October update for Rooster Republic and Strangehouse Books, now with pumpkin spice!

[For the really big announcement, scroll to the bottom. Otherwise, read on – Ed.]

We are closing in on the end of our production schedule for 2018. The last several weeks have seen some great new books go live: Andrew James Stone’s All Hail the House Gods; Christoph Paul’s At Least I Get You < In My Art; Matthew Sunrich’s Someone Shot the Hip Young Conductor; Charles Austin Muir’s Body Building Spider Rangers.

For October, we are currently prepping both Michael Allen Rose’s Rock and Roll Death Patrol and Sara Tantlinger’s The Devil’s Dreamland, respectively.

Beyond that, we have Gareth Bennett’s The Full Howie, and then…

…well, that’s it, for a good, long while. Let’s talk about that.

Rooster Republic is taking a much-needed break for 2019, at least as far as releasing new titles. But, methinks, we’ve earned it. Over the last two years, we have released, or assisted in the production of, some sixty-odd titles. Not a joke nor exaggeration. That has cost us not only our sanity but has at least shaved off about five or so years of life expectancy. However, we very much dug into this work knowing that it simply had to be done.

It was important to not only honor and finish work begun before we took control of the company, but to breathe a bit of life into the press so that the community knew that we were not coming at this half-assed. We wanted to make a statement, make a splash, what have you. And I think we’ve done that.

Now, we are looking at where we want to take all this effort and goodwill. We’ve done what was required to get us up and running, and now we can begin doing exactly what we want.

Our plan is to use 2019 in the following ways (it’s not really a break, c’est la vie):

First, we want to take some time to go through the back catalog, revisit titles that could use a bit of dressing up, as far as interior formatting, etc., and also promo some of our favorite titles from the last couple years that too many people seemed to sleep on.

Second, we need to give more attention to our other media projects: games, video, audio, and film. We’ve had a successful launch of our first video game. Our second video game is in the latter-half of production and it looks amazing. The board games are slower to fruition, but that is because we’ve been re-imagining and re-engineering them to be more affordable for the average consumer, while retaining the mechanics and playability that drew us to the projects in the first place.

Video projects, while not necessarily difficult, take up loads of time. 2019 will give us the required breathing room with which to shoot enough material that we ought to be set for at least a year or two. These types of projects are meant specifically for online consumption, like YouTube or Vimeo, and will serve as promotion and quickie, for-fun shorts.

Audio is something we’ve been interested in for awhile but, again, it is a matter of not having enough time to properly explore our options. By the end of 2019, we plan to know how we are going to approach audio, specifically audio books, going into the future.

Most disappointing to us was that we had to completely halt our 2018 film project due to location troubles. We were so very close, but it just couldn’t happen, and we lost our window of time. Despite that, we are still actively engaged with the project and we’re hoping to gain some momentum over the course of next year. At this point, it’s not a matter of whether it will happen but when it will happen.

Third, we wanted to take the whole of the year to prep for our 2020 titles.

Now, we’ve been releasing a helluva lot of books up to this point. As mentioned before, it was a really brutal schedule. We never stopped working, not ever. And that simply cannot be the way going forward. We’ll die. That’ll suck.

Beginning in 2020, Rooster Republic will only be releasing a maximum of four titles per year, including titles from Strangehouse Books.

The biggest change, though, will be for Strangehouse Books. We previously announced that Sara Tantlinger and Strangehouse Books are organizing an all-women horror anthology, Not All Monsters, but we’ve elected to take that idea one step further. And this has been a long time coming, honestly.

Strangehouse Books, as of now on, will be an indie horror press that focuses exclusively on horror written by women. Sara Tantlinger has agreed to come on as acting editor for 2020. Whether she wishes to continue beyond that is currently at her discretion. We hope it is a positive experience for her, for Strangehouse Books, and we look forward to working with her and reading the fiction she acquires for the press. Further details will be forthcoming.

TTFN