Richard McGowan's Blog: Smashed-Rat-On-Press - Posts Tagged "overture"

In case anyone is watching (which is probably not the case, as far as I can tell) the official publication date for Kajolium Broadwick's book Barely Pursuing the Minions of Mab has slipped from June 2 to July 4, 2015. It may slip again, who knows, because the final cover art is dependent upon Ms Sprockette's shooting schedule. According to her most recent communiqué, she is at present in a low-velocity polar orbit ~7AUs out from Sigma Canis Majoris and is not expected back this way for a while. The good news for readers, however, is that e-ARC copies of the book have begun to circulate narrowly, and are available to those intrepid readers who can follow the bread crumbs and perform the secret hand-shake.

In other news: following on the tepid non-success of Mantissa Etherbright's recent book of poetry, the vast editorial staff at Smashed-Rat-on-Press is in receipt of a brand new short work of fiction by Ms Etherbright, and it has been accepted for eventual publication. Eager readers can expect it to come out some time before the end of the year, possibly. (We already have shocking spectacular cover art and photography for it, too.)

And speaking of year-ends and schedules and sales figures. Mid-term sales figures at SROP have confirmed that our worst publishing nightmares are not mere heart-burny dreams. Sales have been "a tad off" as they say in the biz, where "tad" means ~85% down from last year. First-half sales in any year are traditionally low at SROP because we don't usually give a fig until mid-summer at least, when we often discover the loom of impending doom and make a last-ditch effort to save bacon before December. If 2015 continues at the current run-rate, sales-wise, we may have to consider alternatives to both giving away books for free and selling them. Apparently even free postage of free books is not enough to attract patrons... (See the previous blog post, The Possibly Annual Barely Broken Books Summer Sale for information about that.) We may resort to firing them from cannons into the windows of potential readers' homes.

Then again, it's 2015. With about a million works of fiction bombarding the sales channels each year who, as they often say, gives a rat's ass about one more? LOL.

Luckily, all the SROP Pseudonymia are due to converge soon for their annual mid-term meeting at which the bad news will be officially divulged, digested, regurgitated, and recycled into all the good news that's fit to print.

Good evening and welcome, new friends and old, to the show that never ends, even when you want it to: Smashed-Rat-on-Press!

As we scurry past the longest, darkest night of the year and approach Christmas—probably the brightest hoopla night of the post-autumn season since Diwali—we would like to wish you all good-cheer, plentiful grog, warm hugs, and cozy caverns with bright fires to keep them warm. And books. Books really put the "O" in cozy. At least for some of us, and maybe for you, too.

It's becoming sort of a SROP Rodential Christmas tradition to trot out the free and ancient Yuletide story collection, Violists. Get it while you can! (It's always free.) And don't miss the free Cheesefield poetry books, too.

Everything else from SROP is also available free for the asking, too, of course... At least, the e-books can be had for free in the speakeasy by people who can follow the bread-crumbs and contact The Rodent at Smashed-Rat-on-Press to make their requests. Don't miss our festive pair of Green and Red catalogs!

And remember there's not just one rodent in residence here in mostly-sunny Santa Banana. The SROP stable of authors includes such unknown "brown dwarf" luminaries as: Kajolium Broadwick, Shenanigan Cheesefield, H. Cogito Epsilon, Richard McGowan, Ginger Amelia Sprockette, Mantissa Etherbright, and Sanguinity Hematode... So there may almost be something in the ratty stocking for almost everyone.