Hello Everyone!
I have some great news! RUNE's schedule and publication date has just been finalized! Although there are many deliverables on RUNE's production timeline (publishing and marketing a book is a MASSIVE undertaking), the one readers will be most interested in is:
RUNE OF THE APPRENTICE will be published on November 1st, 2016!
Additional good news is that YOU will be getting your copies before this date AND we will also be able to have special early release copies for New York Comic-Con, too! We don’t know the exact date books will be shipped to you, but I’ll keep you posted!
Even though you will be getting you books before November, I know this is still a long way out. Reading this, I’m sure you are feeling the same emotion I initially felt upon hearing the news: disappointment that RUNE will not be published sooner like originally planned. Despite that initial feeling, as I work more closely with both Inkshares and Girl Friday Productions, and see the tremendous amount of work being put into RUNE, that disappointment has been transformed into appreciation and gratitude. While I know you do not see this hard work first hand, I will do my best to keep you updated on our progress so you can see all we are doing to polish RUNE into printed perfection—which will hopefully help curb your disappointment, even if only a little.
I can go on and on about this and am happy to answer any questions over at @StoneJamison, or down below in the comments, however, I want to keep this update quick so as to not fill up your inbox. Although there are MANY milestones ahead, the next important steps are Cover Design and Developmental Edits!
Cover: I have a call later today where the RUNE team will be solidifying our collective vision for the cover so the designer can begin to move forward with samples for review and selection. There are usually three rounds to this process. The early samples will focus on options of several different directions and the later rounds will polish that vision, bringing it into a finalized physical form. The designer’s previous work is fantastic and I am very excited to see what he produces. I will keep you all updated as we progress!
Developmental Edits: Editing a 500+ page Fantasy/Sci-Fi epic is no small feat. Although RUNE has already had several rounds of professional editing, there is always ways to make a novel of this magnitude more engaging, engrossing, and awe-inspiring! I have been tremendously pleased with the pre- Girl Friday Productions edits, and am now very excited to see their continued polish added to RUNE. The next round of Developmental edits should be done by the end of next month, and then wrapped up by the end of March with copy editing and proofreading to follow in the months to come.
As I said, there are many more milestones after that (I have not even gotten started on marketing!) but for now I’ll end this update. The road to publication is a long one, however, I am so very excited to have you all along for the ride. RUNE OF THE APPRENTICE is going to enliven the hearts and minds of readers across the globe, and it warms MY heart knowing that you all are here to partake in this EPIC journey!
It's been awhile since we've chatted...
Throwback Thursday you say? I say that's a good time for a recipe! Especially if it's another excellent old-school recipe, this time for New England Clam Chowder. (Pretty sure, by the way, I'm going to throw recipes into the back of the book, so it's a good gift for anybody who likes to cook, huh?)
In "Women Like Us", Susan's introduction to the culinary world comes when she lands a job in an old Clam shack on Martha's Vineyard, which is where she meets Henry's father Andrew, who's the son of Edith Vale. She's starts as a waitress but when the old cook drops dead, she's put in charge of the small kitchen, where one of the most important jobs is making the Clam Chowder. This recipe, which I've always loved, is another one adapted from Julia Child's "The Way To Cook". Again, it's a Julia recipe that harkens back to her New England roots and is not in any way French. Anyway, here ya go:
New England Clam Chowder
(Recipe adapted from Julia Child's "The Way To Cook")
1 1/2 pounds littleneck clams
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup good smoked bacon, cut into thin slices
1 tbsp. butter
1 1/2 cups onions, sliced
1 Bay leaf
1/2 cup crushed oyster crackers
2 cups liquid (clam steaming juices and some water)
2 small or 1 large russet potato, diced (about 2 cups)
salt and fresh ground pepper
1 cup whole milk
More Oyster crackers for serving
Chopped chives or parsley for serving
1) Wash the clams well and place in a large kettle with a tight fitting lid. Add the water and bring to a boil. Cover the kettle, and let clams steam a couple of minutes, just until most of them start to open. Remove open clams and steam the rest 2 minutes longer, then discard any unopened clams. Remove the meats to a bowl. Pour the liquid through a sieve lined with paper towel into a 2 cup liquid measure. Add water to make two cups if you need. Set aside.
