The Undiscovered Country

To stave off the flood of comments (one of which would be a 50% increase over the life of this blog), the title does not refer to my death of that of any of the characters in The Chronicles of Reztap. However, the nuts and bolts of the published series itself are undergoing an extensive shift. The books themselves are experiencing a death and a rebirth of sorts.

First, an acknowledgement to Megan LaFoyett (then Director of Publishing) and Jeff Hastings (Owner) of Chart House Press. Without them, book zero of The Chronicles of Reztap, Mishaps and Mayhem, would never have come into being. Megan requested it as a forward copy edition to be sent to book sellers as a kind of pre-marketing push. Unfortunately, her involvement with Chart House Press ceased before that aspect of book zero could come to fruition. Still, those previously untold early adventures would likely not seen the light of day any time without a push to get them written and published. Second, getting book one into a professional shape and appearance is due in no small effort to the expertise of many others working behind the scenes at Chart House Press, from the internal layout to the revised cover design, the second edition of The Adventures of Reztap was a sparkling shiny present compared to the clumsy first edition I pushed out years ago. Thank you both for your involvement in getting Tar and Gorth out to be seen and enjoyed by many more readers than ever before.

Chart House Press has since adjusted their charter to be exclusively pushing non-fiction books from here on out. Even as we speak, both books, Mishaps and Mayhem & The Adventures of Reztap. are no longer available on Amazon. As much as it pains me to see it, I realize it is also for the best. Given their new direction, Chart House Press is not be able to devote the time, energy and expertise The Chronicles of Reztap series is due. This is a mutual agreement - I wasn't just shut out of Chart House Press. We came to an agreement that the book series would be better served elsewhere.

This pushes me into the Undiscovered Country. By default, I need to get The Chronicles of Reztap published by another publisher, and not just self-published. However, I don't want to get put in a bind again with my books being essentially out of print before they've had a decent chance to catch on. My only recourse - start my own publishing company. It's the only way to ensure I retain the rights to my books and can keep them published continually from here on out. A perfect solution with only two drawbacks - time and money. I literally have no time to devote fairly to this endeavor, and that is largely driven by the fact that I have no money I can dedicate to getting this started right now. Seriously, starting one company at a time is enough of a drain on my time and money. Starting a second would be a quick trip to the poor house.

Unfortunately, that means, at least for a time, there will be no copies, electronically or otherwise, of either book zero, one or two available. What you can get now is what you'll be able to get for at least a few months if not a full year. I'm committed to getting everything going as soon as possible, but that could easily push into next year.

I wish it wasn't so, but that's where I'm at. I'll need time to get both financial and professional resources gathered to launch the publishing company in a manner that will ensure it produces quality products. This will not be an overnight effort pushing out a substandard product. For the fans out there, and I've actually met a few, I'm sorry to say it will be a while before I can get everything running again but once I do, I can assure you it will remain a steady company that will keep the products alive and available.

Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks and months as a Reztapian phoenix rises from the ashes of this expiration. I will keep you updated on my progress.

Thank you for you time and dedication.

Regards,
Artemus

Entering Limbo

I admit, I felt that particular leg of my foundation in writing shaking quite a bit since the loss of the Director of Publishing who had championed me to my publisher. Loss as in no longer working there, not because she had passed. I now begin the strange journey of transition from being a published writer to being, well, something else.

I felt the loss more acutely when the Director of Publishing left. She was the creative spark that directed the fiction side of the business. Without her, all the fiction titles and authors have floundered a bit. My excitement to join the publishing company had more to do with access to real marketing and publishing expertise than it did with the "reputation" of being a professionally published author. Just when my book came out, my champion disappeared and so did the push that was supposed to come with my debut novel.

Still, I can say I've sold about as many books in my first year as an average book by any author this year. many authors have sold less and a few have sold more. I've gained experience in web site design (to a degree), seen some very well done cover designs and book layouts (enough to know I need someone else to do them), and a splash of insight into book marketing. It has been a great learning experience, but I'm now at a point where I can't exactly take advantage of that experience and move forward. Limbo has its drawbacks.



My options from here forth are to find another publisher or create my own publishing company. Actually, the third option is simply to go back to self publishing which is just a step down from creating my own publishing company. I honestly had another publisher lined up, but things have changed for them since our last chat a few months ago and they're no longer an option for the foreseeable future. It may be best to go it alone, take on all the pieces of self publishing and simply get the thing done on my own. The advantages are that I'll have complete control over every aspect of the books' life and marketing. The disadvantages are essentially the same - all of those bits and pieces will take time I simply haven't had in my schedule to take over.

What I didn't have before is access to people who controlled every aspect of building a professional quality book. With the contacts I have now, I feel confident I can arrange those pieces and get them into place. The marketing contact I found is probably the biggest key. Still, the production of this book series at this point is a vanity project of sorts now. That's the reality of the situation. Have people commented that they loved the book? Absolutely! For fans of that genre, it's really spot on. The question of how to reach my target audience that I haven't met yet without spending a ton of money is the real conundrum. I suppose it's the same problem most self published authors face - how to reach their audience and not go broke in the process.

