UPDATE: Interior art by Tom Brown is in!!!
The hand-drawn originals are available now! There are only five of the illustrations above that remain, so act fast!
So... Who are we and what are we trying to do?
Neverland’s Library is a joint project between fantasy reviewers Rebecca Lovatt of The Arched Doorway and Roger Bellini of A Daily Dose of R&R.
Roger Bellini (Co-editor) owns and runs a fantasy review website. He works as a promotional manager for a local movie theater and is the 2014 Con Chairman for MystiCon, the premiere convention in Southwest Virgina. He discovered his love of writing early in life and earned his BA in English in 2009.
Currently he is hard at work on his debut novel and actively involved with several different anthology projects, one of which being a collaborative project with Ragnarok Publications.
Rebecca Lovatt (Co-editor) is a founder and reviewer of a fantasy review website. Starting as an editor of non-fiction and educational texts, Rebecca now works as a freelancer, focusing primarily on fiction and fantasy literature.
She's currently in the process of getting a publishing certificate from The Chang School at Ryerson University. In her free time she spends most days buried in a good book and enjoying the company of her two snakes and mountains of books.
Both Rebecca and Roger are also freelance editors at Neverland Books, an independent publisher of fantasy and historical fiction anthologies.
The goal of this project was to create a fantasy anthology based around the theme of Rediscovery. Blending established, and lesser known authors, we hoped to capture the reader’s imagination and bring them back to a time when they first discovered their love of fantasy fiction. For readers who haven't already fallen in love with the genre, we hope to offer immensely entertaining bite-size stories that will pull people in and inspire their imagination!
Growing up as avid readers, it always saddened us to not be able to share our love of literature with many of the young people we grew up around. Because of this, an idea formed: Neverland's Library.
So with this passion, we got to work! Through connections we had as reviewers, con-organizers, and social networkers, we began contacting authors and explaining what we had in mind. To our surprise, the idea quickly took root and we were off and running!
Meet the authors!
Tad Williams - Introduction
He is the international bestselling fantasy and science fiction author of the multivolume Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, Otherland series, and Shadowmarch series as well as the standalone novels Tailchaser's Song, The War of the Flowers, Caliban's Hour, and Child of an Ancient City. His current series is The Bobby Dollar Books. The first two books in the series are The Dirty Streets of Heaven and Happy Hour In Hell.
Mark Lawrence - Deception
He is the author of the widely popular The Broken Empire Trilogy and is currently working on his new series, The Red Queens War. (ACE / Harper Voyager)
Marie Brennan - Centuries of Kings
She is the author of the Doppleganger series (Orbit) and is currently working on the sequel to A Natural History of Dragons (TOR).
Miles Cameron - The Tomb (a "Traitor Son Cycle" tale)
He is the author of The Red Knight, which is the first in his Traitor Son Cycle series. His next release is the sequel to that, The Fell Sword (Gollancz / Orbit).
Tim Marquitz - Redemption at Knife’s End
He is the author of numerous books, including the Demon Squad series and Blood War trilogy. His most recent project is editing the Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters anthology.
Kenny Soward - The Machine (a "GnomeSaga" tale)
He is the author of the GnomeSaga books and collaborates with Tim Marquitz and J.M. Martin on the Dead West series.
Stephen McQuiggan - Redfern’s Slipper
Stephen has written short stories for numerous anthologies, including Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous, Songs for the Raven and Into the Darkness and more.
William Meikle - The Last Magician
William has over fifteen novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries, and is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series, among others.
Ian Creasey - Restoring the Magic
Ian has had multiple short fiction pieces published in Asimov's. He has also been published in Years Best SF 15 edited by David G. Hartwell, among many other anthologies.
Peter Rawlik - The Rendition of Ephraim Waite
He is a Lovecraftian extraordinaire. His debut novel, Reanimators, came out through Night Shade Books.
R.S. Belcher - An Equity in Dust
His first novel, The Six-Gun Tarot was published by Tor books in 2013. He is currently working on the sequel, The Shotgun Arcana.
Joseph Lallo - The Stump and the Spire (a "Book of Deacon" tale)
Joseph Lallo is the author of The Book of Deacon trilogy. His latest two novels are Bypass Gemini and Unstable Prototypes, which are the first two in a science fiction series.
Jeffrey J. Mariotte and Marsheila Rockwell - A Soul in the Hand
Jeffrey is the multiple award-winning author of more than forty-five novels, including both original and tie-in fiction (Supernatural, Star Trek, 30 Days of Night).
Marsheila sold her first short story to Marion Zimmer Bradley while still in college and her first novel to Wizards of the Coast in 2005.She's the author of multiple books in the D&D Online Eberron series.
Jeff Salyards - The Height of our Fathers (a "Bloodsounder's Arc" tale)
Jeff Salyards is the author of the Bloodsounder's Arc series. The first book is called Scourge of the Betrayer and was published by Night Shade Books.
Keith Gouveia - Fire Walker
Keith Gouveia is the author of numerous short stories which have been published through a wide variety of publications. Most of his books have been picked up by Coscom Entertainment, a Canadian small press publisher.
