We printed about 250 - 300 of those, all told. In the end, we got a galley proof for advance reviews: There were no major changes to the manuscript… My edits and final read through took about a month, the proof reader’s edits took two weeks, and the design process took about a month. I always appreciate that, as a former proof reader myself. The manuscript was pretty clean when it came from Brian. This is a picture of a style sheet, done on the back page of the manuscript by our proof reader: I like to have a record of what we’ve done (and I suspect that my files get a little backed up…) I save the proofed manuscript until about a year after the book comes out. Only 350 copies were printed.īrian expanded it, and sent me the manuscript: If you have one of these, or you see one of these, save it. Also, there’s an excerpt of the book online at here. Free short stories, our wovel (more about that later), etc. A note before the pictures start: The Underland web site is selling books directly, at We have a bunch of freebies online, too. Still, I figured some visuals might help. If you are regular readers of his blog, I’d think you have a pretty good sense of how a book goes from a manuscript to the thing you order online and is delivered in its nice cardboard envelope (which, how DO they make those?).

I’ve been reading Jeff’s blog for the last two years or so, off and on. And I’ve asked Matt Staggs, our publicist, to submit a post from his perspective. I, in turn, have asked Brian Evenson for a post or two, so you can hear directly from the writer. He’s also asked me to write about Last Days–how it came to be and where it is now. Jeff’s asked me to write about my experience as a start-up publisher, a story that has gotten much more interesting in the last few months what with everything happening in the economy and with the big publishers. Two years later and here we are… I quit Dark Horse to start Underland, Brian expanded the novella to novel length, the book, called Last Days, is Underland’s launch title, I’m blogging on Jeff’s blog (a huge honor), and, on Saturday, the friendly FedEx man delivered 200 finished copies of Brian’s book to the doorstep. I needed a writer for a Predator book, and Brian suggested Jeff VanderMeer. I remember the moment exactly: I looked up from reading and thought, “I need to start a company so I can publish this book.” The books was that good.Īt the time, I was doing some outline editing for the Aliens series that Dark Horse was publishing.

Thanks, Jeff, for inviting me onto your blog…Ībout two years ago, when I was working at Dark Horse as a prose editor, I read Brian Evenson’s limited edition “The Brotherhood of Mutilation” while sitting on a wall in a sunny spot in the glorious Dark Horse parking lot (the building is particularly ugly…).

The last days brian evenson