Spookies Books 1-4

Chilling children's tales by multi-award winning author, Robert Zangari. For fans of the original Twilight Zone & classic Goosebumps.

Hello, Robert here.  Welcome to my first solo crowdfunding project! I'm happy to present a set of fictional tales for children that I originally told to my children as bedtime stories called, Spookies™.

***

Funding Period Ends: March 27th, 2025 at 6:00 PM (MST)

Fulfillment begins April 3rd, 2025 with eBook delivery

Fulfillment should end by end of May 2025

Spookies™ is a series of children's fantasy thriller/horror stories set in the Legends of Kalda universe, but taking place on Earth. Some of mine and my father's readers know that my dad's original story ideas started as a portal fantasy.  In the 90's version, a father and son are whisked from a camping trip in the Unitas and taken to world of Varland also known to our Kaldean characters (such as Iltar and Cornar) as Kalish.

These stories take that original premise of bridging our world to Kalda, but with certain elements of the Kalda universe bleeding into our world.

Each of these four stories are stand alone (except for When Corn is Cursed, that is part of a trilogy of stand alone stories I've told my kids).  The stories' protagonists are children, between the ages of 9 and 12, with adult side characters.

I originally started telling these stories in 2021 to my three oldest children as bedtime stories (they were then 3, 6, and 9).  I'd read a bunch of book series to them (The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks, Goosebumps, Animorphs) and they wanted more similar stories, so I started making them up.

The first few nights, I just told them the stories and stopped when the last kid fell asleep.  When my wife realized what I was doing she urged me to record them. Unfortunately, I had already told two tales by then but I started a fresh one and recorded it on my phone.  Most of those stories revolved around a fictional summer camp where two platinum dragons from Kalda are hiding out as the camp's directors, but I branched out with these stand alone stories because they were easier to keep track of, and shorter, too.  When Corn is Cursed was the first of those tales. Those two platinum dragons, however, do make some cameo appearances throughout the Spookies™ stories.

For the last couple years my wife, Tamila, has asked me to turn these stories into physical books to give to our children to read.  I had no idea how I was going to do that and I tried a few speech to text options, but that just made a whole mess of a word document.  It was a solid block of 20,000+ words and that just stressed me out.

So, after The Dark Necromancer was finished I decided to look into getting the stories actually written down.  I chose to listen to the dictated recordings at half speed and manually typed every word.  To my surprise, the process was actually smooth.  And it didn't take that long: about twelve hours of transcribing per story.

Then, when my author friend Rob York was running a Kickstarter for his horror film, Curse of Crom 2 (Sept 2024), I collaborated with him to help add value to the campaign's rewards. In addition to offering my epic fantasy books in eBook format I wanted to give something else to my readers who backed the campaign.  I'd just finished transcribing When Corn is Cursed and I figured it'd be a fitting reward.

Shortly after that in Oct 2024, I began looking at all the stories I told and realized I had twenty children's books worth of recordings.  That's roughly 37,000 words longer than The Dark Necromancer.

By the end of that month I had the first 3 stories transcribed.  And that's how Spookies™ was born.

Some of you might be wondering how I was able to crank out four stories right after finishing The Dark Necromancer (that took years to complete) but these were really just completed stories sitting on a digital shelf.  

With the speed at which we'll release these I can anticipate the accusation that these stories are "AI generated" but they're not. I told and transcribed them myself.  In fact, I'll have the dictated files as add-ons you can purchase on a separate page.

Now with that out of the way, let me explain my process for these stories because it's different than writing a Tales of the Amulet book.

All the "creative" parts happened while telling the stories to the kids over the last three years, so I had time to build each of them in my head.  I often went a couple weeks between telling each part of a story.  Throughout the years I would get story ideas and jot them down, make a quick premise/outline, but leave the details of the story to flow as I told them. I would typically tell a story across four nights, recording an hour to an hour and a half at a time. Having an active audience helped me gauge the tone and pacing and where to guide the story. Sometimes those nights were back to back, others they were once a week.

Now for the transcription portion.  When I started in Oct of 2024 I decided to just listen and type what I was hearing.  The first few stories took around 15 hours to transcribe, but I sped up with each one.  When transcribing I do make a few edits but mostly continuity/developmental edits.  Sometimes I'll pause and expand on something, but that's a quick process.

Once the manuscript is produced, my own editing process takes about another 8 or so hours, plus a final listen through (about 2 hours) of the manuscript before it's ready for professional edits. Since these stories are so short with only a handful of characters my editing process is rather quick.

