Birth, Books, NY Comic Con, Coffee, CYBERWAR SERIES Update is an apt description of my current life in less than 60 characters.

That said: ‘Hel-LO!’ as Uncle Leo would enthusiastically say on Seinfeld.

I have not enjoyed going MIA so often these past few months (and years), well for the most part I have not; sometimes solitude is truly bliss, and that is much harder to come across as this world grows more connected by the second.

Please forgive my delays, but I have missed you, Eager Readers.

And without further ado, the news!

I had a baby girl, or rather my wife did with my help, not too long ago, and everyone is happy and healthy!

I could not be happier.

And that is not the sleep deprivation talking.

I am a DAD!

It is an indescribable feeling, all love, and she already makes me much more optimistic about the future of the earth she is inheriting.

Her smile can move mountains.

And since everyone always asks with concern, Indy, our Dalmatian, loves our baby girl.

She guards her, attempts to play with her, and constantly alerts us to any unhappiness she seems to be having.

I am still working, writing, editing, reading, scrawling, and who knows what else, because I damn well cannot remember.

Largely because of coffee.

Strong coffee.

Ground Colombian bean and a french press and repeat.

Do not thank me, thank the coffee, that any art is getting done this year.

So the sequel to my novel, CYBERWAR, has been completed, but because of its massive size, 400-500 pages, it will need more time to be edited to as close to perfection as is possible.

Thankfully, my publisher and I are looking to work with one of the most talented editors I know, and I am beyond thrilled.

The only downside to making this a far better work is that it will not be coming out just yet and certainly not before 2020.

But it will be worth the wait; it is a bold step forward for me and it makes CYBERWAR a prequel to a much larger storyline in the Cyberwar Series (meaning the new book will be acting as Book 1), and I have some very BIG plans.

For the delay I apologize, but I hope this will make it up to you:

SPY WOMAN SPY, my years in the making graphic novel, which had a brief appearance of its cover at New York Comic Con last year will be making noise at NY Comic Con 2019, as Issue #1 arrives.

I can finally speak a little more about this.

Rune Works small press is publishing SPY WOMAN SPY, initially, and for all of you CYBERWAR fans out there, this is a prequel to the novel starring Xera Finn and Fae Yu, and it will be first released at NYCC on October 3, 2019.

Here is the premise so far:

When a foreign agent named Xera Finn learns of her government’s involvement in human trafficking on Long Island, she goes rogue. Xera and her lover, a tech bootlegger named Fae Yu, race to Coney Island to free a truckful of young women. But their hacking and espionage skills are soon put to the test when Xera’s former handler tasks both the local authorities and an outlaw motorcycle gang to ruthlessly retrieve them before they can reach sanctuary.

For those of you who have read CYBERWAR, this graphic novel series will be all about the backstory of the two badass rogue agents that were main characters of the novel.

There will be lots of insight into the degradation of the Cyber US and the Wangluo society before and after hackers took over the governments for good.

I will say no more, as the fun will be in the reveal on the page.

But I will say that I love the further exploration of the world, this near future of ours, and this future continues to surprise me.

I am thrilled to once again be at the Rune Works Productions Ltd. Booth in the Small Press section on the NY Comic Con main show floor to sign books and comics and to talk shop.

The comic book will be a single-issue format to start off, and there are a few of these issues written already so more are coming after #1, with the plan to release a compilation trade paperback down the road.

Cover artist Elizabeth Yoo will also be on hand to sign the comic book.

Last, but certainly not least, my wife and I are hoping Rune Works Productions will have time to have on-hand a version of our new children’s book at New York Comic Con.

We have an incredibly talented artist in Cheryl Huneke, and we are really looking forward to sharing this excellent and exciting book involving space and … I cannot say anymore just yet … but it is a TON of fun.

And I hate rhyming poetry and still wrote ‘TON of fun’ – I must be tired.