Betsy Dornbusch - Season of the Soulless
Betsy Dornbusch is the author of The Seven Eyes the first book being called Exile as well as Archive of Fire, the first book in the Sentinel series. Betsy has also written numerous short stories.
Brian Staveley - Dead Ox Falls (a "Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne" tale)
Brian Staveley debut novel, The Emperor's Blade, comes out January 2014 from Tor Books. It's the first of the epic fantasy trilogy Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne.
Teresa Frohock - Love, Crystal and Stone
Teresa Frohock is the author of Miserere: An Autumn Tale. Her short story, Naked the Night Sings appears in the Manifesto : UF anthology.
J.M. Martin
J.M. Martin has written comic books (Legendlore, Seeker) and role-playing games (Iron Kingdoms, Warmachine), as well as several short stories and a novella, Tisarian's Treasure.
Mercedes M. Yardley
Mercedes is the writer of Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, a dark fantasy. She is also a writer of short fiction and been published in multiple issues of Shock Totem, Tales of Jack the Ripper and more.
Don Webb
Don has had 12 books and about 400 other items published --ranging from poems in Chinese, trucker fiction in Truckers USA, a story in an honest-to-god Norton Anthology, a book on the Greek Magical Papyri, more Cthulhu Mythos stories than Lovecraft himself, and a story in a Norwegian anarchist magazine.
Artists
Gabriel Verdon - Cover illustration and design
Tom Brown - Interior art illustrations (Below are examples of his work - Neverland Illustrations coming soon!)
Joe Martin - Book InDesign
What is your money going toward?
You may be wondering why our goal is so low. Well, the reason for that is because every author and artist involved has ALREADY BEEN PAID! Some money has been raised and even more has personally come from our pockets. We're more than willing to put our money where our mouth is.
But we're only able to go so far on our own! We need your help to make the final push!!!
The thing about printing is that the more you can print at once, the cheaper the per-item cost. We would like to raise enough money to allow us to do a substantial first-print run that will enable us to offer the book at a discounted rate at conventions and to independent retailed in Southwest Virginia and the Greater Toronto Area.
There are of course other costs, like shipping and tier rewards to produce. Those costs have been calculated into what we are hoping to raise.
What type of incentives are we offering to contributors?
A bit more reward details!
First, you might have noticed a contributor inventive called All The Books. We are especially excited about this one because it offers the most value to those backers who are willing to commit to partner with us for the long haul!
With this tier you get a physical copy of Neverland's Library and a digital copy of any and all future anthologies done under Neverland Books. Below are some examples of projects already in the works:
- Rogue (Summer 2014) - Fantasy anthology featuring stories about assassins, thieves and mercenaries.
- The Iron Scribe (Late 2014) - Historical fiction anthology featuring stories set in the Iron Age.
- Neverland's Shadows (Early 2015) - Fantasy anthology featuring stories from the perspective of villains.
So as you can see we've got a lot of fun things planned! These upcoming projects will blow your socks off and turn this particular tier into the steal of the Kickstarter!
Another tier I would like to direct some attention to are our finely crafted collectible pens. Each one of these are handmade from the finest materials and no pen is exactly alike! Should you choose one of these tiers, you'll have a choice of three different types of wood to make yours unique to you.
- Available Woods: Pine, Oak, Maple
- All pens use Parker refills
- Handcrafted
- Magnetic cap
Pens can also be applied as an Add-on for $50, which is more than twenty dollars less than their retail value.
Add-on!
Pens - $50
Ebook - $10 (Want an extra, or one gifted?)
Art Prints - $20 (Only available as an add-on to physical backers)
Extra Paperback - $20 (Only available for backers at the $25 tier or higher)
All The E-books package - $30 (If you've backed at the $60 or higher tiers, you can add on the ability to receive ebook editions of all future Neverland Books titles!)
STRETCH GOALS!!!
$3,000 - Full page illustration from Tom Brown (UNLOCKED!)
$3,500 - Magnets of the cover art for all backers at the $25 tier and higher (UNLOCKED)
$4,000 - Lets get digital! E-books of "The Book of Deacon" by Joseph Lallo and "Dawn of War" by Tim Marquitz will be free to every backer!
$4,500 - Autographed bookplates from select authors for physical book backers + digital copies of "Rough Magic" by Kenny Soward for all backers and "War of the Seasons: The Human" by Janine Spendlove for all backers above $5!
Our Partners and Friends!
Risks and challenges
Challenges: We already have all of the stories that will be included in the finished anthology. Every author has been paid and the costing out has been completed. The stories are edited, but the book in-design has not been completed. We have a professional lined up to help us with this. We also have several friends who are experienced with self-publishing and have offered to help us deliver the best book possible.
Risks: Well, there is the outside chance that we could run into delays if we are substantially more successful than anticipated. We'll also be at the mercy of the printers speed on some of the tier rewards, but ultimately I do not see a scenario where we will be unable to send out all rewards as promised. (Rebecca and I live in different countries, so if God sees fit to smite one of us, the other can handle tier distribution.)
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Funding period
- (25 days)