So far the responses I've gotten have been great. Jim Cobb over at Survival Weekly declares that HFJ is "...awesome drenched in win". Jim makes an especially insightful comment about my essay, The Children of Vietnam, noting how I discuss "...the interesting dichotomy of being part of a generation who grew out of the hippy and counter-culture movements, yet became fascinated with violent movies, gory books, and really what should be considered to be the early days of torture porn."
Adventure and westerns author James Reasoner writes over at Rough Edges that HFJ is "...a fine piece of work". James was, as best as I can figure, the second person to purchase the Journal, and he was kind enough to give me a lot of good advice in private about what can be done to make it better. I'm currently reading one of James' e-book westerns, The Hunted
, and it's a lot of fun.Special Forces veteran and weapons expert Jack Murphy, who can now add "Self-Published Badass" to his resume, gave a review of HFJ over at Reflexive Fire, noting "Overall, Issue One is a solid effort and much more worthy of a periodical reader’s time than what is frequently available on physical news stands". Jack's new paramilitary action novel Reflexive Fire went on sale the same day as the Journal, and if you're a fan of action, intrigue, and conspiracy, you need to check it out.
Paul Bishop over at his super-cool blog Bish's Beat put up a promotional post, and over at Amazon he was kind enough to give me a concise and almost embarrassingly good review. Bish says HFJ "...kicks off a whole new world, not only for Men's Action and Adventure novels, but for the whole concept of fan-type zines for niche interests. That said, The Hatchet Force Journals is one of the most professional entries in the field. Good articles, great interviews, and strong reviews". Bish has just re-released a couple of his own book as e-books, namely Hot Pursuit
and Deep Water
. Do the man a solid and check 'em out.I've received a number of other positive responses, both public and private, and they have all been very encouraging. I've requested from a number of professionals that they give me an "extraordinarily blunt" critique of the first issue, and even when there were a number of suggestions for improvement, as well as praises for what definitely worked, all have said they thoroughly enjoyed the Journal's debut.
With Issue #1 barely out the door, I'm already planning #2. From here on in, every issue is going to have a featured theme, plus a number of regular columns focusing in various topics. The theme for Issue 2 is going to be "21st Century Action & Adventure" and will focus on movies, books, and other adventure media from the last 10 years. I'm aiming for a release date some time in the second half of August.
Thank you all again for your support!
7 comments:
This is fantastic. Congrats!
Hi Jack,
I have a Kobo ereader, so is there any chance Hatchet Force will be for sale on Smashwords (or any other site that includes epub format)? If you make it available in that format, you have at least one more guaranteed sale :)
Cy,
My next big publishing "to-do" is to release HFJ through Smashwords so that Kobo and Nook readers can pull it down. I was actually just looking at a Kobo today over lunch - it looked pretty slick. How do you feel it compares to other readers?
The Kobo is pretty no-frills, but I'm happy with mine. It lacks the touch-screen interface of a Sony Reader (which was my first preference - in the end, I was put off by the high price and the fact that they had discontinued their current model in prep. for a new version), and the keyboard/notetaking capacity of a Kindle, but if you don't mind not having those functions I'd recommend one.
The big drawback is not being able to buy through Amazon (unless you teach yourself how to hack their format). But as I bought mine primarily to read Gutenberg ebooks (there's quite a bit of old adventure/pulp lit available there), that wasn't too big an issue.
Great! I'll be looking forward for the next issue involving the best of action and adventure. Lets see if you've got some in my lists. :-) buy aion accounts
Loved the first issue - looking forward to the next one! I actually pulled my old copies of "the survivalist" down from my bookshelf and got reacquainted with them again.
Keep up the great work!
TF, the next issue will probably be coming out in October. I'm trying to get the Commando novella out the door by the end of August/first week of September, and then it's HFJ #2 full-throttle.
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