Our fab (and rapidly growing famous) artist Ray Dillon has completed the character design for Darien Connors’ main nemesis in the forthcoming comic, StarMage – Orasmas Xul Sarrum.
I don’t really have to say much else do I?
Let me know what you think, folks….
Darth Vader, smarth Vader. He can't make evil look this good!
Hi folks, with all the crazy fast info coming on Star Mage #1, I forgot to mention that we are indeed continuing the novella series begun in July with Darien Connors and the Necromancy of Eridu (written under my pen name, Jason Dawson).
The new novella will be called Darien Connors and the Planet of Sorrows. This one picks up where Eridu left off, as Darien leaves Lambdu Kishpu to look for his father but instead discovers a planet that makes him face his darkest fears. The evil Orasmas returns but we also will be introducing some new villains and allies into the fray…and we ask the question – are the Sarru Kishpu truly the defenders of peace and justice throughout the galaxy as they claim to be or is it all a ruse to hide their true goal of conquering the galaxy?
New monsters, alien races, spells and lessons learned by our hero and his friends. Is Dalidor alive? What is Arylos’ darkest secret? We will get definitive answers in this installment.
In support of the StarMage project as well as the new Darien novella, we’ve done some enhancements to the http://darienconnors.com site to include more detailed character profiles as well as more information on the Lambdu Kishpu school, the politics of Eridu and Darien’s spell book (coming soon). Please note – the character profile pictures listed ARE NOT the comic book characters.
Don’t forget, every Darien novella is only 99 cents – why wait? Get started on Eridu today!
Finally, let me close by revealing the cover of Darien Connors and the Planet of Sorrows.
Hey there gang, so I revealed in my latest tweet on twitter the first concept art for the main character of Star Mage #1 Darien Connors!
Tell me – what do ya think?
Here it is folks – the1st character profile done by @RayDillon for StarMage no.1 – Darien Connors #Comics #SciFi #Magic twitter.com/jcdelatorre/st…
— JC De La Torre (@jcdelatorre) March 29, 2012
It gives me great pleasure to announce that my young adult Sci-Fi/Fantasy adventure Darien Connors will be developed into a comic book series.
It’s also a great honor to announce that acclaimed comic book artist Ray Dillon (twitter: @RayDillon) will be the artist, colorist, letterer and just about everything else you can think of for this book.
Ray’s resume is quite impressive, working on my favorite author Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones comic book adaption. He also worked on NY Times Best Seller The Last Unicorn, the gritty re-imagining of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – TMNT- Dawn of the Ninja, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box (I have a few jokes I could um…stick in there…but I’ll leave it be) and Image Comics’ Nightmare World.
For those of you not familiar with the Darien Connors series, it follows the exploits of a boy necromancer named Darien who discovers that not only is he not human but he’s part of an ancient war between alien races.
While he learns of his power, legacy, destiny and importance to the battle, Darien establishes bonds with new, strange friends and learns his magical craft of Kishpu.
All while fighting for his life, his family and peace throughout the galaxy.
I’ve always described Darien as a combo between Harry Potter and the Last Starfighter.
“The visuals of Darien Connors will be very sci-fi, fantasy, superpowers with big bold colors – exciting,” Dillon told me about our project, “Books like Tellos and Crossgen Comics stuff have helped this genre find more of an audience.”
I know my Darien fans will be excited to see his story spread to another medium. I want you to know I’m going to try to keep the comic as true to the original story as possible but as with any migration to a new medium, some liberties and changes may take place.
Just take some solace in that I am the one doing the writing for this comic and you know how dedicated I am to you – my defenders of the realm. I’ll make sure that whatever is changed (if anything) it will be to enhance the story, your understanding of kishpu and the world of Eridu.
Keep an eye out for some sample pages in the coming months and hopefully to a comic book store near you!
To support the Darien initiative, you’ll be seeing many changes to the main site http://darienconnors.com in the coming weeks.
I’ll also try to keep you updated on my twitter feed on the progress.
We’re very excited about our collaboration with Ray and we look forward to bringing you a great comic book adventure!
Greetings to my defenders of the realm!
Before we get too far into the discussion, I’d like to wish you all a very happy holiday season.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Festivus (for the rest of us), Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Pancha Ganapati and any other I missed (apparently Ramadan was in August this year).
This year was an interesting one to say the least. I joined SB Nation Tampa Bay as a columnist for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Lightning and University of Florida Gators athletics.
I’m now co-editor for the Bucs and editor for the Gators.
I’ve also set up our internet radio station SB Nation Tampa Bay Live and host two shows, Blue Thunder – a Tampa Bay Lightning based sports talk show on Wednesday Nights and The Big Show – a show dedicated to the biggest stories on the mothership.
In addition to my sports writing career (which I’m very excited about, by the way), I’ve also launched the 99 Centers line of e-books. Now, it hasn’t exactly gone as I’ve planned as my sports writing seemed to take over every aspect of my free time. My original vision was to have a new 99 centers book coming out every month of the year – alternating between the three lines.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
However, now that the football season is winding to a close (and the Buccaneers return to the cellar is just about complete), I’ll finally have more time to focus on my fiction.
There’s also some other developments that I’ll reveal later down the line that will enable me to fulfill my promise to you, my dedicated fan base.
In the next couple weeks, you’ll start to see action pick up on the three 99 center lines:
Updated news on the next installments of each of the series as well as a complete redesign of the Darien site that will plunge you even further within the mythology of the interstellar necromancer.
Serial, Continuum Force and Darien will each have installments released in the first quarter of 2012 and hopefully that will allow me to begin fulfilling the promise I began with the 99 center books.
As an apology to all my readers for the delay in the second installments – I will offer each second installment of all the series for free for at least one week of its initial release (on Amazon and Smashwords).
Stay tuned for that and definitely subscribe to this RSS feed, because I will be updating this blog before anywhere else.
Thank you for all of your support in 2011. It was a fun year and I saw a lot of growth in myself, my desires and my fiction.
I believe that 2012 is going to be the best year yet!
Feliz Navidad and Happy Holidays!
Your faithful servant,
JC De La Torre
JC De La Torre's Final Word 