On March 12, 2019, the 132,000 word English manuscript is finished after writing nonstop from beginning to end during a gripe with fever episodes that lasted 6 weeks. While JP Sylvester was sick, not been able to move except for his brains and hands, he decided to write a story, a story that will tie up all his life’s artistic creations and God given talents. During his life, he loved, read, and watched many, many fantasy stories… the theme matched him like a glove. Now, what to write about? And he wrote and wrote until he got lost in his own creation and a world of fantasy. Not knowing what he will write the next day, or even, in the next hour, he just kept writing like possessed by a higher spirit. Reality was mixed with fantasy and he had to stop to create a calendar of events in the plot as things were becoming unmanageable. Characters were popping up here and there as vivid as watching a TV series; one movie that only him could see. Sometimes he was seeing laughing, others crying as he wrote this story full of emotional and very touching moments. He was living an adventure, his adventure, and his dream.
On April 2, 2019, JP Sylvester presents his work in an orange four hole binder with 400 pages to four school friends (A.C.G., J.A.M.D., J.C.M.M. y J.P.R.S.) and the father of one of them (J.A.R.S.), and, to his surprise, they decided to invest and help this story come true. They founded Sylvester’s Co.
The next step was to search for an editor. JP Sylvester never wrote a book before; so, he knew his writing needed plenty of grammatical corrections, but the story structure was solid. For his vast experience and topic proximity, the manuscript was given to the American editor John David Kudrick who bring the writings to a much higher level.
While the editing process was on its way, they started searching for US literary agents and editorials. We contacted almost 100 with no luck. About 40% did at least responded declining. Tough times. Even though JP Sylvester is a novel writer with no contacts or references in that area, he persists day after day while working on a parallel project: searching for artist to create some of the book characters. When he wrote the story, the plot, places, people were already in his mind, like in a movie. He always thought that the book in reality should have been a movie or at least an animated film.
Many illustrators applied for the tasks at hand but only a few were selected. As the characters started to develop and appeared, with as many as five illustrators working at the same time, new ideas came to mind: a boardgame. JP Sylvester decided to design a boardgame that will follow the book in its battles and that will complement almost literally the writings. The whole process will take over one year to see it finished as the artists could not be hired as full time employees but as freelancers during their spare time, and always fighting with other priorities.
On December 5, 2019 the final version of the manuscript is ready for publishing, but JP Sylvester does not wish to auto publish but to go the traditional way. He still has faith that someone will respond satisfactory to his story. John David did a fantastic job with the work and now the manuscript has reached 141,400 words. JP Sylvester starts translating this last version from English to Spanish until January 21, 2020 that the new manuscript is sent to Spanish corrector Víctor J. Sanz.
The search for literary agents and editorials starts again but now in Spain. In April 20, 2020 we received the first editorial offers for the Spanish version. After evaluating some at hand, we decide to go with Publishway as the editorial for Spain’s market. After many corrections, and proofreading the manuscript in Spanish, on July 14, 2020 the editorial gives the green light to print the book. It will be ready in 8 weeks (Editorial Publishway España; 1st edition: September, 2020; 594 pages; ISBN: 978-989-52-8619-5).
Following the editorial advice we start our pre-launching campaign to build audience. We start an account in YouTube, Instagram and become more active in Facebook creating daily publications with the characters of the book that are ready and waiting for the time we build up the boardgame: 31 fantasy characters, 10 battle illustrations, play strategy tested and printing materials, quotes and samples requested. Only the top box illustration is pending for been finished. Every minute is taken and busy on the final countdown.
The launch day is approaching, and the nerves are climbing to have everything in good image. After a couple of weeks of work, the website graphics and structure is looking good and opens up its doors to the public bringing in some characters that have not properly been presented anywhere else yet. In one week everything will match up.