Brown River Queen cover art

Sunday, August 12, 2012

New Mug & Meralda novella! Book trailer release! Dancing elephants! S'mores!

It's a busy day today here at Casa Tuttle!

In just a few sentences, I'm going to announce the publication of a new Mug and Meralda novella. And I'm going to put up a link to the book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. I'll even talk a bit about the new novel now in progress.

But first, a few words of thanks.

No matter how careful I am, typos rceep in two everY man-ewe-screept. And no number of thorough editing passes ever quite catches them all. In fact, I hereby propose a new Law of the Universe, which shall hereafter be known as Tuttle's Truthful Ratio of Typos to Effort, expressed thusly:

The number of undetected typographical errors in any manuscript is equal to the number of editing passes plus 1. Or maybe plus 3, or 6, or 16, depending on how ornery the Universe is feeling on any given day. 

In simpler terms, I suppose one could say of typos 'You never correct them all.'

Which is where beta readers come in. The purpose of a beta reader is threefold. The beta reader sees the complete and uncensored ineptitude of a writer, takes steps to point out the writer's errors, and then keeps this dreadful knowledge a secret, lest the writer be revealed for the quasi-literate poser they are.

So many thanks to my faithful beta reader Kellie, and now her husband Stephon and daughter Ava, who helped stamp out the scourge of missing letters and doubled quotation marks (and that is all I will admit to).

So, without further ado, I present to you the world premiere of the new Mug and Meralda novella, Saving the Sammi!


You can pick it up now at Amazon for a mere buck and a half. I'm working on a Nook version, and should have that ready later this week. I will of course let you know!

I enjoyed writing Saving the Sammi. Without giving away too much, it's a very straightforward adventure story, involving the rescue of the family trapped aboard a storm-stricken airship trapped in a deadly ascent. Market testing even among eight-year-olds (okay, a market of one, but still) placed it just below Harry Potter and possibly even with Warrior Cats, which I consider high praise indeed. Adults will enjoy it too!

So go grab a copy. It's a quick read, and you'll never look at a rowboat quite the same way again.

Now, for book trailer news! That's right, I have a book trailer, which is to a book what those ads before the movie starts are to motion pictures. My book trailer is for All the Paths of Shadow, and it was created by the fine people at Hercules Editing and Consulting. I heard about Hercules through a fellow author (thanks Elyse!), who said they did excellent work at prices authors can afford.

The phrase 'at prices authors can afford' is understood to mean 'whatever loose change you can shake out of the couch,' so I did some checking, liked what I saw, and hired Hercules to produce a short book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. The result is lovely -- but hey, see for yourself!



I love the trailer. So a huge thanks to Beth and Syd at Hercules!

I hope you enjoy Saving the Sammi and the book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. Both represent a lot of work -- not so much by me on the book trailer, since my skills in that arena are limited to spelling the words 'book trailer,' but I know just enough to know putting it together wasn't easy. Writing Saving the Sammi was fun, and I learned a lot about airships and the early days of flight in the process. Mostly what I learned was you have to be a special kind of crazy to climb aboard a huge cloth envelope filled with hydrogen (the word hydrogen comes from the Greek hydro, which means 'wants to explode,' and gen, 'very very badly'). But climb aboard they did, usually while smoking big cigars, and for that, I salute them albeit from a safe distance.

So now it's time to get back to work on the new Meralda and Mug novel, All the Turns of Light. There may be another short story (or two, or three) released in the near future, depending on how work on the novel goes. Look for more airships in Turns of Light. Because darn it, I like airships.

I'd love to hear what any of you think about the story or the trailer! My email inbox is always open, so drop me a line at franktuttle@franktuttle.com.