OCTOBER UPDATE

Happy October,

I’d first like to thank all of you who came out to the Brooklyn Book Fair last month. I was great seeing old faces and meeting new ones. There is a lot to announce so without further adieu lets go down the line.

After 18 years and countless rewrites, the first book in my Dead Syndicate series made its debut at the Brooklyn Book Fair. The Dead Syndicate: Trial of the Archnemesis, which chronicles a fallen angels’ fight in the war between good and evil, is available now in limited run. The book officially launches at the end of the month just in time for Halloween. You can check out the blurb in the bookstore on the Hobbcat website. Those of you who have Anthorrorgy and have read The Diary of the Archnemesis already know the troubles Archnemesis Clide is facing, this first book will take you further down his dark path. So if you haven’t gotten a copy of Anthorrorgy yet, this will be the perfect time to purchase a copy.

Many readers have asked me when will I make some of my books available for the popular eReaders. In the beginning I had my doubts about the devices but I caved in a bought one for myself. After a smooth test drive of the product I made the decision make my work available. So I am excited to announce that The Hooky Party, my most popular novel and first book published under Hobbcat Publishing Inc., made its debut on Kindle last month. If you have any of the Kindle eReaders , you can purchase the book for ½ off the cover price at the Kindle store on Amazon. The other novels will follow in months to come. By next year, all of my titles will be available for all eReaders. So stop by the Kindle store and get your copy of The Hooky Party and don’t forget to tell a friend.

A Gamble of Faith is in the works again to be brought to the stage. I am working with a new producer and in talks of bringing the stage play back in the New York area and possibly further. The play is due to go up early 2011 and may go on the road as the year progresses so I will keep you posted on that.

I will be adding a new section to my website soon called Shorts! which will feature a short story, poem or excerpts from upcoming larger works of mine. Right now I am putting together a small collection that will change from month to month. Availability for download to eReaders will also be made available for a small price. How small, well you won’t break the bank I promise you.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for the next set of announcements during the month of October.

Until next time!

AUGUST UPDATE

The Brooklyn Book Fair is just a few weeks away and Hobbcat Publishing is going to be there. Join us this year as celebrate the launch of my new novel The Dead Syndicate: Trial of the Archnemesis. This book has been a labor of love for me for the last 18 years and finally it is out for you to enjoy. This is book one in a four part series so you’ll want to get your hands on this and get started. For those of you who read Anthorrorgy, you are familiar with the last story Diary of the Archnemesis. This story gives you a brief background of the main character in The Dead Syndicate. For those of you who have not read Anthorrorgy, here’s as good a reason as any to get yourself a copy.

Also, this year at the fair, we will be having our first ever Hobbcat Raffle. Lucky winners will get an autograph copy of a book of their choice and one grand prize winner will get a complete set of four books. That’s all four titles (A Gamble of Faith, The Hooky Party, Anthorrorgy, The Dead Syndicate) for one very low price. So the raffle tickets will be as follows:

Three red tickets for $5. The winner will have their choice of any one title.

One blue ticket for $10. The winner will win a collection of all four titles.

Times for the drawing will be announced at the fair along with the rules.

So come on out on Sunday September 12 from 10am – 6pm to the Brooklyn Book Fair located behind Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. For more information go to http://www.brooklynbookfestival.org/BrooklynBookFestival/festival.html

We’re also asking our readers to let us know if you want to see our titles made available for E-Readers. We would like to provide our work to all who are using the devices.

Hope to see you all at the fair!

Anthorrorgy and the Rebirth of A Gamble of Faith - Part 3

I have always loved horror and I have my father to thank for that. Though my mother would later tell me later that my father was actually afraid of horror movies (he left her sitting in the Exorcist in 1972 because it frightened him so bad), he had a very enchanting way of making horror sound captivating. He would tell me, with a deep voice, about Dracula and his castle. How a cursed man can turn into a werewolf and the terrible things the Invisible Man did to his victims. And to accent these terror tales we would watch the old Universal horror movies together on Saturday nights on PBS on a 13 inch black and white TV he kept in his den.

So imagine his suprise when he started to see the “modern” monsters of horror gracing my wall. As much as he hated seeing Freddy, Jason, Pinhead and Michael Meyers on my wall and in my video library, he continued to fuel me with the likes of King, Barker, and Straub by buying me their books for my literary library. My mother didn’t help the matter much by providing me with a book of Edgar Allen Poe’s collective works.

