If you’ve been paying attention, you will have noticed that the first release from Argonautica Press, my new imprint with Jason Fischer, is a reissue of Bloody Waters.
There’s a few reasons for this. Firstly, the rights have come back to me, and I wanted to make sure the book would stay available. Secondly, I own the cover artwork, which I originally commissioned from the excellent Rhys James, and I had an InDesign layout of the book in hand.
Thirdly, the book has never had a proper physical edition, aside from the ARCs that Jan (my editor and former publisher at Possible Press) and I rushed out for Supanova in 2013. I really wanted a nicely turned out print edition of the book, and this seemed like a good opportunity to make that happen.
So I went to he excellent Garth Jones and asked him to produce a new cover design over Rhys’ artwork. While he did that I took the opportunity to gussy up the interiors, too. The result is a rocking new edition befitting of my favourite group of characters: Clarice, Johnny, Beresford, Enrique, Bad Jack Saunders, and of course, old Satan himself.
So here we are. The book as I have always wanted it to be, available everywhere.
The hard questions.
Is Argonautica going to be its forever home? I don’t know. I’ve had more than one project in the past that has gone through multiple publishers and I’ve learned never to rule out a change. I am writing a sequel now, and when that’s done, who knows where we’ll be? But in the meantime I want the best quality version of the book I can manage to be available to you.
And yes, I did say sequel.
It’s called Blackened Skies and I’ve written half of it already. I have known what happens next to the characters since long before Bloody Waters was published, but I had other projects that needed doing. Still, Clarice and the gang are just too much fun to be around, so I started picking away at some new bits and pieces, and now… well, it’s official. I can’t give a date yet, but the sequel is coming.
So what is the new book about? The cliche for rock’n’roll stories, of course, is for the second act to see the characters descend into drug addiction, financial ruin, and failure… but I have much grander plans than that.
Bloody Waters sees the band rise against the odds to the pinnacle of rock stardom–how do I top that? Well, without spoiling too much, I can tell you that Blackened Skies isn’t going to stop short of the end of the world.
I’m pretty excited about it and I hope you are, too. In the meantime, if you want to catch up on the first book, it should now be available in print or digitally from everywhere you expect:
Amazon ‣
Amazon Kindle ‣
Book Depository ‣
Rakuten Kobo ‣
Barnes and Noble ‣
Barnes and Noble Nook ‣
Apple iBookstore ‣
Google Play ‣
Fishpond ‣
Book Depository ‣
Booktopia ‣
If you bought an old copy and you want an upgrade, please let me know and I’ll work out a deal for you. I want you folks to have the best version of this, especially my loyal readers.
One last note: I have taken down the two Kindle shorts Possible Press published for me. The first of them, “Hellhound on my Trail”, is now available for free from Curious Fictions, so please click on through if you’d like a squiz. The second piece, “The Martyr and the Quarin”, I have adopted into the new book, so you will eventually have the opportunity to see it in context of the bigger story. I may or may not release another stand-alone piece to replace it, if there is enough demand (let me know!)
Otherwise, if you want a bit more occult rock’n’roll goodness from me that doesn’t directly involve Bloody Waters there’s my story Butcher’s Hook, which was published in Aurealis #65 a few years back and which is available here:
https://aurealis.com.au/store/aurealis-65/
Any questions? No? Then I invite you to join me in the moshpit.
Peace, love and head explosions, baby,
— JF