Hey, peoples. This is a long update, but it’s also the last one I’ll be doing for quite some time, so bear / bare / beer with me.

So, I’m going to do something that seems drastic, but is in fact passion-forward (you like that? Off the dome, right there). I’m going to flat out delete chapters 1-3 (I’ll save them somewhere obviously, and maybe come back to that content for other stories). The result will be several thousand words will vanish, to be replaced by stronger pacing in a shorter, page-turning sequence of humor, violence, world-building, and character development. This is going to be baller, y’all.

Thanks to Amanda Orneck for pointing some of that stuff out as problematic. Honestly, I’ve literally been begging for feedback for months and months, and so few people bothered to say a word that I wasn’t sure what was going on. The clips on my page until today were scenes that were in order, though from different chapters. I guess since no one read the original stuff, I should have been explicit about it (a dumb mistake, but it's whatever at this point).

The new content, in all honestly, is the way the book was about three years ago. Writing in a vacuum with no one to tell you if something works means it took a LONG time to get things right, and I kept making bad decisions and adding unnecessary beats. This last fixer-upper draft is going to be the best writing I’ve ever done by far. I'll update again in a month or so with "New Chapter 2" and that may be all that goes up. If I can't hook people that quickly, I don't deserve the sales.

And, speaking of getting things right, I have secured an editor. It’s been a while of me searching and having editors I sent samples to recommend insane things like changing character names (in a friggin’ sci-fi / fantasy setting where names might be nonsense), to splitting the book into two or three so they can siphon more money from me. No thanks. I found someone whose work on a sample made me smile and nod my head at the recommended changes. How invigorating!

I’m ultra-excited to finish a sixth draft in January and send it out to a professional so he can polish my book to a bright shine at last.

Lastly, DON’T PRE-ORDER BLURRED WEAPONRY! Seriously, don’t, not even out of pity. This campaign has failed miserably. I have tried to get family involved, no one cared. I tried to appeal to the cheapness of people, no one cared. I made an informative poster about how to get the credits to buy my book for free in five minutes, and no one even gave me more than the few seconds it took to not bother. So f*** it. If I gotta do this, I’m gonna go H.A.M. I don’t give up easily, and anger at how incredibly unsupportive people in real life have been compared to strangers has only given me a fuel source.

After this campaign ends in a sad little fizzle, the countdown begins. I’m going to do a cannonball from a high roof into a deep pool and no one will miss the splash. I’m not telling anyone outside Inkshares until just before launch, and then it’s on. ON!

I’ll be on Inkshares first for everything I do after that, because I love the prospects it offers. I like YOU people out there reading or skimming through this update. You've given me more hope and faith in writing that you can imagine. I will support the Inkshares community by buying books, writing reviews on a regular basis, and recommending whatever I feel like.

Keep following, because I’m not going anywhere. If a comedian bombs on stage, he gets back on stage – that’s when you know he feels the call. I haven’t failed with this first campaign, I’ve gotten smarter. I feel the call.