Redwall Wiki Expands Coverage

Given that the continuation of the Redwall series is still up in the air, this unfortunately means that we've reached a point where there is not going to be much Redwall or Brian Jacques news, especially not on any sort of regular basis.

Recently, we reached out to our Facebook fans to ask if they would be interested in news items related to books, the media, and the publishing industry. The majority response to this query was positive, and as a result we will be linking and promoting these types of stories - but only on our Facebook page, unless of course it's directly related to Redwall or Brian Jacques.

And don't worry, we certainly won't be flooding or spamming your feeds.

Random House reveals Storycuts

Random House has officially announced a new type of eBook in a series that they're referring to as "Storycuts."

Essentially, short stories from larger collections are published as individual eBooks for viewing on your e-reader. Among the first of more than 250 short stories are a few from Brian Jacques, extracted from Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales. These include R.S.B. Limited, The Lies of Henry Mawdsley,The Fate of Thomas P. Kanne, Jamie and the Vampires and The Sad History of Gilly Bodkin. Allie Alma and Bridgey are combined into one release, asAllie/Alma/Bridgey.

It appears as if these will be listed on Amazon in the future, however if you're interested in checking the eBooks out now, navigate to the Random House website.

Announcing Redwall Answers

Today, we are officially announcing a supplemental service of the Redwall Wiki - Redwall Answers!

Redwall Answers is a question-and-answer type of wiki that allows anyone to make an inquiry, and if someone knows the response, anyone can respond.

You can find Redwall Answers here.

Essentially, the purpose of this is to help people looking for specific Redwall or Castaways information without having to read an entire article.

There is a very short Manual of Style/Rules guide for this service, please check it out there. If you like to helpRedwall fans, be sure to check this wiki regularly.

Art Contest Canceled

Unfortunately, we did not meet the quota of entrants for this year's art contest, and despite having over 60 votes for one, (why didn't you voters enter?) nowhere near that many applied for judging by their peers.

The artists who did decide to enter are free to do whatever they like with their artwork, whether that means submitting it here or elsewhere.

I am slightly disappointed in that regard, as well though. The challenge was to depict a battle scene, which is why I specifically noted the chapter. However, most entrants directly imitated Chris Baker's cover - I was hoping to see some new interpretations of Brian Jacques' text.

If no one is going to enter, this may be the last time we attempt to hold a contest for a while.

Official Redwall Wiki Art Contest 2011

Per a large majority vote held over the last week, we will officially be hosting our 3rd Annual Art Contest. However, there is an important caveat - last year we also received a lot of support for a contest, but very few entered. If a pre-determined number of entries are not received by the due date this year, the event will be canceled.

And now, the details:

In our last two contests, artists were asked to draw a villain, and a hero. This year, we will be combining the two for an extra challenge. Competitors should draw their interpretation of the epic battle sequence between LordBrocktree and Ungatt Trunn as depicted in Chapter 36 of Lord Brocktree.

All entries must be sent to me for initial review, and I will upload them here at the Redwall Wiki for voting. After a 2-week voting period, one winner will be announced, and the other artists will be revealed. I will be abstaining from voting and entering.

Artists will have 3 weeks to create their vision and submit it. All entries must be submitted by 12 Noon EST, November 8, 2011. No exceptions will be made for any reason.

At the end of the 3 week submission period, if the pre-determined number of entries (known only by myself to avoid speculation) is reached or exceeded, I will upload all entries for judging, and provide further contest information and details.

Rules

1. Eligibility: The Official Redwall Wiki Art Contest (the "Contest") is open to residents of Earth who are registered users of the Redwall Wiki. (You do not have to be registered to vote for the winner.)

2. How To Enter: The Contest begins on October 18, 2011 and ends on November 8, 2011 at 12:00pm (EST) (“Entry Period”). All entries must be submitted no later than the end of the Entry Period. Only 1 contest entry per human allowed; works must be submitted in JPG or PNG file format to  along with your Redwall Wiki username. There are no file size or image size limitations.

