Well, what an extremely interesting spring it has turned out to be! Challenging, perhaps a bit hectic, but also fairly rewarding. NOT ALL MONSTERS special editions have sold rather well, especially since we decided to release the title without much in the way of marketing or fanfare, but we felt it necessary and best for the book.
Economic futures being uncertain definitely played a role in that decision, but so did the obvious strains happening to the supply chain. Titles are shipping slowly, different delivery services have been affected, as have printers, especially those printers issuing small quantities (i.e. POD printers). Maybe you haven’t noticed, maybe you have. To us, it seemed prevalent enough to warrant releasing the special editions of NOT ALL MONSTERS several months in advance of our original projected street date. And while the book was expensive for an outfit as small as ours, the production cost isn’t insurmountable by any stretch of the imagination, and NOT ALL MONSTERS looks to be in the black by the time we release the standard edition, in October. I’d pin that as a success for the anthology.
In the meantime, we continue to work on our other 2020 titles, FAIREST FLESH and CRADLELAND OF PARASITES. Not much to share, as of right now, but within the next month, give or take, we ought to have some artwork and excerpts to show you. As for editing, we are making our way through CRADLELAND but we have recently wrapped edits for FAIREST FLESH. We’re quite proud of the title, and can’t wait to share it with readers.
CRADLELAND OF PARASITES, of course, is the highly anticipated follow-up to THE DEVIL’S DREAMLAND, and I think the book is already on many reader’s radars, especially after Tantlinger’s Stoker Award. This book is in its earliest stages, though we have been spitballing art direction for the special edition, which will feature images of a precocious little plague doctor. The collection is, after all, about the Black Plague.
Beyond that, we’ve been hard at work, prepping titles for release through Journalstone’s imprint, Bizarro Pulp Press. We’ve completed work on Ronald J. Murray’s poetry collection, CRIES TO KILL THE CORPSE FLOWER, which is due in late June. The next book for them is Karl Fischer’s LEVELS, which is currently nearing the end of production, and is due in August. Beyond that, we have Andrew James Stone’s THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR DANCE OFF and John Bruni’s TALES OF UNSPEAKABLE TASTE, due in September and October, respectively. All in all, a very solid lineup from an imprint that’s been on a bit of a hiatus. We look forward to hearing what readers think of the titles we’ve picked up for Bizarro Pulp Press.
Meanwhile, we continue to offer design services and we’ve moved lots of pre-made covers in recent months. As we wrap some of these longer book-related projects, we hope to turn our attentions solely to art production for the remainder of 2020. Rooster Republic will, likely, not be publishing anything new in 2021, though we have already gotten our hands on some reading material for Bizarro Pulp Press’s 2021 roster. Taking a year off between major releases works for Rooster, and allows us more time to lend attention to individual projects, as it should be.
And with that, we’ll leave you with a striking little black and white portrait captured during the latest photo shoots for the special edition of Sara Tantlinger’s CRADLELAND OF PARASITES:
TTFN
