Click here to download FRIDAY FIX:
"One for the Junkies" from D*C 2012!

This week's FridayFix™ has NEW FICTION!

That's right Junkies! Little-heard, new fiction that Scott read at Dragon*Con 2012. This fun little story will be in the eBook-only short story collection FIRE IS ORANGE, out later this year.

If you didn't make it to D*C (or even if you did) and you have some feedback, you can reach us at 206-666-4673. That's 206-666-GORE. Have at 'im!

At right is a picture of Scott at Dragon*Con 2012, licking a stegosaurus. I don't know why he was licking a stegosaurus. Maybe it has something to do with Dinolition? Photo by Mellisa Kaercher, who is one of our favorite peoples.

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Click here to download FridayFix New GFL T-shirts!

There was voting, and ballot stuffing, and lots of awesome design suggestions, and some fine tuning tweaks, all leading up to the t-shirts now available for sale!

First things first: last week when I posted the two "Keep Calm and Run the Plays that I Call" options, I neglected to credit Belladonna420 with the cool idea. An oversight on my part I'm correcting now — THANKS BELLA!

As for the "Keep Calm" version voting, the black T won hands-down. We're going to stock that version in our store. However, I'm making the orange version available for special order for the next three weeks only, until May 17th. You want an orange one? Don't delay, order today!

And the end result of all this work? New T-shirt designs now available in the store! We decided on four new teams: Isis Ice Storm, Buddha City Elite, Sheb Stalkers and Yall Criminals. (That's in addition to the Keep Calm Hokor tribute tee, because that's how we roll.)

Here they are, all designed by Scott "Big Fish" Pond. Click on any image to order:

Sponsor of this episode: GoToMeeting:
We actually used GoToMeeting during the creation of these T-Shirt designs, as it allowed us to have face-to-face meetings with people in San Diego, San Francisco and New Hampshire. It's more than a Google Hangout or a Skype chat, it's software designed to let you work together on the same document, as you talk using a webcam from your computer, phone or even your tablet. We highly recommend it. GoToMeeting with HD faces offers a free 30-day trial, check it out and see it it's for you. 

The short version: All existing preorders for THE ALL-PRO and THE MVP will be cancelled any minute now because we're switching distributors. A new preorder for each book will be up in the next couple of weeks. I'm sorry about the extra work, and do hope you'll come back and preorder again! The silver lining here that the books will come out a month sooner, on September 3, 2013.

The long version: Back in 2011 we partnered with Diversion Books, a publisher, and Perseus, a distributor, to put THE ROOKIE and THE STARTER into stores all over the US and Canada. We did a bunch of number crunching and soul searching, then decided we could manage printing 3,000 copies of each title. Then Perseus' sales team got reallllllllllly excited about the books, and by the time we went to print, we'd agreed to print 10,000 copies of each. We'd print a ton, Perseus would do co-ops to get the books on the front-of-store tables, cover-out at airport bookstores, and we'd be The Next Big Thing. We reasoned that, out of all of us, we knew the least about distribution, therefore we'd take the advice of the pros and soon cash in all them monies.

And then … nothing like that happened. We printed the 10,000 books, and everything else fell flat. No co-op (for reasons we still don't understand), no airports, no marketing. And no Next Big Thing, of course. We sold okay, but not for an initial print run of 10,000 books. (Sadly, had we stuck with our initial projections, we'd have done GREAT and be getting ready for our second print run.)

It's been rough. Scott and I hate to lose, and hate to give everything we've got and have that not make a damn bit of difference. And that's exactly what happened here. But, we are also people who don't much cry over spilt milk. It is what it is, and it's time to move onward and upward.

To that end, we're changing distributors. Perseus will ship the remaining inventory for THE ROOKIE and THE STARTER to our new distributor, and we'll start fresh with THE ALL-PRO and THE MVP. Because the ISBN for a book is tethered to the distributor, we'll lose all the preorders when that ISBN effectively goes away.

As ever, we're moving forward and working harder to bring you guys the best stuff we can. 

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