One of the decisions an artist has to make when developing a fantasy universe is how much to license the images onto calendars and puzzles and other products.
But having worked in animation, I remembered the feeling of creative synergy, of making something larger than what one person can imagine. Gathering a team of creatives who share a vision is a requirement of games, film and animation, but not always so in comics and illustrated books.
I was intrigued with the idea of allowing other writers and artists into the laboratory to help me build the world. I set up a few parameters, inviting them to: invent their own characters and storylines, stick to the spirit of Dinotopia, stay true to paleontology, and reference the characters of my illustrated books only obliquely.
Starting with Windchaser by Scott Ciencin, we ended up producing 16 digest novels. We hired Michael Welply to paint the covers. I enjoyed working with the authors, and felt that their contribution expanded the scope of my own imagination.
The books were successful, but they eventually went out of print, and we never published ebooks. Until now.
Working through The Authors Guild with a company that specializes in ebooks, we've made a reasonably priced ebook edition that you can enjoy on any of your modern devices. Dinotopia: Windchaser will be released on September 16, but you can pre-order a copy now at these links.
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Dinotopia: Windchaser at Barnes and Noble
A day late chiming in on this -- just wanted to say the impact of your 5,000 posts is incalculable -- one of the true forces for Good in the world. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHello, Sir. Posted on facebook that I’m very excited for this. Hope you get around to doing the Alan Dean Foster novels as well. It’s practically impossible to get them outside the US.
ReplyDeleteThis is good news! I've managed to collect all the digest novels via eBay. Many are ex-library, which is a shame since I'd prefer they stay there -- "Knowledge is for all." If Windchaser works out, perhaps we'll see more digest novels released as e-books. In addition, some of us on the Dinotopia Message Board would like to see your books in this format as well -- portable and searchable. Breathe deep, seek peace.
ReplyDeleteThanks to this new e-edition, Windchaser is thoroughly enjoyable the second time around. It was fun recalling its character development and the wonderful Dinotopian nuances throughout. My paperback digest novels from eBay continue to deteriorate, so let's have the others served up this way!
ReplyDeleteWould extremely love to see more of the books in ebook form, it's incredibly difficult to get a hold of them and my paperbacks are very tattered from being well loved through my childhood...I look every few months for updates
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