Last year, I suggested that we put together a Limited Edition Artwork Portfolio featuring all of the artwork from the The 25th Anniversary Edition of It by Stephen King that Cemetery Dance published in December. This was based on something I had done the previous year at Lonely Road Books for the Lettered Edition of Blockade Billy by Stephen King.  (See those photos on the LRB website.)

Everyone agreed it seemed like a fine idea, so we made special arrangements with Glen Orbik, Alan M. Clark, and Erin Wells to collect ALL of their artwork from the book into one giant artwork portfolio. By giant I mean the artwork alone is 11 inches by 14 inch. Obviously, a portfolio that can hold that artwork would need to be even bigger. After the deals were made, we created a special signature sheet to be signed by all three artists. We publicly announced the project and we limited the portfolio to a one-time printing of just 500 sets.

But getting the actual portfolio to look and feel the way we wanted took almost three months and four prototypes. The first prototype was too flimsy and it didn’t feel elegant enough. For the second prototype, we used a heavier material and we also tried a different closure to give it a different look, but the closure didn’t really keep the portfolio shut and we were concerned the artwork would just fly out if someone moved it too quickly. The third prototype got the material weight and closure just right, but they accidentally made it at 2/3s the final size, so we had a fourth prototype made just to be sure everything was perfect. These prototypes are constructed by hand, one at a time, so they’re not cheap, but they’re well worth the cost when you consider the alterative: producing a less than desirable collectible. The final prototype was everything we envisioned and we gave it the green light.

The actual finished portfolios will begin shipping in late March, but below are some photos of the final approve case they sent us today. For the first photo, keep in mind how large our special edition of It by Stephen King is and that’ll give you a good feel for how huge these portfolios are.

Even though the book was just announced on Friday, 85% of the signed Limited Edition copies are now spoken for and there are only 3 copies of the Deluxe Signed & Traycased Lettered Edition remaining. Be sure to click on the cover below and place your order before supplies run out so you don’t have to worry about paying the secondary market prices the Cemetery Dance Signature Series books often fetch:

This anthology is a print version of what I experimented with on my webzine, DuelingMinds.com, while in college way back at the turn of the century.  For those who never had a chance to stop by the website, each issue of the webzine had four or five stories that were all inspired by the same piece of artwork, giving readers the chance to discover how different authors interpreted (and were inspired by) the exact same image.

In 2003, a small press publisher approached me and suggested a Dueling Minds anthology would work for his newly founded company.  I agreed and quickly went to work searching for a cover artist.  Normally choosing the cover art is one of the last parts of the creative side of putting together a book, but obviously in this case I needed the cover before I ever approached the authors since it was to be the inspiration for everything that followed.

Alan M. Clark was the first artist I spoke with and he was quite agreeable to the concept.  He had also edited an anthology where authors wrote stories based on individual pieces of his artwork, so he recognized how much fun this sort of project could be. We looked through his portfolio and settled on one of my favorite pieces, which was originally inspired by a Ray Bradbury story.

Once I had the cover artwork, I contacted a handful of my favorite authors to see if they might be interested in contributing to this project.  These authors took the challenge and ran with it, turning in their amazing stories over the next couple of months.  I was already a big fan of their writing before this project, and the results of their efforts here just reinforced for me how truly creative these authors are.

In an unfortunate turn of fate, though, the original publisher closed up shop, leaving the book without a home for many years.  Fast forward to 2011 when Richard Chizmar and I were kicking around ideas for new and creative titles for the Cemetery Dance Signature Series, which features small books from the genre’s best authors that are heavily illustrated by the most talented artists working in the business today.

Cemetery Dance had never offered a mini-anthology in the Signature Series, but the series seemed like the perfect place to experiment with this sort of unusual publication.

