On OCTOBER 30th 2020 at 8pm EST, Rough House Publishing will launch Pre-Orders for their debut creator-owned full length novel, MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™, written by newest roughian keeper of the Veld, STEVE VAN SAMSON, and promises to be the first in a new line of novellas, anthologies and novels offered by the independent publishing outfit.
“Rander Belmorn is far from home. He searches tirelessly for the one man who might be able to cure his dying son, but time is running out. The road has led to a frozen waste at the very edge of the world. But what Rander Belmorn never learned on that long, lonely road was the answer to the last question…The only question…How do you kill a witch?”
And with that slogan begins a bold new journey for ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING as they expand their catalog from comic books and graphic novels, into other forms of pulp media beginning with their debut full length novel, MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™, a first for the company, being released in the DEAD of Winter 2021. And with all Rough House infernal offerings, Artist/Publisher DEREK ROOK promises, “We may have widened our bandwidth in formats and genres, but assure you we’re bringing every bit of our punk rock sensibilities with us into the veld. Steve crafted an amazing story. This is definitely a dark fantasy, …Rough House Style!”
EARLY BIRD GETS THE WYRM
As with all of ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING’s payload of “tangible awesome”, MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™ will be made available in a variety of formats to suit any budget and with more limited edition collectable extras than you could throw a moderately sizable battle axe at!
Here is the rundown of all you have to look forward to when the Pre-Sale goes live:
As per usual, the ULTIMATE and PREMIUM editions of MARK OF THE WITCHYRM will come with a bunch of signature EXTRAS that will make for a monster of a purchase for the die hard Roughians worldwide! Here is the breakdown of all you have to look forward to!
THE ROUGH HOUSE/WITCHWYRM STICKER - 4x5.5” Inches. This Rough House logo is going to need an electric heater to get through this frozen hell.
THE OUROBOROS STICKER - 5” Inches in Diameter, featuring the “Mark” as it appears throughout the novel.
ENAMEL PIN - 2” Inches in Diameter. Go Team Witchwyrm! This hardback embossed enamel pin will complete the look of any uniform made of burlap and/or blood-stained steel.
DOUBLE-SIDED POSTER - Folded 11x17. Full Color. Side A features the incredible artwork of RENE AIGNER with additional artwork by author STEVE VAN SAMSON, designed in fine style into a 1950’s “movie” poster (shown).
The flip-side of this poster features a full color stylized “comic book” front cover illustrated by DEREK ROOK (not shown).
AUDIOBOOK - Your purchase will come with a digital code allowing you to enjoy a full, unabridged audio experience on all of your favorite listening devices. Narrated by author STEVE VAN SAMSON and interstitials by DEREK ROOK with music from the band, ENCHANTED EXILE.
SLEEPING WITH THE WITCH
Author STEVE VAN SAMSON has spent the last year and change getting plenty dirty in the Rough House sandbox, but his writing street cred was well-travelled before taking the roughian plunge. Not only did Steve contribute his scribing skills to last years, GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO in a story titled, “The No.Ware. Man” (click here to get yours), but he is featured in a brand new Vampire Noire anthology entitled, SLAY, featuring a direct tie-in story to his ongoing Predator World series, which will also see a Rough House edition beginning in 2021. To read more about Steve’s other notable works, (Click here).
Of WITCHWYRM, Van Samson said this of Rough House’s newest offering. “MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™ grew from an idea I’ve had in me for over twenty years. The goal was to have my own wandering, (Conan the Barbarian) type character that could have a series of adventures across a bleak, plague riddled world. I knew it would be a period piece, but wanted to go for more dark ages than high fantasy. Alchemists and plague doctors over wizards and elves. But from the beginning, I also knew that there had to be monsters.”
And monsters there are aplenty in this harrowing read as we find our lead character (Rander Belmorn) in a desperate race against time as his journey takes him (and us) deeper and deeper into a doom-ridden frozen hell where even the most benign of settings can kill you and everyone and everything is a potential threat. In a world where every circumstance has conspired to make waste of his journey, the only thing Belmorn has to look forward to seemingly is death itself, …and that’s all before the discovery of the title character….and once you wear it’s mark, DEATH is a mercy. Something wicked stalks the Veld. A creature which had earned its death many times over….and it cannot be killed.
Regarding the constitution of his main protagonist, Van Samson shed some very dark and relatable light, “The challenge with my hero was to make Rander Belmorn come off as this mythic, heroic type character, but one who was far from invincible. Sure, he had to be big and mighty and wield some big axes, but he also had to be able to bleed. Superman types are all fine and good, but I always prefer the ones who screw up and have to really fight their way to the bitter end.”
EVERY JOURNEY IS A DAMNED CIRCLE
Regarding the approach he took to bring the world of the Witchwyrm to life, Van Samson explains, “As the concept grew, I liked the idea of using this world as a dark reflection of our own. Pulling certain things that would be familiar and twisting them. I wanted the reader to wonder if the story were taking place on Earth or perhaps the Earth of another tangent universe, but I also wanted to push the setting so far back that it didn’t matter. The main thing was to mix invented names and ideas with things that the reader would find familiar.”
With shows like “Game of Thrones” and to a lesser extent, “The Witcher” and “Vikings”, what was once targeted for a very intimate niche audience, is now in the forefront of the pop culture zeitgeist and the subjects of water cooler conversations for all walks of life across the globe. With the advent of streaming services and a slew of new, cutting edge programming, viewers have an E-ticket to more (and more diverse) genres of storytelling from contemporary to otherworldly and has injected new life into tired genres that a decade ago wouldn’t have lasted a single season on network television. And with consumers rediscovering their identity through physical media, the ground could not have been more fertile for Rough House to make its mark with this new story, in this format.
AS THE WYRM TURNS
“The idea from the start was to expand into producing creator-owned properties in and outside of just comic books”, says Rook of his vision for the Rough House product line(s), “but being such a small company, once the train leaves the station, you’re either on it or chasing after it. It wasn’t until Covid that we were forced to stop with the rest of the world. I knew immediately that once we shut down, that it would be for a long stretch, and it felt in very poor taste to try to continue promoting and selling new products when people were losing their jobs, livelihoods and people were dying. So during that downtime we planned our next project, and this organically came out of that experience.”
Much like the characters and their ultimate fates in MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™, Rough House Publishing is compelling roughian fans to embark into uncharted territory, where no roughian has ventured before. …and at the end of it all, Rough House Publishing will be leading the charge when it exclaims, that every journey is a damned circle.