The books were my favorite because I could envision the sequences in my mind (hence the anger I spewed whenever a beloved book was turned into a bad movie) and I was always up on whatever my favorite authors were printing. When I knew for certain I was going to be a writer, I knew I wanted to write horror for sure.

Though writing in general is not easy, certain genres I found were more difficult than others. Horror is one of the more difficult. It’s not just the style that makes it difficult, the subject matter as well is hard to. It’s not easy to scare an reader. Many of the classic monsters that we have grown up with have changed so much that they have lost their appeal. Vampires, for example, have come to the point where the reader now sympathizes with the monster rather than fear it. What used to destroy them we are now told are myths (the myth has myths) and that they are now misunderstood creatures of the night. Trying to revert back to the classic image now is nearly impossible.

So I sat down and started to think of different kinds of stories to tell. I made a list of things that scare me, conventional monsters and monsters in nature (i.e. plants and animals) that either maim or kill.

Once I had enough on the list I began to weed out the ones that would not make a strong story. There were just some creatures that just would go over well in a horror story; the ones that you could believe would come after you in the dark. I kept the traditional ones like vampires, werewolves and ghosts. Then I added spiders, mosquitoes and plants along with a couple of aliens and a demon. I threw in a couple of surprises just to spice it up and when I was done I began writing.
Many of the stories had already been fleshed out prior to the list. They were stories I had already begun so I added them to the list in order to focus on finishing them. Now my mind works in a very strange way. By that I mean that while I was finishing one story I had started writing two others. So I would have three word windows open on my computer and I would switch back and forth from story to story as ideas for each came to me. This didn’t speed up the process but it did keep me on top of things.

While doing the stories, I started to think about a name for the book. I had first considered using one of the story titles followed by “and other stories of horror and suspense” but that had been used too many times before. I needed an original name, something that snapped and was very different.

I love to play with words (if you read Gamble you know what I mean) and I did that very thing with this book. Since I knew I was writing an anthology of horror stories, I decided to mesh the two words (horror and anthology) together to form one. Removing “olo” and replacing it with the word horror, I came up with Anthorrorgy. Pronouncing it, some people found, was difficult so how I explained it was like this: You say it the same way you would say anthology except you have the word horror in the middle (ie. An – thor –rorgy). It takes some getting used to but once you get it, you understand it.

Once I had the name, I started thinking about the cover. I wanted something really disturbing but not gross for the cover. I spent a lot of time looking at covers for horror novels and many of them weren’t really that eye catching. It seemed that as long as the authors name was large and yelling out at the reader, that’s all it took. The cover art was very subtle and maybe hinted on what was inside, but for the most part they didn’t seem to be big attention grabbers.

I then turned to the fantasy novels for some help and noticed that almost every cover had either some kind of action sequence or battle ready character that drew the reader in. I liked that concept so I decided that was one way to go.

But a lot of those covers were drawn. The artwork was impeccable and eye catching. I had been told that artwork, in terms of the kind of fiction I was doing, was not the best idea for a cover. But I knew that it would have to do for what I was thinking about for the cover. I had developed a very distinct idea in my head about what I wanted at that point and no photographer was going to be able to capture it.
The idea came from two of the stories in the book; The Pheromone Incident and Five by Seven. Both stories were unsettling in the fact that the people in them were suffering great deals of pain at the hands of some creature. So I wanted to showcase someone in great pain, but which of the two creatures to showcase was the question.

I went with the one I knew everyone could identify with and that was the spider. But I was particular about the kind of spider it would be. I chose the Australian Funnel Web Spider, one of the worlds deadliest spiders, as my “model”. The idea was to show it crawling out of a person’s mouth as their screaming in agony while their eyes were stitched closed. Knowing no one in the world would voluntarily put one in their mouth for a photo shoot, I had to find someone who could bring the concept to life.
At the time, I was part of a lightsber stage combat crew called NY Jedi. The group was comprised of many different artists, musicians and writers who all had a soft spot for performing and lightsaber lore. In this group I met an artist named Tara Lopez who was working on a comic strip she was pushing to the public. On her website, I found wonderful sketches and designs but what caught my eye was a style of “living art”. It’s where the art work looked almost alive. Peoples features were distinct and simply amazing.