The artist and authors were contacted, all immediately agreed that it sounded like a fine idea and, all of these years later, we hired Erin Wells to create the interior artwork for the book since the Signature Series requires more interior illustrations than almost anything else Cemetery Dance publishes.  That meant she created interior images that were inspired by stories that were inspired by Alan’s cover painting… which was originally inspired by a Ray Bradbury story.

Funny how things work out sometimes.

Here is just one sample of the many outstanding drawings Erin created for the book, and you can see more on the Cemetery Dance website:

Read more or place your order on the Cemetery Dance Publications website while supplies last!

From when I open my computer at 6 AM until I close it around midnight (or 3 AM tonight since I can’t sleep again), there is never more than seven minutes before the email icon at the bottom of my computer screen starts bouncing around like one of those whac-a-mole games.

This “email laptop” stock image is about as literal as you can get. Blame my budget for this blog, which is $0 per week or $0 a month, depending on how you break down the numbers.

Why seven minutes? Well, sometime in college, more than 10 years ago, I hit on seven minutes as the ideal schedule for my email program to check for new mail. Ten minutes was long enough that I might miss something urgent (“everyone’s going to Reisner Hall for dinner at 6″ and now it’s… 6:03…) while five minutes didn’t give me enough time to plow through some work before the next email intrusion. I’ve never changed the setting, so here we are.

Like most people I love the ease of email, but most days I hate that bouncing little icon that is oh so helpfully letting me know there’s new mail. You see, the icon is mocking me. He knows I haven’t finished all of the work the last batch of email created, and yet here he is, laughing at me and saying, “Haha, you fool, I have more work for you!”

(Note: The icon actually has no gender and he rarely talks to me, I state this only for effect. If your email program talks to you, or you have concerns about your email program’s gender, please speak with a doctor. Unless your email is on your iPhone and Siri is talking to you, in which case I am jealous because I do not have an iPhone but instead a Samsung knockoff that actually openly mocks me. In that case, please mail me your iPhone. Thank you.)

Email is often a good thing when it comes to getting business done (every single book deal I’ve made with an author, an agent, or a New York sub-rights person in the last 5 years has been via email), but it can also be a bad thing because it seems to create even more work than you ever imagined possible… work that you know would not exist if it wasn’t for email!

This is not rme, but I feel bad for this poor guy because he's clearly horrified to realize his computer is such a stock photo item that it does not even have a logo on it.

When you see you have 100 new messages to respond to on a Monday morning (after spending “just” 2 hours per day over the weekend “keeping up” with your email so you wouldn’t have as much email to deal with on Monday), you feel like this happy guy to the right.  ———->

Anyway, the reason I’m posting this now is because someone asked me how much email I receive at work in a given day. I know, it seems like an odd question to ask a person, but I guess you had to be there.

This was in response to a discussion about how I juggle many hats (figuratively, not literally) at work: overseeing production of the books, eBooks, magazine, and now the comic; dealing with all of our vendors; sending out press releases and working with the media; negotiating contracts for books and sub-rights deals; writing all of the sales copy for the website and newsletters; putting together said website pages and newsletter; coming up with new special offers to keep things interesting; running the costs and potential sales numbers for proposals we’ve been offered; creating a detailed schedule for the next few months that I know fate and the gods will do everything to muck up; helping Mindy with all kinds of customer service related issues; and just about anything else that I can get my hands on because there’s nothing quite like putting way too much work on your plate to keep someone feeling really, really old.

Anyway (again), to answer the question about my emailing habits, here are my email counts for 2011 for my work address only — no personal email addresses, nothing for my own writing, etc. This does not include newsletters and automatic alerts (eBay, Google, etc), which are filtered into their own folders, and it does not include spam, which is deleted automatically.

SENT: 40,064
RECEIVED: 38,488

Again, that’s just work email and it’s only real emails, no junk or mass notices or newsletters. (And yes, those are the real numbers, not some kind of joke. Unless the you consider the fact that I know those numbers to be a joke, probably one on me, right?)

