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Last October, at Archon 32, Mike Cole and I made the acquaintance of Wei He, a costume goddess who has had a four year career coming to Anime, Manga, and other conventions raising the bar on what is possible for amateur costuming. Her talents have brought to life many favorite Anime characters. Her portfolio photo gallery is very impressive.

Wei will be attending the University of Missouri-Kansas City this fall as a Costuming major in the Theater Department. She is always striving to outdo her past achievements. She has a passion for continuous improvement. This past Anime St. Louis, back in March, she told me she is working on mastering Hollywood quality wings for winged costumes.

Mike Cole thought she would be an excellent Black Lotus from the Smerdiverse. Wei and I went shopping together for costume pieces and parts. I had a wonderful time learning from her a tiny bit about the art of costuming.

At Anime St. Louis 2009, Wei/Black Lotus was a smash! Some of you may remember.

Since then, the idea has grown to make a series of Black Lotus webisodes that are currently slated to debut at Archon 33, just one year after Mike and I met Wei. The webisodes will be short, one to three minute vignettes that link together in a story arc that tells a tale of Black Lotus right before the beginning of the first Velocity Girl novel.

The webisode producer will be master craftsman Jeff Koziatek.

There are several friends I have invited to play various roles in the webisodes. The one confirmed so far is everyone’s favorite dark fantasy author Shane Moore!

The poster at the beginning of this post is the work of Mike Cole.

We will keep you posted on how the work is progressing.

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There is a well known series of popular computer games called “Guitar Hero”. Today, I would like to extend special thanks to two “Computer Heroes” who have made the functionality of this site possible. I (Jon) am in their debt and Smerdiverse.com would not work right without their support during two recent crises.

John Schmidt and Sara Trice are two awesome individuals and when you see them at conventions, you should thank them for making the Smerd site possible.

John is a writer and is currently writing one of the Smerdiverse novels as well as one of the kid’s books.

Sara is often seen at conventions with her significant other, the great filker Luke Ski.

Herika Raymer proposed the idea of the Smerd Award for Small Dragon Literature, so if anyone knows of any stories about “smaller” dragons, email us here at the Smerdiverse at jonklement@yahoo.com and nominate them!

The first award goes to Herika for her story in the anthology “Dragons Composed” featuring a variety of small dragon she calls dragonelles. The story is called “Small of Stature: Big of Daring”.  It’s a VERY cute story! Love it!

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Well, it’s the weekend. It’s been a busy, busy month of June so far. I am at GameClubHQ June Game Day sitting in on a “Mutants & Masterminds RPG” session set in the Smerdiverse. It’s a big game and as the Game Master goes around the table giving each player their turn, I am taking the time to blog this for you. The Game Master is Bill Tracy and he rocks!

There is a lot going on in and around the Smerdiverse and with its friends and fans. Probably the biggest news is that we are working with the talented Jeff Koziatek (http://www.tallhippo.com) on a series of Smerdiverse webisodes starring Wei He as Black Lotus that will debut at Archon 33 in October! More on that to come in this blog.

For today, I am showing off a couple of Hypericon pictures. The first is a couple of talented author friends of mine, Elizabeth Donald (http://www.elizabethdonald.com) and Sarah Harvey.

The second picture is a couple of gorgeous masqueraders!

Hypericon is growing and will have a spin off con in 2010 called Emergence that is a gaming-only con.

Hypericon is a blast that I cannot recommend enough!

Congratulations to Fen Con for winning their bid for Deep South Con 2010!

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Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Here we are at Hypericon 5/Deep South Con 47! Woo-hoo!

Since Velocity Girl No. 1 was supposed to be out from my new publisher by now and I only have one copy left of my old publisher’s version, here is a FREE e-book version!

So here I am at Hypericon with Books 2 and 3 of the series, but only one copy of Book 1. (Sigh)

This offer is for a limited time until the delay in my publisher getting Book 1 available to you in paper form is over.

Download the FREE Book 1 here!

Free Book 1

You can DOWNLOAD the book from the link above OR BROWSE the book by scrolling down in the Scribd window below.

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