Another Round @ The Crow Bar #14 – February 2018

Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 14th newsletter: February 2018 – jam-packed with tidbits and information about new releases and projects I’m currently busy with!

Coming up in this edition of Another Round @ The Crow Bar:

Regular updates, new releases, and a monthly spotlight on one of my books, this time “Panic! Horror In Space #1″, book 1 in Panic! Horror In Space Series.

Hello!

February is always a busy and eventful month for me, being my birthday month. I had a nice long holiday from December, and towards the end of January I went back to work – and I had to get back into my routine again.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been working on “African Assignment” and “Bugspray“, two books that were both published and available until November. To give you a little background, both books were published through LightBearer during 2016, which was a mutual project of mine together with a friend, but due to various considerations, including the unsuitability of CreateSpace as a publishing platform regarding payment options for the publisher and author, we agreed that the best thing to do was to take both books down and re-release them through Lulu. We also agreed that this was better under my own brand, as it seems likely that LightBearer isn’t going to be active again anytime soon. This came about at the end of November, and I’ve been working on both titles since. It’s not just a matter of taking the manuscripts down and putting them up on another service; it’s more complicated than that – different POD sites use different software and have different formatting requirements. Also, in our opinion, CreateSpace’s materials and printing quality is inferior to Lulu’s. In the meantime, I’ve been reformatting, and have modified cover details and made some content changes, all in preparation to put them up again via Lulu alongside the rest of my books.

In the meantime, my fiancée and I are also in the thick of making preparations for our hand-fasting in March this year. It’s been in the workings since last year, when we got engaged on the 9th – and the date is set for the 10th! Some pictures will be included in an article on my website and later, in one of the next newsletters – so stay tuned!

In the meantime, I’m also working on another of my dad’s books, getting it ready for publication. My dad, Theo Engela, died in 1985. “Shakandazu Valley” was the last book he finished, in the year before his death. He tried unsuccessfully to get it published up to the time of his death, sending typed copies to publishers who weren’t interested in anything from South Africa due to the political climate etc. – that’s right, politicians have a long, long history of shattering dreams and screwing things up for us ordinary folk!

So, I’ve been editing it for him, which has been quite a mission since it was typed on paper old-school, with a manual typewriter that imprinted slightly smudged letters on the paper. The only way I could do this, was to scan the pages into digital images and run them through a text-bridge application – which provided me with a Word document with a truckload of errors! Aside from that, I think the lady who typed the manuscript for dad altered the text in typing from the handwritten manuscript by replacing contractions (i.e. “can’t”) with full words (i.e. “cannot”), and so this makes for a rather plodding text, especially in dialog, so I’ve had to modify it to make it easier to read. That’s just what I’m up to with the first edit which is still in progress – during the next edit, I’ll be working on the flow of the story telling, the dialog, and any other errors I find.

The book should go out soon after I’ve put the other two back up again. “African Assignment” is a collection of my dad’s short stories, and there’s an interesting difference in his style in writing short stories as opposed to his novel-writing – add to that, his two earlier novels are written in a style more like his short stories than “Shakandazu Valley“. There’s an almost 20 year gap between them. Nevertheless, it’s an exercise in getting to know my dad, and it’s a pretty deep experience for me, one I’m enjoying a lot.

But before I waffle on too much, let’s get on with the newsletter! 🙂

New Releases

The Galaxii Series

The Quantum Series

About The Quantum Series will give you more background about the series, its settings and characters. To get a better idea of what the latest two titles are about, read What Readers Can Expect In “Prodigal Sun”, “High Steaks”, “Fortitude” & “The Last Hurrah”.

Panic! Horror In Space

Panic! is a sci-fi/horror series, which will have some decidedly sci-fi characters encountering some decidedly horror entities – ghosts, haunted objects, zombies, etc. along with my usual twisted brand of humor! The first two titles are available in paperback and eBook versions on various distribution platforms including Amazon and Lulu. “Panic! Horror In Space #1” and “Panic! Horror In Space #2” were released earlier this year and “Panic! Horror In Space #3” was released on 18 November 2017.

On A Personal Note

• Fan Mail & Honorable Mentions

Noticed in the past month by my long-suffering PA and fiancée, Wendy K. Gloss, were the following honorable mentions:

Nothing this month – sorry!

I display my Fan Mail & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You are always welcome to have a look.

• Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’m almost sad to say I have nothing new to show you this time! (I may have something to show you next time though!)

(I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review it here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking or you might choke while laughing!)

Monthly Book Spotlight [Spoiler Alert]: “Panic! Horror In Space #1”

“While on a routine deep-space mission to chart new territory on the frontier of unknown space, the Pioneer Fleet starship Mercury stumbles across an apparent shipwreck in deep-space that opens a whole new can of worms for her crew.

How had a ship last seen near a Terran colony light years away forty years ago got here before the Mercury? Why couldn’t the cause of death of the crew be determined – what was in the deleted log entry of the Kilgary – and why had it been deleted?

The last thing Stuart Flane, captain of the Mercury, expected while he and five members of his crew worked to discover the answer to the enigma, was a day-long running battle inside the bowels of the moldering corpse of a long-vanished loderunner. Their troubles don’t end there, because Mercury – their only ride home – is also in trouble…”

In Closing

Well, that’s it, folks! 🙂

Stay tuned for more news as things progress!

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction! Until next time,