2) In a large soup pot, melt butter and toss in sliced bacon. Cook bacon over medium heat until it just starts to crisp, and then toss in onions. Add bay leaf. Cover, lower heat and cook slowly about 10 minutes, until onions are soft and translucent. Toss in crushed oyster crackers. Mix in well, then add in the 2 cups clam steaming liquid. Add potatoes. Liquid should just cover potatoes, so add a little water if you need. Bring to the boil and then simmer, loosely covered, for 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Blend in milk, bring to simmer again and taste for seasoning.
3) Roughly chop the clams. Fold them into the chowder and remove from heat. Sprinkle with chopped chives or parsley and serve with more oyster crackers on the side.
Serves 3-4
Here's the final product!
Hello readers. Well, we've soared past 600 orders, excellent! Very excited to release a new chapter of the book for you to enjoy, check that out on the project page. We are in the home stretch, and I'll be posting my screenwriting tips starting tomorrow. Hopefully you'll find them interesting and educational, and incentive to order if you haven't done so already (I see plenty of followers who haven't actually ordered yet, join in friends! We only have three more weeks left.)
As a reminder, all hardback orders come with a signed Felicia Day headshot. I couldn't be more grateful for her support for my novel. Her willingness to promote this project I've worked three years of my life on is quite wonderful. We are all lucky to have such a kind friend.
Hope you enjoy the new novel excerpt and the screenwriting tips I'll be releasing starting tomorrow. The finish line is nigh!
Pat
Greetings!
On Wednesday, I did a 30 minute interview with Mary Jane Popp on KAHI in Sacramento, California. You can listen to it by clicking here:
http://secretagentman.org/Media.html
Next week, I scored a booking at WLW-AM 700 (50,000 watts) - with Bill Cunningham - Cincinnati, OH
This station has one of the strongest radio signals in the United States and my interviewer is the recipient of the 2001 and 2009 Marconi Award as America's Big Market Radio Personality of the Year.
I'm still looking for more supporters to step up, so if you are ready to review Journey, here are the important links -
http://www.secretagentman.org/PR.pdf Read this document after you have read the book and Before you review it on Amazon & Goodreads.
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-SecretAgentMan-Mykl-Walsh/dp/1941758479
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25915392-journey
This could be the book that puts Inkshares on THE MAP in a big way, which will help all Inkshares authors, so please consider sharing this update on Inkshares and on your social media feeds!
On Twitter I'm @RFSaunders
https://twitter.com/RFSaunders
My FB account is https://www.facebook.com/RichFSaunders
Have a great weekend everyone!
Kind regards,
Rich Saunders
And just like that - there's no turning back.
The interior of Asteroid Made of Dragons has been approved and it's on the way to be printed. Inkshares staff, Bethany at Girl Friday Production, the irrepressible copy editor Carrie, the mysterious being I only know as DES (Designer), and my Pokemon trainers Veronica and Tom from Sword & Laser have all given the nod. Final cover tweaks are coming today as well and we're off to physical production.
I feel odd about it. I've self-published before, so there was much more of a feeling of instant gratification when I put the book out. After intense beta reading and copy editing by friends and colleagues - I clicked a few buttons and it was done. You could order the book immediately. That moment of white-hot excitement as I pushed 'GO' and tossed my stuff out into the world - it was wonderful. And then, inevitably, I'd realize I'd goofed on stuff. The problem with being both writer AND publisher is you get to overrule a lot of sensible things when you WANT BOOK NOW. My first book, I actually pulled it down, re-edited it and put it back up on Amazon a few months after release because of all the snarky little copy edit and formatting problems. Ha, I had an ogre that changed names at least twice in one chapter.
So, the moment where I left to my own devices would have put this book out - was months ago. And in all that time, the book has only gotten stronger, cleaner, better - less prone to causing impromptu hauntings. Intellectually, this is amazing - readers will see a remarkably more polished form of my work this time around. But emotionally, hmm. It's been long enough that I've kind of come disconnected from the excitement of the book coming out? Maybe I'm just tamping down my expectations for what launch is going to be like, but in a weird way - it's like I'm excited about someone else's book coming out?
