Well hello again.

I’ve done my best to not overwhelm everyone’s inbox, but I thought today would be a great opportunity to reach out and check in.  BLUE WATER has been on bookshelves and eReaders for a few months now, and I’m hoping you have gotten a chance to read it and loved it as much as I loved writing it. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s Halloween. No better day to start a creepy novel.

If you bought the book and read it, (THANK YOU) or have even started it and are still turning pages, please leave a review on Amazon. The more reviews the book gets, the more Amazon will push it, the more people get to read it.

As I said, I’ve not tried to inundate you with messages. As an introvert, a crowd-funding campaign is considered nightmare fuel, and having to constantly vie for your attention has been a struggle. One that I’m sure you may have noticed, I’ve been avoiding. But you all got this book out there, and for that, I can be brave and send out a mass email every now and again to say thank you, and let you know I haven’t forgotten.

Oh. And this.

Now, this is early. But man... do I like where it’s headed. There’s nothing to buy, nothing to pre-order yet, but if you liked BLUE WATER, click that link and hit FOLLOW and SHARE. You’ll get all the updates and news when it starts flowing.

Happy Halloween everyone, and thanks again,

Joseph Parcell

Well, backers, it’s out in the world.

I’ve just started receiving notifications that the first copies of Blue Water are being received. I’m not quite sure the timeline on eBooks yet. I’ll contact Inkshares and have an answer for you shortly.

I am so excited/terrified right now in the best possible way. I know this book is the culmination of not only my work but of everyone along the way who ordered one and told a friend. I hope you enjoy it.

 And if you do, please tell your friends again. We don’t get the full brunt of a massive advertising campaign to get this book noticed. It’s just us and the word of mouth. I know some people were nervous during the crowdfunding stage to purchase a book by an unknown author from an unknown website without the promise that it would ever get published you’d get your money back. So now, thanks to the people who believed in this book enough to still throw in some cash, we can take care of all those issues. Except for the unknown author part. Blue Water is a finished novel, people are reading it currently, and it’s available for pre-order from Amazon, a more well-known retailer (no offense to Inkshares, who I still encourage you to purchase the book through.)  So share that info with anyone who was on the fence, especially if you really like it. 

 Thank you all again for paving this road. I wouldn’t be here without literally every one of you. 

Joseph

Here we go.

Blue Water has now reached the front of the line at Inkshares. I first want to thank you all for your patience with the lack of updates since we reached our funding goal two Novembers ago. I know that it can be frustrating not hearing any new information. Believe me, that won’t be a problem anymore. Inkshares has been in contact quite often now that it’s our turn.

Here’s a quick overview of how it’s going to go from here. Currently, the novel has gone through the preliminary copy edit. The changes have been sent to me, and I’ve gone through them all and am sending the book back with notes on the changes. After that, Blue Water’s final manuscript will be sent back to me in the first week of February. The book’s final cover for the eBooks will be done and sent to you all to check out first in March, the full cover in April.

And the big date, the day the book is available to the public: June 5, 2018. 

However, you guys are the backers. If it weren’t for each and every one of you (literally, we sold just barely over the goal to make Quill), none of this would be happening. So again, I have to thank you, not just for your patience, but for believing in a first time writer and a book you’ve never read. So, you guys won’t have to wait until the publish date, your copies will be mailed or available for download a few weeks early. The goal is that you guys all check it out first and tell your friends about it before release day. So I may have to call you you again to help spread the word again. We currently have sold 263 copies, and I’ve backed off selling during the information vacuum of 2017. My third thanks to all of you is to buy the book with no information on when you’d receive it. That is a hard sell, and you guys all came though. Now, I’m going to take the next six months and start the selling again. Luckily for you, you already bought it, so I won’t bug you (although it would make a great birthday gift for everyone you know.) 

So three thanks to you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We’ll be in touch.

Joseph Parcell

Happy Monday everyone.  

Just wanted to let everyone know that after a bit of hyper-focus to the point of nearly blacking out, the BLUE WATER cover has been updated.  I think this is quite near what the final design will look like, but there’s always room for a couple tweaks here or there.  Seeing this makes it all feel pretty real. It’s getting closer and closer to our turn at the plate.

Whaddaya think, sirs?

 -Joseph

Hey everyone.

FROM THE BLOG DIARY OF EMILY HUNTER

Entry #15: October 3, 2013

Things are getting worse. I got home from work today, and I saw Carrot.  I know she wasn’t there, but I saw her.  She was standing on my kitchen table, just smiling at me with her eyes closed as usual.  Like she didn’t have a care in the world, and didn’t think it odd to be standing on a kitchen table.  I’d look away, and look back and she was still there.  Maybe it’s lack of sleep. My nightmares are getting more frequent.  I’m going to call Dr. Harper.  

Entry #16: October 11, 2013

Ever have a song stuck in your head and catch yourself singing it out loud?  Or just running through it in your mind.  Is it ever a song that you don’t know the words to, or you only know the chorus?  And it goes on for days and days.  It’s the first thing your brain does when you wake up.  Before you even realize you’re awake, it’s playing on a loop.  It keeps you awake at night.  You toss and turn and it’s there always, driving you more and more mad.  That’s how this feels.  Except instead of a song, it’s words, it’s ideas.  And I don’t know what they are, or what they mean.  I know they’re there, over and over, repeating.  But they’re on the tip of my tongue, and I can’t remember them.  But it feels like I’m forgetting something important.

-Emily

Entry #17: November 4, 2013

I had the Living Room Dream again.

Entry #18: December 1, 2013

I’m so sorry mom.  You didn’t deserve any of this.

