Old Book, New Title

In the near future, no later than August 2025, we will be releasing a new version of House Amongst the Dunes in both ebook and paperback on Amazon Books.  The book was first published in 2021 to few reviews (though all positive) and almost as few sales, a testament to my failings as a book marketer.  The book will have a new title, Black Jack: Behind the Waves, and it will be clearly classified as an urban fantasy (something the original failed to do).  So, why go through the expense, trouble, and confusion of republishing a work under a new title?  Aside, of course, from every author’s desire to get in just that one last edit…

The major reason is that House Amongst the Dunes has transformed from a single volume into the first book of a series, the Behind the World Trilogy, and the two sequels have now both been written and will publish in short order, hopefully both becoming available in 2025.  These are the ongoing tales of Father Homer and his friend, Francisco Stampa, and they will now consist of:

Black Jack: Behind the Waves
Mortimer: Behind the Walls
Long Tom: Behind the Woods

So, clearly, the naming convention of the first book needed to be brought in line with the others.  

But perhaps the most important reason for the rewrite is revising the character of Joe-Joe, the afflicted older brother of Millie.  Joe-Joe has a mental disability due to being struck by lightning as a child, making him a rather unique character, and I originally did a lousy job with his dialogue and his development.  Barbara called me out on this, pointing out that in my effort to emphasize his disability, I had inadvertently made him childish, which was insulting to anyone with such a limitation.  By writing him as a man with a disability rather than an oversized child, I made a huge improvement to the character, the narrative and the story.  In my mind, that change alone justifies the new edition.

Another factor will sound like the least important, but it is constantly overlooked by self-published authors: typos.  My system for producing a book involves no less than 4 proofreaders as the story progresses, and they do a very good job of catching the obvious mistakes.  So, if you have a great story and interesting characters, what do a few misspellings matter?  But I have become increasingly aware of the damage typos do to the cohesion of reading.  They are like stubbing your toe: they break the rhythm and momentarily take you out of the story, a distraction from the building tension of the plot.  So, real effort is being made to find and correct these errors and hopefully create a smoother and more enjoyable narrative.  

The final factor is harder to nail down.  Characters evolve over the course of a book, and this is much more pronounced over the course of a trilogy.  That may sound like natural development, what every author does with his characters, but nobody can sketch out development over two books, let alone three.  The truth is that characters all too often go off in directions of their own, showing unexpected reactions to situations as the author responds to the collision between character, plot, and context.  For example, the character of Francisco is established early on as a formidable fighter, and by the third book, he’s getting the better of some dangerous opponents.  I really needed to give some explanation and support for his fighting skills, which stemmed from his youth in the American consulate in Italy.  As a young man, he spent increasing time with the Marine consular guard who took him in almost as a mascot, allowing him to exercise and train with them.  So, whereas most Marines start their training at 18 when they were already largely grown, Francisco started at 12, helping to explain his extraordinary size and skill.

That, and of course, I just love reading my own stuff.  I am my own favorite author and tear-up at all the mushy parts!

So, keep watch for the launch of Black Jack and the other two installments of the new trilogy.  They are light urban fantasies, fun, easy reads with dark interiors, and I promise, they’ll have fewer typos on which to stub your literary toes!