Speaking of poetry, if you have not kept up with my recent publications, I am thrilled to have been selected to have poems published in these 2019 anthologies: POETS TO COME: WHITMAN'S 200TH BIRTHDAY ANTHOLOGY, the 2019 Suffolk County Poetry Review, the BARDS ANNUAL 2019 anthology, and the National Beat Poetry Festival anthology We Are BEAT.

Poetry is the most freeing form of art I know.

No matter how frustrated I may be drawing, editing, writing, strumming a new tune on the guitar, I can always turn to poetry and release myself from all sense of structure and allow pure instinct and energy and strong of consciousness to take me to another place of bliss.

If you did not know, I am a big fan of the beats.

Feel free to check out the Bard’s Day or the National Beat Poetry Festival, as both are coming up next week, both will feature readings and fantastic books of poetry.

I hope you are all well and your summer reading never falters.

~RJH

Part I of an Exclusive Two-part Interview with PENTIAN CEO & Founder Enrique Parrilla

By R.J. Huneke


On May 31, 2014 PENTIAN launched its revolutionary publishing and crowdfunding model in the US at the Book Expo of America.

Things will never be the same.

I was fortunate to sit down with Founder and CEO Enrique Parrilla, just hours after the exciting debut going on in the Jacob Javit’s Center in New York City, and his vision of the future of the publishing world is keen and bright for both readers and artists taking part in Pentian’s “everyone wins” platform.

Mr. Parrilla was very pleased when he stepped away from the buzz of the Pentian booth at the Book Expo to talk to me. Dressed in a sharp suit jacket and button-down shirt that was happily tie-less, his passion for books immediately became contagious.

He started off saying, “[we’re] launching as we speak, and people are going [crazy] over it.”

Pentian is invoking their crowdfunding platform, as a publisher, and their business plan calls on potential readers and investors to crowdfund their Pentian favorites so that the cost to create, print and distribute the book on the market is covered by the determinate readers who wish to bring their authors’ works to life.

Pentian believes that invoking a community around funding a book helps to add to the media exposure and burgeon its success.

Mr. Parrilla spoke very candidly that Pentian “seek[s] to reward . . . the backers with financial compensation for 3 years . . . with profits from [the funded] book. What this essentially does is create an army of sales people for that book working for you.”

Authors everywhere rejoice!

Rarely has a business model helped to provide them with such free marketing prowess or incentive.

He went on to say that with the “small army of people who are financially invested [in the projects] . . . we have a very fair mechanism to reward those people who have taken a risk.”

Who as an avid reader would not warrant risking a few hundred dollars on an author and/or idea they are passionate about – and feel would take the world by storm, whether hitting the best-seller list or becoming a successful Hollywood film – especially when they would be compensated a set percentage of sales for three years for their investment?

Readers and stockbrokers beware: there is a new investment portfolio in town!

“Being a publishing company ourselves,” says Pentian founder Enrique Parrilla, “we own the production process.”

The process is quite simple:

• Authors submit their work to Pentian, and they judge the project strictly based on the quality of the work
• Pentian and the author come up with a plan of how many and what types of mediums the book will be produced in order to get it on the market and place the project on Pentian.com’s crowdfunding site
• Pricing levels are suggested: reward levels $10 gets you e-book, for instance, or $25 gets you a hardcover copy and more money might get you a signed hardcover.
• Readers and investors contribute to financially cover the costs of the project’s production and receive a part of the profits from the sales of the book
• The author’s work is published at the very best of quality in both paper and e-format.

For Enrique Parrilla, the way that technology has opened up the world continues to amaze, and the connections between writers and readers can be made instantaneously, as working Pentian’s “crowdfunding platform . . . enables ‘disruptive’ financial connection between authors and readers.”

“In thirty days we can have a book sold worldwide,” says Mr. Parrilla, as he smiled proudly.

The reason Pentian promotes a “disruptive” connection is because they eliminate the old barriers – disrupt them completely – in favor of a more direct model.

Published books used to be only held by the traditional publishing industry model and, in more recent years, by self-published authors (the majority of whom do not provide readers with quality product, whether in the physical paper printed or in the actual written material on the page).