All in all, it takes me around 25 to 30 hours to create one of these stories in book format, from dictation to my final edit.

When my wife began working in the late summer of 2024 I became the primary parent at home.  My actual writing time became very limited to about an hour to 2 hours a day before my wife headed off to work, if I got up early enough.  There have been a few nights where I've been up with sick kiddos.  Working on a Tales of the Amulet book is very time and energy intensive, so any progress on the next novel in that series is regulated to those early hours, if I get them. Needless to say, it's been pretty slow.

But Spookies™ has been a great project to work on while taking care of the children, especially when the baby goes down for a nap and I still have my toddler around.  I can pause the recorded story at any time to take care of things, and I can keep an eye on the kids while transcribing.

So, since Oct I've been able to transcribe and edit one Spookies™ story a week to week and a half.  That's right. I've nearly transcribed all twenty of those Spookies™ stories and the kids are still wanting more.  I've got another twenty story ideas, and I will probably make another twenty more.  Ideally, I'd like 64. Why? Because 1) it's 2 more than R.L. Stine's classic Goosebumps series, and 2) it divides evenly by 4 for box sets.

As for the covers, I've digitally painting them myself in Photoshop. Like with my covers for Beneath the Frozen Wastes, the first edition of Untold Tales of Kalda and my Rising Wonder anthologies, I use a variety of techniques from photo manipulating stock art/my own work, photo bashing, and digitally painting with my XP-Pen tablets. I have a subscription to Envato Elements and monthly credits to Adobe Stock with our business's Adobe Creative Cloud membership, so those two places are where I source my stock images and 3D assets.

Each of these covers takes me around 20 hours to complete, and I've mostly worked on them with my kids around.  For instance, I'll get all the kids together and we have "drawing time" in my office. Because I have multiple pen tablets it's been easy for me to take the illustrating around the house.  I'll even work on them in the evenings while my wife and I watch T.V. or a movie.  She crafts and I draw.

I wanted a particular look for the covers, and I knew if I hired them out it would cost more than I could afford at the moment, especially since I want to do full-wrap illustrations.  We're looking at at least $2,000 to $4,000 a cover (that translates to $4,000 to $8,000 raised with crowdfunding).  For four covers that's $16,000 to $32,000 we'd need to raise.  I felt that was far too much of a jump from $3,600.

I've been drawing all my life, so I consider it a talent of mine.  I started digitally painting in 2020 and for the past few years I've been refining my digital art techniques.  But it's something I only do for myself and my own publications.  I'm not taking commissions. Sorry.

Four children's fantasy thriller/horror books: When Corn is Cursed, Don't Go to the Mall, It Came from Under the Shed, and My Grandpa is a Mad Scientist.

Each of these stories are around 155-160 pages, between 21,000 and 23,000 words. They feature young protagonists, male and female, between the ages of 9 and 12. 

While each of them are stand alone tales they fit into the overarching Legends of Kalda Universe but take place here on Earth and adjoining alternate dimensions/planes of existence.

And the best part, the books are actually ready this time.  We're raising funds to repay the costs for editing and formatting.  So, once the funding dealine is over we'll begin fulfilling your orders.

I'd like to get this project fulfilled fast because I intend to do a rapid release of these stories once a month until all twenty stories are released. That is planned for August of 2025, and I'm hoping to run another crowd funding project or a Kickstarter (if The Dark Necromancer is fulfilled) in June for the second set of Spookies™.

Here are the blurbs for each of the stories in this bundle:

When Corn is Cursed: Elizabeth Weller is the new kid at school. But rural Idaho is far from the suburbs of Chicago, especially when everywhere you look there’s corn.
    But something is wrong with the corn.
    Cobs aren’t supposed to have wiggling black and brown strand, right?
    But the odd corn isn’t the strangest thing Elizabeth’s seen. Nearly everyone she’s met has deep wrinkles in their foreheads, like they’ve been frowning too much.
    And every night in the fields outside her new home an eerie cry carries through the air.

Don't Go to the Mall: Mike always goes to the mall with his friends after school. It’s the place to hang out. Everyone is there, even the bullies.
    But when the mall opens a new hall with a future arcade called the Scale Cade, Mike and his friends sneak a peek inside only to find a human-sized lizard in the construction zone.
    No one believes them, of course, except Mike’s Grandma who has heard rumors of Lizardmen sightings taking place long before the mall was built.
    Has Mike spent one too many days in the mall... or have Lizard People really made their home beneath the Scale Cade?

