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Dear readers, 

Though I’m not entirely certain of the exact number of people who remember who this email is from, what this email is for, or even why they are receiving this email. And I have to admit that it is my fault for not keeping a regular, updating email list. To reacquaint ourselves: My name is Yicheng Liu, the author of The Remains of Civilisation, a Science-Fiction novel which was published last year, this is a gentle reminder that you have indicated an interest in the story and would perhaps like to purchase it as a weekend read on a variety of outlets. Though, it would be quite convenient to purchase it through Amazon, I suppose. Here is the international order link:  and here is the Australian order link: https://amzn.to/2DROCBy

It’s a story about rebellion, aliens, conspiracies, and ultimately, snarky humour directed at everyone and no one in particular. I had given it my all to try to offer the readers (you) a good reading experience for this book and to perhaps give you something that you would find entertaining, and beyond that, I want to give everyone my heartfelt thanks for following this story and little ol’ me on this journey. 

If you want to have a quick look at the story to remember what it was all about, here’s the first four chapters:
If you’re still interested, please order from the Amazon order link above and write a review after you finish the book. I hope we can meet again as author and reader soon. Have a nice day, everyone. 

Sincerely,
Yicheng Liu
Yicheng Liu · Author · edited over 6 years ago · 2 likes
Dear readers,
First of all, I would like to apologise for the near year-long hiatus from updating and I would like all the followers of this story to know that this book has now been picked up by Starforged Entertainment. With any luck, this might be published somewhere around December of next year. The other thing that I would like to tell everyone is that THE BOOK HAS FINALLY BEEN FINISHED!!

After four drafts and more than four years in this long, tireless journey. I’ve had doubts; procrastinated; lied; and done many things a writer shouldn’t have done, but I’ve finally finished my story. The book is now officially finished, clocking in at ~57,000 words or thereabouts after a merciless series of re-writing 75% of the plot. I want to give everyone my heartfelt thanks for following this story and little ol’ me on this journey. Most people would’ve given up, but I’ve seen a few of you still offering kind and heartfelt support (that isn’t my mum or dad) and I’m honestly really grateful for this. Sure, I might never ’make it’ as an author, this story might never be A-list movie material, but this is all only possible because of your support that motivated me to writing the finish. THE END is a journey that we’ve all walked through after a long and incontinent trek into writer-hood.  

Dear readers, I’m not joking. #serious, and I’m eteranlly grateful for the support from 2014 to this very day.

Sincerely, 
Yicheng Liu

Hello there dear readers! 

First of all, Merry christmas! I know I haven’t updated in a while, but I’ve been spending my holiday break tweaking and adjusting the Remains and it probably wouldn’t be long before I post it on an online store for purchase. 

Of course, I’ve also finally decided on and written an ending that fits for the story. While I could spend the rest of this post talking about all the things I’ve written so far without actually talking about something meaningful like publication dates or goals that I’ve set, I decided to instead finally open up my computer and upload chapter 3 of the Remains because...why not?

CHAPTER 3

I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday!

-Yicheng Liu

Hello readers,

So...sorry for accidentally maintaining a radio silence for three months. I had meant to post an update on how the Remains is going and keep the good folks here up to date on these things. But I guess being bad at keeping up with self-made promises is one of the reasons I’m slightly overweight and are writing a novel instead being a blogger. Well...I’m not gonna make any promises here that I think I will accidentally break, so let’s move on.

The Remains is chugging along at a steady pace...and I shall now unveil The Remains of Civilization V2.0! 

Here’s a slightly more typo-free, 200% more humorous, and punchier chapters of the book! I promise this time the revision I made to the chapter will make rereading them be like adding sprinkles on a vanilla-flavored ice-cream on a hot, sunny day instead of a reptitive task. I would be interested in hearing your feedback on the story so far and your opinions on it. The reader’s voice is essentially the lifeblood of writers, we REALLY can’t live without ’em.

Chapter 0

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Other than that, I can now also officially announce that I will finish this draft before or during NaNoWriMo and also had finished planning and writing down the ending for the story. Funny how the ending was almost completely different from how I had finished the first draft, but that was never meant to be the real ending anyway, the ending to the first draft served as a placeholder for when I thought of a better ending and a reminder that if you don’t plan...eh things can really become a mess really quickly. At the end, the current draft is more a rewrite than an edit, really.

