On Sunday October 24th I had the special privilage to join six other authors for a free virtual book launch event, hosted by the Society of Children’s Books Authors & Illustrators. Below is the short script which I wrote for myself.
I’m Patrick Lugo
Illustrator, Author (mostly of article & movie reviews) and Comic Creator.
My Primer children’s picture book Little Monk & the Mantis, earned some acclaim. There’s even a copy in the library of Shaolin Temple in China; birthplace of Zen Buddhism & Kung Fu martial arts.
My current piece in the YA Anthology SPECULATIVE FICTION FOR DREAMERS is a short comic titled Contraband. It’s one of three comics to share covers with short stories, poetry and a play by 37 stellar talent. I feel like my purpose here to encourage you to check out there work, that I happened to find myself among them is gratifying. Maybe there’s one or two here –
What’s contraband about?
Marie Cruz is a Runner, a sort of bicycle messenger with-out the bike in a not-too-distant future where this is no outdoors. What must it be like to live in a world with no windows? no sunlight? even water is regulated and check-points are everywhere. In a world such as this even the most mundane of proof of a greater outdoors, could very well be contraband.
Interesting aside: while initially developing the project, working out the plot; I consulted with a specialist in A.I. Computing and machine learning. I asked him, in a world patrolled by autonomous robots how could a hacker get around them? He ended up providing me with some actual code that could in theory be used under the circumstance portrayed in the book. Upon reading his copy of the anthology he noticed that the code as printed includes the actual time and date that code was written; a time stamp for anyone fluent in that particular coding language.
My next project will return to my more martial roots. You see, for more than 2 decades I’ve been art director for KUNG FU TAI CHI magazine. In that time I’ve had the good fortune to meet and learn from some of the greatest martial arts masters the world has seen. In that time I’ve collected a vast amount of oral history and folklore passed down from these masters and my forthcoming middle grade fantasy graphic novel A Tiger’s Tale brings them together for a new generation of readers who may otherwise never have the chance to hear these tales. So I’ve launched the website aTigersTale.com where I will host these tales as told by the masters then on February 1st 2022 (Chinese New Year of the Tiger) I will launch the kickstarter campaign that, if successful, will finance the print production of the full-color graphic novel.
A Tiger’s Tale
The Jungle Book meets the Tao Tae Ching
Or
The Jungle Book meets Avatar the Last Airbender