The person I shared these numbers with was absolutely shocked, and I was shocked in return… because it never really occurred to me that many people do not deal with that many emails on a regular basis.

I now have a better grasp on why some people get very upset when their email isn’t answered within an hour or two. (Sometimes they send multiple emails throughout the day asking why the first email wasn’t answered. This does not help the situation.) They probably just don’t have 100+ emails coming and going every day, so to them, it seems like emails should be answered as quickly as a phone call.

This is actually my computer. Photo taken with my Samsung phone that is possessed by the devil.

Here’s my personal policy: I try to respond to every email within two business days, but sometimes that simply isn’t possible due to any number of factors.

Length of the email can be a big one. If you send me nine dense paragraphs in one email, it’ll be a while before I can READ that much, let alone research whatever questions are raised and compose my reply. The easiest emails for me to answer are pretty short while still including just enough information for me to understand what you need. (Some emails are far too brief and then I have to try to decipher the secret encoded meaning hidden in the handful of confusing words, which also takes time.)

I try to answer every single email to the best of my ability, and I’d like to send you a detailed, thoughtful response about whether the owners of Star Trek would listen to your Cthulhu crossover proposal, but there isn’t always enough time in the day to go into the detail such a query deserves.

By the time I answer you in an appropriate fashion, that little nagging icon at the bottom of my screen is bouncing again, and five more emails have arrived, all of which will create more work.

It’s a wonder that I actually get any real work done.

P.S. I don’t think the owners of Star Trek are into Cthulhu, but you should send them that proposal anyway. You never know, right?

P.P.S. During the writing of this post, in the middle of the night, 23 more emails arrived. I’ve replied to half of them while editing, which is my excuse for any typos, spelling mistakes, and logic gaps that exist in this post that is so incredibly long (and about such a boring topic) that no one is going to read it. Seriously, why are you still reading this? Please do not feel it’s necessary to send me a nine paragraph email about these errors, but if you do, I will try to answer you within two business days.

Here is just a little bit of the recent media coverage of the eBook that I wanted to share real quick before I have to get back to work:

Book Review: ‘Seven Stories’ by Brian James Freeman at FEARnet.com

Author Talks Free Cemetery Dance eBook at Fangoria.com

Here are the links again if you want to grab your free copy of the eBook before time runs out:

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.de
Amazon.fr
Amazon.es
Amazon.it

Help For Those Who Don’t Own A Kindle:
Even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can still read this eBook for free on any of the free Apps to read Kindle eBooks on your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android device, Blackberry, or Windows Phone: Free Kindle Apps

Or you could read the eBook in your web browser with Amazon’s Free “Cloud” program: Amazon Cloud Reader.

Hope that helps, and thanks again for the support!

As of this morning, the eBook is the #1 bestselling free eBook short story collection on Amazon in the US, UK, Germany, and France, plus #2 in Spain and and Italy thanks to your support! (Plus it’s in the Top 5 and Top 10 in several other categories in the stores.)

There have been thousands and thousands of downloads, tons of emails and Tweets and messages on Facebook.

The strong interest in this eBook only happened thanks to everyone who has been posting links and promoting the free download, and I truly appreciate the support you have shown this project.

There are a few more days left in the free promotional window, so please keep telling anyone who might be interested if you can. It would be awesome to keep up this level of excitement for the book!

If you’ve already downloaded Seven Stories, I hope you have a chance to read the stories and I hope you like them. These stories are going into my new collections later this year, so you could consider this a free preview of those books to see if you like my style.

And if you do like the Seven Stories eBook, I would really appreciate any positive customer reviews you might have time to post on Amazon so other readers will see your feedback in the future.

Here are the links again if you want to grab your copy before time runs out:

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.de
Amazon.fr
Amazon.es
Amazon.it

Thank you again for all of your support!

As my way of saying thanks to everyone who has stopped by, I’m giving my eBook short story collection Seven Stories away for FREE on Amazon for this week only.