• The subject line of the e-mail must read "Redwall Wiki 2011 Art Contest".
• Failure to include your Redwall Wiki username, e-mail subject, and proper file format will be grounds for disqualification. You may only submit all of this information once.
• To maintain a sense of anonymity amongst the artists, you agree to not post your artwork elsewhere on the Internet or reveal yourself as the artist of any of the submissions at any time during the contest and voting period. Anyone found to be doing this will be disqualified immediately. You are free to post this anywhere you want after the winner is announced, of course.
• Artists are not to be speculated upon in comments, talk pages, or elsewhere on the site. CORRECT: "I like entry #2." INCORRECT: "I bet LordTBT drew entry #2!"
• Artists may not encourage voting for their particular artwork. This is also grounds for disqualification.
• Artists may not reveal they are planning on entering or that they have in fact entered the contest until the winner is announced. To be clear, all identities of any artists participating in this contest will not be stated until the very end.
• Artwork found to be copied from another artist is grounds for disqualification. Original works only!
• Notification of Winners: One winner selected by the audience of this site will be notified via e-mail, failure to respond in 48 hours will result in a new winner being declared.

Additional Conditions

By submitting your artwork, you authorize it for hosting and display on the Redwall Wiki indefinitely without compensation to you. You acknowledge that your submission is an original work created and designed by you, and that you understand all the rules as explained above.

Release: Redwall Wiki Turns 6

Today, the Redwall Wiki officially celebrates its 6th birthday, and it has been a great past few years.

Unfortunately, this year can't help but be overshadowed by the loss of Mr. Jacques, and as a result I'm going to keep our annual press release brief in honor of his memory.

What's important is this:

Even though at this time it is totally unknown if we will ever see another Redwall novel, be it from Mr. Jacques himself or another author who has received the go-ahead, the Redwall Wiki isn't going anywhere. We will continue to serve as the best Internet resource for Redwall information, news, fan fiction and fan artwork.

I'm personally hopeful that there may be one more novel out there, and if we're lucky a Redwall film adaptation will happen.

In the past few years we've done an annual art contest, and honestly I'm not sure if you guys want one this year, so I've decided to put it up for a vote. If a significant number of people vote for one, we'll do it. If a majority votes for a contest and it's only 3 people, that's not really necessary. I'd like to see as many entries as possible.

Thanks to everyone who visits this site and contributes to articles, fan fiction, and art. We couldn't do it without you.

Brian_Jacques BBC Tribute

Brian Jacques will be honored this weekend with a one hour tribute on BBC Radio Merseyside.

At 5PM BST August 28th, The Life of Brian - Remembering Jakestown will air, and it is said to feature archival Jacques audio, as well as thoughts from David and Jimmy Jacques and BBC coworkers.

BBC Radio Merseyside can be streamed right here, so hopefully international listeners can tune in for this special.

The program will air again at 9PM BST, August 31.

Perhaps a Redwall movie is coming

For the past two years, a group of Redwall fans has attempted to produce a Redwall movie on their own - albeit with no legal permission from The Redwall Abbey Company, and thus a heinous violation of copyright and an infringement on Brian Jacques' intellectual property. It is illegal to produce/create movies using copyrighted material without proper licensing, even if you have no intention to profit off of it.

It is for these reasons that this project has never been linked on this website, and it will not be linked here even now, as we take copyright and legal issues very very seriously.

Thus you can imagine my relief this week when Alan Ingram on behalf of The Redwall Abbey Company contacted this group of people and informed them that film rights were not available, effectively halting all work on the project.

However, Mr. Ingram also noted in his e-mail that the Redwall Abbey Co. was in "contractual talks with another interested party," and that they were "close to reaching an agreement," which is incredibly positive news for a potential Redwall novel big screen adaptation, and I sincerely hope it all works out for the best for everyone involved.

Hopefully we will see a tale of Redwall at cinemas in the near future.

"Rogue Crew" Paperback Announced

Amazon.com has posted details for the forthcoming Ace paperback for The Rogue Crew, which will be published next spring.

The price is listed at $7.99, with a page count of 368. In fact, you can even pre-order it now if you like, even though it's scheduled for release on April 24,2012.

Redwall.org rebrands itself

Overnight, Redwall.org has rebranded itself as the new Redwallabbey.com!

The site has a totally different layout, which includes a new online shop, an obituary section in remembrance of Brian Jacques, and a discussion forum. We also appreciate being included in the Links section of the site, thanks team.

This change has been planned since last year, as the domain has been registered since November 2010.

Stop on by and check it out. What do you think? Let us know in the comments

The Future of Redwall

With the publication of The Rogue Crew earlier this month, many have been wondering if this means the end of the Redwall saga as we know it.

I have some news on that.

And the big exciting news is...we don't know yet!

