When the Sleeper Wakes: Your December 2021 Progress Report!
The Council White Guard. Art by Will O'Brien
Since the team (thanks to many of you) reached the fundraising target on Kickstarter last month, we’ve been pretty busy:
Melting the nation’s fiber-optic networks coordinating between our publisher Catherine Fitzsimmons (the visionary leader of Brain Lag Publishing www.brain-lag.com), our brilliant artist William Francis O’Brien, and me (the writer/H.G. Wells-adapter who really should be humbler). We’re taking the creative work to the next level of detail and pinning down logistics like deadlines and deliverables.
Will has generated more concept art – which you see right here – and reports that he’s busy on revised page layouts and the cover image which we hope to share with all of you soon.
I’ve been trying to stay out the way by doing some cheer-leading and sending out the first wave of rewards: frame-able colour and black & white prints to some of our wonderful backers. You should receive yours in the mail soon.
The Energy Police. Art by Will O'Brien
Speaking of our backers, here’s the second wave reward; special mention on this website of two very special friends and supporters:
IRIS GRANT
Here’s what Iris says about herself:
“As a Travel Advisor at Vision 2000 Cruises & Vacations I have access to incredible products at amazing value. I have personally selected a number of cruises and vacations for you to browse on my home page, but if there is something you have in mind that you do not see, please do not hesitate to call me.
One of the biggest advantages to booking with me, whether it is online, over the phone or in person is that you receive personalized service and I am always happy to answer any questions you have regarding your holiday.”
Vision 2000 are travel specialists who have been helping their clients plan their business trips and dream holiday for over 50 years. They are knowledgeable in all destinations around the world and are waiting to help you find your perfect holiday and the optimum business travel and accommodations.
I’ve benefited from Iris’ experience and expertise for both personal and business travel arrangements for almost 15 years and there is no better (and no safer) way to go!
You can contact Iris at:
https://www.visiontravel.ca/irisgrant/en
ISOBEL RAVEN
Isobel Raven has been writing since retiring from teaching in Ontario and British Columbia. Her first work of fiction is a collection of short stories called A Flower for Allie. In these stories, readers will meet their friends, relatives, and enemies. School-children, teachers, lovers young and old, long-married couples, spinsters, grandmothers, even dogs: their joy, their loneliness, their outrage, laughter, secrecy, triumph and always, hope. ALICE MUNRO, to whom the book is dedicated, said in a personal note to the author: “I am delighted with the stories, which seem to me to have a unique tone and a special, keen vision.”
Isobel has also ventured into the realm of speculative fiction with her first novel, Out of the Roons:
“On her 75th birthday in July of 3015, Elve receives a letter from the Glorious New World Republic of Asia and the Americas. The government demands, but nicely, that she begin to plan for her Glorious Death which will be solemnized upon her eightieth birthday. Elve decides that she will not do it. Instead, she will devote her remaining years to disseminating her precious books, books which have miraculously survived a thousand years of cultural upheavals, political stupidity, and environmental devastation. Her book project is stillborn when five-year-old Hom comes to live with her. Caring for the boy, teaching him, and protecting him from government authorities consume all her energies. The Statesfield ruins (Hom's "Roons") across the road from Elve's condo are both an icon of peril and a place of sanctuary in the story.”
Good Reads gives Out of the Roons a 4-star rating and you can learn more about the book and where to purchase it at:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52879077-out-of-the-roons
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/home/search/?keywords=out+of+the+roons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgm1iLEKNbs (video interview with Isobel)
I had the privilege of reading the first 50 pages of the sequel to Out of the Roons and I think it’s destined to be one of the best Canadian SF books of 2022.
