I swear that I will return to talking about robots and post humanism shortly. Forgive my temporary lapse in preoccupation, dear sentients.

Let me address this 'murderous' urge that the header implies. I don't, in actuality, want to kill anyone, but I would like to murder the likeness of one of my readers within the pages of my next book.

'A God in the Shed' is a horror/fantasy story and this means I'm going to be murdering some characters. I decided it would be fun to have one of these victims be one of my supporters. The idea is that everyone who pre-orders my book, 'A God in the Shed' gets a chance to win. Every pre-order that is from a reference wins the referrer an extra chance. The more you promote the book, the better your chances of dying by my pen.

Essentially, the winner, drawn at random, will get to collaborate with me (we'll Skype or something) and we'll come up with a suitable way to include your likeness into the book, as a minor character, which will be gruesomely dispatched.

So please go pre-order 'A God in the Shed' and help me spread the word far and wide so that you can win the chance to 'die'. It's worth noting that you'll also get the opportunity to beta-read the manuscript so you can witness your demise ahead of everyone else.

Click on these buttons to share and have your recommendations be counted.

As always, many thanks for your support.

JF

Happy Friday fellow robot enthusiasts, 

I love this. I really shouldn’t, but I do. I’m currently juggling two projects at the same time. More than two but ultimately two major projects. On one hand I’m bounding approvals and changes on ‘The Life Engineered’. Now that the final manuscript has been sent to copy editing, we’re working on covers, interior layout, cover copy, etc. It’s all very exciting. Much like an artificial life form, every piece is played out, examined and added to the final assembly, bringing it one step closer to life. 

On the other hand, I’m running this crowdfunding effort for ‘A God in the Shed’. This requires me to get in touch with as many supporters as I can and find ways of getting exposure for the project. Some of you may already have received emails asking for your support. I try to make these as personal as I can. You deserve more than just a mass copy/paste email, but it’s very time consuming. 

All of this is emotionally draining but I love the excitement and the sense of purpose. While I do worry about being a pest with requests for help and pre-orders, I’m getting to really love getting in touch with those who pre-ordered ‘The Life Engineered’. My favourite is when people both pre-order a copy of ‘A God in the Shed’ and get in touch. The one-on-one interaction with readers is always a blast. 

I’ll leave you with this cool thing that fellow writer Paul Inman (author of the upcoming ‘Ageless’ and currently funding ‘Motor City Chronicles') did for me. It’s a voice over of the prologue to ‘A God in the Shed’. I think you’ll agree that he completely knocks it out of the park. The tone, the atmosphere. It elevates the material. Have a listen, then pre-order the book and pre-order his books. 

All the books. 

 JF  

Fellow sentient beings,

I require your assistance.

I have great plans concerning my literary efforts. Worry not; The Life Engineered and it's sequel are a huge part of those plans. The Life Engineered should make it's way to your grasping appendages early in 2016. There will be a period of a few months after that to allow you to enjoy multiple readings of The Life Engineered after which I will probably attempt to fund the sequel on Inkshares.

However, what am I to do until then? The answer is evident: Write another book.

As some of you know, I am currently running a campaign for another novel on Inkshares. It is called 'A God in the Shed' and is a completely different genre but it's another project I'm very passionate about and that I think you'll enjoy.

Consider giving your support to A God in the Shed. It doesn't have any robots but it does have a zombie cat. That's almost the same right? Have a look! What's the worst that could happen?

JF

Fellow sentients! Greetings.

I am incredibly excited about the next few steps in the development cycle of The Life Engineered. I’ve written my acknowledgements and dedications. I’ve sent in my final draft and will soon get the copy edited version to review (I will have read this book so many times you guys…) but the most exciting is that we’re nearing a final cover! We have the illustration. We have the… title… I guess. We’re soon going to have the logo for the Sword & Laser Collection and our designer has already sent us some great concepts that we are debating internally.

But I’m going to show you exactly none of that. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. It’s too soon.

Instead, I’m going to ask you for your support again.

Do you know what question I get the most from people who have read The Life Engineered? “When’s the sequel?”. It is a super flattering question and each time I stammer that I’m working on it. Make no mistake; I am. However, with The Life Engineered releasing in March and having to give the first book some breathing room after release, I have several months with nothing on my plate! There are a few projects in the works that I’m not at a liberty to discuss yet but I have this hole in my schedule that I need to fill.

So I’m filling it with this: A God in the Shed

Go check it out. If you enjoy what I do and want to see more of it, the best thing you can do is support another project of mine. I swear I’ll leave you fine sentients alone for a while after this one, but if you could toss me a pre-order and help me be in the Top Five for the Nerdist Collection contest, I would love you forever and would be in an increasingly good position to create more content for you to consume. If each of you were to pre-order a single copy, we'd be in very good shape.

Support the arts as they say.

JF 

I'm at it again...

Hi guys, 

Do me a favor; if you’re not the kind of person who reads whole newsletters, make an exception for this one. I’m trying to do something and I need everyone’s help.

Friends, acquaintances, enemies-spying-on-me, I’m at it again! A week after I sent in the final draft of The Life Engineered, Inkshares is having another contest. This time it’s for the Nerdist Collection. Did I throw my hat in the ring? Of course I did!

Am I going to ask you to pre-order my other book, A God in the Shed? I guess so. I mean, I’m eager to do a final version of this book and revisit the world and characters from it, but what I really want us to do is break the contest. Let me explain:

• The Sword & Laser Collection contest was as stressful as it was awesome but it became a crazy competitive environment.

• Crowdfunding benefits from cooperation and sharing potential readers. Especially if the contest focuses on unique reader pre-orders like this one does.

• The real prize, the important prize, the one thing worth winning above all is the opportunity to get published.

• Getting published isn’t limited to the top five books in the contest. It’s available to everyone who meets their goal (750-1000 pre-orders)

• All the people you might see as competition in this contest? They’re going to be your contemporaries. Your friends. When this contest ends, they’ll become your buddies and you’ll wish you’d cooperated anyways.
  

So here’s what I want to do; I want us, you and me and the other writers, to blow this contest up. I want this to reach so far that in the end, not only will there be five books with the most pre-orders but another five books getting published by having reached their pre-order goal. 

Nerdist is a pretty big deal. A lot of eyes are going to be on this contest. We can work in silos and five of us can get published with 600 to 700 pre-orders while another gets into the Nerdist Collection. Or, we can get a bunch of us published, help Inkshares capitalize on the publicity and huh… maybe they’ll throw in a little something extra since they won’t have to foot the bill for publishing books that didn’t meet their actual goals. Just putting that out there. You never know.

The process is simple; since this contest is based on unique reader pre-orders (and I’ve been assured that there are measures in place to avoid dummy accounts taking advantage of loopholes) we all need to rally as many people to pre-order our books. However, while they’re on Inkshares, why not point them towards another few books or set up a referral link so they can get credits and pre-order more books. The idea is that each book is bringing in a certain amount of readers that are specific to them. In the previous contest we had a tendency to keep these readers to ourselves in the hopes that they would order multiple copies of our book and increase our numbers. However, if we share our reader base, if we spread the love so to speak, we can have several books break from their existing audience and not only climb to the top five, but reach their publishing goals in record time.

It’s an experiment. It’s steeped in optimism and feels like a ‘Canadian communist’ thing to do but I strongly believe that it can be done. Competition will yield five winners. Cooperation might yield ten or more.

Let’s get books published.

Hello again dear readers!

Second, and this one is particularly exciting to me; we have a new book cover illustration!