Exciting news! We are thrilled to announce that Cinevore has signed with publishing house Aethon Books for not one, not two, but a TRILOGY of Parallax novels!

What sort of publisher is Aethon?

Aethon is a traditional publisher, focusing on fantasy, science fiction, LitRPG, and superhero content.

As a traditional publisher, Aethon covers the costs of producing and marketing the books, and of paying their own editors, designers, and marketing folks. This is in contrast to vanity presses, and even often-times self-publishing, in which figuring out how to pay for editorial and book covers falls to the author themselves.

They focus heavily on digital distribution through Amazon and the like, but our understanding is there will also be paperback versions of Parallax available for purchase when the book is released in case anybody is interested. There may even be an audiobook! We’ll see what happens.

How did this come about and what made you choose Aethon?

For those who don’t know, we’ve been working hard on the Parallax series – starting as a role-playing game, and then morphing into short stories – since 2019. And we’ve been working on querying and submitting the book to dozens of agents and traditional publishers throughout the course of the pandemic.

After years of writing, and another year of being “out on sub” as they call it, the Parallax novels you’ve all been reading here began to get traction late last year with some cool indie publishers.

By the beginning of winter, we had multiple offers from traditional publishers, each with differing styles, strengths, and marketing strategies. In the end, we felt Aethon was the best place for Parallax, between their focus on sci-fi and fantasy, their extensive catalog, their seemingly exponential growth, and their impressive track record of successful, well-reviewed releases.

Does Aethon own Parallax now?

Aethon will own these three books for sure. But overall ownership of the underlying intellectual property itself will remain with Cinevore. This means we still have the ability to try to pitch and sell a TV show, a movie, an RPG, etc. At the same time, Aethon may choose to use their own network of contacts to do the same thing, and we’ll just keep each other in the loop as the process moves forward. In our opinion (and Aethon’s), if a TV version of Parallax comes out, that can only serve to sell more books, and it’s good for everybody.

So what happens next?

Now we’ll be working with Aethon on our release schedule for the coming year. This project will likely consume much of our 2022.

The manuscript for Book 1 is now complete, and nearly ready to be delivered to Aethon’s editorial team to kick off our partnership.

But as any of you who may be artists know, making the art itself is only half the battle. My co-author Lauren Cipollo and I will be spending much of the next year going through the process of editorial on Book 1, working with Aethon to design the best possible cover art, and prepping a release schedule.

We’ll even be doing small things like formatting tweaks before we deliver the complete manuscript in the first place. For example: did you know you can’t use “tabs” to start each paragraph when formally submitting a manuscript? Neither did we! 🙂

We’ll also have to come up with NAMES for each book! We can’t just call them Parallax 1,Parallax 2, and Parallax 3, can we? Nope, this is most likely going to become the Parallax Series, or the Parallax Saga, or the Parallax Chronicles or something, and each book will certainly need a separate moniker.

All the while, we’ll be shoring up Books 2 and 3.

While Lauren and I do have drafts of the second and third book, we have spent far more time making sure Book 1 is pristine. We’re now going back over our outlines and existing chapters for books 2 & 3 – as you’ve read them here in this Patreon – and we’re now adding, subtracting, and replacing chapters to make the story and character arcs as compelling as possible.

Those who know us, know us to be perfectionists, so we refuse to submit or distribute anything we don’t think is the best it can possibly be.

We want to tell an exciting cyberpunk space adventure, full of conspiracies, gene-splices, and killer robots, and we want it to feel like it reaches a satisfying conclusion in three books.

Because of course we already have plans for books 4 and 5.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

When can I buy a copy?

While the schedule is still being worked out, the idea is that we will have all three books written and ready for release before we start releasing. But everything above takes time. So… if I had to guess, you will be able to have your very own shelf-or-Kindle-ready copies of the Parallax Saga sometime between now and March of 2023.We’ll even figure out a way to get you signed copies if we can.

How do you feel about all this?

Amazing. There’s nothing quite like showing something you worked really hard on to an outside impartial third party who says “This is actually really good. We’re going to contribute our own time, money, and resources into making sure others get to see this.” That’s Aethon right now, and it’s an absolute delight.

In addition, while our agreement basically doesn’t let me talk about the terms of the agreement itself (standard NDA stuff), I’m very encouraged by seeing other authors post about their work and publishing deals on social media and their own websites. After so many years of TV options that pretty much prevent any sort of discussion of the property in development, publishing actually feels like it might be a much-needed respite in which advance promotion for upcoming releases is actually welcome by all parties.

So yeah. I’ll speak for myself, but I’m nervous, excited, overwhelmed, confident, full of questions, and raring to go. It’s honestly my favorite state to be in. I have work to do, and I can’t wait to do it.

Wow, I’m a nerd.

How are all of you? I hope you’re all staying safe, healthy, productive, and happy, or whatever amount of that you can handle at once. 🙂

-Matt