Daughters of the Witch Queen announcement

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edit: advance reader copies gone! Thank you for your help guys.

 

Today we’re announcing a new book project called Daughters of the Witch Queen.

We’ve been working on this story for the past two years alongside of Run Freak Run, and what seems like a million rewrites, violent headaches, and many cries, this story has come to a place that we can start sharing it.

We’re especially proud of it because it’s something quite different for us. It’s a serialized novel that we hope to release to you in parts, like TV episodes, as a series of e-books – all the while continuing to work on and deliver Run Freak Run to the finale it deserves.

But we’re also artists, so this novel will come to you with a mighty package of concept art, info-graphics, and illustrations. It is a project in which we hope to marry our two loves, creating stories and creating art.

We want you to be part of this experience! The first part of this serialized novel is finished and ready to be released on the 1st of March on Amazon for $2.99. But before that happens we’re releasing the first two chapters to you for free. This blog post contains a link below. We hope you enjoy them!
On that note, we’re also looking for early reviewers who would receive a free e-book of Daughters Of The Witch Queen Part 1 for a promise to leave an honest Amazon and/or Goodreads review after reading it.

This is in no way a request to satisfy our vanity but a means to help us get our feet into a totally new distribution system. Amazon’s search engine works, among other things, by giving the more reviewed items priority in search results, and getting some honest early reviews will be immensely helpful to us to spread the word of the book. Not to speak of giving people a better understanding of what to expect from the story and helping everyone to make a more informed purchase.

So, if you want to read Daughters Of The Witch Queen for free, then send us an e-mail to contact [at] runfreakrun.com requesting a copy, and we will send you the e-book within couple of days. All we’re asking for return is an honest Amazon review: a star rating and a few words whether you liked it so far or not. We can handle a group of hundred volunteers before we’ll get overwhelmed, so we have to operate on first come, first serve basis. We hope you understand. :)

The first part of Daughters of the Witch Queen is roughly 1-1,5 hour long reading experience, depending on the speed of the reader. As mentioned before, the release happens on the 1st of March, so that means you’ll have about two weeks to give it a read and rate it after the release :) We hope this sounds like a fair enough exchange, and we will be eternally grateful to the first hundred that wants to take a stab at it!

Now back to the sneak peak :) You’ll find the first two chapters along with a new set of illustrations below. Click on the “Click To Read!” button to go to the Google Drive document with the chapters. We hope you enjoy reading them!

 

 

Daughters of the Witch Queen part 1 – teaser

Click to read!

 

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To sum up!

We are working on a serialized novel, released in segments of 1-1.5 hour reading experiences. DotWQ is planned as s 9-part story (at least). We’re releasing it in small segments because we enjoy this constant interaction with our readers, and we’d love to keep it up, instead of writing in silence for the next three years.

Each part will be released on Amazon for the price of $3. We’re going to do our best to delight and entertain you, and to earn you as our readers.

 

If you’d like to help us create this book, then please become one of our advance readers. You’ll get a free copy of Daughters of the Witch Queen part 1, and we only ask that you’ll leave us an honest review on Amazon/Gooderads. We can only handle up to a hundred helpers, so first come, first serve.

 

To participate, send us an email at contact@runfreakrun.com

 

We look forward to this ride with you :)

 

Love,

Silver and Kaija

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Sneak peek in the newsletter!

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Last Sunday we delivered a promise.

We delivered a promise to give our email subscribers a sneak peek to our next project, and the response we’ve gotten was overwhelmingly positive and exciting. It’s something we’ve been painstakingly working on the little hours when we’re not doing Run Freak Run, and it’s been a tremendously proud experience to see it come together.

I mean, just check it out yourself :)

 

How can we not feel excited after that? :)

It was such an encouraging experience that this Sunday we’re going to do it again, and this time we’re going release more teasers and content to our newsletter subscribers. This time, we’re also going to ask for a limited amount of advance readers to help us bring this project to life.

So, if you haven’t yet subscribed – don’t worry! This Saturday we’re going to re-send the first sneak peek to every one who joined the list after the first sneak peek, and the next day you’ll get the second sneak peek with everyone else!

We’re so adamant on getting you signed up because we never want to lose you as a reader, and we want to have the tools to reach you with all our current and future projects. And trust me, you don’t want to miss them. :)

And just so you know we’re serious, check this out:

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Sign up to our newsletter, and we’ll rock your world!

Love,
Silver

 

Looking forward to hearing what you thought of it! @runfreakrun

Inquisitor Six wallpaper

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To celebrate the end of this chapter, and the soon beginning last chapter of Run Freak Run – we made a wallpaper out of today’s comic page. We hope you enjoy it :)

Click to open up!

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It looks like our chapters have just become longer and longer (besides 3 & 4 that were side-stories). I wonder how long the last one will be, for there’s still a few things to cover.

