Brian James Freeman is author of The Painted Darkness, Black Fire, Blue November Storms, More Than Midnight, Weak & Wounded, Dreamlike States, and The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book (with Bev Vincent), along with many short stories and many essays. He is also the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Publications and the publisher of Lonely Road Books.
The first copy of the hand-bound Patreon Stories: Volume Two Lettered Edition has arrived, and I’m really pleased with how this edition turned out. The book features real leather and imported hand-marbled endpapers, with a matching leather traycase. Best of all, this very special edition should ship later this week, assuming the postal system doesn’t shut down!
Here are some photos I took real quick for those who are interested:
Lots more news to come soon. Thank you for all of your support!
Orders can now be placed through Cemetery Dance Publications, and the books will be signed for a limited time only.
Orders via Amazonwon’t be signed, but on the other hand Amazon can have a copy of the book with the amazing Vincent Chong cover artwork in your hands in two days or less, so that’s pretty tempting, eh?
The newest chapbook from LetterPress Publications is “The Sniper” by Richard Chizmar, and as of yesterday all copies have shipped to Patreon supporters on Level 2 or higher!
Thank you again for all of your support! More news to come soon!
I’ll try to keep this short since I know everyone’s schedule is crazy busy as the year winds down, but I wanted to give some project updates for those of you interested in what I’m doing on Patreon!
The Sniper Chapbook
We’re in the home stretch on The Sniper chapbook! All copies have been signed by Richard Chizmar and me, so now it’s a matter of preparing the custom-printed linen envelopes, putting together the shipping list, and packing all of them up to go out the door.
If you are a supporter on Level 2 or higher, please be sure to update your PatreonAccount shippingaddressASAP if you’ve moved because that database is where I get the shipping lists for rewards.
Patreon Stories: Volume Two The printer managed to complete a partial run of the trade paperbacks before they closed for the holidays, and I expect the rest of the paperbacks and the full run of Limited Edition hardcovers in January. The sample copies they sent me turned out great:
For my Patreon supporters on the LetterPress Publications Patreon Levels, your copy will be shipping next week if all goes well. My plan had been for your copies to ship FIRST, and that is the plan for all future books, but I thought up something special at the last second and that something special won’t be here until next week.
Here’s what we’re waiting for: your copy of Revival will be shipped to you in the custom printed shipping boxes I’m having made for VIPs (folks in the business, big name authors I send complimentary copies to, etc). Here’s a mock-up of what they will look like:
I hope this makes the book an even more special addition to your collection.
Thank you again for all of your support! More news to come soon!
I’m very pleased to report that the Limited Edition of Revival by Stephen King, our first publicly available book from LetterPress Publications, is now shipping to retailers! It will take this entire week for me to process all of the retailer orders, and depending on where the retailer is located, it might be a while until they receive their shipment, so please be patient.
In the meantime, I took a few photos of the very first finished copy, and if you click on the image below you can visit a new Photo Gallery for the project over on the LPP website:
The Lettered Edition of Revival is also moving along nicely through production. The latest report from the hand-binder is that they trimmed the finished book blocks, which were then sent out for the custom edge gilding.
I’ll have more news after the holidays including details about our next special project, our next Limited Edition book that will be available to the general public, and some long term plans for the press.
Thank you again for all of your support and enthusiasm!
Orders can now be placed through Cemetery Dance Publications and they will have free US shipping and the books will be signed for a limited time only.
Orders via Amazonwon’t be signed, but on the other hand Amazon can have a copy of the book with the amazing Vincent Chong cover artwork in your hands in two days or less, so that’s pretty tempting, eh?
As you might recall, this new edition of Weak and Wounded follows the revised and expanded edition of More Than Midnight. Between now and the end of the year, Dreamlike States and Lost and Lonely will also all receive the same treatment: revised, expanded, and with new Vincent Chong covers for their first appearance in trade paperback.
Here are my advance copies of all four trade paperbacks, so you can see what the complete “set” will look like once completed:
Here’s a general update on the serial novel, The Echo of Memory, for my Patreon supporters:
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One of the things I’m realizing as I near page 100 of my edit on The Echo of Memory is that I obviously made some attempts to edit the book over the years and stalled out around where I am now.
How can I tell? Well, the overwriting and melodramatic phrasing kicked into high gear around chapter sixteen. Definitely the product of a college age me!
This means a lot more work on each chapter, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end. The stuff I’m cutting won’t be missed by anyone. It isn’t even “texture.” It’s simply too many words! And the parts I’m rewriting are hopefully grounding the story more in reality.
Here is a special update just for my Patreon supporters:
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July really turned into a Murphy’s Law kind of month here in the Freeman household. One kid with a concussion, one car accident (minor), one hospital stay for me (damn kidney stones), one hospital stay for my wife, and finally our cat Smokie passed away this past week. (She was 18 years old, and the vet said last October that she was probably going soon, so she held on a good long time and was a very happy cat to the end.)
Here’s where various projects that you might be waiting on currently stand:
1) All copies of the new chapbook, “So It’s Come to This,” are signed. We need to prepare the envelopes with the cover artwork, number the chapbooks, and print the shipping list. I’m hoping all of that will happen this weekend, so they can be shipped the following weekend.
2) I’ve edited several more chapters of The Echo of Memory, and will get those posted soon.
3) The Limited Edition slipcases and Lettered Edition traycases for The Zombie Who Cried Human are due to arrive in the CD warehouse in August, so those should ship by the end of the month.
4) The manuscript for Patreon Stories: Volume Two is just about ready to go to the designer. I just want to work on my story notes and the introductions to the juvenilia one more time.
There’s probably more, but I just wanted to get a quick update out to everyone since I had been radio silent for a bit. More news to come soon!
I’m pleased to report the Limited Edition and Lettered Edition of The Zombie Who Cried Human will be shipping from Cemetery Dance Publications in the second half of August!
The first short story I’ll be posting for Patrons Only on Patreon will be ready to post on August 1st. The notes from my first readers are coming in today and tomorrow, so I’ll be making some tweaks this weekend and then we should be good to go.
The really good news is, other brand new short stories are already in rough draft form. I’ll continue working on them to get them into shape, which might take some time.
I am not a fast writer because writing, for me, is 50% getting SOMETHING on paper and then 50% trying to FIX that SOMETHING through repeated editing and polishing and rewriting. One of the stories I’ll be posting this fall is based on a rough draft written when I was in college… in 2000 or so… But I’m really pleased with how it has finally come together!
More news soon, including the announcement of a surprise “bonus” gift I’ve decided to send to all of you.