In the mean time, The Adventures of Reztap and Mishaps and Mayhem are still available for sale, and I still get paid royalties for them. It's actually unclear at the moment if I'll be pulling them from Chart House Press or leaving them there. All signs seem to point to the publisher wanting to relinquish control as soon as possible. What files and data I'll receive in the process in unclear. Even book two is in a basically completed stage, just waiting on me to get the cash together to push for the marketing reviews of The Adventures of Reztap and, possibly, Mishaps and Mayhem as well.

New job, bills stack up and the cost for getting review copies sent out seems further and further away every day. I'm taking a deep breath and pushing forward. I want to get those reviews online before March 2016. I'd like to get book two reviewed shortly thereafter and published some time in 2016, hopefully by the summer. I just don't want links to point to a book that's no longer there! Hence, limbo.

Wish me luck and keep on reading!

Regards,
Artemus

Reztap and the Quest for the Insane Moth - Book 2 News

We're flying to the next book in the Chronicles of Reztap series - Reztap and the Quest for the Insane Moth! See what I did there - flying? OK, bad joke. The Quest manuscript and cover are completed while the editing has just started. It feels like I did this just a few months ago with Book One - oh, that's because I did just do this a few months ago!

The manuscript for Quest was done faster than the manuscript for Book One (Adventures), which technically had it's infancy in the 1980s. Given that time frame, Adventures took roughly 30 years to complete! Really, though, I was maturing as a writer during that time, with countless revisions, writing group critiques and some writing workshops thrown in there the last ten years. The previous twenty was more of a life happens delay, with sporadic writing occurring here and there including two Star Trek: The Next Generation scripts - which sadly never saw or had a chance at production.

Book Two took about eight months. The lightning round began in June when I figured full time writing would be a fine career transition, and that's when I really put the steam and brought the final manuscript to my soon to be publisher, Chart House Press, in August. That included a great deal of part-time writing, but it really paled in comparison to writing the prequel, Mishaps and Mayhem - A Primer to The Adventures of Reztap. I wrote that 100-page set of three short stories in three weeks (the bulk of which was roughly 80 - pages in the last six days before I sent it in.) That was a real eye opener to my writing abilities - I clocked over 5,000 words one day. To put it bluntly, that's insane, but it worked. I was in the groove so to speak.

If you managed to get out to see me at the Houston's Authors Bash 2015, AggieCon 46 or the MenilFest last weekend, you would have seen the cover art for Quest. I know I have many fans who are not able to make it in person out to see me, but I'm not quite at liberty to the cover at this time. Quest is a darker book by far than Adventures and that is reflected in the cover art. It's dark and populated with zombies! It does play a bit on the zombie tropes out there - I hope my Adventures blurb writer, Joe McKinney, continues to have a healthy sense of humor as I'm traipsing a bit on his territory being one of the foremost in the zombie field (see his Dead City book series for some great, fast-paced zombie action!)

Jerrica Law did a fantastic job on the art of the Quest book cover. She's really nailed the vision I had for the covers and delivered great cover art. Book Zero (Mishaps) was actually a quick revision of a sketch she originally did for the Adventures book cover which I rejected since Adventures didn't involve a shipwreck. Mishaps did and that helped her get the cover out quick for the quick to write, quick to press prequel. She's currently hard at work on the book cover for the third book in the series. I won't reveal the name just yet for a few reasons - I like suspense and I'm not under contract with my publisher for it yet, so the delivery date and publication are nowhere close to set in stone. I've only just barely begun to write it as well. Marketing and coordination for the first two books (and the prequel) have kept my attention away from the important task of writing the book. After Quest comes out, we'll see where we are with Chart House Press and find out if they're ready for the next set of books or not.

Then we have editing! This was my down with the first edition - not getting a professional editor. Second edition of Adventures is fully edited and is so immeasurably better than first edition that I shudder to open the fist edition to take a peek. The manuscript transition from third person to first person introduced so many writing mistakes that I overlooked on three personal editing passes that I knew it had to have the keen eye of a top notch editor to give it any hope of survival. Happily, Chart House Press connected me with Erika Wisdom, a fine editor and fan of science fiction. It's good to get an editor who is not only sharp, but also "gets it" when a humorous novel poking fun at science fiction tropes comes across her desk.

Erika will also be editing Quest! I'm very excited to continue what I consider a successful partnership with such a fine editor. She quite properly dissected Adventures, providing a bevy of corrections and suggestions, putting the manuscript in excellent shape. After I completed my run-through of incorporating everything she had exhaustively done, I then had to go back and look at my own changes with a fine tooth comb to make sure I hadn't introduced further errors with my own revisions. I think I nailed it, although a last minute grammar check revealed a few things I'd overlooked. Still, it was a much better experience than I thought it would be - I'm very happy with the final product and look forward to the same experience with Quest.

