Award-winning author and NARUTO Actress Tara Platt Launches Campaign to Fund Interactive, Illustrated Book ZARTANA

THURSDAY OCTOBER 1st, 2015 — Tara Platt, author of the award-winning Voice-Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic, and actress (Naruto, Ben 10, The Call), is launching a crowdfunding campaign October 1st with an online book party to fund her fully-illustrated interactive book Zartana, a journal-style tale of a traveling Romani girl. The book is set a hundred years ago in the European wilderness, and takes readers along with Zartana on her adventures over the course of the year as she goes about her daily life while searching for her missing family.

“I wanted to create the type of book I wish had as a kid — a book to get lost in.” says Platt. “Zartana is a book you can climb into and be a part of.” Filled with instructions for tasks a young gypsy girl might need to master, from fishing, to making a skirt, to mapping by the stars, Zartana has fun interactive elements: pull-out recipes so readers can make the food Zartana is eating; herb cards that explain the types of flora she encounters and their uses; and even a few tarot cards and maps that help guide her journey.

To imbue the book with an exotic, timeless quality, creator Platt collaborated with illustrators from around the world, including Heavy Steam’s Peter Johnston (UK), Cards and Quests’ Francesca Baerald (Italy) and Blake Bradley (US). Zartana’s pictures literally spring from the pages via removable inserts. Each page also features hand-written calligraphy done by Blackwell & Bell Mysteries’ Maisie Yang (US), detailing Zartana’s thoughts and experiences as if the reader has picked up the adventurous young woman’s journal.

Platt’s Indiegogo Campaign (http://igg.me/at/Zartana) hopes to raise the funds for a limited first-run printing of Zartana.  The copies of Zartana offered as crowdfunding perks will be limited edition, hand-finished, signed, and numbered as collectors editions. For your $30 contribution you get “Zartana: the Book”; at $75 “Sharing Spirit,” you get a copy of the book for yourself, a copy of the book for a friend, and you contribute to a copy being donated to a local charity,; and at the highest level perk, world-famous ambidextrous artist Rob Prior (Spawn, Heavy Metal) will do a one-of-a-kind Zartana-inspired piece for you.

Zartana’s adventure kicks off with an online Indiegogo Campaign launch party hosted by writer/creator Tara Platt this Thursday October 1st, 5:00p PST/8:00p EST at https://plus.google.com/events/cg100i8uj4dv0afo4k2nucs7en0 and on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ASS_GbLUaI. There will be giveaways, including pdf’s of art from the book, a copy of Zartana, and a chance to chat with Platt during the hour-long party.

The online Indiegogo Campaign (http://igg.me/at/Zartana) is a wonderful opportunity to support creativity at its best. Everyone with an adventurous spirit needs a copy of Tara Platt’s Zartana.