This is not the case now that Pentian has created a publishing uprising and Renaissance of written works, of all genres, in Spain.

Since launching its beta test model six months ago, Pentian has captured over 6% of the self-publishing market and that number is growing exponentially as the company launches in the United States.

Mr. Parrilla believes Pentian has “great potential because it’s all over the world . . . you can push a button and your product is everywhere.”

And now the US is eager to see Pentian’s newest headquarters location in Los Angeles, California thrive.

“The reason we set up shop in L.A.,” said Mr. Parrilla, “is because we are seeking relationships with the media producers, the people that are in charge of acquiring content and licensing rights and stories are having a hard time finding original stories . . . and we have a situation where the market can determine what is hot.”

How did Pentian first come about?

Enrique says that they “saw a need that wasn’t being met.”

He spoke of a scenario he witnessed being played out on a major crowdfunding site: “One day . . . somebody looking for four or five thousand dollars [on a Kickstarter or Indiegogo-like campaign] got $20,000 . . . and did not publish the book” and they fulfilled their contractual obligation, took the profits, but the readership did not get the product they wanted.

Pentian strictly adheres to planning the production of a book and crowdfunding for that cost alone.

The cost is associated with getting a book on the market, not on the traditional crowdfunding for books, like the Kickstarter model, of continued funding through a certain period.

Once a book is backed, the crowd-funding campaign ends and the book creation begins. This as Enrique Parrilla says, “instills a sense of urgency” to back a project while there is still the opportunity to invest in it.

And Pentian already has a host of worldwide distribution partners, including Ingram, Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, Apple, El Corte Ingles and more.

This is turning the publishing industry on its head – as Pentian’s P/R release depicts – by allowing the readers to choose what a best seller will be, not the big publisher’s President and their marketing budget.

“Everyone Wins” as they say in their press release (except maybe the “Big 5”).

In terms of the “Big Five” traditional publishing houses determining most of what readers in the world get to see published, that time is quickly passing. Their business model is being shaken dramatically at its foundations.

Everyone looks to benefit from a more hands-on approach to publishing, as Pentian is happy to point out.

How exactly does Pentian decide what is “quality” and will be put up for funding?

In order to maintain a relationship with reputable distributers, Pentian adheres to a strict quality control – if a book is illegible or not up to snuff in terms of its overall shape and idea, Pentian politely declines the submission; if it is raw or “not 100%” on the surface, but the project’s idea and content is great, they will offer a team of experienced editors to polish or format the project, but not to alter any of the key creative plot or character elements, only to streamline the grammar and finished product.

The writer does not have to worry about compromising their creative work based on the publisher.

Mr. Parrilla was emphatic that at Pentian they “do not get into the content, in terms of editing . . . [he has] friends that have been going back and forth with a traditional editor [and publisher] for a year and a half to publish a book with an adulterer as the protagonist,” but because the US market does not like adulterers they required the ending changed to reflect poorly on the adulterer.

Pentian does NOT get involved in the writer’s content.

Pentian is looking to do what many of us have as a fundamental basis of our reading and writing souls desired: art is made and published as it is meant to be depicted by the artist, and the readers who are interested will actually see it as such.

In terms of creating art and writing, Pentian only offers an editing team as part of the production process if the work needs help polishing its grammatical and clerical work.

Successful authors are currently flocking to Pentian, because of their favoring the artists that create the work, not the publisher.

“The 'Big Five' houses . . . are going to start losing quality content from authors,” said Enrique.

He immediately cited an example of an author that has a following of 70,000+ social media followers, and has published two books with one of the traditional publishers, and when he went to have his third book published, they said simply that they had no interest in doing it.

He could come back to them with his next project. The author went looking to take advantage of the fan base he built himself and fund the book that the publisher callously discarded without even testing the market for interested readers, and Pentian was where he ended up. [We’ll hit on this author, by name and in detail, in part II of this interview, folks.]

Read the rest of the article on Examiner.com here