US link: http://amzn.to/SevenStories
UK link: http://amzn.to/SevenStoriesUK
Germany link: http://amzn.to/SevenStoriesGerman

If you have a Kindle, or the Kindle App, or even if you just want to try out the Kindle Cloud for the first time, now is a great time to grab a copy of the collection before it goes back up to the regular retail price on Friday.

(Also: because these stories are going to appear in new collections down the road, the eBook will probably disappear from Amazon later this year, but those who download the eBook now will have it for as long as you want, of course!)

So please go ahead and download the eBook for free this week if you’re at all interested in my short fiction. What do you have to lose, after all? I hope you enjoy the stories.

Also, if you can, please help me spread the word about this FREE giveaway by posting the news and that link on your websites, blogs, message boards, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Any help in promoting this would be greatly appreciated since I don’t have a lot of time to let readers know.

Thanks!

UPDATE: Seven Stories in now the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s “Free Anthologies” categories in the US, the UK, and Germany thanks to everyone who downloaded today!

I started this post back in November because one student’s email really made me laugh, but then I decided to wait to post it until after the semester was over, just in case this somehow got back to her professor.  Who knows with the Internet, right?  Here is the email that inspired this miscellaneous thought:

From: “XXXXXXXXXXX” <XXXXXXX@capecod.edu>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:52:15 -0500
To: “‘info@cemeterydance.com’” <info@cemeterydance.com>
Conversation: XXXXXXXX
Subject: XXXXXXXXX

11/10/2011

Dear Sir or Madam:

Hi!  My name is XXXXXX, and I am a fan of Stephen King.  I

am doing an analytical review of Blockade Billy for my English Composition

class.  I was wondering does your publishing company have any book critics

that have reviewed Blockade Billy and have published their review on the

Internet.  Could you tell me where to find these reviews?  Where do I find

these reviews on the Internet?  Could you cite these reviews in MLA format

with the author of the review, name of article, publishing source, and date

of publication or date of when the review was written?  Where would I go on

the Internet to find more reviews on Blockade Billy?  How was Blockade Billy

originally released by your publishing company, and how and when did

Scribner originally publish Blockade Billy?  Please e-mail me with the

answers to my questions and send me any other information about the novella,

Blockade Billy.  I need the information by next Friday.  Thank-you. My

e-mail is XXXXXXX.

Thank-you.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX

There’s so much in here that I love! The way she asks three times where she can find reviews of Blockade Billy on the Internet, for example.  And there’s something about “Could you tell me where to find these reviews?  Where do I find these reviews on the Internet?” that sounds almost musical to me.

But the best part, of course, is where she asks: “Could you cite these reviews in MLA format with the author of the review, name of article, publishing source, and date of publication or date of when the review was written?”

Well, yes, I can… because I actually paid attention during my college classes and wrote my own papers.  The better question is… can you?  :)

For me, most stories come from the everyday things I see in my daily travels. Often a few unrelated events will come together in my mind at the same time, a character appears, and the story starts to tell itself. The stories often just spring to life, all on their own.

For example, there’s a strange house in our neighborhood, one that doesn’t quite fit in:

Every now and then, when I’m walking our dogs, I see a pale boy pacing around the back yard of this house, talking to himself:

A few months ago, they put bubble wrap in all of their windows:

A few weeks ago, they put a giant wooden owl on the front step, blocking access to the front door:

Finally, two nights ago, I was walking the dogs in the dark during a torrential downpour. As I passed this house, I realized the yard and sidewalk were swarming with giant earthworms, the biggest I had ever seen:

There were thousands of them, and what made this really strange was one simple fact: I walked the dogs for two miles that night and there was not a single earthworm to be seen anywhere else in the neighborhood.  Not one.

When you put those five things together, you start to set the stage for a pretty strange story, don’t you think? You do if you’re wired like me, at least.

So, where do my ideas come from?

I have absolutely no idea.