Greetings and salutations. Long time, no see.
I hope you have been doing well. It’s been a minute, and I have a lot to catch you up on. Clevenger was just down from Chicago this past weekend, and we got a lot of details locked down on our debut novel. We have an artist we are working with, Betty Martinez, and after some back and forth, we received our first rough draft of our cover art! Look for that to be posted very soon.
https://reedsy.com/betty-martinez
After a lot of research, we have decided to go with a presale launch through Ingram Sparks and Amazon, rather than through Kickstarter. It was a tough call, but this path seems to give us a better chance of using the presale to aid in the marketing algorithms, plus it will give us a better chance of making it into brick-and-mortar shelf space in stores like Barnes & Noble or Books A Million. Right now we are looking at a tentative launch date of June 1st for the preorder, and a street date 4-6 months later, with November at the latest for the book to be fully on sale.
Speaking of, I’ve already touched base with my local library, and we will have copies of the book on their shelves, plus they will be hosting a book signing. Clevenger is doing the same for his local library as well. In addition, we got to speak with the manager of our local Books A Million location, and they are interested in both helping us advertise the book to be preordered on their website, plus they also want to host a book signing in the fall.
Now for the names! Names, names, and more names. Names, they are a-changin’. For a variety of reasons that we can get into at a future time, we are changing the book title. Well, swapping, really. Book One will now be titled “War of Night”, and the series title will be “Manticore’s Shadow”. Similarly, we must sadly announce that, as the post title suggests, the Writing Ettin is dead. We have decided we will no longer be publishing under the pseudonym of Graham Clevenger. Instead, we will be joining our own individual pseudonyms of Greyson Black & E. Scott Clevenger. This was decided after we realized how many individually written books we have planned. Using our individual names from the outset allows us to cross-promote with less confusion.
So there you have it. After months and years of false starts and hopeful promises, we are finally setting the stage. Tell your friends. Mention us on social media. We are looking to start this blog back up, this time more like twice monthly, rather than twice weekly. When the new official website launches, it will be announced here as well. So until our next announcement…
Don’t forget to love one another.
Greyson Black
Stories of Sainan 