Hello,

It's me again. Don't worry, I don't plan on making this a daily thing. The last thing I want is to be remembered as a spammer. I just have a quick, dumb gift for you guys.

This campaign is very stressful. Most of you have probably already heard me bellyache about how bad I am at self-promotion and how I don't handle the pressure and competitive nature of this particular effort with much grace. While I was undergoing a routine panic attack, one of my friends said something that I thought should be a poster. Wanting to take my mind off of things and having some illustration I'd worked on that would be acceptable for the purpose, I made the poster and now I'm making it available to you. Click here and you'll find what is becoming a fleshed out 'extra content page' for The Life Engineered.

I hope you like it and again, always, thank you for your support.

JFDubeau

Hello readers, whether you are human, android or sophisticated computer AIs.

Let me begin my extending my thanks for your interest in The Life Engineered. It's been a stressful couple of weeks getting to understand how this crowdfunding thing works and how to grab people's interest without pestering them too much. This campaign is a work in progress as I try to add incentives and benefits to backing my book while keeping up with the demands of finding new readers and grabbing their attention.

However I don't want to forget those who've already committed to the cause or who are keeping an eye on my progress for now. As I currently work to add a book trailer to the campaign page, I find myself sketching out several robots in order to have a few visuals in the video. One of these seemed pleasing enough to my friends and I ended up making an iPhone wallpaper from the illustration. You can find versions for iPhone 5, 6 and 6+ by clicking here. I will be looking at adding Android versions in the future.

Again; thank you for your support. If you haven't pre-ordered yet, please consider doing so soon and if you know anyone for whom a book about sentient robots fighting to protect their civilization from slipping into civil was would be interesting, please point them in my direction.

Regards,

JFDubeau

Let me start by thanking you all for pre-ordering The Life Engineered.

The journey from graphic designer to wannabe author has been an interesting one. While the hours upon hours of work and stress have been difficult at times, it’s been a rewarding experience so far. I often like to say; now that I know how much I love this writing books thing, I’m going to keep doing it. If I can make a living off of it I’ll just get to do it more.

What’s interesting about the project is how, despite the difficulties encountered, it’s made me less cynical about the writing process. The first full book I wrote was, to borrow a term from my friend and fellow aspiring writer Amanda, a vampire love triangle. It’s a terribly written story about a cliché plot and generally unimaginative characters, but I had to get it out of my system. It’s unreasonable to think that my first book would be any good so I didn’t waste any of my ‘good ideas’ on it.

Since then I’ve written three more books, the latest being The Life Engineered. The other two are still in need of serious re-writes but they’re far more palatable then that vampire drivel I used to warm up. I’m also working on a sequel to The Life Engineered. I’m halfway through the first draft and have a few rewrites ahead of me but I’m excited by where it’s going. It builds on what I’ve already told in the first book but more importantly on what I’ve learned writing it.

So what’s one of the more interesting thing I’ve learned while writing these books? Well, the more interesting is how characters have a life of their own. It’s a pretentious thing to claim, that made up characters are so well crafted that they become independent of their creator, but that has nothing to do with it. It’s much more scientific then that.

When planning out a novel, I like to come up with a plot and then populate that plot with characters. As I refine each element of the story before starting on the actual writing, I end up with a lot of details about personalities, setting and events. Often, while putting words to the page, I’ll end up with a situation where a character was written in a way that becomes incompatible with the plans I had made for it. The character is too compassionate to commit a horrible act or maybe not smart enough to figure out a key plot point, etc. At this junction I can decide to either rewrite to character from scratch and shoehorn it into it’s role, have the character act in a way that is inconsistant with how it’s been behaving so far in the story or, my favorite and more entertaining, ask myself “what would this character do in this situation?”. It’s the accumulation of these divergences that make the story tell itself and I end up being it’s interpreter. This is just one of the many clichés I used to mock about writers that I’ve learned exist for a reason. I’m not saying that there aren’t many authors who just repeat the trope without understanding why in an effort to make themselves sound interesting and deep, but know that it isn’t all hot air and fantasy.

I’ll have more random musings as the campaign progresses. In the meantime, here’s an illustration of a character from The Life Engineered.

Cheers, 

JF