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Hestia Housekeeping

| What's New Intro | Latest overview of a PHANTACEA print publication | Today's Topic | Elsewhere (phantacea.com, Travels Website, Serendipity Now) | Conclusion |

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Hestia Housekeeping amounts to the 'What's New' section of pHpubs. Consequently I always start it with a 'What's Old' link to where I put its previous update.

Now that that's done, we can get on with this edition's preview -- and it's a biggie.

Well, not a biggie in terms of life-shattering. And, other than to me, I suppose the (Yikes!) 35th anniversary year of Phantacea Publications isn't such a big deal either, though I am somewhat stunned I'm still at it.

Happy I am, however, and it's primarily because I've just published "Goddess Gambit", the concluding book in 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' trilogy.

Verne Andru did the cover. An alternative version of it is reproduced to the left of this paragraph whereas the actual front cover appears in the amazon ordering lynx at the bottom of the page.

(Double-click here for an enlargement of the final version of the full cover. One of a number of collages I prepared using its essential graphic elements is here whereas two others rollover here. Ads using one of these last are making the rounds. Preview both lower down this very panel as well as here.)

Verne was also the cover artist for "Feeling Theocidal" as well as most of the sequences involving Nergal Vetala and her Soldier, her Theattis, in the original comic book series.

He also did all the artwork for pH-6, including the privately revised cover reprinted here and here, but as yet never used on a Phantacea Mythos print or e-publication.

As you might have guessed from the preceding, Gambit is in good measure derived from the Soldier's Saga, which began in pH-2. Its Auctorial Prefatory starts here.

For fans of the cover I prepared for 2005's version of essentially the same saga, aka "The Trigregos Gambit", fear not. I like it, too. Which is why I placed an image of it underneath this paragraph

If that suggests there will be a black and white version of it in the print version, and a colour version in the inevitable <==e-book that comes later, consider that one suggestion taken.

Which reminds me of another thing I'm happily about to note. As per afore-linked <==here, e-versions of "Feeling Theocidal", "The Death's Head Hellion", "Contagion Collectors", and "Janna Fangfingers" are available on the Kindle format.

Hit here for the opportunity to attain instant ordering gratification in that regard. You can also hit <==here if you want to order a version of Feel Theo built for Adobe Reader. Usual provisos when ordering from publisher apply; meaning certified cheques or money orders only please.

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As for what else is new in the Spring 2012 update, well, how about a reminder as to what pH-Webworld is all about:

Illustrated Mini-Essays on PHANTACEA Characters and Concepts, Online Serials, Synopses, Web Publisher's Commentaries going back to 1996, and more background information than you can shake a currently non-existent search engine at.

That in mind, does anyone know how I can acquire and thereafter set up a search engine encompassing my various websites? If so, please advise.

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Should mention that the 'Travels in my Pants' (TIMP) web pages are not, as has been alleged, a porn site. As noted previously, I have nevertheless changed the lynx at the bottom of these pages to read Travels.

Will further say that its main menu page is still here and that its latest entry's entitled 'The Wonderful Weather Wizard of Oz'.

It's a howsoever belated, not to mention incomplete, effort to finish a travelogue on the trip I took to Australia in the Spring of 2011 (Oz's fall).

Have to further admit that most of the reason it's incomplete, and that more travelogues and oddities photo essays have not been forthcoming of late, is that I ran out of space on my website.

(Ran out of space on this one too, hence having to amalgamate it with www.phantacea.com as a subdirectory.)

I am working on sorting that out such that by the time you read this I might have activated yet another URL (Universal Resource Locator) in order to continue producing ever-so-interesting, at least to me, travelogues. Then again, I might not.

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Not at all scandalous scads more in the way of new material – new material specifically prepared for PHANTACEA Mythos publications, I should emphasize – can be found on afore-linked www.phantacea.com.

Its main menu is here. The latest photo essays are here and here whereas the webpage entirely dedicated to Feel Theo, the first PHANTACEA Mythos print publication since 1990's graphic novel, as well as the first e-book from Phantacea Publications produced specifically for Adobe Reader, is here.

The one for War-Pox – its successor, though not its sequel, and the opening entry in the Launch 1980 story cycle – is here; the one for Theo's sequel, "The 1000 Days of Disbelief", starts here.

The main webpage for "Goddess Gambit" is here. If Fangers is can be considered Launch's prequel then, eventually, Gambit becomes its sequel.

