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Its been one year since “Long Live The Emperor” was published and we are shocked how fast this year has gone by!

2020 was a rough year to publish new works due to the global meltdown of the pandemic.  We prevailed however in many ways despite the difficulties getting traction for marketing due to communication lines being clogged up with collective panic and fear! 

Looking back had we known what was going happen after we did our official release we may have postponed until the dust settled and things calmed down.  Even as we write this post the chaos is still spinning in many ways and we have been informed supply chain issues will be the next wave of this fragile human system collapse! 

We are dedicated to the long haul however so over this past year we have cultivated extreme patience and tenacity.  Today we were presented with the “Hang In There” Award:  For Persistence and Perseverance in the Face of Ridiculous Odds!  

We have made excellent progress on scripting Lateefa of Mirea and illustration has begun as well as many pages of illustrations of Book II of the Tales of Orlen Series “Mercenary and the Crystal Eye“

E-book sales of Long Live The Emperor have been successful enough to pay for ongoing marketing expenses which is wonderful and we are looking at the possibility of translating the work for international publication.   We are so grateful to everyone who has purchased the e-book and supported our launch of our studio.  We look forward to sharing more in the coming months as summer comes to a close and we begin a new year! 

The peak of summer is always our favorite time of year.  We have been of course working on our new upcoming books in between riding our new electric bikes in the mountains and river-boarding to cool off from the hot days.  The long days are filled with many inspirations and we are grateful to all of our friends and family who are supporting our work.  

Our Metatron marketing campaign is doing great and we are so thankful for Metatron’s help with getting “Long Live The Emperor” shared within his noble community of the sword! 

We spoke in our last post that we intend to try a new approach to publishing –

“Our works will always be tailored to an audience that have high standards based on sound values/principles and who have an appreciation of classical beauty as well as a love of history.  This audience we will want to form our community around is a ‘niche’ audience so to speak and we want to have a more personalized connection with them rather than blocking them into a mass audience and labeling them ‘fans’.  We want to be able to call those who appreciate and support our works ‘allies’ and friends.  That means we will not be going through established channels like Amazon or participating in mass marketing.” 

Our desire to share our works outside of the mainstream publishing paradigm has many built in challenges of marketing and distribution that we will be navigating in the present and coming years.  One of the biggest challenges seems to be succeeding in simple communication via email.   We have decided we are going to go back to old fashioned ‘snail mail’ correspondence because it seems like emails just get lost in some kind of a vacuum despite our best efforts to ‘google’ verify and all the other ‘safe guards’ that they claim are needed so that one’s email doesn’t end up in spam!    There is something charming about putting letters in envelopes and placing stamps upon them which we enjoy.  Our world has become too crazy fast and therefore it seems many opportunities are simply being missed because everyone is in hyper drive.  

The second biggest challenge is in getting print on demand (POD) for printed versions of our work streamlined so that when someone orders a hard copy of a book it can be easily drop shipped from the printer at a cost that is reasonable.  We are working on getting “Long Live The Emperor” printed so that folks can order a copy easily without us having to bulk order and then mail ourselves.  Many of our recent sales have been international so if we cannot find good overseas POD we won’t be able to offer printed versions to folks in other countries – the shipping would cost more than the book! 

Our family publishing company – ReGenesis Media – is doing outreach on this matter and we hope to have something resolved by this coming autumn.  It will be wonderful to be able to offer printed versions.  Until then we will continue to offer our works in simple e-book downloads and we thank everyone who has purchased our work and appreciate your wonderful reviews! 

Here is the latest Metatron video “Long Live The Emperor” sponsored…

After months of working on promoting “Long Live The Emperor” and doing outreach to individuals who we deeply respect we are so happy to announce our first promotional campaign on the “Metatron” YouTube channel.  Jaron has been a big fan of Metatron’s shows and has learned a great deal about history, languages, and medieval weapons/armors which inspired him while working on “Long Live The Emperor”. 