Well, that’s unfortunately all. I’ll probably post another update next month. Until then.

-Yicheng Liu

Greetings everyone!

It’s been a while and I have some news for you guys.

First of all, I’m not dead and are just trying to juggle work and daily life alongside my goal of someday getting this book out there. Yes, I’m still working on making the book better and have officially called the first draft to an end.

Thus far, due to the fact that I no longer have to deal with the stress known as crowdfunding, I had got my stuff together and started the second draft and started to rewrite the story so that it make sense and sound less like it written with the ’visionary’ ideals of an eight-year-old ("Action! Explosion! Globetrotting! Boom!"). 

Though the overall plot and ending remained unchanged, the journey starting from chapter 4 onwards are going to radically different from the first draft as many unneccessary characters and shoddy scenes are going to be cut; and bad puns are no exceptions either. 

I plan to finish draft two within the next two months and decide on whether to submit it to the publishing companies that I had spent hours reasearching or publish it myself. So, with the help of a clear goal in mind and a much more detailed outline this time around, I shall give self-doubt and procrastination the finger. 

Until then,

Yicheng Liu.

Hey guys,

So today is the last day of the campaign. I had originally wanted to write a loooong update on this and rant a lot. But as I move on with revision the book, I discovered that I ramble too much. I’ll keep this short and try to get to the main points. 

First of all, this is not the end. Yes, it’s a failed campaign, but I still plan to have this book published. I will try my hand at investigating traditional publishing (approaching publishing houses and agents) and self-publishing (when I figure out how to connect an Australian bank account through a confusing system that doesn’t seem to be easy to understand). Sooner or later, this book will be in your hands as I had promised. 

Also, yes. I will infrequently update you on my progress and journey as an author.  I won’t leave you people in the dark about the direction I’m taking for this book since you would be some of the first group of fans for this book. I’ll keep on keeping on...somehow. 

Finally, a HUGE thank you to the dedicated fans of this book. I had honestly low hope on whether or not my talents as a writer would be good enough, but apparently it’s enough for more than SEVENTY people to decide to rummage through their wallets a little bit and see if they can spare a bit of cash. There’s many people who had brought multiple copies of my book because they genuinely believed in it to be something worthwhile. People like Billy O’Keefe,  Kelsey Ray Barthel, Tabi Card, etc have pledged a TREMENDOUS amount of their interest to this book. It’s because of the ones that believe this book can be entertaining enough to be purachased multiple times that I want to truly make an effort to not disappoint. I’m a writer, and I’ll try my best to not disappoint. 

Thank you for staying with my rants for the last 7~8 months or so as I collect my thoughts and discover the world of writing and publishing. I am indebted to the beautiful group of writers I met (digitally) and the avid readers that connected with me. Getting this book in your hands will be something I’ll try my best doing. 

Sincerely,
Yicheng LIU. The writer guy. 

Hey all, 

I’ve meaning to make this update for a while now, and I am proud to say I had finally gotten around to it. I’ll keep this brief and give you guys the Cliffsnotes of what I wanted to tell you.

We crossed 100 preorders! Yay! Huge thanks Billy O’Keefe and Kelsey Rae Barthel in their help for crossing that line. Thanks to everyone for their support and trust in book. I really couldn’t have crossed this milestone if it weren’t for you supportive folks out there.

1 months left until the preorder campaign officially ends. Can we get this book into Quill? Let’s push for the LAST time and see how many more this can get before it ends!

Cheers,
Yicheng Liu

Hey good folks,

Thanks for your support! With your help, The Remains had officially reached 100 followers and 74 preorders with more than 90 days left. That left a warm fuzzy feeling inside my heart, but that isn't love...because, as a writer of comedy, I am secretly dead inside. You can only churn so many sacrifices to the old gods before your writer's block kicked you in the posterior. 

But because I feeds on the positive support that had been given to me, I had created a special book trailer to commemorate this moment and cement the fact that this book DOESN'T suck and had not been the targeted by the cats yet (though they are lurking in the background).


