Riddle Road 4: New Gods PRE-ORDER NOW!

You waited, you watched, your brain sat in anticipation, and now it's time for Riddle Road 4: New Gods!  Featuring the continuing second season of Bizenghast, PLUS a new David and Valerie mini-comic and a further unraveling of the secret about Edaniel that will make your brain literally, not figuratively, explode inside your skull!

www.etsy.com/listing/180924941…

Pre-order the NEW Riddle Road installment right now, because volume 4 is on sale for 20% off and the first 75 pre-orders pay just 99 CENTS for shipping...that's right, even international orders!  Y'all gonna save major dosh!

Why am I doing a pre-order instead of a regular order right now?  Because I'm offering a new feature for this issue, called Letters to the Mausoleum.  I'd like you to write in to your favorite character about anything you like (questions, comments for them, etc), and I'll pick three or four letters to be answered by those characters and printed in the back of the issue!  Note me privately with your letter...the deadline is March 7th (next Friday!).



As a personal aside, I just want to thank everyone so far who has bought and read Riddle Road, in any capacity. I was discussing publishing the other day with some people in the industry and they were trying to assert the idea that "readers today only want flash pictures, interactive, multimedia, attention-grabbing stuff."  One guy was telling me flat out that comics and literature have to hop on the bandwagon of reinventing themselves for iPads, phones, all that, and do it in loud, full-color animated ways, just to get people to still care. And they have to be 1.99 or less, because people don't have the patience or concern to support artists any more, unless it's stupid cheap. And they need tons of alternate covers and to be sold in certain places and push hype on a bunch of review sites, blah blah, just to sell at all.

I was like, "Well maybe my readers are just smarter than most, but they care more about story.  And to prove it, here's a bunch of sales data about people who have bought Riddle Road.  No glossy cover, no gimmicks, just good story, in a plain little printed cardstock cover, with computer printed pages, and a little ashcan comic in the middle.  I don't earn enough from it to make a living or anything, but it definitely helps out a little with bills, and I enjoy doing it.  Someday I even hope to take the whole story and turn it into a proper graphic novel continuation."

Dude was flabbergasted.  He just kept saying, "Wait...and people buy these?  Like, they read them?"  I was like, "Well yeah, DUH, they want to read a story, you know, like an actual STORY?  Because they're fans, and want to see how the rest of the story goes?  Like people used to do?"  Dude couldn't wrap his head around it, the idea that people want to support a good story series and read it regardless of how non-shiny its packaging might be and how not-iPad-compatible it is.

So today's sale is really a thank-you for being the awesomest fans on planet Earth and also every other planet.  You care enough to spend a little extra to support an independent writer and artist, instead of throwing less money at a conglomeration book-mill that pays the writer practically nothing and pushes crappy knock-off stories that were written by committee based on TV trends and merchandising.  That not only means a lot to me, but it really says a lot about you!

In fact, without your support of Riddle Road, these game people I'm working with now wouldn't ever have considered Bizenghast as worth making a game about.  The fact that people are willing to continue reading it in a humble little ashcan format really sent them the message that it's a story worth following and people really care about it!

So THANK YOU EVERYONE.  I don't like to brag, but I pretty much have the smartest, most discerning fans in the world.  Also the handsomest and nicest-smelling.   You are all MINTY FRESH and DELIGHTFUL!

-M