New Editions Coming Soon

Somehow, in between everything else I need to get done, I have republished my first two novels! Here's what the new editions look like:

Not bad, huh? But you may wonder why I bothered to republish them now. Here are some of the major reasons.

1. I have learned something about book covers in the age of ebooks and Amazon: namely, that people usually see thumbnails of covers first, and those thumbnails have to catch a potential reader's eye. So I decided to go with big, bold, iconic covers with simple backgrounds.
2. Related to the above, I wanted to improve my branding and to give all my covers a simpler look, namely, that big, bold, iconic cover image with a simple background. They are also all going to be under the heading of my own small publishing company, Bodacious Publishing.
3. I wanted to offer a little more in each of these books. Now, both Children of Rhatlan and Tamshi's Imp have a group discussion section in the back. Children of Rhatlan also has a new afterword.
4. Naturally, I hope to sell more books and to gain more loyal readers. This was the first step. I may also release a new edition of Amber in the Over World, my YA fantasy novel. I'm not sure about re-releasing Seeds of Vision, though.
5. All this is leading up to the release of the book many have been waiting for and which I am eager to finish, Bodacious Creed. Though it is a steampunk zombie western, and not fantasy, it will have the same cover style, a discussion section, and more.
6. By republishing them through CreateSpace, I've been able to reduce the price of each from $15.95 to $9.95!

Here's some trivia about my work on these.

1. Before I got back to work on these, I was afraid that the latest versions had been lost. Due to a few hard drive crashes over the years, at first, I wasn't able to find them in any other but pdf and Kindle format, neither of which would convert back to Word for me. Fortunately, I was able to recover some information from an older drive and found them there.
2. Children of Rhatlan was a Dream Realm Awards finalist in 1999.
3. Tamshi's Imp had more typos than any author should want in the finished manuscript. I was able to go through and fix most of them. I suspect there are a few that my eye didn't catch, but the most egregious are fixed.
4. I once sent Tamshi's Imp to an agent at the same time that my author friend Steven Savile was trying to get that agent to sign me, because Steve loved my books. The agent told him (and yes, I'm paraphrasing, based on what Steve told me), "I don't know. I'm about to send an offer to another author who sent in a great novel. My first reader read it and said it's the most original fantasy novel she's read in years." As it turned out, they were both talking about me. Yes, that book was Tamshi's Imp. (Unfortunately, he wasn't able to sell it, as, at 67K words, it was shorter than what publishers were looking for in a first novel.)
5. I met James Rollins one year at World Fantasy Con. (I think it was the one in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1998 or 1999). If you haven't heard of him... why haven't you heard of him? He's a popular and prolific fantasy author and terrific guy. I asked if he had time to read Tamshi's Imp, and he did, and had this to say about it. "Jonathan Fesmire continues to grow as the fantasist of the new generation. Tamshi's Imp is a blend of magic and mayhem, heartbreak and heroism, sorcery and suspense, but at its heart, its also of redemption and the undying power of love. It's an adventure not to be missed!"

There you have it! A bit of the why, a bit of the how, and a bit of trivia. Currently, I'm waiting for my proof copies, which are due to arrive on Monday, March 23, and once I've looked them over and am satisfied, I will release them to the public. Keep an eye on this blog for more, or on the Bodacious Creed fan page at https://www.facebook.com/bodaciouscreed.

I have also discontinued the current print and Kindle versions of these books. If Amazon has any print copies left, now's the time to get them!