Aug 17, 2018

Greetings Friends. 

I’ll be reaching out to each one of you sometime in the next week to express my appreciation for your support so far, but for now I’ll simply say many, many, many thanks for getting behind this project. It means more to me than you can ever know. 

The sci-fi-horror novel BREATHLESS is now available for pre-order. 

Please consider: 

If you personally find an additional three people -- three friends or family members --  who might be interested enough to purchase this yarn, we could have this thing on its way to being published in a week. 

Here’s a bit of context regarding just how exhausting this project has been! 

I spent four years writing this thing. Four grueling, tedious years stealing brief moments in a basement closet for one hour each night after work and after getting my kid to fall asleep. The witching hour, between 10pm and midnight. That’s when all the magic happened. 

When the manuscript was finished, I crossed all fingers and toes and hurled it into the crowded thoroughfare of genre fiction. Within a month I was signed by literary agent Mark Gottlieb with Trident Media, who then spent a year trying to find a home for it. He wasn’t able turn up anything, so he handed the manuscript back and wished me luck. 

And I was dropped from our agreement. 

I then went to every genre publisher I could find who accepted non-agented, unsolicited manuscripts. I had several manuscript requests, and within two months, I was offered a contract with TCK publishing. 

Of course I signed. 

I had several phone conferences with the owner of TCK and his editors over the following month. They eventually asked if I would be willing to cut the novel in half and write an additional two sequels (because series authors sell more books than standalone authors, is what they told me). 

I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea, but if they were paying I would certainly try. 

The problem was they gave me a June 1, 2019 deadline. 

One year. 

Remember what I said earlier? About how long it took me to write this ONE novel? 

That’s right. It took about four years. 

TCK wanted me to basically write four books within a year. 

I told them that I would certainly try, but that because of how long BREATHLESS took to write -- because I have a full-time job and family to take care of -- I wasn’t confident that I could write that much so quickly. 

We had two more phone conferences after that, and then there was silence from them for a month. 

I reached out to my editor and asked if everything was going okay and if she needed anything. 

And then I was informed that my contract was made solvent. My timeframe for project submissions didn’t meet their publishing calendar. 

And I was dropped from the agreement. 

This was pretty devastating. 

I kinda lost all drive to write anything after that, and I don’t think I would have been that bothered by the project failing if I hadn’t have come that close. But I DID get that close. I got so close I could taste it. And the disappointment was almost too much to deal with. 

So I just stopped writing, for almost a year. I just felt like I was going to put another four years of my life into something that was just going to fail anyway, and that killed my drive. 

Then one day I found a book at Barnes and Noble. i paged through the first couple chapters, and it was great. I purchased it, and quickly devoured it. Finished it in about two days. 

The book was called The Punch Escrow, by Tal M Klein. 

I discovered that it was an Inkshares publication. 

I’d never heard of Inkshares before. 

I checked it out, and I what I found sounded pretty cool to me. It was a crowdfund, like kickstarter for books, except it was free to use by both backers and content creators. It was reader-driven publishing, and for my money there’s no better measuring stick for gauging the value of piece of writing. It all boils down to readers anyway. That’s the whole POINT of publishing. 

So I thought, meh, I’ll give it a shot. Why not? 

And here we are. All caught up. 

We have until November 14 to obtain 750 pre-orders. That is very intimidating. 

But I have you, dear followers, all 138 of you. My ace-cards. A WHOLE DECK OF EM. 

This is my calling-all-cars moment. My last ditch effort to see this thing through before I slush it for god knows how long. 

I have YOU. 

And, like I said, if each one of you found at least three people to place an order, we could have this thing on its way to the bookshelf in about a week, and then I can finally get off this roller coaster and move on with my life (haha). 

Again, many thanks for bringing me this far. No matter what happens, I’m very grateful for your support. Truly. Honestly, I am. If you need anything from me, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me -- shaneplindemoen@yahoo.com 

Please let me know if there are questions, and I guess I’ll see on the other side. 

--Shane Lindemoen