LOTA Preorders Are Now Open
Monday May 19, 2014 • Howard Tayler

Schlock Mercenary Book 10, Longshoreman of the Apocalypse, (LOTA) is now available for pre-order. 

LOTA was my 2nd Hugo-nominated work. This 160-page, full-color print collection features stacks of margin art, a scattering of new footnotes, and a bonus story written by Jim Zub, drawn by Ben McSweeney, colored by Travis Walton, and overseen and approved as canon by me.  I'm pretty excited to let other people play in this space with me. If you're wondering what's been going on with the in-universe Schlock TV show, you should be pretty excited too. 

Longshoreman of the Apocalypse begins with a very powerful introduction by my friend Myke Cole. I was thrilled that he agreed to write this for me, and I couldn't be happier with how his intro turned out. I hope you love it too. 

All sketched and unsketched pre-orders are scheduled to ship by June 15th. The pallets of books are en route to the Schlock Mercenary Warehouse, and we're waiting on a phone call to let us know the exact date of their arrival (it'll be sometime in the next ten days.) And then I become terribly, terribly busy, but I shouldn't complain because Sandra becomes even busier. 

Setting aside my usual self-deprecatory cracks, I think this is the best book we've done so far. We're getting better at the process of making books, and I've been getting better as a storyteller, but Longshoreman of the Apocalypse stepped ahead of that curve and cleared some new bars thanks to my association with the Writing Excuses crew. This was the first book outlined and brainstormed after I began podcasting about creating genre fiction, and those conversations about this craft really took my work up a few extra notches. This was also the first book in which I involved other writers in the process of refining the story.

So if you don't have any Schlock Mercenary books yet, this tome is a fine place to start. And if you're looking to hook friends on Schlock Mercenary, or just looking to give someone a book they'll love, this story stands well on its own.

And if you need more than just one book, we have a few bundles available. These will shave about 10% off the regular price, and we've created bundles that include LOTA sketch editions.

We also recently took delivery of Sandra's second picture book, Strength of Wild Horses.

And of course there are pins in the store now along with lots of other goodies. There's even a whole category for clearance items!

I've mentioned before that I'm not doing as many sketch editions this time around. Usually I do a thousand. This time I'm only doing about 600. We're not trying to create a sense of urgency, or drive first-day sales, or anything like that. This is just a necessary step in the preservation of my hand. The extra money we make from numbered, sketched books is nice, and we'll miss that, but I think you'd all miss regular comics a lot more. 

I'll still sign all the books, and if you catch up with me at a convention I'll sketch in any of your unsketched Schlock books. I'll be at GenCon Indy, Westercon/FantasyCon in Salt Lake, and I'll even be at Lock & Load in about two weeks (though I won't be selling any books there -- you'll have to acquire those ahead of time.) My full schedule is here, and you can count on me to be sketch-ready at any of these events.