Guardians Of The Galaxy Pages: Annual #4

In 1994, I was a freelance artist working mostly for Marvel Comics.  Craig Anderson hired me to draw six pages in the Guardians of The Galaxy Annual that year. To be honest, until the movie came out this summer, I had completely forgotten I had drawn for Guardians of The Galaxy. When the trailer started appearing in theaters earlier this spring, I kept thinking, "Gee, that title sounds awfully familiar."

Fortunately, I kept all my artwork from that era. I still have three of the six original pages (we split them with the inkers; in this case my friend Rodney Ramos). More importantly, I found xeroxes of my breakdowns.

I'll always be grateful to Craig Anderson and Lynaire Brust for thinking of me whenever there was work to be assigned as well as many other great editors (like Terry Kavanaugh, Don Daley, Renee Witterstaeter, and Mike Lackey) who I still consider friends to this day. The pages are presented in chronological order below with the breakdowns to the right of the published versions.

High Praise for Awakenings and The Lost Prince

Most of the great quotes and good reviews for my books won't fit in a twitter feed, so I put them here.

The Date

Playboy College Fiction Contest Winner 1999

The Date

Edward Lazellari

In 1999, I was a senior majoring in English literature at Rutgers University, with a concentration in creative writing. The Date was my second submission to Playboy; I had tried the previous year with a story about a NASA shuttle mission and astronauts getting it on in zero gravity. (It was not as good.) Somehow, under the onslaught of plodding through melancholy emo stories of student life generated by my classmates, I managed to find my way to this dark comedy. The inspiration was a Dateline NBC story about conjoined 10-year-old twins living in the Midwest, and thriving despite their condition. I was a big fan of the girls, cheering them on for making lemonade out of life's lemons. I remember being grateful that my problems did not come that big and that I should be more of a doer and less of a complainer.  I also remember thinking, "things would get a lot harder once those girls hit puberty, though." Duh! And of course, it clicked. I hit the computer like a force of nature for the next three days--and here we are.

(For a Pdf version of this story available for download, click here.)

Big Numbers And Easy Steps: Buying Granny A Cell Phone

Don't consign Granny to telegrams. Buy her a cell phone.

If your 84-year old mother is anything like mine, then she's not texting a whole lot. She's probably not surfing the Web, playing video games, tweeting, or updating her Facebook page either. So why does she need a smart phone or an expensive plan that locks her in until she's 87? Fact is, she doesn't. However, we need our senior loved ones to be able to reach us, especially in times of emergency. Some form of mobile communication is a must, and it's often the children that pay for it.


In researching this subject, I was not surprised to find that modern phones confuse the elderly. After all, this is the generation that could not figure out how to program their VCRs when they were still in their 40s. What an Octogenarian needs in a mobile device is simplicity, large numbers, and good volume. They need a Contacts menu with few steps; two clicks away from the loved one they want to reach.  And, they don't need a plan at all because they still use their house phones for everything (i.e. they need a prepaid plan).

The Ogre Hunt (A Tale of Aandor)

I wrote The Ogre Hunt between Awakenings and The Lost Prince. Although it features a character from my novels, which are adult urban fantasy, this one beckoned to be a young adult (YA) story. The illustration is an oldie from 1995, when I still made a living as an artist for Marvel. I only had an inkling of my fantasy series at the time and was still fleshing out the back story.  (Lelani in The Ogre Hunt is much younger than she appears in this illustration and has a full head of hair instead of a Mohawk.) I had fun writing this short and present it here for old fans and new. A PDF version is also available by clicking on this Link.

~*~

Everything was black.

The ogre had taken them all in seconds. It was implausibly swift for such a large, brutish creature—twenty-five feet tall, with the rancid odor of a garbage pit. So this is death, thought Lelani. Her cheek stung fiercely but she couldn't move, as though she were made of lead. She had always imagined death to be more comfortable then this. A tiny hand slapped her face—again.

"Wake up!" came a tense whisper.

That high, squeaky voice did not belong to any centaur. Lelani opened her eyes just as her diminutive friend Mytah was about to administer another smack of impromptu medicine. For an unabashed pacifist, Mytah packed a good wallop. She wore her hair in a pixie cut with matching big brown eyes. Her short-sleeved forest-green smock denoted the Fhlee preference for forest colors and materials, as did her hemp-rope belt and sandals woven from leaves of the water lotus. Her eyes were red and puffy, the tracks of her tears clearly marked upon her cheek.

"Thank the gods...I thought you..."

"What happened?" asked Lelani.

"It carried them off!" Mytah whispered.

"But not me?" Lelani asked.

"Don't you remember?"

Lelani could not remember—recent events were hazy. She recalled the previous two days quite clearly, however—the moment everything started to go wrong—the moment Kreeg ruined her first hunt.

Goodreads Giveaway Of Awakenings And The Lost Prince

In association with Goodreads.com, I am giving away signed copies of the first two novels in my Guardians of Aandor series from Tor Books.

To win a paperback copy of Book 1, Awakenings click here. 
To win a hardcover copy of book 2, The Lost Prince, click here.
The signing period ends Dec. 18, 2014, so don't wait!

“Combines crossover fantasy in the style of Charles de Lint and Mercedes Lackey with urban fantasy reminiscent of Jim Butcher in a hard knocks action tale.”—Library Journal on Awakenings

Awakenings

Cal MacDonnell is a happily married New York City cop with a loving family. Seth Raincrest is a washed-up photographer who has alienated even his closest friends. The two have nothing in common—except that they both suffer from retrograde amnesia. It’s as if they just appeared out of thin air thirteen years ago, and nothing has been able to restore their memories. Now their forgotten past has caught up to them with a vengeance.

The Lost Prince

In Lazellari’s debut fantasy, Awakenings, New York City cop Cal MacDonnell and photographer Seth Raincrest found themselves stalked by otherworldly beings intent on killing them. The two had to accept the aid of a mysterious woman to unlock their hidden pasts, and what they discovered changed their lives.

Everything they knew about their lives was an illusion. They had in fact travelled to our dimension from the medieval reality of Aandor to hide their infant prince from assassins, but upon arriving, a freak mishap wiped their memories. Cal, Seth, and the rest of their party were incapacitated, and the infant prince was lost.

Thirteen years later, that prince, Daniel Hauer, is unaware of his origins--or that he has become the prize in a race between two powerful opposing factions. Cal and Seth’s group want to keep Daniel safe. The other wants Daniel dead—by any means necessary.

From the streets of New York City to the back roads of rural North Carolina, the search for the prince sets powerful forces against each other in a do-or-die battle for the rule of the kingdom of Aandor.

Against a backdrop of murder, magic, and mayhem on the streets of New York City, victory goes to the swiftest and the truest of hearts.

For those who do not win, you may also find the books anywhere novels are sold.

Awakenings Amazon
Awakenings Barnes & Noble
Awakenings KOBO

The Lost Prince Amazon
The Lost Prince Barnes & Noble
The Lost Prince KOBO