Bernie Sanders Talks Health Care w/ Ed Shultz

Makin' A Racket!

I was just interviewed by Heather Roulo for Podioracket.com. It'll be coming up in a future Podioracket podcast! They've got a great interview special with Podiobooks' Chris Miller up right now: http://www.podioracket.com/

Great Little Write Up at Comic Book Resources!

...In This Week's “Permanent Damage” by Steven Grant

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=20828

"For the last year, Mike Luoma's been online publishing his strip PANTHEA OBSCURA, and currently beginning the fourth "issue." The premise – what the relationship is of ancient gods still walking the earth and a civilization that no longer acknowledges their existence, and currently facing the consequences of their own actions as they try to win some acknowledgement back – has gotten a bit well-trod over the past few years (Neil Gaiman has probably poisoned that well as much as anybody) but Luoma has done a pretty decent job of it nonetheless. Though the latest installment's taking on aspects of THE MIGHTY THOR, and that might not be a good direction. The art's okay, drastically improved by flashy coloring (I'm starting to wonder if too many strips aren't banking too much on computer screen luminosity for effect; then again, that's the medium...) but Luoma's writing is entertaining enough to gloss over it. This reminds me of some of the better independent comics published in the late '70s..."

How cool is that!

Kindle-ing Interest...

Yeah, couldn't resist that Post Title.

Got a Kindle? You can get each of my books for just 99 cents each for the Amazon Kindle!

Including the newest addition, available just today - "Holy Shit: Or... Pat Robertson Is The Anti-Christ!" Thanks to improved graphic capability, you can read my black and white comic book/graphic thingy on your new Kindle 2 reader... for just 99 cents!

Need a Kindle? Click Here:
Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)

Get "Holy Shit: Or... Pat Robertson Is The Anti-Christ" for your Kindle here:
Holy Shit: Or... Pat Robertson Is The Anti-Christ

Get Vatican Assassin for your Kindle here:
Vatican Assassin (Vatican Assassin Trilogy)
Get Vatican Ambassador for your Kindle here:
Vatican Ambassador (Vatican Assassin Trilogy)
Get Vatican Abdicator for your Kindle here:
Vatican Abdicator (Vatican Assassin Trilogy)

Get Synthetic Marmalade for your Kindle here:
Synthetic Marmalade
Get Neo-Gnosis for your Kindle here:
NEO-GNOSIS

Ninja Pet!

This came to me in the shower the other day. Not even sure it's all that funny, but I like it!



Click on the image to enlarge it.

Watching Watchmen and More

Reviewed Watchmen for Cosmicbooknews.com:

http://cosmicbooknews.com/reviews/wmenreview

I liked it! Brilliant movie.

I've been writing a lot for Cosmic Book News this week. There was also my appreciation of Nova #1 from 1994 for the site's Nova/Quasar Month:

http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/nova1-90app

And a Review of R.E.B.E.L.S. #1:

http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/reviews/rebels1review

Plus my column "Mike Luoma's Making It Up!" continues. I did a massive fourth installment. Working on the fifth right now!

http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/mlmakingup4
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/mlmakingup3
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/mlmakingup2
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/mlmakingup

New Podcast!

Hi everyone, I posted an episode to my podcast! The Glow-in-the-Dark Radio Podcast returns!



Click this link to check it out:

Glow-in-the-Dark Radio Podcast Episode Seventy

More at glowinthedarkradio.com

- Mike

Mike Luoma Book News

I Just sent this out as an email update, thought I'd include it here on the blog:

Hello from Mike Luoma!

Please excuse this mass mailing. You're getting this because you've either emailed me or been a friend of mine through the years. Either way, if this sort of “what I've been up to” email isn't to your taste, please let me know and I will take your name off of my rudimentary email list. I'm doing this by hand, so please let me know if you don't want to receive emails. On the other hand, if you know of other people who would like to get this kind of info, please forward this to them. If you've received this as a forward, please drop me an email at glowinthedarkradio@gmail.com if you'd like to be on the list. Thanks!