When developing a marketing strategy for all Summer Time Studios works we had deep discussions about ‘what audiences do we wish to reach’ and ‘what methods of marketing and distribution do we wish to use’.  We have always walked our own path in life and when we looked at the mainstream publishing and marketing methods we made a decision that we don’t want to participate in that paradigm. 

Our works will always be tailored to an audience that have high standards based on sound values/principles and who have an appreciation of classical beauty as well as a love of history.  This audience we will want to form our community around is a ‘niche’ audience so to speak and we want to have a more personalized connection with them rather than blocking them into a mass audience and labeling them ‘fans’.  We want to be able to call those who appreciate and support our works ‘allies’ and friends.  That means we will not be going through established channels like Amazon or participating in mass marketing. 

We want our works to be promoted by people we respect and admire which Metatron is at the top of the list.  We are proud to be able to call Metatron our first official Ally on this path of bringing our creative works to our human family!  Please visit his channel to support his wonderful work! 

Here is the full video that has our first official promotion in it at the 3:38

Since 2013 Summer Time Studios has been working on a series of ideas that would eventually become Jade Green’s literary graphic novel series “Lateefa of Mirea“.  

This epic tale is the creation of Summer Time Studios Green Brothers over the years with both contributing to the characters, plots, and world building.  In 2019 Jade Green took the helm on its final development and has been writing and illustrating the series for its final release and publication.

Series Description:

“Within the Celestial Family of the Apsu there is a great world known as Tiamat.  As a blue and green gem Tiamat hovers in the heavens and upon Her lives the creatures known as the Tohn.”  

The Tohn can be somewhat of an enigma existing between that of a wild beast and a civilized creature.  Being happy to live amongst the grasses of the vast plains of Mirea or to build small settlements and farm the land the Tohn are possessed with great curiosity and have a love of learning.  They could have a great civilization if they wanted to focus but their minds often dwell in the happy-go-lucky-silly-playfulness that exists in their hearts.  The Tohn also share the world of Tiamat with the macho yet kind ‘pig’ like Gonahein and the proud and noble Griffins as well as many other fantastic creatures. 

The story of Lateefa of Mirea takes place within this world where we will follow Lateefa and her friends as she seeks to understand the Tohn and her place amongst them because although she is a Tohn she was raised among the Griffins.   Lateefa of Mirea is a Fairy tale Mythos having the levity and fantastic nature of a fairy tale yet grounded in the foundation of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Sumerian Mythos.  

The first book is currently being illustrated and will be completed by sometime in 2022. 

We at Summer Time Studios have celebrated Earth Day every year since we were born with our mother who has taught us that ‘Earth Day is about caring for our community” which is not just our human family but all life on our beautiful planet.  We have been sad to see this annual celebration get hijacked by ‘climate change’ and other political crazies over the years because it has robbed people from being able to simply come together in honor and celebration of the beauty of our world, the appreciation of our families/communities, and do fun things like learn about our big blue planet in this mysterious and amazing universe. 

When we were little we would sometimes spend this day simply choosing a place to go that we could do a clean up project or have a picnic with friends.  Our mother sometimes was part of organizing events or festivals but she left that arena when the ‘green’ movement strayed away from happy celebrations of life to lecturing about how doomed we all are. 

One of our favorite songs that we feel really captures the spirit of Earth Day was created by a composer Glyn Lehmann and performed by a children’s choir.  The animation in the video was created by children from Marryatville Primary School, South Australia in 2008.  We wanted to share it with everyone on this Earth Day to help lift spirits and bring smiles!

At the beginning of March Summer Time Studios publisher, ReGenesis Media, submitted “Long Live The Emperor” for consideration of nominations for the 2020 graphic novel and comic book awards.   The title was submitted to be considered for the following categories:

• Best new series
• Best publication for kids
• Best publication for teens
• Best graphic album–new material
• Best writer/artist
• Best painter
• Best coloring

“The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry, are handed out each year in a gala ceremony at Comic-Con International: San Diego. Named for renowned cartoonist Will Eisner (creator of “The Spirit” and pioneer of the graphic novels), the Awards are given out in more than two-dozen categories covering the best publications and creators of the previous year.”  Official nominees will be announced in May and winners will be announced at the annual gala ceremony in July!  

