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

The Blurbs Are In!

So I asked two authors for a blurb on my eBook about to be a print paperback (to go on the back cover).

Norman Ray Fitts, ever the teacher, gave me a synopsis and critique. Not sure he was into the whole parody concept. I'm still incredibly grateful for the author blurb he came up with. Here's what his blurb will look like on the back cover:

"A great romp through the galaxy with two well defined main characters and a story that keeps you constantly guessing about what weird thing is going to happen next."

It is a good blurb. Positive and concise. Norman's work (The Sentinal among others) can be purchased here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Sentinel-Norman-Ray-Fitts/dp/1451559275

Joe McKinney is a pretty well known author in horror circles for the Dead City series of zombie novels, three and counting plus a great number of other novels and short stories (http://joemckinney.wordpress.com/the-collected-works-of-joe-mckinney/). If you follow his online blog (Old Major's Dream http://joemckinney.wordpress.com/), you'll also note he is fairly well read and educated. Here's what he gave me back verbatim as a blurb:

"No self-respecting kid raised in the 1970s could help but love space opera.  We had Star Wars, we had Space: 1999, we had Star Trek and Isaac Asimov and Harry Harrison and the birth of New Wave.  So when I see space opera done exceedingly and lovingly well, as Artemus Withers does in The Adventures of Reztap, it gives me a thrill.  Discovering a genre anew is a gift, and Artemus Withers gives freely.  Built on a classic rescue story plot, Withers' story proceeds to slay all the sacred cows of science fiction, but does it with such humor, such style, that even a hardened fan can't help but laugh along.  The Adventures of Reztap has got the humor of Douglas Adams, the snappy dialogue of Firefly, and all the moral slipperiness of the Stainless Steel Rat, but it is a unique and wonderful story all its own.  This is the good stuff!"

While I'm certainly not under the impression that I'm anywhere near as great an author as those mentioned, it did give me some pleasure knowing the reader recognized a lot of my parody inspiration.

It's interesting the diversity of the two authors and their level of commentary and insight into the writing. Of course, the same will be said for the readers out there. Some will get it, some won't. I can only hope that all will find it entertaining. At least both of the author's who blurbed for me enjoyed it.

Regards,

Artemus

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You can find the eBook version of The Adventures of Reztap at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/161674 in PDF, HTML and .modi format for the Kindle - soon to be on iTunes, Barnes & Noble's Nook and the Sony eBook reader.

Two Authors - blurbs for print version

I've contacted two author friends who've agreed to do a review of The Adventures of Reztap and provide me with blurbs of their impression of the book for the back of the paperback print version. That is awesome!

Great site on Joe McKinney with links to all his books: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/52047.Joe_McKinney
Joe is probably one of the top Zombie writers out there - his books are deep and engaging.

Here's Norman Ray Fitt's personal page with links to his books and screenplay services:
http://www.normanrayfitts.com/
Ray (as I like to call him) is a top notch sci-fi writer. He has in depth technical scenarios that are touched with humanity. Very moving stories.

I worked through most of the day today getting the book formatted corrected for print. Funny thing is I originally formatted it for printing and then reformatted for eBook - making all the editorial changes to the eBook version. So I had no choice but to start from the eBook version and work my way back.

Print version of The Adventures of Reztap should be available in June - to celebrate, here is a coupon code good thru the end of June for 25% off the eBook version at Smashwords: JU69W

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/161674

Please share with all your friends - there will be sci-fi fans among them!

Regards,
Artemus