In case you haven't heard, I've got a new column I'm writing for the “cosmic” comic book site CosmicBookNews.com (http://www.cosmicbooknews.com) where I'm detailing the creation of my comic book series Panthea Obscura. The fourth issue of Panthea Obscura is almost finished! If you need to catch up on the first three issues, you can do that for FREE a couple of ways. You can download the issues as pdf files from my site, http://glowinthedarkradio.com. If you're not into downloading, you can read them online at DrunkDuck.com. Just head over to http://www.drunkduck.com/Panthea_Obscura.com and go back to the beginning.

I've also hooked up with a new printer for the comic books – Ka-Blam.com! They know comics, they do comics well, and I can sell my books through their site IndyPlanet.com. Best of all, my comic books cost A THIRD of what they were costing at lulu.com! You can get issue one for $3.99, issues two and three for $2.99 each – very competitive! Follow the links from my site http://glowinthedarkradio.com to pick up the books on Indy Planet.

The Vatican Abdicator audiobook is DONE! I just uploaded the final recording this past weekend. This means you can now listen to the entire Vatican Assassin Trilogy for FREE! The last four episodes of Vatican Abdicator cover the trilogy's appendix, the background material for the story. All three books are available on Itunes for free download, or you can go directly to the books sites at Podiobooks.com to listen:
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/vatican-assassin
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/vatican-ambassador
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/vatican-abdicator

If you'd like to pick up the books themselves, head on over to http//glowinthedarkradio.com and follow the links. You'll find a new 3-in-1 Omnibus Special Edition Hardcover of the entire Vatican Assassin Trilogy – all three books under one cover, plus the Appendix! Here's a direct link to the new collected edition: http://www.lulu.com/content/5097584

And... I've also created a stand alone paperback edition of the Appendix, in case you already have the paperback books and don't want to buy the same thing twice. Seemed like the right thing to do. Might also be good background material if you've listened to the series. Just $9.99 for the trade paperback or 99 cents for the download: http://www.lulu.com/content/6106627

All of my books are available through my site http://glowinthedarkradio.com. Most are available through Amazon.Com as well.

On a sad note, I'm no longer working for The Point on the radio in Vermont. We'll see what the next chapter brings...

That's it for this time! Drop me an email if you feel like. Please forward this email to any friends who might be into science fiction and comic books. And again, please let me know if this annoys you and you want off the list. Thanks!

Mike

News from The Cutting Edge: ComicsMonkey.com!

News from the world of comic book publishing! Diamond, the near-monopoly for comic book distribution, announced a couple Fridays ago they were going to up their "benchmarks" for the books they'd carry in their catalog: you have to sell more books or they won't list you. Many small publishers heard the news as a death knell of sorts. Diamond enjoys a near monopoly as their catalog is used by most direct market comic book retailers exclusively, and there's no competing national distributor.

Now the folks that brought us Ka-Blam.com and IndyPlanet.com have announced Print-On-Demand Distribution to Direct Market retailers: ComicsMonkey.com was just rolled out today!

Ka-Blam's Comics Monkey could create a new distribution network to, in effect, replace the smaller scale distribution Diamond is abandoning! They've hinted at something in the works for a while now. They stepped up their hints last week, and have now revealed Comics Monkey POD distribution.

Ka-Blam.com is the print-on-demand site. IndyPlanet.com is their on-line store, and now ComicsMonkey.com will be their distribution/retailer hub. All that's there now is the blog entry describing what they're attempting to do, and what numbers they're anticipating for retailer profit and publisher percentage (sort of the "royalty" payment):

http://www.comicsmonkey.com

I'm very excited! I've got my books up on IndyPlanet.com right now (Panthea Obscura Issue One, Issue Two and Issue Three) and if they can pull this off, it will give me distribution into local comic shops everywhere... if they order the book. It at the very least makes the books available to retailers who might sell them.

Good news!

On The Cutting Edge of Publishing

Haven't had much to post about, seems...

Here's an interesting article from TIME magazine over how publishing is changing:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873122,00.html

And another article from TIME on how the very way I've been promoting my book through making it available as a Free, Downloadable Audiobook Podcast through Podiobooks.com just might be part of the future of publishing:

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1872381,00.html

Explore more at http://podiobooks.com

James Bond... as a Priest?

