Hologram Kebab Deluxe is here!
+ Even more discounts on my books.
So, the discounts aren’t over. Whilst the free week for WBTH is finished, I have entered Smashwords’ July sales with all my books on that platform. That means that Mycelial Deluxe and The Certain Universe are FREE until the end of July. And beyond that, WBTH is half price.
This only applies to smashwords, so it’s worth checking out!
Okay, now onto the main bit.
HOLOGRAM KEBAB IS HERE
Does anyone remember when I announced a short story collection called Hologram Kebab? It was about a year ago, around the time the WBTH reviews started coming in.
Well, I later changed Hologram Kebab’s name to WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? TWO, because I realised that was I was writing was secretly a sequel. In fact, the only reason it had the name Hologram Kebab for so long is that, whilst I knew it was essentially WBTH2, I was privately afraid I might not manage to capture the magic of WBTH1 again.
Then I realised I didn’t have to. WBTH2 is its own entity, an evolution on the weird themes and structures introduced in WBTH1. It’s currently in progress, and if you’re here for my 31st birthday in August, you’ll be here when something big and WBTH2-shaped happens.
But what happened to the original Hologram Kebab story?
It’s still a main player in WBTH2, but it deserved its own release. The title was so good, the reception to its early drafts so overwhelmingly positive, that I was forced to realise it was a damn good story.
So here it is.
And I’ve added some extra spices for you.
This deluxe edition features an exclusive interview, in which I interview myself using the questions my readers have asked me over the past year about this story and others. The result is a short story that comes with an exclusive look into how I made that story, how I came up with the title, and why I feel that my purpose as an artist is to mix Sci-Fi, Satire, and Dark existentialist fiction together in a way that is unique to me. It’s a deep dive into my process as an author, and you won’t find it anywhere else.
You can get the full story with the deluxe bits here.
Fringe show
Just a final check. Anyone in Manchester, UK? I have a dark Sci-Fi comedy show coming up in three days for the Manchester Fringe. I would have done Edinburgh, but costs proved too high. Next year I’ll gather funds a few months beforehand, rather than a few weeks!
Extra thoughts
I find it funny how this story is long enough to be larger than most paperback poetry books if it was in print. I doubt I’ll print it (unless I can get chapbooks made) but it is interesting how poetry is weighted differently to fiction. I saw someone a few weeks back talking about his poetry book. He turned it to show us the back cover, and in the brief moment it was side-on to the audience, the thing vanished like paper Mario. Jokes aside, you could see the stage lights burning through the entire book. I think poetry books should be a touch bigger, which is why all of mine are always longer than 30 pages. That way you can tell a coherent story, and make the book more valuable to the reader without having to charge them much more. Because the printing costs for a 30 page book, a 20 page book, and a 50 page book are almost the same, you can charge the same amount to customers, so you may as well put more story in the book.
I’ll always go for quality and value for money here at THE WEIRD WORLDS OF PHILLIP CARTER, which might be why WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? is still selling two copies a week, with no advertising.
In fact, it sold less copies when I was paying Amazon to advertise for me…
Maybe what indie bookstores say about it is true…
People like quality. The Value/Quality idea that is central to my publishing (and by extenstion, Halfplanet Press too) is why I shaped WBTH into the book you know today. It contains no less than 47 chapters split across 11 distinct universes, many of which could have been released as novellas in their own right, some of which will, soon.
Such as THE LAST SERMON OF LAX MORALES and BEYOND UNCERTAIN STARS, which are currently getting the deluxe edition treatment before re-release. When they come out, you will find them here before anyone else.
So this year is a busy one for me. You can get WBTH below if you’ve not already got it.
Cool! I agree. Hologram Kebab was too good of a title to not put to use like this. It's clever, relevant to the story, and doesn't sound like it came from a Reedsy title generator (unlike an alarmingly high number of indie sci-fi books).