Stay tuned for a revelation of the book cover for Quest - coming soon!

Regards,
Artemus

Houston Authors Bash 2015 Post-Mortem

I made my first real appearance as Artemus Withers to the public on Saturday, February 28th at the Houston Authors Bash in Katy, TX. I had a book launch party earlier in the week, but my slightly less snazzy alter ego showed up there. As my first event, what did I learn, how did I think it went, and what do I think I (and the organizers) might do better next time?

Probably the biggest category is what did I learn. As I've never been to anything like this as a vendor/presenter/author, there are many behind the scenes things to take into account. I lucked out and had a publisher behind me with this one, so my table fee was taken care of and they helped me out with a large poster of my first book (went on a floor easel they also got for me). I had to provide my own table runner, swag giveaway stuff and two 8x10 posters of my book covers for the table (OK, I sprung for some with a thicker backing - my publisher (Chart House Press!) actually provided a printed 8x10 for my covers in a clear plastic stand-up frame). My short story book was there (I asked for a certain number and those were provided - yes, I will be paying for them so they weren't free.)

The author next to me offered a free ebook if people signed up for his newsletter. I immediately talked to my publisher about doing the same thing. Sure, that means giving Mishaps and Mayhem away for free as an ebook, but that was part of the plan anyway. This would be a great way to introduce readers to the Reztap universe - if they like it, that means future readers, fans and book buyers. I'll be enacting that on my web site as well. I have only to wait for the formatted ebook to be delivered so I can send it to my newsletter subscribers!

I had volunteered to be on a panel. Truth be told is what panel number two I thought I would be the most useful in, but I was placed on panel number one - street teaming. Not only did I not know what street teaming was, I was pretty certain I wouldn't be adding much content to the folks watching from the audience. As it turned out, the panel wasn't exactly as well organized and planned as one would hope for. There was no moderator, the authors weren't notified when the panel was starting and, for the most part, the panel was geared toward authors, not readers and fans, so our target audience was busy in the big room selling books and talking to readers while we did the panel for mostly, well, us! But all was not lost. I'd been to so many writing conferences and attended so many panels that I had no problem stepping in and acting as moderator. I learned so much from the other authors there about street teams and how they work, Facebook parties and other fan engagement tips that would strengthen your fan base and make them a part of the creative and marketing processes. I'd like to think other authors on the panel got some great ideas from each other as well. As for our five audience members, four of them were part of one authors street team!

The overall event went well enough. I sold seven books, traded one for another author's book (thanks Tom Glover!), and signed up eight people for my newsletter. That's 15 potential future readers (or more) for The Adventures of Reztap when it comes out! I also handed out 50 pieces of homemade swag (outer space themed foam stickers from Oriental Traders with hand cut personalized information on the front about the books and my website), so there's another potential 50 readers for my books! I think this was a success for my first big event.

What could I do better next time? I would've liked to have some better swag available. I'm currently looking into professional bookmarks and probably some business cards. something easy to hand out and preprinted. The foam stickers were fun, but they inadvertently painted my book toward a younger audience than I'd anticipated. My book covers, I've discovered from the foot traffic, are skewing to a lower age bracket than I'd intended also. Many people asked me about my kids' book - on even thought it was a graphic novel! My swag will need to be a little more sophisticated to balance that reastion out for sure. On the other hand, my book is profanity free and really doesn't have any graphic content, per se. There are some adult situations, but I've intentionally not gotten graphic in any of that. There is suggestion and innuendo, but that's certainly nothing a high school age reader or even a great majority of middle school readers wouldn't be shocked by. At the end of the day, some of the jokes may go over the heads of the more naive kids, but there's really not much in there a parent would find highly objectionable or corrupting. I suppose the references to holographic pornography chits is the most risque element in the book, but, as I said before, there are no graphic depictions accompanying them.

What did the organizers of the event take from this year's session? Number one - don't hold it on a Houston Rodeo weekend! We had half the traffic (or less) than last year when it was held the weekend before the rodeo started. On the panels - if the panels are going to be geared toward writers, they should be held after the doors close so the authors themselves can take advantage of the panels if they so choose. As it was, the authors had to choose between selling their books and meeting readers and fans to attend the panels. No readers attended the panels - I'm not sure this is really the venue for reader attended panels anyway. The feel of the HAB was one of people dropping by for perhaps an hour to browse through the offerings, perhaps chat with a few writers, buy a few books and then move on with the rest of their day. A casual book browsing or buying experience. It works out well as designed.

Will I attend this next year? Absolutely! I'll have three or four books available then and perhaps a bigger presence in the book market by then. I hope to engage with more readers and maybe introduce them to fellow authors when they come to see me. I think that's the biggest gift a successful author can give an up and coming author - a little extra traffic by their booth that might catch a new readers eye!

Keep writing my friends and watch for March 9th when The Adventures of Reztap comes out!