It Came from Under the Shed: Lucy’s fascination with dirt was far beyond the average kid. In fact, it surpassed most adults.
    So, when her family builds a new shed at the back of their property she takes every soil sample she can find. But there is something strange in the dirt: wiggling strands of silicon.
    Then, the day after the shed is built she finds strange hand formations in the fresh soil: a hand with six fingers. The following day, feet appear on the other side of the shed, as if someone was squashed by the new construction. But the prints aren’t there for long.
    No one but Lucy’s father believes her, at least not until a neighbor is found dead with silicon in her mouth.

My Grandpa is a Mad Scientist: Gabe is on summer break after seventh grade and his mom is making him spend the vacation time with his reclusive grandpa from out west.
    Luckily, his cousin Jake will be there. Gabe had only met him once, years ago, but he couldn’t remember much of him.
    To Gabe’s surprise, he wasn’t staying in a hovel but a lavish castle, with dozens of guest rooms, a full-sized theater, a private tennis courts, and a detached garage with dozens of sports cars.
    With plenty of things to do there wasn’t time to cause any mischief, that is until Gabe and Jake find out their grandfather has a hidden laboratory with all sorts of bizarre experiments.

Every Backer, regardless of their reward tier, will get the following for pledging toward this campaign:

• Your Name in the Acknowledgements
• Digital Art Pack with High Res images of the cover art and interior art.

Get the first 4 Spookies™ books by Robert Zangari in eBook format (pdf, epub, mobi) delivered via BookFunnel. Plus your name in the acknowledgements, high-res digital wallpapers of the cover art.

Get the first 4 Spookies™ books by Robert Zangari in Paperback and eBook format (pdf, epub, mobi) delivered via BookFunnel.  Plus your name in the acknowledgements, high-res digital wallpapers of the cover art. Paperbacks will be numbered, starting at #11.

Get the first 4 Spookies™ books by Robert Zangari in Hardcover (lettered) and eBook format (pdf, epub, mobi) delivered via BookFunnel. Plus your name in the acknowledgements, high-res digital wallpapers of the cover art. Hardcovers will be lettered, starting at lowercase "a".

Get the first 4 Spookies™ books by Robert Zangari in eBook format (pdf, epub, mobi) delivered via BookFunnel, as well as every future Spookies™ Book published in eBook, a Spookies VIP T-Shirt.  Plus your name in the acknowledgements and high-res digital wallpapers of the cover art. 

Get the first 4 Spookies™ books by Robert Zangari in Paperback and eBook format (pdf, epub, mobi) delivered via BookFunnel, as well as every future Spookies™ Book published in eBook and Paperback, a Spookies™ VIP T-Shirt.  Plus your name in the acknowledgements and high-res digital wallpapers of the cover art. Paperbacks will be numbered, starting from #1, and your entire collection will match that number.

Get the first 4 Spookies™ books by Robert Zangari in Hardcover and eBook format (pdf, epub, mobi) delivered via BookFunnel, as well as every future Spookies™ Book published in eBook and Hardcover, a Spookies VIP T-Shirt.  Plus your name in the acknowledgements, high-res digital wallpapers of the cover art. Hardcovers will be lettered, starting from "A", and your entire collection will match that letter.

I'll be doing things a little differently with this campaign and making limited quantities of the physical rewards: 500 for Paperback and 88 for Hardcover.

The first 10 of each of those edition types will be given to the Spookies VIP tiers, so if you select the regular "Paperback Bundle" and you're the first one, your copies will be numbered #11.  490 paperback bundles will be available to the "Paperback Bundle" tier.

For the Hardcovers, we will be doing lettering.  So your title pages will be labeled with "a" or "aa" or "aaa". For those selecting the regular "Hardcover Bundle" your copies would start with lower case lettering "a".  The 27th backer for the "Hardcover Bundle" tier will have "aa" and the 53rd will have "aaa".

The Spookies VIP Hardcovers will have capital lettering, "A-J".  Future campaigns will start with "K" if all 10 are selected and so on, and eventually will have "AA" and "AAA".

While I could get these crowdfunded individually, I wanted to try bundling. Plus, with the amount of books in Spookies™ it'll be much faster to do bundles of 4.

Another reason I would like to do four at a time are custom slipcases.  I grew up collecting Goosebumps and loved it when they came boxed together in a slipcase. Luckily, producing such a slipcase is relatively cheap, so we'll be adding those as stretch goals for both paperback and hardcover.

Although I originally made these for my children I eventually realized I could publish them. It'd give me a whole new series, one that could cater to a different audience than my adult fantasy novels.

