Dec 16, 2016

Hello all, my apologies for keeping you all in suspence since my last minute plea  in the final moments of the competition. 

It was an unbelievably close competition in the end. Julia, Chase, and Leslie all campaigned incredibly hard over the last 24 hours, and in the end first place was separated by just one pre-order. One!

I am humbled to report that Human Resources managed to hold on to first place, if only by the slimmest of margins. You can read the official announcement here. My unending thanks to everyone who pre-ordered, tweeted, posted on facebook, sent out emails, cajoled, or otherwise helped us achieve this outcome. In particular, I owe my deepest thanks to my wife and my parents, who have been a constant source of encouragement through the campaign and who have also toiled away at driving sales for me.

I offer my heartfelt congratulations to the other winners. Now that the competition is over, I urge you all to have a look at their books, as they look great. In particular, check out King’s Daughter by my friend Julia Bobkoff - winner of Best Drama in the formal judging. This is the saga of a viking queen that will absolutely grip you. The other two on the podium are How to Kiss Like a Movie Star (Leslie Nipkow) and The Loving Wrath of Eldon Quint (Chess Pletts). Both very different styles of book and both worth checking out.

What happens now?

Now the real work begins. I need to get the manuscript ready for Inkshares to start editing. I have taken the month of January off from my job to focus on this task and plan to turn the manuscript in by the end of that month. After that, the entire editing and production process takes approximately 12 months to get books on shelves. This may sound like a long time, but there is a lot involved in producing a quality book - the Inkshares team have written a post explaining the details here.

I’ll continue to keep everyone informed of progress and time frames as the process progresses. During the competition my updates have been weekly - now that the competition is over I’ll drop that back to approximately monthly (unless there is an important announcement). However, I am always happy to engage with people - if you have questions or want to chat the novel page has links for different ways to reach me.

Thank you,

Robert