So the new James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" is out today... I'll have to check it out this weekend! Some folks say they think my lead character in the Vatican Assassin trilogy is kind of like James Bond in space, if he was a priest (but Moonraker it ain't). Bernard Campion or "BC" as he's known certainly has a license to kill... for the Pope. It all starts in 2109. BC is on a mission to kill the Governor of Lunar Prime, the main city on the Moon. She's collaborating with the enemy - the Muslims of the Universal Islamic Nation or UIN, headquartered on Mars.

In case you've come in late, I've got three science fiction novels out, my Vatican Assassin Trilogy: Vatican Assassin (2005), Vatican Ambassador (2007) and Vatican Abdicator (2008).

The best part? You can listen to me reading you all three books for FREE!
Vatican Assassin
Vatican Ambassador
Vatican Abdicator (in progress)

As a radio announcer as well as a novelist, I've been podcasting the chapters of my books since 2006. You can find them on Itunes by searching for MIKE LUOMA. Or just go to the books themselves on Podiobooks.com, a site dedicated to offering free audiobooks as downloadable podcasts: Vatican Assassin - Vatican Ambassador - Vatican Abdicator. So if you're itchin' for a little interstellar assassin action, give a listen!

By the way... If you're into the Amazon Kindle, you can get each book for just 99 cents!
Vatican Assassin
Vatican Ambassador
Vatican Abdicator

Barack Obama for President

Just wanted to state publicly, here on my blog, something folks who know me have known for a long time. I am supporting Barack Obama for President of the United States. I urge you to get out and vote, and to vote for Obama, this coming Tuesday, November 4th.

I first became aware of Barack Obama during the run-up to the 2004 Democratic Convention, when he was announced as Keynote speaker. Although it was John Kerry's convention, after hearing Obama's keynote speech the talk among my friends was, "Why isn't this guy running for President?!" He grabbed my attention and the attention of many with that speech. I wanted to find out more, so I bought his book The Audacity of Hope when it came out. "Audacity" covered Obama's outlook on politics, America, and what it was like to be the freshman Senator from Illinois. Reading the book, I agreed with his outlook, his clarity of vision, and his pragmatic approach to problem solving. At the time, he wasn't sure he was going to run. After reading the book, I truly hoped Obama would run. My hope was that there would finally be a candidate I could vote for... as opposed to the many years when I was voting against the other guy while only half-heartedly supporting the candidate who received my vote. When Obama announced his candidacy in early 2007 in Springfield, Illinois I was instantly onboard.

I am not a fan of Bill Clinton. I am a proud liberal, and have no patience for those who concede the term to Republican smearing. The United States of America is founded on and based in liberalism. You would not know this, the way the right has disgracefully used the term to focus their derision, and the Democrats let them get away with this for far too long! Clinton's brand of Democratic Party gives in to the Republican's "liberal" smear campaign and instead tries to be more like the Republican Party. Corporations are favored over individual citizens. Clinton is a Corporacrat, not a Democrat. Hillary Clinton promised more of the same. Her smear tactics in the primary campaign were disgraceful. Her suggestion that Obama might be assassinated during the campaign was outrageous, and planted dangerous ideas in the minds of madmen. Her attempts to smear Obama with guilt by association with Reverend Wright and William Ayers were also despicable. And these tactics provided grist for the John McCain campaign's "dark satanic mills" (to quote Blake). What sort of Democrat stoops to these gutter lows against another Democrat? Obama's primary win was a vindication for the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Then there's John McCain. I respected McCain when he ran in 2000. I didn't agree with him on many things then, certainly not his anti-choice stance. I still do not understand how a party that claims to want government "out of our Lives" can be so intrusive, nay, invasive! This and other internal contradictions have finally eaten through the rotten core of the Republican party, causing the collapse we see today. The wave of Republican endorsements for Obama comes from the old school conservative wing that clearly despises the intrusive nature and ugly personal politics employed by the hardcore new right. The old school conservative right feels betrayed by McCain, who, in 2000, was numbered among them despite his anti-choice stance. Some time after he lost the Republican Primary in 2000, John McCain decided, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" He began to support George W. Bush in every way, shape and form he could, seeing this as his road to the WhiteHouse. The "old" McCain was gone. For him to campaign as a Maverick NOW is ridiculous.