I approached her with the idea of doing a book cover and she was excited about it until she heard the idea. She literally cringed because, as I found out, spiders were not her thing. I knew from that response I had a great cover coming. I gathered pictures of the spider in its most menacing poses and gave them to her and left her to do her work.

I went back to writing and editing the stories. When I was done I had fourteen stories I felt would work well in the book. But as I did a reread of each one, I started to discover that some of them just didn’t fit right. They were all good but there were some that I could use for a different book at a later date so I removed them. Then I decided to take a page from The Twilight Zone and write an introduction for each one. But after I put the chosen few together, the introductions seemed to be a bit much. They felt forced rather than adding something special as I intended them to. So upon working on the fourth draft, I got rid of the introductions and left the stories alone.

Next was to put them order. I had read that Stephen King, for his anthology of stories in Everything’s Eventual, used a deck of cards to help him decide the order for his stories. I went in order of when the stories were created. So the oldest and more seasoned stories came first then the newer stories followed. The final story in the book, however, was chosen specifically because it was a precursor to a series I had been working on for several years.

Satisfied with the order, I did one more edit before I got the cover from Tara and put the book together. I sent the book to the printer and had twenty copies printed right away. I sent one to the book reviewer and the others I handed out as review copies. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

One reviewer called me and said that he and his wife found errors running rapid through the book. That is probably the worse thing a writer can hear. He sent me a list of the pages I needed to look at and I went back to work correcting the stories. While working on the corrections, I discovered another minor setback; a story that did not fit with the others. The whole situation began to frustrate me so I walked away from the book for a week so that I could gather my thoughts.

I ended up taking off two weeks then I picked the book up again and got back to work. With a fresh set of eyes, I was able to find the errors and clean the manuscript up. Then I removed the story Ms. Elliston and put it to the side to use in another collection. I passed the revised edition onto an editor who made sure the mistakes were corrected then I prepped the book for print.

As I awaited the book to be reprinted, I began looking into redoing A Gamble of Faith with a new cover and a new description on the back. I contacted IUniverse to see if I could send a new cover in and they told me in order to change the cover, I needed to pay the same processing fee I did when I set the book up. I thought that was a bit much seeing as how the interior of the book was not changing. But it was further explained that they would have to issue me a new ISBN number on the new cover and that constituted as a new set up.

I took a few days to think about it and came to the conclusion that if I was going to pay to have the book redone under IUniverse, I might as well move the title under Hobbcat Publishing where I could have the freedom to do what I needed and it would be easier to manage. So I wrote a letter to IUniverse telling them that I wanted to discontinue my novel with them and that the book had been picked up by another publishing company.

While awaiting an answer from them, I began rewriting A Gamble of Faith. My original manuscript had been lost when my computer crashed and I had to begin again from scratch. Using one of the IUniverse copies I began working on copying the story over and adding a few new details to the story.

Anthorrorgy, meanwhile, made it to print and was released in May followed by a book review featured in the New York Amsterdam News. I put together a release party for the book which had a strong turnout and soon after I went back to working on A Gamble of Faith.

I went back to Marion Designs for the cover again. I knew that I wanted to keep the same theme as the original cover but I didn’t want to carbon copy it using models. I gave them a few ideas to work with and settled on a design that kept the card game feel. Whereas the original artistic cover captured nearly all the characters on the front, the new cover only encompassed three of the characters during a pivotal moment in the game.

The layout was the next phase and that outcome was surprising to say the least. When I first published the book with IUniverse, the print was small and page count was around 170 pages. This time around, the book length was 270 pages with the print size slightly larger. For the exception of a few additions, the manuscript was pretty much the same one I had originally wrote. So I had to ask myself why the original Gamble was so much thinner and smaller than this revised edition. Putting the two side by side I was able to see the difference in font seizes, page size and spacing. In the end I didn’t worry about what the book used to be, only that it was now the book it should have been all along and I was pleased with it.

A Gamble of Faith was re-released in June, a month after Anthorrorgy made its debut. I didn’t do as heavy of a release with Gamble since it technically wasn’t a new title. I did have a small release party for it which allowed people who had not read it to finally get a copy.

With the launch of two books, I went on to the Brooklyn Book Fair in September. Anthorrorgy, with its frightening cover and blurb from the Amsterdam News, drew readers right away. Those who were disturbed by the cover turned their sights to A Gamble of Faith and The Hooky Party for more light hearted reading. Sales went well for Hobbcat Publishing, Inc. and a week later I was back to work on A Gamble of Faith again. This time, I was working on revising the play.