Stephen King (Uncle Stevie), has a phenomenal book called 'On Writing' - and one of the many passages I really took to heart was his edict that you have to put the book away after you write it. Long enough that you can read it as a stranger - that it doesn't sound like your own voice in your head. I think this is the first novel I've really been able to do that. Especially this week as we were working on the final copy edits - I found myself reading passages of AMOD and thinking Who wrote this? This is pretty good. Ha ha, Sideways is the best.
And you must now how much it pains me to say this about my own stuff. I am a quiet, quivering ball of self-loathing.
But quite honestly - I kept feeling a new excitement. Not the sweaty, PUSH THE BUTTON release fervor I've felt before - but more of a Christmas morning, oh, just you wait until you see what I got you kind of feeling. As dangerous and perilous for my anxiety as this is to even think or type - I felt ...proud...of the book. I wanted to swagger.
I hope this feeling lasts. I'm going to ride it as long as I can - until the crippling doubt returns, natch.
Thank you all again - I can never say it enough. Real bookstores are buying the book! You are going to get to read my book in just a few weeks! You did this. YOU DID THIS.
It's all your fault.
More reports as they come in - be prepared, we're on target for release at the beginning of April - so you're going to hear more and more from me soon.
NOTES OF INTEREST
Audiobook giveaway for Spell/Sword - Precursor novel to AMOD. - ends 1/31
My twitter! - c'mon and follow me people! It is SOLID GOLD over there. Just me whining and complaining ALL THE TIME.
SCREENWRITING TIP #1: The Big Idea
Everywhere I travel if someone discovers that I am a writer, they invariably tell me that they have a great idea for a movie, a book or a TV series. (Especially cab and uber drivers, they are idea machines). And if I would JUST write it for them...
Yikes, there’s the catch. They don’t want to do the work themselves. Problem is, I have tons of ideas of my own. Ideas are cheap. Execution is what counts. Very few execute. When I am pitched an idea I tell people, "Write it yourself!" Few ever do. Because they discover when they start that writing is hard work, and they quit without seeing it through. So the basic secret of success in writing is: Do the Work. Write the worst thing you can put on paper, but get through it. Then you can rewrite it. Over and over until you make it great. Most people who are professionals wrote five or six screenplays before they even sold one. No one is a genius right off the bat.
But a word of warning before you start the actual writing: It’s best to test your Big Idea before you dive in. Do an outline of your movie, brainstorm the plot points. Do character sketches so you make sure the character fits with your plot and vice versa. I will be covering how to do those things in more detail in future updates, but the biggest warning I have is: NEVER START WRITING WITHOUT AN ENDING. You will just be making the hard work harder for yourself. Your Big Idea is worth doing the homework for, just so you can keep your enthusiasm up through a very difficult process of creating something from scratch.
And if you don’t have time for full steam ahead on one Big Idea right now, the best thing you can do is make a habit of filing your ideas away in a file cabinet. Virtual or physical. Write anything you find interesting down. Scan the world for things and plots and people and phrases that pop out to you. You never know when your observations will come in handy. Eventually, you will have files and files of plots, and characters and ideas, that can help you start quicker when you finally dedicate yourself to that one Big Idea project. You’re not starting from zero, and that’s a wonderful thing.
A Good Idea is eternal. Sorting the bad from the good is the hard part, but having a file to pull from is the key. You never know when a character you thought of five years ago, might solve a plot problem you have now. And every once in a while, make yourself go through those files, let your mind wander over them. You might be able to add some puzzle pieces together and BAM! You could have the pieces of a Big Idea just waiting to be assembled and written.
Or you could just take an Uber somewhere and grab one of the driver’s ideas. But we both know you can do better than that.
Hello Readers!
I’m so excited to announce that The Talkers are Talking has met its Quill goal and will become a part of the collection!! I just want to say thank you to all of you lovely, wonderful, generous and supportive readers. I couldn’t have done it without you, and now as I start the long road to publication, I promise to do whatever it takes to make Talkers the best it can be. More updates to follow (also in regards to Breaking the Bechdel Syndicate- hell yea people, we are really making a formidable group against manic pixie dream girls and other depth-less female character tropes), but for now, thank you, thank you.