Brian James Freeman

I have lots of important updates for my Patreon supporters, so we’ll get right to it:

* The review copies of Walking With Ghosts had a small printing issue, but the ARC printer is rushing me a new batch to replace those. I should be able to get all of them shipped by this time next week. PLEASE make sure your mailing address is correct on your Patreon profile page. That’s where all of the shipments get generated from. Thank you!

* RELATED NOTE: The new “Special Illustrated Artist Limited Edition” of Walking With Ghosts will list ALL of my Patreon supporters as of March 1, 2021 in a special Thank You section. Your name will appear as it does on your Patreon profile page. I’ll be downloading the list later this week for my designer, so please be sure to double-check the spelling is exactly how you’d like it to be.

* Everything for this special edition is just about ready for the printer. Glenn Chadbourne is signing the signature sheets soon, and then I’ll sign, and then everything goes to the printer for a June shipping date:

* As before, there will be a Deluxe Lettered Edition of Walking With Ghosts created by my binder for supporters on Level 7 and above. Those editions won’t ship until later in the year, though, due to the production times involved. (The binding and case making is ALL done by hand.)

* I have a new (very short) story to post this month. It’s called “The Hired Gun,” and I think you’ll like it.

* I’ve been really stuck on the editing and rewriting of The Echo of Memory, which I’ve been wanting to serialize in full on Patreon for a long time now. For those who don’t know, here’s why I’ve been working so hard on a book I first wrote back in the ’90s:

After I graduated college in 2002, Don D’Auria at Leisure and Richard Chizmar at Cemetery Dance Publications both agreed to publish the book in 2004. Leisure would publish the mass-market paperback you’d see in regular bookstores while CD would produce a signed Limited Edition for collectors.

For reasons that are no longer important, it was recommended I use the pen name James Kidman and the title Black Fire on those first editions, which I now consider a mistake. I’ve since restored my name and my preferred title.

I also received “first reader” feedback that resulted in some more rewrites and additions to the text, many of which I later realized weren’t actually helpful to the story. There really can be too many cooks in the kitchen, and the originally published version suffered from that.

That’s probably why, while revising the manuscript this past year, I realized all of the padding needed to go. The resulting draft is leaner and maybe a little meaner, what the story always wanted to be. It isn’t perfect, but you should have seen the materials I started with!

This new draft goes to my copyeditor next month, and the serialization should start again this summer. Plus: I have a special surprise planned for later this year to thank everyone for their patience.

More news soon! Thank you very much for all of your support!

Best,
Brian