Entry #19:  December 29, 2013

My last appointment, I got in trouble for not writing more.  In fact, my once a week has become once a month.  I’m not sure what else to add.  I hate writing. 

Merry Christmas.

Entry #20: February 27, 2014

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FROM THE BLOG DIARY OF EMILY HUNTER

Entry #14: September 19, 2013

I’m going to try to be a little less somber now. 

This is one of the dreams Dr. Harper wanted me to write down the next time I had it.  I’ve had it for a long time. For the last few years, I have it once every couple months or so.

I wake up back in my room at Sandy Shores.  Only it’s different.  You know how sometimes you have dreams about places that don’t look right, but you know where you are anyway?  This is like that.  I’m in Sandy Shores, but my room is smaller and the door doesn’t have a window (which would have been nice).  And I specifically remember this feeling like I’m back, because I’m pissed at myself for screwing up and getting myself thrown back into a place like this.  I told someone about all my crazy thoughts, and they threw me back in.  They wrote it all down and gave it to the doctors.  (I’m sure this is anxiety about therapy.  Not hard to figure that one out.) Anyway, not important.

So I wake up and look out the window, and there’s a forest outside.  But all over the forest are these people lying down.  They’re moving around and talking, but I know they’re dead somehow, and that’s their "graveyard."  And Carrot is out there.  She’s running through it, and I’m scared they’re going to reach up and grab her.  Right before I see if she made it, all the lights go out and the hospital shakes violently as if there were a giant earthquake.  The quake is over after a few seconds, and the hospital is ruined.

My door is open, and I walk outside my room.  The hallway is destroyed, like it just fell apart.  It’s also empty.  And I’m walking really carefully and quietly, because I know the devil is under the floor and if he hears me, he’s going to kill me.  It’s like directly under the floor is hell.  I can see it without seeing it.  I just know that under the floor is fire and evil and I have to get out before the devil knows I’m awake.

This is the weird(er) part.  It’s at this point, the trek down the hallway, that I remember that this is a reoccurring dream.  In the dream, I remember that I’ve done this before, and every time it ends the same.  But I think in the dream that this time I’ll go a different way, or try something else to avoid Satan hearing me and killing me.

There’s someone else here too.  Someone who I want to help get away from the devil.  But she’s already been seen by him and she’s running.  She’s a scary old lady, and when I see her, I know she looked at the devil because her head is on fire.  She runs through the hall screaming, and I try to will her to be quiet, because at this point I know he heard us, and he knows I’m up here too.  But she doesn’t shut up.  And she starts laughing because she knows she’s toast.

None of the hallways make sense.  I’m panicking now and I’m trying to find the way out, but I don’t know the way.  The halls are like a maze and turn in weird places.  I pass another person, another patient.  She’s sleepwalking and has no idea that she’s in danger.  And for some reason I feel like I have to help her, but can’t because I’m too scared.  She’s carrying a dead rabbit.  I don’t understand it, but I feel like she’s got the right idea.  Like the dead rabbit is the key to getting out.  Maybe to give to the devil, or use it as a distraction or something.  I have no idea.

(You know how sometimes things "feel" in dreams.  Like you understand them even though logically they make no sense?  My therapist suggested that the dead rabbit is Carrot, or symbolic of Carrot.  And as I look back, it sort of makes sense.  When I imagined Carrot as a kid, one of her favorite toys was a stuffed bunny rabbit.  She always had it with her.  So now this other woman is carrying a dead rabbit and walking with her eyes closed.  The thing is, Carrot always "feels" a certain way, and this woman didn’t "feel" that way.  Does that make sense?)

So anyway this woman turns a corner and I don’t follow her.  And I imagine she’s going to be mad at me for not following her.

And this is where last night’s dream goes differently.  This time, knowing I always die in this dream, I decide to follow her.

But it ends the same.

I turn the corner this time, and I am in the White Room. 

The room is just white.  White walls, white floor, and white ceiling.  In the middle is a giant skull.  This thing is massive and horned, the size of a barrel.  And I know it’s Satan, and I wandered into his lair.  You can see the heat radiating off the skull, but the rest of the room is cold.  The skull doesn’t move but it has a heartbeat.  And it’s loud, and that’s how I know it’s alive and I’m about to die.  I turn away from it and in the wall is a small observation window.  Very very small.  Just enough to look through with two eyes.  And someone is looking though it at me, waiting to watch me die.  A doctor, like just observing an experiment or something.  I feel like he doesn’t care that I’m about to die, like I’m a test subject.  Just a number. 

Carrot is there.  Her eyes are closed as always, and I feel like she wants me to close mine too.  And I’m sad, because I know it’s over.  But I’m also relieved.  My fucked up life is about to end, and I got out without losing control and hurting someone, or doing something wrong.  (In group therapy I found a common fear among a lot of us was that we were terrified we will lose control of our actions at some point and do something horrible.  You know how sometimes you can’t sleep on vacation because you are obsessing over whether or not you locked the front door of your house?  It’s like that, except instead of worrying if someone is stealing your TV, you’re worried you’re going to get the electric chair for shooting up a mall.)  In this way, my death feels like success, and the world will be safer and better now that I’m gone.  I guess self esteem has never been my strength.

My head starts to get hot, and I know the devil is behind me and about to kill me.  And at this point, I’m strangely calm about it, and somehow I’m sitting relaxed, although there were no chairs in the room.  I’m scared, but I just want to get it over with.  The heat is awful and I can’t breathe and my skull starts to crack like glass in the back.  I scream.

And wake myself up screaming.

It always ends like that.