The Hooky Party and the Birth of Hobbcat Publishing, Inc.- Part 2 of The Writers Journey

The Hooky Party was my second book and, technically, my first self published novel. Like Gamble, it was based on a screenplay I had started working on with my childhood buddy Michael Barksdale. Originally we had started with a bevy of different ideas and events that developed into the concept. But after years of not being able to make the screenplay come together fully, we abandoned it and it became another idea that never got fleshed out.

I got the idea of turning it into a novel when I stumbled across the old script three years after it’s rough draft was done. Rereading it with a fresh set of eyes I started to see how to mold and shape the story better. Being able to fill in the gaps through a novel rather than tip toe around parts due to screenplay time constraints was very refreshing. Initially there was no real story behind Hooky Party other than some guys cutting school to throw one. But the novel gave me a chance to create an entire plot behind it all. So rather than just have a story about kids cutting school, I developed an entire reason behind it.

Using the names of people I knew to help me focus on the characters better, the story of teen rebellion, love and friendship slowly unfolded. Two teen friends decide to throw the Hooky Party after their new tough-as-nails principal cancels the long awaited and much beloved Senior Cut Day. Underlining that plot is a story about taking responsibility for ones own actions; a lesson the two friends learn when their party doesn’t go as planned. The intention was to make this more about a life lesson than just about rambunctious teens going wild.

In the beginning, I intended the story to be a trip down memory lane for people of my generation. I made references to things that were familiar to my growing up in New York as well as setting the story in the early nineties. I even created characters that nearly everyone could relate to (ie. The kids that steals tater tots from people, the underclassmen that liked hanging out with the older crowd and student that kissed up to the principle). But As I neared the completion of the story, I realized that the story could easily appeal to today’s youth.

But that was going to be a hard sell. I observed that many teens I saw reading books on the train were reading some very adult books. Urban Fiction (a label given to many of today’s African American books whose stories focus on or are driven by the street, sex and some violence) was a big draw for them. Very few were reading classics or even were immersed in the popular teen vampire/romance/drama stories. Was it even possible for this story to get through to them or would they even consider reading it?

I realized after looking over it that there were no stories like this out there for young adults. True, most young adults read mature subject matter, but rarely do they read something that they can really relate to in fiction. The story, a coming of age story with a lesson in taking responsibility for one’s own actions, seemed like a good fit for many of today’s teens but would they want it? That was a question I wouldn’t know for sure until I put it out there.

The novel took seven months to complete. Since this was my second novel, and I had learned so much from my initial outing with Gamble, I put a lot behind this project. I also did things a little different.

With Gamble, I edited the book myself. This time, with Hooky Party, I sought out an editor to properly go through the book and make the corrections that were needed. Granted I didn’t have a great deal of mistakes in Gamble, but it was a shorter book. This one was more intricate and detailed so I needed a second set of eyes for it. I had the entire book checked for grammar, spelling, story structure and redundancy. When I got the manuscript back and double checked it, I decided that this time I would go through a traditional publishing house.

With help from the editor, I had a query letter drawn up and I proceeded to send out copies of it to publishing houses that would take unsolicited material. As they made their way to their destinations, I sent a second set of letters out to agents, looking for representation. I knew two things going into the letter writing campaign. The first was that it would be some time before I heard anything back. The second was that many of them would come back as rejections. It was very rare for one to get picked up right away but I remained hopeful.

Within three weeks, the first round of letters came back from publishing houses with the usual “thanks but no thanks” kinds of answers. I wasn’t surprised by this and took them in stride. By the forth week, I started to get letters back from a handful of agents who wanted to see the manuscript. I packaged up several of them and shipped them out immediately.

Within a month I started to get letters back from them saying that they were passing on representation. While the rejection wasn’t too surprising, the statements following the initial rejection was. “Although the manuscript was a good read, we are not sure who to target this story to. The demographic is unclear.” One agent even stated that it seemed too difficult to even market. I was both confused and taken aback by this.

For starters, the majority of the characters in the story are high school students. Many of them are African American and Hispanic. The story is set in a high school and its about high school hi- jinx. It seemed pretty obvious to me who the demographic were. I also stated it’s a coming of age story as well. It didn’t seem confusing to me who would want to read it.