Needless to say we are very excited to be able to participate in this prestigious contest with our first publication and are hopeful to have this first Summer Time Studios publication recognized for its high quality art and story. 

We are happy to announce that the script for Book II of the Tales of Orlen Series is completed and Jaron has started the illustrations and writing of “The Mercenary & The Crystal Eye”.   

The paperback and limited edition hardcover copies of “Long Live The Emperor” will be available for order next month!

After researching and reviewing printers and print on demand services we are super excited to be able to offer the beautiful 8 1/2 x 11 copies of our first publication to our followers and fans.

We will be doing a ‘limited edition’ print run of 100 hardcover copies signed by author alongside the release of the regular paperback.

We have been discussing the possibility of doing a ‘virtual book signing” for people who purchase one. We have been thinking about how fun it would be to set up a calendar where each buyer could book their date/time slot and have a zoom call with author where he would chat and sign the book prior to mailing it out. We think it would be a great way to meet readers and personalize the experience.

We are adding a subscription newsletter to the website so anyone interested can sign up to receive notifications and eventually we would like to have a Summer Time Community network developed where fans could comment on things and interact with us more easily.

Thank you to all of our readers and fans who have supported us during our launch year in 2020 and we look forward to releasing more works in the coming year!

Traditions are the foundation of family, community, and culture.

Our whole life we have celebrated the Winter Solstice which is the shortest day and longest night of the year.   It is when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky.  Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere of Earth is the Summer Solstice in the southern hemisphere and vice-versa with the Summer Solstice.

In the winter we are closed in from the cold and we it is in those dark days that we spend a great deal of time on our creative work.

Beginning December 1st though we set up our dinner table with our Solstice Candles – 22 total.  On the first day of December we light the first candle and each day after we light one more to the grand finale of light on the 22nd of December.

To us it give us the warm light as the dark nights get longer and we always prepare special meals with the family to feast, tell stories, and enjoy the passing of each day.

On the 22nd day the table is lit up like a miniature bonfire and it is on this day we exchange gifts and do some other special thing that marks the celebration which is different every year.

This season we watched some great movie classics almost every night and we also baked more sweets like chocolate eclairs and zucchini bread.   We grew a big garden last summer so we have a ton of frozen and canned food that we harvested.  We grew potatoes this year for the first time and made french fries which we bagged and froze so those are super yummy with some of our meals.

It’s nice to be able to remember the garden time and sunlight during this time of year and eating the food from our garden warms our bellies and spirits.

This year we were also researching other holiday traditions around the world and came across the Russian “Santa”.  We were blown away at the awesome outfit he wears in this huge country where their days are much colder and nights are much longer than our own latitude on Earth.  We love to learn about other cultures and their histories and winter is a good time to spend researching and learning.

This year was very special to us and we hope all of our readers and extended family around the world were able to light the fires of their own hearths and celebrate with loved ones in whatever traditions they have that affirm the most important things…family, friends, health, community, love, and peace on Earth.

Winter may be just officially declared but after today the days will be getting longer by the minute which means Spring is coming and we are now entering the days of the Return of the Light!

The coming Spring’s garden planning is already beginning for us here so the next couple months until Spring Equinox will go by faster as we get busy doing things outside again.

We send our blessings and prayers for everyone’s happiness and well being!

Back in 2018 before YouTube became a censored monopoly and destroyed the lives of content creators by setting new and unfair monetization rules we had ambitions to start our own show called “Art – Movies and Us”.  We worked for months planning and creating videos to post and then the new rules came down so we put the whole plan aside to focus on our graphic novels and other creations.

Recently we learned about a new video platform called “Rumble” that is gaining in popularity every day due to its uncensored and fair monetization policies for content creators.  Click here to check it out!

We are now working on launching this new show on the ReGenesis Media Channel – we will post updates when we launch our first official video. Until then we have uploaded a fun video we created awhile ago and look forward to sharing more soon!