The first pHant graphic novel, "Forever & 40 Days — The Genesis of phantacea" (henceforth 4-Ever&40), has a much more elaborate page here. As for the next two graphic novels, well, I'm working on them. And you read it (and sort of saw a fuel-4-thought cover for one of them) here first.

And, as if all of the above isn't already enough, as already noted I've prepared a few ads to mark Gambit's arrival. One's here; another's to the upper left of this paragraph; both reappear here. There's also this one, this one, this one and this one. All are double-clickable.

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Should mention I came across an online article I'd read a few years ago in Atlantis Rising, a magazine I've quoted from a few times in Serendipity and PHANTACEA. (For example, most recently, here. An even weirder one -- weirder because it isn't speculative -- is here.)

Entitled 'The Other Sun God', it's by Steven Sora and makes a number points about Mithra (pHant's TVM), Mani, the labarum, etc, that I've been incorporating within the PHANTACEA Mythos since the Seventies. A link to it is here.

There are also some tasty new material in Serendipity itself. Doubly and trebly odd, not to mention serendipitously appropriate given I'd released "Janna Fangfingers" not long before, is an album I spotted when I visited the Comic Book Museum on an exceedingly cold day in Brussels in early February 2012.

(Minus 13 Celsius is exceedingly cold by Vancouver standard; perhaps not so much so in the Rest of Canada north and eastwards.)

Too bad it wasn't a display on the undeniable brilliance of phantacea. That would have been over-the-top exciting.

Do help build the buzz.

Feedback encouraged. As always, good reading.

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Additional Notes on Graphics:

1. The eye-lynx rollovers and double-clicks at the top of the page (assuming your browser allows double-clicks, which they don't all do) are described here;
2. Most of what went into the collage strips here, the smaller ad here and here, as well as the large, blue ad here and here, are as noted here; the blue, 2012 price list for Phantacea Publications here is the flip side of the PDF and giveaway sample for the blue ad that enlarges here and here;
3. The flip side of the postcard featuring a stretched-out alteration of Ian Bateson's enduring, 1986 Sedonic Eye (the right eye rollover at the top of page) is here; like most of the images on this page double-clicking it should open a new window with an enlargement of the image; doesn't always work, though;
4. The front covers in the masthead are collages prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010/11; double-click either image for an enlarged version of facing rollovers; there's more on the images that went into Hellion's cover here whereas there's more on what went into Contagion's cover here; as for Fangers cover, that's here; notes on the 1000-Daze collage are mostly here and here;
5. Artwork in the ordering lynx panel for the front cover of "The War of the Apocalyptics" is by Ian Bateson, 2009; the rollover image is the front cover of PHANTACEA Phase One #2, which was never published; artwork is by Ian Bateson, circa 1986; Bateson's innards for the issue can be found here and here;
6. Artwork in the ordering lynx panel for the front cover of "Feeling Theocidal" is by Verne Andru, 2008; the rollover image is the front cover of "Forever & 40 Days - the Genesis of PHANTACEA", artwork is by Ian Fry and Ian Bateson (cover only), 1990; 
   [NOTE: multiple copies of the graphic novel are advertised online but, as linked from below, only amazon.com offers never-sold copies of the original print run, and for the original price of $10.00 an issue, supplied by PHANTACEA Publications — that'd be the same as here, except I don't accept credit cards]
7. The cover for pH-6 is by Verne Andru, 1980; as already noted, there are variations and/or re-workings of it of here and here; also in the middle column here (a double-click) and here; I used it twice in a Peculiar Perspectives photo feature I did on the Smiling Fiend here; without giving too much away Feel Theo's Bad Rhad does his best impersonation of a good guy in Gambit; because I hardly ever remember he exists, before I forget I should mention that he's one of the 'they' referred to here;
8. The page and panel backgrounds on this page are as per here

Latest List of Lynx to some previous Web-Publisher's Commentaries

| Spring 2012 | Summer 2011 | Spring 2010 | Winter 2009/10 | Summer 2009 | Spring 2008 | Autumn 2007 | Summer 2007 | Winter 2006/7 | Summer 2006 | Winter 2005/6 | Summer 2005 | Winter 2004/5 | Summer 2004| Spring 2004 | Autumn 2003 | Summer 2003 | Autumn 2002 | Summer 2002 | Autumn 2001 | Spring-Summer 2001 | Winter 2000/1 | February 1999 | November 1998 | August 1998 | Samplings from other Not So Recent Commentaries | June-March '97 | February '97-July '96 |

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