Welcome to Author Brian James Freeman’s Website
Welcome to Author Brian James Freeman’s new website. If you’re here for the blog, you can scroll down the front page a bit for the latest updates or use the pull-down menu at the top of the website to select a specific section. You can also read all about Brian’s books, short stories, other writing, biography, Lonely Road Books, and even order his eBooks directly from Brian through this website’s store. Thanks for stopping by!
The Dark Man by Stephen King featured in USA TODAY
I guess it’s to be expected because it’s Stephen King, but I’m still thrilled when a project I’ve worked on for the last six months is featured over at USATODAY.COM in their Book Buzz section:
“Beware, for the Dark Man cometh! That is, the book The Dark Man by Stephen King, reigning master of scary tales. Cemetery Dance Publications will publish a hardcover edition of the title on July 30. It’s a change of pace for the author: The Dark Man is an 88-page poem featuring artwork by Glenn Chadbourne. Considered something of a prequel to his apocalyptic epic The Stand, it was written in 1969 when King was a student at the University of Maine. It appeared in literary magazines while he was in college, but has never before been published for the general public.”
I know it’s a cliché and also kind of jive to say this, but hopefully readers will enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed working on it.
There was a very specific rhythm to the poem that we wanted to convey through the blending of the text and the artwork, and Chadbourne skillfully used his illustrations to create a kind of mixed media story.
Feedback from early readers has been fantastic, with some saying they never expected a poem to make their heart race with terror and horror the way the ending of The Dark Man does.
This certainly isn’t going to be a book for everyone — not even every Constant Reader! — but for those who dig what we’ve tried to do, I think you’ll enjoy it a lot.
Scenes from the Cemetery Dance office: Shipping The Talisman/Black House Slipcased Set
A recent day in the Cemetery Dance Publications warehouse:
Man plans and then mice laugh at him
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Two quotes come to mind when I’m managing a complicated project like a new Stephen King Limited Edition. To paraphrase:
“Man plans and the Gods laugh.”
“The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.”
Of course, at the end of the project, all of the stress and averted disasters and new gray hairs are almost always worth it.
Amazing Stories reviews Blue November Storms
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I was very pleased to hear about Keith West’s review of Blue November Storms over at Amazing Stories.
I’ve pulled out a few of my favorite lines, of course, but you can read the entire review here.
Blue November Storms falls into the category of You-Think-Know-Where-This-is-Headed-but-You-Really-Have-no-Clue-What’s-Going-on…
Freeman brings the five men to life, each a distinct individual, each coping in his own way with what occurred on that summer day when they were eighteen. So when the story veers off into unexpected territory, the reader has an emotional investment in the characters. This brings added depth to the events that follow. A depth that was missing from all earlier variations I’d seen on this theme.
Blue November Storms was an entertaining novella with more depth than many works of similar length available. If you like horror, especially horror that focuses on character, then this is one you’ll want to check out.
Like I said, it’s a great review and you can read the rest on the Amazing Stories website.
Purchase the Trade Paperback:
Amazon.com • Cemetery Dance
Purchase the eBook:
Amazon.com • Amazon.co.uk • Barnes & Noble • iBookstore • Kobo • CemeteryDance.com
If you’re comfortable loading your own eBooks onto your e-reader, you can also try the new “purchase from the author” feature on the Blue November Storms product page.
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King — Color Artwork by Vincent Chong
As many of you know, this fall Cemetery Dance Publications will be publishing a special edition of Stephen King’s new novel, Doctor Sleep, which is a follow-up to The Shining. Here is a preview of the color artwork Vincent Chong has created for the Cemetery Dance edition of this very special book:
W. Somerset Maugham On Writing
W. Somerset Maugham on writing: “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
The Painted Darkness Featured On IndieReader’s “Alike But Indie”
Some fun, unexpected news hit my inbox:
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IndieReader has a regular feature called “Alike But Indie” where they select a bestselling traditionally published book and then list indies in the same (or similar) genre.
Yesterday, they posted “If You Liked Six Years, You’ll LOVE…”
The traditionally published book is Harlan Coben’s latest thriller, Six Years.