On writing tools Part 2

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Almost two years ago (jesus time flies.) I wrote a blog post about some of my favorite writing tools. Since I’ve learned a lot during this time, and come across even more useful resources, I thought I’d take a second to post three of my favorite ones that I like to share to all my independent/self-publishing friends.

I know there’s at least a few storytelling enthusiasts following this blog, and I hope these will prove as useful to you as they did to me. And even if you aren’t a writer, an artist or any kind of a storyteller, you can still benefit from knowing the basics, and hey – in the best case scenario it’ll enable you to take that step towards being one.

This blog post will cover my favorite book on writing, my favorite podcast/blog and my favorite youtube-video from the last few years. These are the resources I think everyone should have access to.

And lastly, I think the most important message in all these resources is that storytelling is not just magic, but a craft that involves a hefty amount of theory and skill. And if you put enough hours into it, you too can make a story that’s at least okay – which is just one step away from a good one.

So let’s start!

 

1. The Book: Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

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This is the book I wish I had five years ago. It’s about things we see all the time in television, but can’t really put into words because we take them for granted.

Basically, it will teach its readers how the Three Act-format works, the basic story troupes in Hollywood, and how formulaic it can be. Now when I say formulaic, I don’t mean it in a bad sense: this book teaches how to break down your story into points that will take the story forward, bring it to a satisfying end, and make sense of it all at the same time.

It’s not a book about your creative voice and individuality, but about being efficient. Hence, why I wish I’d had it five years ago, I don’t even want to tell you how much time and effort I’ve wasted because I had no idea what to do next. The time I’ve spent wallowing in waves of frustration and anger, because I was guessing the next step. Well, at least now, because of this book I’ve learned a set of tools that allow me to proceed to the next step, and have basic guidelines on what I should be aiming at. Now, what you do with those guidelines, that’s where your creativity should come to work.

Nevertheless, get this book, pronto.

 

2. The Podcast/Blog: The Creative Penn with Joanna Penn

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Joanna Penn is an inspiration among self-published writers. She writers thrillers, self-help books, hosts a podcast/vlog on writing, teaches workshops and shares a lot of it free. The amount of work she manages to put in to get closer to her dreams is incredible, and I can’t but admire her tenacity.

But more than anything, she’s a business woman.

Now, I’ve been brought up in the world of artists; everything we do is for the sake of the fun and self-expression, and when ever we hear business talk we zone out so fast it’s like hypnosis. It’s scary really. It’s the same in the video games industry, as it is in the web comics worlds, as it is in any artist community, and it’s not helping anyone.

Hence my delight, when I noticed how much Joanna Penn is focusing on marketing and business plans alongside the creativity and craftsmanship. I’ve personally learned tons from her massive (over 200) library of podcast interviews, where she talks to select successful authors and really hammers down what strategies they used in their whole operation.

I recommend you check out The Creative Penn, listen to her podcasts, and download her free book on being an author with a healthy attitude to business.

 

3. Youtube-video: Mr Plinkett reviews Star Wars episode 1

So this video is kind of like a summary of the two previous resources. He breaks down the movie step by step, and educates us what went wrong. While the video has a peculiar kind of sarcastic humor (hilarious), it’s also extremely helpful and I recommend to anyone who is even remotely interested in storytelling, or just throwing poo at the Star Wars prequels.

Whichever you fancy, check it out!

 

 

I’d appreciate if you let me know your favorite writing and storytelling resources, because I’m always looking for new things to study.

And while you’re at it, remember to sign up for our newsletter because I want your souls.

 

Love,
Silver Saaremaeel

Twitter me @runfreakrun or comment below!

 

Run Freak Run art sale AKRASIA

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New art, hooray!

Jelou all! We’re happy to announce that we’ve added five new pages to our online store. These are inked with blood, sweat and sumi-e inks on A3 smooth bristol papers. Only one of each exist in the world, and they all come signed by the artist, Kaija.

We’re also happy to announce that we’re offering a 10% off with the coupon code AKRASIA on all art sales, because we’re not just artists here, but also capitalists.

 

Speaking of ALSO! Make sure you sign up for e-mail newsletter, because we’re just about ready to start about our next project with some teasers, and we’ll reveal things first to everyone on our mailing list. Besides, you might win some free art in the process.

See you on Mondays!

Silver

Four Disney artists painting

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If you’re one of those who has played Banner Saga, then you’ve no doubt noticed the beautiful background artwork in there. Who were they inspired by? Eyvind Earle and the classic Disney movies. While totally different mood and subject matter, the influence is clear and well executed.

As big fans of them, we just had to post this. You can see Eyvind Earle work his magic with his fellow Disney artists on few of the Sleeping Beauty background paintings, and do a personal take on a simple outdoors tree-portrait. Simply fascinating.

Love,

Silver

Drawing On Everything

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If you don’t know Shantell Martin you should check her out. She is a New York based artist, who is known for her black and white marker drawings. They adorn anything from walls to furniture, objects and clothes, and are often done live in front of an audience.

