One of my first group novel chapter sessions during the end of the first lockdown I met Matthias, and loved his use of the German language describing these creative dodo characters. For several years everyone who has known him and his dodos have loved them so much. He has spoken with me at length about his considerations to publish them. After several years of attending agent and publisher sessions, I'm not an expert by any means on determining the best path to publishing for a given book. However, I have done my research well enough to understand the considerations and perhaps that research and talking to people is the best way to determine those options.
You can lead a horse to water... I encouraged Matthias and cojolled him to attend some sessions to hear what agents said for himself about considering options to self-publish in German versus trying to query an English translation to the UK market. Well, here we are after my realization that pulling my hair out or feeling like I was pulling teeth to be heard was not worth my sanity.
Matthias has collaborated me on an original German folk lore piece, and my frustrations about not wanting to see him make mistakes on his path to publication choices was because I wanted everyone to read his story about dodos. Enough about it, so now I am writing this because the book is out. So now everyone can have an opportunity to read the story in German, any way. As I've described in my review, this is a satirical anthropomorphic world of dodo society contemplating space travel, how to get along with radical members of their friend group, and the answers to the universe, and it's brilliant.
Also if you know anything about my childhood influences, Lewis Carroll was a big part of them, who loved a good dodo and a good bit of silliness and satire.
You can find my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5334495809
And AI art is always whacky, and I tried a few options which I felt were incredibly boring, before getting this result. Obviously, I also want to promote the original book cover art.
