May 16, 2016

Hello friend,

Sorry for the radio silence. I had forgotten how much work preparing a manuscript, even a fully written one, for the editorial process could be. The good news is; I’m but a few days away from handing in my manuscript for A God in the Shed. Even more good news is that once that’s done, I’ll be getting back to finishing off the first draft of Arch-Android, the sequel to The Life Engineered. In fact, you should probably follow the page for Arch-Android on Inkshares immediately as things will start happening there soon (like beta reader selection).

 As things are progressing on my side that doesn’t mean I still don’t need your help. I’ve recently been able to witness first hand the impact getting to 100 reviews on Amazon does for a book and it’s impressive. As of this writing, we have 83 reviews. There is no rational reason we couldn’t get to 100 in a very short amount of time. So if you’ve read The Life Engineered, don’t waste another minute; go write a review. Doesn’t even need to be long or complex. "I liked it." is enough.

 I’m also hoping for a nomination at the Dragon Awards, so if you haven’t done so yet, consider nominating The Life Engineered for Science Fiction Novel and perhaps some of my friends from Inkshares in some of the other categories (Ageless, Asteroid Made of Dragons, An Unattractive Vampire).

Finally, I want to share with you my updated writing schedule. What you see on the graphic above is the estimated release dates of my books. These only show books that I plan to fund on Inkshares along with the two books I’ll be writing for the Ed Greenwood Group. Obviously, this is subject to change. If books fund faster or slower than anticipated, or the production schedules don’t line up with my estimates, etc. However it gives you, and especially me, an idea of what I have to look forward to. Immediately when I look at it, I want to get a better distribution of publishing, but that’s something I can course correct on the way there.

I’m especially looking forward to some of the plans and ideas I have in store right now. A God in the Shed is planned as a trilogy so that will end with the third book, but The Life Engineered is more of an anthology format with recurring characters and an overarching story to tell, so I’m less sure how many books will be in that series. I have other ideas but they’re in the pre-planning stage so it’s hard to tell if they’ll be Inkshares projects or not.

As you can tell, I plan on this journey I’m taking with you to last for quite a while and I hope I’ll have your support for the duration. So far, it’s been a pleasure to travel with you and I see rough but exciting seas ahead of us. Stick around and gather your friends; the next leg of the odyssey begins soon.

Extra notes:

• Huge congratulations to Amanda Orneck for getting her novel Deus Hex Machina into the Sword & Laser Collection. Your book looks rad Amanda, glad they added you to our ranks.
  
• I also want to congratulate Tom Merritt for fully funding his time travel book, Pilot X and getting it into the Sword & Laser Collection. I hear he has someone on the inside that helped with that.
• Finally, a shout out to my friend Paul Inman who officially launched his book, Ageless a few days ago.

Thanks again,

JF