Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Contest(s) and News

Riv Re is having an exciting contest where she's giving away excess YA Book swag. Check out Riv's contest here: http://fantasticfantasyfan.blogspot.com/2010/06/nineteen-followers-plus-one-brother.html

Meanwhile...

According to Twig, International Fairy Day never ends. I guess I will have to keep giving away free passes to Faerieworlds in Eugene OR until I run out. Buy a copy of the Triskaidek and email me that you have (with your address) and I'll send you some free passes. Be sure to tell me: what day you bought your copy of The Triskaidek and whether it was on Amazon or Lulu, your address, how many passes you want, and what day you want to attend.

Thanks!
13asil

Thursday, June 24, 2010

International Faerie Day

Today is International Faerie Day. In celebration anyone who buys my book today on Amazon.com (either the physical book or the Kindle download) AND decides to follow me on this blog, I will give FREE PASSES to visit Faerie Worlds in Eugene Oregon this summer.

Here's a link to Faerie Worlds:
http://www.faerieworlds.com/

Here's a link to my book on Amazon.com:
The Triskaidek (both versions) on Amazon

Enjoy!

13asil Sprig

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

So much news, so little time

Wow, there's so much news I don't know where to start.

First of all, thanks to one of my followers (stalkers) I discovered that The Triskaidek is actually available already through Amazon.com (even though I haven't approved the proof.) I don't know if this means you will be pre-ordering the book if you buy one, or if they will be selling the version I had temporarily available for about 15 minutes last week before I discovered a fatal flaw in it and pulled it back off the market.

Go check it out at:
http://www.amazon.com/Triskaidek-1-Basil-Sprig/dp/145288689X/

The second most important thing in the news is that I posted late last night (or was it early this morning?) our next Camp Fae video trailer called "Mischief." It is available at Fairy Mayhem Films on YouTube. Here's a link to FMF:

http://www.youtube.com/FairyMayhemFilms

And here's the actual video embedded:



The next piece of important news is that The Triskaidek Global Book Launch Party went great! When I say that, I feel like I'm walking on water. I could feel let down that hardly anyone showed up, but I'd rather tell you at how psyched I am at the enthusiasm of the guests who were there. It was awesome! When I think about "what am I doing all this for" - it is all for YOU, my readers. You are a great bunch of people.

Let me tell you how it went. To begin with I asked my daughter and one of her friends to dress up in their fairy costumes (from the videos.) The idea was to draw attention to ourselves since we were in a public place. I was there in my cape, and my beard alone is generally enough to draw attention to myself. But when all the other kids started arriving, they were in their costumes too, and they wanted to put on jewelry and get all decked out as my particular type of fairy (you've got to read the book to understand.) You can look at the photos on my main web site if you haven't read the book and you've never seen what my fairies look like. www.campfae.org

So, by the time I started reading to the crowd there was a flock of fairies on my left, and a flock of their parents on my right. It was like there was some sort of official segregation going on that prevented kids from sitting with their parents.

I read the first chapter, and everyone clapped, and I took a dramatic bow. Then I opened it up for questions and the kids went wild. I won't tell you what they asked, because they've all read the story (many of them several times) and that would spoil things. But we had a lot of very interesting dialog. It is great these kids are so passionate about this world I've created. They were even arguing about things. I will be posting some photos of the book launch on the Camp Fae facebook page so you can see what I mean.

The kids, and their parents, and the hand full of other guests who came all got to preview the second video trailer. We had it mostly complete at the time. The only thing that wasn't finished yet was the credits. These kids were all so excited to see themselves in the video that they didn't even care about the credits.

All-in-all the book launch was an enormous success. I say it was a success not because I sold a ton of books, and not because tons of people came. I'm grateful for those who did come! I say it was a success because it was mostly a bunch of kids celebrating a story, and you can't get better than that! Inspiring young people to dream is what it is all about.

~ Basil

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Video Update

Video editing is moving along, but unfortunately very slowly. We are all busy people and have real lives too! But part of it was that I needed a new voice-over introduction to continue the story a bit, and I we needed a voice-over for some parts that you couldn't hear the actor when we filmed.

Thankfully, I met with Anya (my main actress) this weekend and got about 2 hours with of voice-over recording. Unfortunately there's only one sentence, plus 3 words! :) Now I've got to spend several hours weeding out all the junk and finding the best recordings and then deliver them to my video editor. The short version is: hopefully we will have the next video ready this weekend.

Hopefully!

Stay tuned.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Writing About Fairies

When I'm out and about and people get me talking about my books, the question often comes up: "is it difficult writing about fairies?"

I have to confess, yes, it is difficult at times writing about fairies. There are days when I wonder if anyone believes anything I have to say about them.