It was never made clear to me why anyone didn’t think they could move the book. Even minority companies declined the novel. If it wasn’t the writing, then what was it about the book people felt they couldn’t sell it? I never received an answer to that question and I was just left with a batch of rejection letters.

After sending out close to 50 letters and landing not a single deal, Hooky Party was destined to end up with its screenplay counter part; collecting dust in a drawer. I was left with one option and that was to publish it myself. I had enlisted the help of an artist to do a cover for me but after several months of waiting and not getting anything back, I was pretty much stuck. I had considered going back with IUniverse but at the same time, Gamble wasn’t doing too well either. As I contemplated on what to do, I received an email from Gotham Writers Workshop (I was on their mailing list) that the Center of Independent Publishers was hosting a seminar and workshop on self publishing. I figured I had nothing to loose so I enrolled in the workshop and spent my entire Saturday going to panels and learning what it meant to be a self published author.

I discovered that my decision not to go back to IUniverse was correct and in a way, the fact that my cover never got done was a blessing.

One of the panelists took a look at Gamble and told we everything that was wrong with the book. From the artist drawn cover down to the font size and pricing. Then I found out why I was not touted as an self published author. There was something on the book itself that did not belong to me but rather to the IUniverse that signified that they were the publisher, not me.

The ISBN number on the barcode had been issued to me by IUniverse. Because I didn’t buy the number myself and it was provided to me by them; it meant that they were the publisher, not me. I had to own that number and it could not be bought from them. I had to buy it under my own company name or my own. But it was strongly advised that I have a company, which I didn’t have. I also found out that there were companies out there that did book covers. I had always been under the assumption that only publishing houses issued covers. It never dawned on me to look for a company to do that. Then there was the matter of finding a printer to print the books, pricing the book and marketing. None of this had ever crossed my mind, but it didn’t sound terribly difficult to do as long as I knew where to go for what I needed.

So for nearly nine hours I listened, learned, took advice and gathered as much research material as I could. Then I went back home and for several days I did homework.

The first thing I had to do was find out how to get incorporated. I was told to check out Legal Zoom where I could have incorporations done online. On the site they offered to research the name I had chosen for my company to make sure it wasn’t already taken. I chose the name Hobbcat for the company because I had used the name before as a trademark which had long since been cancelled. Once the name was approved I went through the steps of setting it up as incorporation. The entire process took only a few weeks to have done.

My next step was getting the ISBN numbers for the company. Following the directions I got from one of the panel discussions, I went to the website where I bought 25 numbers along with some barcodes. I assigned the first number to The Hooky Party then put it to the side while I went looking for a book cover designer.
Marion Designs was my choice for cover design. The experience wasn’t what I had expected. When they replied to my email about working with me, they wanted to know what I had in mind for the cover. Granted I had thought about some ideas but I figured that the company was going to just come up with ideas on their own. But they involved me in the process and I was happy to pass along some of my ideas. They even helped me to design my company logo.

Approximately one month later I had a finished cover complete with bar code, ISBN numbers and an eye catching font design. All that was left was to do was have it printed. But I didn’t immediately have a printer to work with. I knew that I wanted to print books like I did with IUniverse which was by small volume. Many printers wanted me to order and print large quantities which would mean I would have to make room in my apartment for thousands of books. Marion Designs told me about a company that did what is called Print On Demand which allowed me to order only the amount I needed. The company was called Lightning Source. Not only were they a good place for me to print but they also work with Barnes and Noble and Amazon so when my novel was finished and approved, it was listed on their sites.

Ten months after its initial completion, The Hooky Party was finally published and was the first book released under Hobbcat Publishing , Inc.
Soon after its release, I wanted to run an ad for it in The New York Amsterdam News. I was advised that instead of an ad, to have the book reviewed. I was a little apprehensive at first because a review can swing both ways. A good one would give it life. A bad one could stop it dead in its tracks. It was a 50/50 chance I had to take.

In August of that year, reviewer Glenn Townes wrote a solid review of the book which helped kick off sales. By September, The Hooky Party, made its official debut at the Brooklyn Book Fair and nearly sold out before the day was over.

Once I knew exactly what self publishing entailed, I decided I would work to bring A Gable of Faith over from IUniverse into Hobbcat’s fold. Unfortunately, a computer crash destroyed the manuscript and I was forced to start over from scratch using the novel I had in my possession. While working on that, I started putting together the finishing touches on my third book.