Halfway

 

As of this writing, with 17 days left to go in the campaign, the Never Bet the Devil Kickstarter is already more than halfway to its funding goal! That means that soon we’ll be talking about stretch goals, which include the possibility of additional original stories by yours truly (which will, of course, be accompanied by additional illustrations by the incredible M.S. Corley).

Before we get to that point, though, my publisher has already announced that when we hit 250 backers (we’re less than a hundred away!), everyone who has pledged at the $30 level and above will get a PDF of (mostly) never-before-seen ephemera that I wrote to accompany some of the stories in the book. You can see a sample here.

Why “(mostly) never-before-seen,” you ask? When the first edition of Never Bet the Devil came out back in 2012, the intention had been to release a few of the stories as stand-alone ebooks on Kindle to help promote the collection. For each of those stand-alone stories, I wrote some additional exclusive ephemera to accompany the ebook release. However, not all of the planned stories were ever released in ebook form, and of those that were, only one or maybe two actually contained the ephemera. So for the handful of people who bought ebook versions of some of these individual stories years ago, some of this ephemera may seem a little familiar. But no one has ever seen all of them, and they’ve never been collected together before now.

Already backed Never Bet the Devil but still got money burning a hole in your pocket? (You probably shouldn’t accept gold coins from King Vold…) Well, it just so happens that Dark Regions Press is currently running a pre-order campaign for three new books, including The Children of Gla’aki, which features my story “Invaders of Gla’aki,” about two kids who discover a most unusual arcade cabinet in the gas station up the street, and the fate that befalls them both as a result.

Prefer to do your pre-ordering the more old-fashioned way? Well, not to worry, there are plenty of options there, too. Right now you can pre-order Ellen Datlow’s Children of Lovecraft, which features my story “Mortensen’s Muse” sandwiched between tales by John Langan and Laird Barron and behind a Mike Mignola cover, Ross Lockhart’s Eternal Frankenstein, the latest anthology from Word Horde, which features my story “Baron von Werewolf Presents: Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet” (a title I will probably never top), and Joe Pulver’s The Madness of Dr. Caligari from Fedogan & Bremer, which includes my story “Blackstone: A Hollywood Gothic.” I’d say more, but if you need encouragement to order an anthology inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I clearly don’t even know you anymore.