Tag: romance

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Reprise Kickstarter is off

June 19, 2023: UPDATE — Sadly, this Kickstarter was not a success. No one who backed it will be charged. However, Reprise has now been published, and is available from the usual online vendors as well as in our own store (we expect to have paper copies available by Sunday, June 25th, but ebooks can be had now).

Just launched Kickstarter banner

She’s got a doctorate and nothing to lose
He’s got a time machine and a hot wife
Which is deadlier, love or science?

May 21, 2023 — It’s been a long time coming, but the Kickstarter campaign for Zilla Novikov’s singular debut novel, Reprise: A Post-Modern Comedy of Manners, is here at last!

A caustically funny time-travel romance that blends dark academia with with timey-wimey complexity, D&D with S&M, and leaves the reader wondering if the protagonist is a murderer or victim — or both — Reprise is the novel that would have been written by the love-child of Jane Austen and the Marquis de Sade, had she been raised by Douglas Adams.

Reprise will make you laugh, gasp, and maybe, cheer.

Back and front cover of Zilla Novikov's Reprise

Most people play ‘F**k, Marry, Kill’ as a game of hypotheticals, but Eddy Courant’s life takes an unconventional path when Dr. François Gagnon offers Eddy a postdoc position studying time loops. This unexpected chance to revive her career pulls Eddy from a deep depression. She loses herself to the thrill of science, and to the simpler pleasures in life – like flirting with her boss, seducing his wife, and playing Dungeons and Dragons with their son.

That is, until the men funding the research demand ever-more ground-breaking data to justify keeping her on board – after all, they have a war to start.

Eddy is plunged into ever darker and more violent acts to appease the funders. So long as she’s employed, she doesn’t have to face the consequences of replaying countless deaths – including her own. But keeping track of shifting timelines while her own mental state deteriorates means losing the ability to tell real life from its shadow.

If you like your pop culture nerdy, your queers messy, and your time travel criminally clever, this book is for you.

Please click here to support the campaign, and feel free to share the link with anyone you know who loves time-travel, romance, or any kinky combination of the two: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bppress/reprise-hardcover!

That's me!

Geoffrey Dow, publisher

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Cover Reveal: Reprise, by Zilla Novikov

The wild imagination of Douglas Adams,
The acerbic wit of Jane Austen,
The surreal vision of Emily Brontë …

Reprise

In a caustically funny post-modern Gothic, Dr. François Gagnon offers Eddy Courant a postdoc position studying time loops. The chance to revive her stalling research career pulls Eddy from a deep depression. She loses herself to the thrill of science, and to the simpler pleasures in life – like flirting with her boss and seducing his wife. Until the men funding the research demand more ground-breaking data to justify keeping her on board – after all, they have a war to start.

Eddy is plunged into ever darker and more violent acts to appease the funders. So long as she’s employed, she doesn’t have to face the consequences of replaying countless deaths – including her own. But keeping track of shifting timelines while her own mental state deteriorates means losing the ability to tell real life from its shadow.

Can Eddy find loves, stop the arms dealer, and save her sanity – or even one out of three?

Scroll down to see the cover (and find out more)!

Image shows the cover of Zilla Novikov's novel, Reprise.
Cover created by Rachel A. Rosen.

Zilla Novikov’s Reprise, coming April 15, 2023

January 13, 2023 – I am excited and proud to present the cover of The BumblePuppy Press’ next book, Zilla Novikov’s singular time travel romance (and brilliant debut novel), Reprise.

Already available for pre-order as an ebook on Amazon, this coming week will see the launch of a Kickstarter campaign with all sorts of extra goodies available, but for now I just want to share the wonderful cover created by our own Rachel A. Rosen.

And don’t forget to subscribe our newsletter to keep abreast of Reprise news, and news of all of our upcoming books (because there is a lot more to come in 2023).

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Another month, another signing!

Reprise by Zilla Novikov

Reprise

I feel as if someone needs to force-feed me a thesaurus, but there it is: I am once again thrilled to formally announce that The BumblePuppy Press has purchased the rights to another debut novel.

Reprise, by the remarkable Zilla Novikov, is a story the author has been shopping around for some time and I can only be grateful that no one else has been smart enough to say “Yes! Yes, I want this!” before I did.

Granted, Reprise is not an easy book to sum up — and I’m not going to do it now. A relatively short novel by word-count, Zilla manages to pack a lot into it: inter-dimensional travel, a very funny Dungeons and Dragons adventure, romance, and a hearty kick in academia’s shins, all woven into an extraordinarily tightly-woven plot. Zilla herself described it as a “… toxic romance, slow-burn plot, #darkacademia #specfic …” which is incomplete, but certainly not wrong.

Needless to say, you’ll be hearing a great deal more about Reprise in the weeks and months ahead, as we aim to publish it in the fall of 2022.

You can follow Zilla Novikov on Twitter (@zillanovikov), and don’t forget to subscribe to the BumblePuppy’s newsletter using the form below to keep abreast of what’s happening here. (There is more good news coming this year!)

And don’t forget, our Kickstarter campaign for Rachel A. Rosen’s forthcoming novel, Cascade has been a great success; with 20 days to go, it is already nearly 250% funded!

If you want to support a brilliant new writer (and get in on some fantastic extras) please click here. Alternately, the ebook is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

That’s it for now.

Thanks and looking forward,

That's me!

Geoffrey Dow, Publisher

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Like Sir Walter Scott, Louis L’Amour and … Penthouse Forum?!? Clearly, opinions vary!

Carl thinks Black Grass is a really good book - and he's right!

Setting the Black Grass promo train in motion (again)

Of course it’s tempting to blame the worldwide pandemic for the lack of a real push on promoting Black Grass; cancelled book fairs and television appearances are a real thing.

I can also point to my darling daughter, pictured with me above. Though there are currently two of us at home to take care of her, she still demands a fair amount of attention (which I gladly provide, make no mistake about that!).

“In the spirit of Walter Scott, Black Grass offers humour, horror, passion, satire, and insight.”

And there is my related work as a “daddy blogger” over at PapaZesser.ca, not to mention the time I have spent figuring out how to maintain and remodel this (apparently) rather kludged WordPress site.

Even so, despite the exceptional circumstances of our times and my own complicated situations, I have not done enough in terms of doing what a publisher is supposed to do: sell books!

“The way Susan felt just before she had the first intercourse, is the way you feel about it when you want it. I wondered, how does Carl know how a woman would feel in that moment? He must have been a woman in a prior life.”

After all, the stories in The Old Man’s Last Sauna range from good to bloody exceptional, and Black Grass is a genre novel that transcends genre, a story that will surprise and delight and excite discerning readers. So I want people to buy them!

But there is, as I have been learning (too slowly), more to publishing than editing copy, laying out the interior and (second time smart!) hiring a real artist, Magdalene Carson, to create a cover. No, a publisher has to promote the books they publish — they need to sell the books they publish.

“The poker game was a tour de force, and I say this as an experienced player.”

So, without further ado, if you have been wondering whether Black Grass is worth your time (and money), I have written about how and why Black Grass inspired me to start this company and, perhaps better still, we have finally posted the opinions of 15 advance (or beta) readers of Black Grass here.

Does Black Grass appeal to English Professors and receptionists? Does it resemble the works of Sir Walter Scoot or Louis L’Amour? And is Carl Dow a sexist, or was he a woman in a previous life?

“A delicate balance of sex, violence and history that should take the book far.”

Why not find out for yourself?

Click here to find out what 15 readers of a draft version of the novel thought!

Cover of Black Grass, by Carl Dow
Black Grass – a novel like none you’ve read before!
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