Back Seat Book Club – Book Seven: Brave Men Run

Thanks for the detailed critique of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” gang!

I have a few corrections to make, if you’ll permit me.

Your show notes list “Lulu” as the publisher of the 2005 paperback edition. That’s incorrect.

The original paperback, ebook, and podcast editions of “Brave Men Run” were all published by MWS Media. Lulu was the print-on-demand supplier for the paperback edition… but the paperback hasn’t been available through Lulu since 2008.

If the three of you based your critique on the original 2005 edition, that’s an edition only available as a used book… and two editions out of date.

In 2008, a new edition of the paperback was published by Swarm Press, an imprint of Permuted Press. That paperback edition went out of print in 2012, when I opted to not renew my contract with Swarm.

A revised, expanded, definitive and canonically up-to-date edition of “Brave Men Run” will be released by MWS Media in paperback and several ebook formats later this Spring.

If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you could edit the show notes to indicate MWS Media as the publisher of the book.

I don’t think it’s my place to offer a rebuttal to specific criticisms of the book — those are your opinions, after all — but several specific criticisms were based on information that is incorrect. That’s unfortunate, since factual errors have a negative impact on the veracity and validity of the critique as a whole.

In one particularly unfortunate example, comments are repeatedly made to the effect that there would be no new books featuring the lead character of “Brave Men Run,” Nate Charters.

That tells me you guys must not have done much research for this episode, as a search of my own website or Google shows it’s been known since 2008 that “Pilgrimage” will feature Nate and characters from “Brave Men Run,” and last summer’s Kickstarter campaign for “Pilgrimage” provided even more detail on that front.

Tony’s a patron of the Kickstarter campaign, so his not knowing this is especially troubling.

There were other examples, especially involving points of criticism that hinged on reviewers mis-remembering events portrayed in the book, but they’re too numerous and nit-picky to get into. As a whole, though, they misrepresent the material, and that’s too bad.

Finally, before you recorded this episode, I offered to provide the three of you with review copies of the revised, expanded edition of “Brave Men Run” so that you would base your critique on what will soon be the only commercially available version of the book.

Unfortunately, I never heard back from anyone on that front, so your review seems to be based on the 2005 and possibly 2008 editions… or perhaps the 2005 podcast alone..?

To your credit, you do mention the upcoming revised / expanded edition in the episode, but it’s a shame your published critique will soon be at least partially obsolete..!

Be that as it may, thanks for taking the time to read “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era!”