We recently connected with Breakfield And Burkey and have shared our conversation below.
Breakfield, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Breakfield and Burkey were writing technical white papers and technical manuals for Auerbach press some 20 years ago and they did the publishing and marketing. We tired of having to update the materials on a regular basis so we thought about doing fiction with technology baked into the story. Auerbach turned our idea down so said what the heck, let’s go publish them ourselves. I mean, how hard can it be, right? Fast forward 20 years and we are here to tell you, it’s that hard. Several missteps, many poor assumptions, and lots of we’re not doing that again have brought us to today and our our publishing company ICABOD Press.
The risk was believing we could write and publish but not fully understanding that it takes a village to make a project like publishing work properly.
Breakfield, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Breakfield and Burkey – started writing non-fictional papers and books, but it wasn’t nearly as fun as writing fictional stories. They found it interesting to use the aspects of technology people are incorporating into their daily lives more and more as a perfect way to create a good guy/bad guy story with elements of travel to the various places they have visited either professionally and personally, humor, romance, intrigue, suspense, and a spirited way to remember people who have crossed paths with them. They love to talk about their stories with private and public book readings. Burkey also conducts regular interviews for Texas authors, which she finds very interesting. Her first interview was, wait for it, Breakfield. You can often find them at local book fairs or other family-oriented events.
The primary series is based on a family organization called R-Group. Recently they have spawned a subgroup that contains some of the original characters as the Cyber Assassins Technology Services (CATS) team. The authors have ideas for continuing the series in both of these tracks. They track their many characters on a spreadsheet, with a hidden avenue for the future coined The Enigma Chronicles tagged in some portions of the stories. Fan reviews seem to frequently suggest that these stories would make good television or movie stories, so the possibilities appear endless, just like their ideas for new stories.
They have book video trailers on their YouTube Channel and website, www.EnigmaSeries.com. We invite you to visit the website for FREE stuff along with samples of the books and options to purchase signed copies directly. You may also find it fascinating to check out the fun acronyms they create for their stories. Reach out to them at [email protected], Twitter@EnigmaSeries, or Facebook@TheEnigmaSeries
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
As we stated earlier, it takes a village to get a story from inside your head to print copy. Cover design generated with us and a graphical designer. Copy editor finding the mistakes we can’t see. Genre editors pointing out missed story steps. Publicist helping us get interviews to pitch our new book. Work with the webmeister to create a nice landing page on our website. Working with the voice actor to bring the story to an audio format and marketing it. Writing the book begins the journey but we needed others to help polish the story so it will sell. We started out thinking we could do everything.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Reading a heart felt review of one of our books from a reader that the world can use to judge the story and us as authors.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.EnigmaSeries.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enigmabookseries/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEnigmaSeries and https://www.facebook.com/roxanne.burkey.50
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesbreakfield/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxanneburkey/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EnigmaSeries and https://twitter.com/1rburkey
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Vz4x5ctTnx3yUhZk1OJkw
- Other: Blog posts: https://EnigmaBookSeries.com/the-enigma-chronicles/category/blog-statement/ and https://roxburkey.com/ Medium: https://medium.com/@enigmaseries
Image Credits
Graphic cover design: Rebecca Finkel – F + P Graphic Design Photographer – Ashlee Bratton