That's right - it appears as if nothing is set in stone in terms of publishing any other Brian Jacques works for the time being, and I for one accept no news as good news.

I'm also inclined to believe there is at least one more Redwall novel floating around out there for two reasons. The first being that Brian tended to be have his work completed way in advance of the publishing dates, so given his writing schedule, I have to think there is something else there. Second, last year there was a contest to name a future Redwall character. We do not know the name of this character - the winner has gone AWOL as it were and cannot confirm or deny that their character appears in The Rogue Crew.

Additionally, Brian has a few shelved projects, possibly even ones we don't know about, and several years back, an autobiography was put away. Personally, I'm interested in anything and everything Brian has written, so if anyone out there reading this has input into whether or not any other works for Brian Jacques should be published, I strongly advocate for the publishing of this material, and I'm sure more than a few fans would be happy as well.

While it's up in the air in terms of new works being published, there is some news in terms of 2010's repackages.

The books will be receiving reprints with numbered spines; the number will be representative of the order in which it was published. Also, if the front cover of the paperback is opened, a list of the books will be numbered as well. Two books have already received this treatment from my observation, Mattimeo and The Sable Quean.

Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the publication of Redwall in the United States, and I hope another special edition will be released, perhaps with some nice illustrations.

So don't worry, I don't think we've seen the last of Brian.

Redwall Collectors Community: Redwall: The Next Adventure (2011)

Happy Easter everyone!

Earlier this month, the second DVD in Kaboom Entertainment's Region 1 re-release of the Redwall TV Series came out: Redwall: The Next Adventure.

The disc is currently available on Amazon for $9.99; and even better, the last release Redwall: The Adventure Begins, normally on sale for $7.99, has been listed at $3.49 for weeks now (which we announced on our Facebook and Twitter accounts)! This means if you want Redwall - Season 1 in its entirety on DVD, it's only $13.48 total, which is a great price considering the independent sellers out there ripping everyone off.

As with The Adventure Begins, there is no pamphlet or anything inside the case, just the disc. Also like last time, there are no special features, just the final seven episodes of season one, with the option to change the language audio track to French.

However, worth noting is two cosmetic errors on the back cover of the DVD case that certainly make this item even more collectible. First, "Abby" is misspelled in the product description, and second, the run time for the disc is listed as 132 minutes, when it is actually 154 (the run time on the disc itself displays this correctly).

Overall, definitely worth getting if you want a copy of the show to watch any time you want legally. Here's hoping Kaboom continues their releases.

Redwall Collectors Community: Redwall in Hebrew

It's been a while since our last edition of Redwall Collectors Community, which means it's time for the first one of the year!

Today we'll be exploring something I happened to accidentally stumble across, the Hebrew edition of Redwall, from Israel.

Previously, I actually never thought I'd find one of these, mainly because I don't speak or know any Hebrew, but also because I don't have a Hebrew keyboard to type the letters!

With that said, I'm told the literal translation of the author and title on the book turns out to be "Brian Jacks", "Redvol". If anyone would like to offer another translation, and/or could actually type out this bit, please chime in.

The Hebrew edition of Redwall was printed in 2003 by the Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House in Tel Aviv, Israel. The text was translated by Rachel Aharoni, edited by Yona Tepper, and the illustrator is Danny Kerman.

The illustrations, simply put, are not that exciting. There are no images in between the 'books', and almost all of the chapter icons are the same. The icons generally tend to be one of two mice, either facing forward or backward, and as you can tell below, they look like basic sketches. One of the illustrations really stuck out to me though, because I have no idea who that Asian-looking mouse is supposed to be.

The back cover of the book (with a great drawing of Redwall Abbey) has a summary - I'd be interested in knowing how accurate this is, so again - we welcome Hebrew translators to comment!

Redwall is often described as having been translated into 28 or 29 languages across the globe. Based on my own research, as verified by the Redwall Wiki's Book Cover Gallery, there are at least 17 languages out there, and those are:

• English
• Dutch
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Lithuanian
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish

Redwall is also alleged (I've found no certifiable evidence, but many sources cite these) to be translated into Czech, Danish, and Bulgarian. So even if we include these potential translations, that's only a total of 20. We're still missing 8-9 here, which is why the quest for what they are must begin.

Does your country have an edition of Redwall that is missing from this list? Please let us know! In order to officially verify languages, we will need scans and/or photos. You can upload them here, or contact me with them. I'm extremely curious to know if there is an Arabic Redwall myself.