Here's the video in case you cannot see the book trailer for any reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgIR9SvXVUk


Hey folks,

 I should've put out this update a long long time ago. Now that I had officially missed Christmas, New Year and even my birthday put out this update, I feel like I'm just making excuses to not put any updates at this point. Nw year resolution #1: do reader updates more frequently.

We officially have 66 preorders now! That's the equivalent of 314 cups of Starbucks coffee! Thanks to all the people that had came here and bought my book, I cannot express my gratitude enough. Only 6 months ago, I had been a nobody hack writer that no one knows. 

I now have quickly become a name in community and met (digitally) many great writers such as John Robin, J.F. Dubeau, Paul Inman, Cara Weston (the lady who made Review-a-thon possible), Thomas Arnold, and many more. They're the pillars of the community and had been here to help others to make their dreams come true. 

If any of the people I had mentioned above happened to be reading this, happy new year and keep on keeping on. It's because of this community that I gained confidence in my writing, started a YouTube channel and had one of the best years in my life. 

The New Year had came and went, but when I reflected on the things I had done last year, I saw the ripples that I had metaphorically made. I wouldn't brag, but I saw beyond my book. I had become a contributor to John Robin's blog, and had done a lot of things beyond just typing words. I never regretted a single moment of last year, and I hope that things get better from here on out. Let's see how far my ambitions can take me.


Sincerely,

Yicheng Liu

hello,

I feel slightly guilty for not doing a monthly update and not keeping in schedule. I understand that some of you may not know what is currently going on. So I have some good news to deliver this time. So of it has to do with my book, the other...is slightly more important.


I am going to start with the good news. I have officially 'won' nanowrimo. Yay! It's kind of a writer's thing where everyone kind of get together and bashes their keyboard for an entire month repeatedly in a valiant attempt to type out something legible that could pass for parts of the books that the aforementioned writers were working on. The ones who 'won' wrote FIFTY THOUSAND words in an month, an average of 1,667 words a day. I did my own thing and were pleasantly surprised to find a certificate with my name on it. 

But I am not celebrating and clicking my toes just yet (mainly because I can't do that); my book still needs a strong ending. So I estimate I will have to keep on writing until Christmas, yes, I work even in the holiday season. THAT'S how dedicated I am, you don't see a lot of people working through the christmas season...mainly because I got nothing better to do (excuse me, I need to have a talk with a dark corner. We are on a talking basis).


The other piece of good news is that there is an inkshares thing going around (that we writers created of our own volition, because we are good people). Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Get ready for the inaugural Inkshares Review-a-Thon! 

On December 19th, all authors and readers are invited to leave reviews on currently funding Inkshares books using the Inkshares "leave a review" option. 

Throughout the day we'll be hanging out on Twitter in the #InksharesReviews tag as we share our favorite book projects, answer author Q&As, debate the merits of astronauts with swords versus cavemen with lasers, and much, much more! 

From 6 - 8pm ET, JF Dubeau and Paul Inman of the WriteBrain Podcast will be hosting a video livestream filled with author interviews, review readings, and live announcements of prize winners! 

The Prizes: 

Everyone who leaves a review on December 19th by 6pm ET will be eligible to win one of our fantastic general prizes: (make this a bulleted list) Sword & Laser Contest Winners Package - print copies of the six winning books from the Sword & Laser Inkshares contest! Nerdist Contest Winners Package - print copies of the five winning books from the Nerdist Inkshares contest! An immediate pre-order of the book of their choice for five winners! $30 in Inkshares credits! Readers: Peruse the "currently funding" books on Inkshares and leave as many reviews as you want on Dec 19th. You could even start up a "must-have" list of books to order in case you win a free pre-order or the $30 in credits! Authors: Join our review exchange to leave three reviews in exchange for two guaranteed reviews on your Inkshares project and a chance at author-exclusive prizes! 

Email the event organizer, Cara "A.C." Weston, at cara.c.weston@gmail.com to learn more and get on the list. (And authors, if you're in, please copy the message above and include it in your next update!).

It's gonna be fun(well, all work and no play make jack a dull boy :P).