And the McCain campaign has been despicable. Lies, distortions, half truths, innuendos... if John McCain wins, it will be because he's convinced a lot of people to support him based on misinformation and lies. "Joe The Plumber" is the most glaring example of this. First of all, his name isn't Joe, and he isn't a plumber. He's not buying the business he spoke of, he thinks he might like to some day. The plumbing business he spoke of is not a $250,000 business, but instead a $150,000/year business. The business will not incur any greater taxes under the Obama plan. "Joe" himself will actually get more money back under Obama's plan than McCains. That's right. "Joe's" taxes will go down under Obama. But the McCain campaign has lied about all of this consistently, trying to corner the blue collar vote by lying to them... or worse, by providing the white blue collar worker afraid of a black candidate with a rationalization for voting against Obama, even though the rationalization is untrue and fallacious.

In contrast, the Obama campaign has relied on facts. There is no need to lie when the country is in the shape it's in. There's no need to lie when you put all your plans for governance out with transparency and clarity.

Barack Obama for President!

Panthea Obscura Video Trailer!

Can't believe it! Juan Carlos put together a video trailer for our comic book! He did it all, even the music! Check it out, and let me know what you think:

New! "TOO MANY MORONS" T-Shirts!!

Just got inspired to put together some shirts featuring the "catchphrase" of my character Troy, the Destroyer from Panthea Obscura, "Too Many Morons!" They're for sale in a wide assortment of styles and colors over at my "Panthea Obscura" Cafe Press store: http://www.cafepress.com/pantheaobscura

Art Dump!

It's been a while since I've posted any original art... thought it was time for an Art Dump!
Click on the image for a (slightly) larger size









I'm putting some of these designs on T-Shirts... click on the Doodlerama Store link to get yours Today!

VATICAN ABDICATOR is out as of TODAY!

I gave the go ahead this afternoon. VATICAN ABDICATOR is out as of now!

This is the conclusion of the VATICAN ASSASSIN Trilogy, the follow-up to VATICAN AMBASSADOR.

Bernard Campion is back. He's the Pope? And there are aliens out to kill or control humanity?

Things aren't looking good for BC. Or for any of us, for that matter!

The "official" release date will be this Friday, August 8th.

The FREE audiobook goes live this Friday at Podiobooks.com! I'll be reading a chapter each week. If you haven't listened yet, you can catch up on the series. Both Vatican Assassin and Vatican Ambassador are available now at Podiobooks.com.

For those who wonder... The book won't be available on Amazon.com until early September. It takes 6 to 8 weeks for the book to list there. I've ordered copies for the local stores as well.

I've written more about the book and the series over at vaticanabdicator.com.

Always more over at glowinthedarkradio.com, too!

Panthea Obscura #3 Out NOW!!

I've spent the evening updating web sites, fixing graphics, checking links... made a new banner:






Feel free to download and use the banner to spread the word about Panthea Obscura!

Here's the Lulu Page: Panthea Obscura #3

Downloads are 99 cents!

High Quality, Ad Free Print copies are $6.99.

And you can still get the first two issues free!
Download the PDFs right from http://glowinthedarkradio.com.

Got the proof copy of Panthea Obscura #3 in last night... here I am holding it in my hot little hands... OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE JULY 23, 2008!!

Take a look at Panthea Obscura Issue #3 Page One!

Written by me -Mike Luoma
Art by Juan Carlos Quattordio
Lettering by Pablo Lizalde

Click for a larger version...
Coming soon!

Get Him While He's HOT!

This is SO preliminary as to be premature... but it's also so cool I had to share it with you! I'm working on a new Super Hero story pitch with artist Rhys ap Gwyn, and he's graced my desk (er, desktop computer, actually) with this pin up of our lead character...

INTRODUCING... RED HOT!!



Watch this space for FUTURE DETAILS...