I saw her Skillshare class: Draw On Everything, where she talks a lot about her process. Hearing artist’s thought processes is almost always fascinating, but Shantell’s was particularly eye opening: “Everything is one big mistake, and you’ve got to enjoy the process.”

Personally I’m tired of having a stick up my butt about not making mistakes when drawing. So I’m creating space for spontaneous drawing on anything that stays still for enough time to fill it with squiggles.

Armed with Krink pens, I’m taking the first step of spontaneous doodling by filling my drawing board:

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Any permanent marker should do, but the Krink pens have been perfect for this. They write on most surfaces, dry quickly, and don’t come off. Not easily at least.

 

This first attempt didn’t go entirely without hiccups. You’ll notice in the video there’s a tad longer pause at about 01:30. That’s me turning to Silver and asking if he knows if you can clean out permanent markers easily because I think I ruined my drawing board, and Silver answering: probably not, time to go nuts. And I did. And I think I understand Shantell’s message. Sure it looked horrible at some point if perfection was the goal, but when you relax, give up on perfection, and instead just create a tapestry dedicated to mistakes, the outcome is impressive.

I love my new drawing board:

 

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I love how other drawings look against the texture. It creates cool synergy.

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Shantell Martin: http://www.shantellmartin.com/

 

Krink pens here!: http://shop.krink.com/

 

Smiles,

Kaija

 

PS. HAPPY NEW YEAR GUYS!
tweet tweet me @KaijaRudkiewicz

The Original RFR

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This might be confusing to you, but I promise if you read on you’ll find out why I put RFR and a gif of a cube shaped cat in one picture ;)

Titles are terrifying.

They’re supposed to be one or more words that will represent everything that your hundreds of pages of work have been trying to get at.

And it’s a paralysing prospect: in addition to being representative of the whole point of your work you want the title to convey the tone of the work, right genre, and hopefully not be too much of a mouthful at the same time.

During the year we took to prepare RFR before launching, we went through at least a dozen titles for the comic, none of which made much sense after a few days of commitment. “NEXT! Ok, this one is good. No, what were we thinking? NEXT!” Some were going for a wild west vibe (not sure why), some were as broad as can be (“Witch hunt”), and most were so unmemorable that for the life of me I can’t recall them now.

And this leads me to “Run Freak Run”.

During my college years I used to have an Etsy shop where I sold plush toys sewn by me. It didn’t exactly take off, but it gave us a bit of pocket money to… well… eat something else than plain spaghetti with a drop of soy sauce on top for flavouring.

All the toys were these weird, cute, colourful monsters with tongues and brains coming out from behind zippers and with “X” to mark their buttholes.

But the shop needed a name.

My approach to finding that name was to rifle through my seven shoeboxfuls of cd’s and brainstorm based on the song names. A mash-up of “Run Boy Run” (I can’t remember by whom, I’m pretty sure it was in a “Punk-O-Rama” cd) and “Freaks in uniforms” by Horrorpops became “Run Freak Run”.

I stopped running the shop when I got a full time job. The shop was empty for couple of years gathering virtual dust, the toys gathering actual dust, until in the year before launching the comic Silver said something along the lines of: What about reusing Run Freak Run? We already have a website for it, a shop set up, and it fits the story surprisingly well. That doesn’t actually sound like Silver at all, but you get the gist.

For better or for worse we went with it.

 

To give you a feel for what RFR was originally I photographed the toys we still have in the apartment and pulled some pictures from Etsy sales history.

I hope you enjoyed hearing this somewhat unusual origin story. How we came up with the comic itself is a tale for another day.

 

Group picture. There’s more, but they’re stashed in the cellar somewhere. 

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These pictures are straight from the Etsy shop pages. We’ve come a long way with photographing products!

Smiles,

Kaija

Don’t forget to enter the Winter art givaway by signing up for our newsletter! More info here.

 

Silver’s shitty poems

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For every decent RFR poem, I have to do at least ten bad ones. Here are three from over the years, wonderfully illustrated by me. I hope you love ’em.

 

MARCELLA

Marcella,

He was a rough fella’
Who liked to dress like
A pretty bella.

Tough and sweaty,
Big and hairy,
Build like a male dairy.

Marcella,
Ma bella,
I hope you don’t end up
A lonely fella’.

marcella

 

 

RED SHRIEK

In a wet creek,
There was a Red Shriek,
His teeth reeked
of onions.

Red Shriek,
Onion freak.

What a
stupid creep.

redshriek

 

 

HORTENSIA

Hortensia,
The flower of
Valencia.

She was a fine lady,
Born in sixteen-eighty,
Who ate a lot of
Gravy.

Too much gravy.

And became fat.

So fat.

Hortensia,
The greedy bitch,
Died killing half of
Valencia.

hortensia

 

 

Love,

Silver

Challenge me to a poem showdown @runfreakrun, if you dare.