While I can do a lot of publishing tasks myself, I still need an editor.  Every authors, no matter how clean of a draft they write, needs another pair of professional eyes. Otherwise, you just look dumb.

The purpose of this crowdfunding campaign is to raise funds to pay for the editing and hire eBook formatting.  Each of these books will cost around $350 to edit and another $20-50 for formatting and $60 for a Lexile Level grading (more on Lexile Levels below).  The rest of the funds raised will cover fulfillment.

Anything extra raised beyond those expenses will help offset any printing costs for my in person signing events, and produce some extra goodies for backers.

Also, I won't be selling these books direct on our website after this crowdfunding period.  So if you want a signed copy, this will be the only way to get them.  (Unless you come to one of my book signings--I will be selling them in person).

Because we offered the audiobook of The Dark Necromancer on our last Kickstarter we will not be able to run another Kickstarter campaign until that is delivered, and that's not going to be happening until mid to late 2025.

Also, I'm trying an experiment to see how well crowdfunding can be done outside of a major platform like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, BackerKit, or GoFundMe. It's definitely risky, but I want to see if this can be a new way for authors to generate interest in their works.

With this experiment comes some slightly cheaper prices for you, and there's no worry of it not funding because 1) we have the project done, and 2) your order secures your rewards because payment is processed immediately.

Plus, by doing it this way I'm not tying up any future Kickstarter campaigns.

Lexile Level is a comprehensive grading system that ranges from 0L to 2000L. It is a more accurate system than the Flesch-Kincaid grading system that I currently use with ProWritingAid.

Because I want to make this books as accessible as possible, and since Utah's schools use Lexile Level grading, I need to have an accurate Lexile Level for EACH book. For the entire book series that's over $4,000 I'll need to spend. So we're baking the cost of each Lexile Level grade ($60 per book) into this campaign.

With a goal of $3,600 that breaks down to $900 a book.  As mentioned above, the editing will cost around $350 plus another $20-$50 for formatting and $60 for Lexile Level grading. That leaves $440-$470 to fulfill the physical rewards.

Like with my Kickstarters, I've built this campaign so that 50% of the money from the physical tiers cover expenses and fulfillment and the rest goes toward production cost.

In order to make this project a reality we'd need around 60-70 people to back it.  I'm confident we can get there.

Essentially the money we raise is going to pay back the cost of editing, and depending on how much we raise we'll be able to have the next batch of four books edited, and potentially enough to do a medium-ish sized print run (dropping the cost per book down by $2 a piece).

Not at this time. Although if we raise enough money we could potentially have them produced.

Each book will be around 2-3 hours of audio, which will come out to around $1,200-$1,800 depending on the narrator. In terms of money raised on this campaign we'd need around $2,400 to $3,600 for each audiobook, a total of $9,600 or $14,400.

If we managed to raise over $40,000 on this campaign then we'd be able to produce the audiobooks, have enough set aside to edit the 20 current Spookies™ books, and have enough to do medium-ish print runs of each book.

IF we do manage to raise enough to produce them I will send you audiobooks of these books for free via BookFunnel.

Here are the stretch goals for this campaign, starting at $4,000.

• $4,000 special Spookies™ bookplate, signed by the author.
• $5,000 Slipcases for paperbacks.
• $7,000 four exclusive bookmarks.
• $9,000 character cards with bonus lore on the backs.
• $11,000 additional interior art (4 pieces total, 1 per book).  Drawn by me.  Each added to the art pack.
• $13,000 Slipcases for hardcovers.
• $17,000 Personalized messages in each physical book, unlock T-shirt for Spookies™ Club Member purchase-able on a separate page.
• $21,000 Additional Spookies™ Book (S.E. #1) in eBook format for EVERY BACKER (a $4 value).  Paperback and hardcover will be purchase-able at a 30% discount ($7 and $17 respectively) on a separate page.
  
• $25,000 Expanded Character Cards with bonus lore that is akin to a full page story across 9 cards, a total of 45 cards plus the character card set (a $5 value).  Unlock add-ons for additional Character Card decks.

Additional Spookies™ Book will not be released at retailers at this time and will be available on this Crowdfunding Campaign and at select signing events in the future.

For those curious on the appearance of the Spookies™ Club Member T-shirts, here are some images as well as a sizing guide for adults and children:

These images should not be confused with the Spookies™ VIP Club Member T-Shirts.  Those will have a similar look but with slightly different lettering and layout.

Thank you for taking a look at this unconventional crowdfunding campaign. I hope you back it and join me in producing Spookies™.

Sincerely,

Robert Zangari