The independently published books they selected are:
Blood Money by Doug Richardson
Depth of Deception by Alexander Gallant
To Die For — a collection of 8 novels
Traces of Kara by Melissa Foster
The Summer We Lost Alice by Jan Strnad
The Painted Darkness by Brian James Freeman
Nice company on that list and a couple of new titles I’ve ordered to add to my To Be Read list. My thanks goes out to Keri English for including The Painted Darkness!
Blue November Storms eBook Edition Available Now!
If you’ve ordered the unsigned trade paperback of Blue November Storms, your copy will be on the way very soon. The Cemetery Dance warehouse has just been slammed with a 35 title project that will probably end up devouring all of April, but they are shipping regular orders every day. (For those who ordered the signed and remarqued copies, those are already making their way around the country and will hopefully be ready to ship by the end of next month.)
In today’s news, the new eBook edition of Blue November Storms is available for download now:
About the Book:
It’s been twenty years since the group of friends known as the Lightning Five visited their hunting cabin together. Twenty years spent living in the shadow of something they did in high school, an event that forever defined them in the minds of everyone in their small town.
Now they’re returning to the cabin to reminisce about old times and forget their troubles, but mother nature has other plans in mind. Before too long supplies will be running low and the Lightning Five will have to make some hard choices… like who gets to live and who has to die.
Special Bonus Features:
* New introduction by horror legend Ray Garton about why you should never, ever go into the woods
* Twenty original illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne
* Afterword by Brian James Freeman detailing how and why the story was written
* “Ink-slinger: An Interview with Glenn Chadbourne” by Robert Brouhard
* Stunning new cover artwork by Vincent Chong
Thanks again for all of your support!
Restoring A Mac From A Time Capsule Back-Up Via the Ethernet Port
This is not publishing related at all, but since I can never remember how to do this on the rare occasions I’ve needed to, I thought maybe I’d post it here so I can actually find the steps in the future.
Whenever we’ve had to completely restore one of the office Macs from the Apple Time Capsule back-up (love that software, by the way, because I never have to worry if the staff is properly backing up), I always want to do the restore via the Ethernet ports instead of Wi-Fi since Wi-Fi could take 50+ hours for the amount of data we’re moving.
But it never seems to work.
Then I remember that there’s something I need to do to make it happen, but I can’t remember what, so I head to Google and I have no luck finding the information I need for some reason.
So then I end up using Wi-Fi and grumbling about it.
Today, though, I guess I finally entered the right combination of search terms because I found the answer: when you’re using the Apple Time Capsule’s Wi-Fi feature for your regular back-ups, the Ethernet ports on the Time Capsule are apparently turned off.
** So if you want to restore a back-up via Ethernet, here is what you need to do:
1) Open AirPort Utility on your Mac (in the Applications folder) – because I was setting up a brand new computer, I just used another computer on our network to do this
2) Click the Time Capsule
3) Click Manual Setup
4) Click the Wireless tab and change the setting for Wireless Mode to “Off”
5) Update to save settings and wait for the Time Capsule to restart
6) Connect an Ethernet cable to the Mac you want the data restored onto
7) Connect that Ethernet cable to one of the LAN ports on the Time Capsule
8) You are now ready to restore your back-up using Ethernet — just follow the regular steps from here
9) When you’re done, just remember to change the Wireless Mode for the Time Capsule to “Wi-Fi” so everyone’s computers can start backing up again.
Instead of taking 50+ hours today, I was done in 45 minutes. So Future Brian, in case you forget, search for this post!
Brian James Freeman versus Kealan Patrick Burke and THE SEVEN!
I hope you’ll check out THE SEVEN: Brian James Freeman on Kealan Patrick Burke’s blog today.
If you’d like some updates on what I’m up to these days at Cemetery Dance Publications, Lonely Road Books, eBookBargainNews.com, or even with my own writing, that’s the link to click on. Or this link. (It’s really the same link.)
My thanks goes out to Kealan for including me in his series!
