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Warning: this post contains self-defeatist language and gratuitous self-pity. If you don’t need any more negativity in your day (and who does) then do yourself a favor and skip this entry. -open vent- I’ve just about had it. You would think that high demand for a book would be a good thing but this Play…

John will be attending World Fantasy and this time around we’ve got a couple books that we hope will cause a stir; Westermead and Fugue XXIX. Both are much more appropriate for the WFC crowd than what we had last time around. Also, Mike Arnzen, D. Harlan Wilson & Forrest Aguirre will be attending so…

Mostly I’ve just been answering emails lately. Now that John’s got Ripley during the day it’s impossible for him to do much with email, one-handed typing doesn’t just take twice as long, more like 4 times as long. Right now we’ve got a few people helping us out which is really great. Phillip Overby is…

Apparently the zombie Wellington Hackmeat is a big fan of Mike Arnzen and really enjoyed the copy of Play Dead we sent him. This photo was taken on the set of Hell on Earth. For more info about the movie visit http://www.deadlyspawn.net/inproduction.html If you scroll down you can see a pic of a grimoire style…

They sent the proof for the Play Dead deck of cards today and it looks wicked! Putting together these Grimoire special editions is quite a feat. You wouldn’t think it would be more complicated than getting a regular book out but somehow it is. I just read Jeff Thomas’ sample for The Explorer’s Guide to…

It looks like we may be doing a Punktown Guide Book with Jeffrey Thomas. He was so impressed with the special edition I put together for Westermead that he was immediately inspired to come up with some great material. Of course this is still in the planning stages but Jeff is definitely fired up about…

One of the coolest things that happened recently is that Play Dead was reviewed in both Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist. This is only the second book we’ve had reviewed in PW and the first for Booklist. PW said:…this cautionary tale grows sticky with relentless gore as the victims pile up. I actually hate PW reviews…

Here’s a recent interview with Ron Malfi aka brotherrabbit where he talks about the creative process behind The Fall of Never, how his writing has evolved and what he’s up to now: http://www.seviercountynews.com/seviercountynews/default.asp?id=6 He also shows that he’s not just a pretty face with this perceptive comment; “I feel women are simply smarter than men,…

Life with a baby is different. You’d think I could have posted at least once since I start maternity leave. Now that I’m back to work I can actually get 20 minutes of uninterrupted time on the computer. Ripley is doing great though. A lot has been happening with RDSP even though we’ve been much…

Ripley was born July 18th, 4:29 pm, he weighed over 8 pounds and measured 21.5 inches. It was the hardest work I’ve ever done to get him into the world without drugs but well worth it! Check out the onesie that Deena Warner made, it’s not totally clear but it’s our logo except with a…

It looks like Afterbirth Books is going to have John’s book out in time for Horrorfind! Very cool. I just finished re-re-re-reading the manuscript a few days ago. Well maybe I hadn’t read all the stories 4 times but I know I’ve read a lot of them more than twice. And don’t you know it,…

Finally got up a page about the Play Dead Grimoire with some pictures and info. We plan on announcing the pre-order in August and I think they will sell out pretty much immediately. I really wish we didn’t have to cut the number of Grimoires in half, the demand is so high and it stresses…

It’s official and it’s been announced that we will be releasing Matthew Warner’s novel Eyes Everywhere. John has mostly been handling this project and, to tell the truth, I haven’t even gotten to read the whole manuscript but what I have read so far was very entertaining. I love fiction that is darkly funny and…

I started to try to update my lists at Amazon.com. We’ve released so many books lately that the lists are woefully out of date, so far I’ve only managed to add stuff to the “Books Released by RDSP” list. It’s only a little over a week until the baby is due. It could still be…

The money went out to cover the cost of the Play Dead press run and the Westermead special edition. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that Lightning Source didn’t actually bill our credit card last month so all the orders we’ve been placing for books recently wound up on this bill, almost $4000. It’s too bad all…

Yesterday was one of those days. Negative comments had me wondering if the press is going in the right direction, if we made the right decisions for packaging and promoing certain releases and which titles are the best to pick up for the future. Too much thinking about these things can make your head hurt….

For anyone counting yesterday marked the 15th year John and I have spent together. It really doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. The whole Bizarro thing motivated me to try to get more reading done. So I burned through Jeremy Robert Johnson’s Angel Dust Apocalypse and really enjoyed it. I haven’t done any reading…

horrordiva‘s review of Tempting Disaster is up at Gothic Revue and Midwest Book Review. Here’s a quote from the review, “If you can’t take the heat of this puppy, than you may as well curl up with a blanket and suck your thumb, cause baby, this is going to leave a mark.” I love seeing…

Got the files for the hardcover and paperback versions of Fugue off, plus a project John has been hard at work on; The Unauthorized Woman a short collection of stories by Efrem Emerson. He’s a relatively new writer without a lot of credits to his name but John just loved the stories so much we…

I’m a bit behind on things because I didn’t expect to have to do the final read-through of Fugue. I thought I had somebody lined up to do that but it didn’t work out. So John and I split the stories and got it done. Of course we still found mistakes! I hate that, I’ve…

Fugue XXIX is allllll-most done. Just a few tweaks and it will be off to the printers. We got a copy of the newest American Book Review with avantpop‘s insightful review of 100 Jolts and Move Under Ground in it. A cool plus is that he managed to mention ‘s book The Fall of Never…

Well, they’ve already got the community up and running, it’s an ezboard. It’s so cool to see people get together to discuss something and have a forum born out of that discussion. I’ve seen so many that just degenerate into silly jokes, bitter complaining or flame wars. So far, the majority of the discussion has…

Holy Moley! A discussion started up on John’s LJ about this “new genre” or “movement” or whatever you want to call it that has been brewing for a few years now. It’s that weird, off-kilter and impossible to categorize fiction that has been coming out in zines like The Dream People, Blood Cookies, The Idiot’s…

Forrest just received a request for a review copy of Fugue XXIX from someone who does reviews for Booklist! That’s a really important resource for libraries and he tells us that a review there for Leviathan 3 helped get a lot of sales. We’ve been sending copies of our books to them all along but…

John tells me our copies of PLAY DEAD arrived today and they are a marvel to behold…super-high quality books! Of course the book doesn’t come out until August so we’ve got between now and then to crank up the hype. What worries me is that the books will be sitting in a warehouse with the…