My next exclusive signed Limited Edition chapbook for my Patreon supporters is “The Sniper” by Richard Chizmar, and I’m pleased to report the printer is finishing up their work this week. (If you want more information about how this chapbook came to be, please check out this post from last month.)
All copies will be signed by Richard and me, and then this reward will ship in December to all supporters who are on Level Two or above as of THIS MONTH, so now is the perfect time to sign-up if you’re interested in what I’m doing over on Patreon!
We’re getting into a very busy time of year for everyone, so I’ll try to keep my updates short and sweet instead of rambling.
As you know if you read the Revival production update over at LetterPress Publications the other week, I spent much of my summer talking to printers after the one I had worked with for many years closed their doors. (They actually printed the very first Cemetery Dance Publications hardcover way back in 1992!)
The most urgent matter in my search were the BIG books on a tight schedule like Revival, but the old printer had also printed Patreon Stories: Volume One for me.
In September, it came time to find out which of the many printers I had talked to over the summer might be able to handle Patreon Stories: Volume Two.
I won’t get too far into the weeds, but the short version is this: a printer I actually drive past on my 90 minute commute to the Cemetery Dance offices will be printing this volume. As a kid, my family would drive by that printing plant on the way to vacations and the such, and I always thought it would be awesome if they printed one of my books, so this is kind of like coming full circle.
This morning, I added the names of all of my supporters as of October 31 to the special THANK YOU page that concludes the book, and I’ll be sending the printer all of the files next week.
I don’t have a schedule from them yet, but I’m hoping the Signed Trade Paperback and the Signed Limited Edition hardcover will ship by the end of the year. The super fancy Lettered Edition will take a few months longer to complete due to all of the hand-binding, etc. The plan is for it to make a nice matching set with the Volume One Lettered Edition, though.
I approved the proofs today, so the printer will be ready to roll next week. All copies will be signed by both Richard and me next month, and this reward will ship in December to all current supporters who are on Level Two or above as of November 2019.
That means now is the perfect time to sign-up if you’re interested in what I’m doing over on Patreon.
A few years back, Richard Chizmar and I collaborated on Darkness Whispers, a novella that was published as a beautiful signed Limited Edition hardcover by Scarlet Galleon Publications and later as a trade paperback and eBook by JournalStone.
Here’s a little secret, though: Darkness Whispers is actually based on the very first short story Richard ever sold, way back in the 1980s, called “The Sniper.”
In early 2016, he was going through some old files in his office when he stumbled upon the original manuscript, as well as an acceptance letter and a contract — but a contributor copy was nowhere to be found, and he realized he had no memory of the story ever being published.
A comic adaptation of “The Sniper” had been included as a bonus item in Midnight Promises, his very first short story collection, but the prose version appeared to be unpublished after all these years.
Richard asked me if I would be interested in doing a rewrite and expansion of the story. I quickly agreed, and we traded it back and forth for a few weeks and came up with the novella that would become Darkness Whispers.
In this new chapbook I’m publishing exclusively for my Patreon Supporters, you will find Richard’s original draft of “The Sniper,” so you can experience the story as he originally intended it way back in the day.
All copies will be signed by both Richard and myself, and this reward will ship in December to all supporters who are on Level Two or above as of November 2019, so now is the perfect time to sign-up if you’re interested in what I’m doing over on Patreon!
Just a quick note to show off the full set of REVIVAL promotional items I made to test the capabilities of some different vendors for these kinds of items. I think most of them turned out really nice:
For those of you on the LetterPress supporter levels over at Patreon, you should have already received one shipment with a few of these, and the rest will be going out next week. Please email me at brianfreeman@cemeterydance.com if you have any questions.
As you might recall, one of projects I’ve been working on for my Patreon supporters is a serialized version of The Echo of Memory, which is a heavily revised take on my first published novel.
The book was first published in 2004 as Black Fire by James Kidman, and there was a paperback edition from Leisure and a signed Limited Edition hardcover from Cemetery Dance Publications, but it’s been out of print since then.
Now that my Patreon supporters have given me the opportunity to tackle this one again, I’m restoring my preferred title and my real name for all future editions.
So far, there has been a ton of fine tuning and some serious excising of unnecessary material through Chapter Twenty, but something really surprising happened in the following section:
I discovered a bunch of chapters that really, really, really were NOT needed.
The reason why this happened is actually rather simple: the first finished draft of the novel was only 50,000 words, but in the early 2000s, that wasn’t long enough to sell the book as a novel to a trade publisher.
A good friend gave me some tips on how make the story zig and zag, to add more words and stretch things out, and that added material got me to the word count needed to sell the book to Leisure, but…
None of what I added really helps the story.
And my rule these days is simple: if the material doesn’t develop the characters or move the story forward (and preferably it does both things), out it goes.
So, yep, this will be one of those very rare “Author’s Preferred Editions” where stuff is being CUT out instead of crammed back in, and I’m certain you won’t miss the things I’m editing out.
Reworking this section is taking me a little bit more time that expected, but I’ll have some more news to share soon, and I thank everyone again for all of your support!
As I mentioned earlier this year, thanks to your support on Patreon, I was finally able to make the time in my schedule to edit a big themed horror anthology I’ve wanted to work on for many years now. This project is still officially UNANNOUNCED and won’t be published until 2020, so please don’t share this information or the images below anywhere:
Read the rest and a lot more for just $1 per month as a supporter on Patreon! Exclusive material includes short stories, essays, sneak previews of new projects, and even a serial novel. For those who prefer reading stories in print, there are higher levels available that include exclusive publications such as signed Limited Edition chapbooks, an exclusive Not-For-Sale signed Limited Edition BOOK each year, and much more!
Read the rest and a lot more for just $1 per month as a supporter on Patreon! Exclusive material includes short stories, essays, sneak previews of new projects, and even a serial novel. For those who prefer reading stories in print, there are higher levels available that include exclusive publications such as signed Limited Edition chapbooks, an exclusive Not-For-Sale signed Limited Edition BOOK each year, and much more!
Once again, I probably shouldn’t be sharing this because it’s a September 2020 publication, but I wanted to show you something because this is yet another project that is finally happening because I had the time to work on it thanks to your support!
Read the rest and a lot more for just $1 per month as a supporter on Patreon! Exclusive material includes short stories, essays, sneak previews of new projects, and even a serial novel. For those who prefer reading stories in print, there are higher levels available that include exclusive publications such as signed Limited Edition chapbooks, an exclusive Not-For-Sale signed Limited Edition BOOK each year, and much more!
