A quick refresher on the history of The Brittle Riders. If you’ve memorized past newsletters, feel free to scroll to the bottom to see the cool new cover graphic.
Back in September of 2016, Azoth Khem Publishing released The Brittle Riders: Book One on an unsuspecting world. The majority of the world, in its unsuspecting way, said “Thanks. Now get off our damn lawn.”
But not all the world said that. A Russian bootleg site snagged a Kindle version, turned it into a PDF (screen shot below), and began reselling it like it was the most amazing thing since naked people started doing naked stuff for money.
Before we could stop them they sold around 30,000 copies of Book One.
And, no, we never saw a penny. Plus, due to its salacious content, according to Russia’s prudish standards, it’s banned there and I was advised I should probably not visit until Putin’s body is cold.
On the plus side, we ended up with a lot of new fans, Jiba Molei Anderson’s cover art won admirers before Amazon labeled it as porn and made us come up with new graphics which led us to find Brhi (Perez) Stokes who came to our rescue with new art, and stores seemed to think anything worth stealing should be worth selling so we ended up on shelves and people actually paid money to keep a copy.
As time as trudged on Books Two and Three followed in order, and people seemed to like that.
Since Amazon, with Amazon Japan being the only – and inexplicable – exception, didn’t allow people to buy all three books with a single click Azoth Khem released a 948 page Omnibus Edition so people could just click that and have it on their reading device.
One year later Amazon changed its mind and now allows one-click purchases (graphic below). They’re even bargain pricing Book One to entice people to buy the trilogy instead of the Omnibus. None of us know why they’re doing that, since it seems (being polite) odd, but no one asked any of us either.
Since whatever deity is in charge seems to like having fun at my expense, despite Amazon’s efforts, stores started purchasing the Omnibus and letting their customers buy it. Intrigued by this development, a small group of professional critics reviewed the Omnibus (all 948 pages of this beast) and deemed it to be the kind of poop that doesn’t stink. They even rated it as a 97.92% adaptable story (graphic below). Anything over 60% is deemed worthy of making into a movie. 97.92% is freaking insane.
One thing led to another and suddenly there was real interest in The Brittle Riders and all it could be. Real movie producers, the type who have the kind of money that allows them to buy villas for their staffs, started saying nice things about it. People who name drop without even trying started saying “So and so would love this” and being able to back that up by delivering a copy.
All of that brings us to where we are now. The Brittle Riders is being re-edited, repackaged, and will be festooned with new artwork from the legendary Ian Bristow. If you scroll down a little bit you can see the new template for all things Brittle Riders going forward.
Once completed, early 2023 is a good guess, new promotions will be enacted and you may never escape the Multiverse of McSciFi. The only multiverse scrubbed completely free of Benedict Cumberbatch.
I have no idea where or how this will all end. And I no longer try to guess. The amount of variables that go into making a film see the light of day are myriad and daunting. And none of us involved with the book can control any of them. What we can control, the upgrades and increased promotions for example, we will and are.
It all comes down to this. Just like with SPLICE: HIT BIT TECHNOLOGY, if you have the Kindle version you will receive a free upgrade as edits come out. If you own paperback versions of any of my stuff, excluding Goptri of the Mists: Kitaab Ek – at least for now, you now own collector’s editions. Feel free to abuse e-Bay and make some cash.
Until next time, stay safe and sane. I like having you around.
