Well, as I'm sure you've all seen by now the campaign is over and Exile, Magus did not meet its goal. At the end there were 93 orders between 83 readers, and 291 followers. This was actually far better than I expected when I first started this campaign. As mentioned before I've had this book finished for years now, and going through a cycle of writing query letters then scrapping them before sending any out. When I jumped into my Inkshares funding attempt I did so on a whim, and mainly as a way to knock myself out of that cycle which had been preventing me from truly trying to get this story out there. Jumping in like that with no plan, not enough money to pay for any of the promotional efforts I wanted to, and a very small support base, I never expected to get more than a dozen orders and perhaps twice that in followers. I certainly didn't expect to inspire 83 people to place orders, some of them even for multiple copies, and I'm still blown away by the number of followers. That is why despite not achieving the funding goal I still consider this endeavor a success – it did not me out of the cycle which kept me from really trying to do anything with this story and it finally gave me confidence that there is an audience for this weird tale though it may take a bit longer(and more than a bit of additional effort) for me to bring together enough members of said audience to make a real go of this.

Enough talk of the past though, now on to the future of this book, a future which I am dedicated to it having. First step in my new plan – rest my brain a bit. Combining what is often more than a full time job with also trying to keep the funding campaign moving has kept me in a state of exhaustion, especially in these last couple of months. So for at least a couple of weeks I plan to try and recover from that, catching up with friends and family while I'm at it. My players have likely come to hate me for suspending a long running Dragonlance game(we're up to the 2nd generation of player characters at this point), so I'll try to appease them by returning to my DM duties during that time as well.

I've got a number of thoughts on how to proceed with the book, and I'll be letting those percolate in my mind while resting. Just so I'm not keeping everyone in the dark I suppose I'll share some of those ideas, and I'll also invite anyone who has their own ideas to share them with me(the best places would be on my Facebook page linked here or via Twitter @ Thoasoold). The most obvious idea is to return to the query letters and actually send them this time. With what I've learned of pitching through this campaign I may finally be able to craft a letter I'm satisfied with.

When I was originally writing Exile, Magus it was with the intent of trying to serialize it, an idea I abandoned around Chapter 4. With that in mind I found it odd/amusing when I was contacted towards the end of the campaign asking if I would be interested in contributing some serialized fiction to a website. This caused me to look around and discover what I'm sure I'm that last to find out, that being that there's a few options for releasing serialized fiction online now. With that knowledge the serialization becomes an option, though it is one I ultimately view more as a way to raise the money I would need to pay for the various artwork as well as a development edit in order to get this book looking the way I've always dreamed of it looking.

That leads me in to the next potential plan – self publishing. If I did so my budget would demand that it only be print on demand, a thing I've researched for years now so I've pretty much already picked out which services I would use. This plan will take longer than the others though, because I would not take this step until I have gotten a developmental edit, and gotten all of the artwork. The current cover art would be moved to the front piece of Part 4-Llanchland since that is the scene I always intended to proceed that part. Then I would need to commission art for the other 12 parts, as well as a new cover. I have no ideas(that I'm happy with anyway) for what that cover would look like.

I'll take a break from my potential plans here to briefly cover something else I'd not mentioned before. That being the restructuring of parts. Some of you may have noted that the currently layout has Llanchland as part 3, but I just noted it as part 4. That's because for some time I've been meaning to split the current part 2 into parts 2 and 3. The new layout would be as follows: Part 1 (Thierdenvolgenlund); Part 2 (Exile); Part 3 (Warrior); Part 4 (Llanchland); Part 5 (Cruise); Part 6 (Academy); Part 7 (Graduation); Part 8 (Hunter); Part 9 (Proposal); Part 10 (Rescue); Part 11 (Ansvari); Part 12 (Reunion); Part 13 (Ascension). I'd actually already made these changes to the structure over at my Wattpad page some months back.

Enough of the break from potential plans. The most obvious remaining plan is to try to fund through Inkshares again. Before I do so I would have to make sure I'm ready next time. This would involve both getting the new artwork mentioned above, and coming up with a real plan. Also looking at my order statistics I would also not move forward with a new campaign before hitting at least 500 followers, with a preference for 750 followers. In the meantime I will be keeping the draft page active with all of the Parts and their composite chapters(yeah, I'm just going to start calling the “sections” chapters from now on, whereas the former “chapters” are now parts) uploaded remaining in place. In addition, at every 50th follower I will upload a new chapter, or 2 new chapters when one chapter is particularly short. We're now at 293 followers, and at 300 followers I'll upload the final 2 chapters of Part 6(soon to be renumbered Part 7).

Beyond all of these plans though, I intend to stay active on Inkshares. Every other Sunday starting with tomorrow I will still be sending out updates to recommend currently funding projects to you all. Now that I have a bit of free time I'm also going to start completing several side projects such as the short story detailing a bit about the ancient civilizations of Melexi and Thirosia or at least the legends concerning them, a narrative gazetteer detailing the continent on which Exile, Magus takes place, and the maps of said continent. I'll be posting these on my blog, or if I can find a home for them in other, higher traffic venues I 'll do so there instead. Either way, I will let you all know when such things are posted.

That's about all I have for today. Thank you all for the support you showed during the campaign, and I hope you'll continue following. Now that the campaign is over and I can get my brain to focus on things other than getting more preorders, I also hope that you all will feel free to communicate more directly with me. I'm always up for a good conversation, even those which have nothing whatsoever to do with my own book. I linked my Facebook and Twitter above, and they are still the best ways to reach me. You can also find me on Goodreads, and as mentioned and linked above on Wattpad. If you're feeling particularly nosy and of a mind to see what kind of pictures I take you can also check out my Instagram, though I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to. The point however, is that you should feel free to both follow and contact me at any of these places.

Only 2 days left to hit at least 250 preorders!

Also its Wednesday which may cause some of you to note how I missed both my Sunday and Tuesday updates.  With the deadline so quickly approaching I decided to skip those updates in favor of doubling up on pitching the book.

We're currently at 285 followers, and 86 copies ordered by only 78 of those followers.  That means 207 of you haven't ordered yet, and if only 164 of you(roughly 3/4) did then we would be at the Quill goal.  While I'm too much of a realist to not acknowledge that its a long shot with such a small amount of time remaining, I'm also too stubborn to give up and not push for it to happen.

With that in mind I'll point out that now is the perfect time to take the chance on Exile, Magus by going ahead and hitting that order button.  If enough of you do so, then this book will be published by Inkshares and find its way into your hands.  If not, then your money and/or credits will be refunded to you after the campaign ends so that you'd have it back in about 3 days time.  So I beg of you to order now if you haven't done so already.

That's all I've got for today.  I will be back Saturday to for an end of funding campaign update.  As always I want to thank everyone for your support, it has been quite entirely heartwarming.  I just wish I'd been able to communicate more directly with all of you.  If any of you do want to communicate with me, then you should hit me up on Facebook and/or Twitter(@thoasoold).  In the meantime, keep reading and enjoying!

Saturday update time.  A bit later in the day than I intended, but with the combination of the campaign and my work schedule I have been somewhat neglectful of family so I gladly took some time to remedy that a little with a bit of a hangout, dine, and game session with my brother.

Tonight, and for one night only, I will be doing the unthinkable! I will not try to sell you my book or be promotional about it or myself in any way whatsoever, and instead will just let myself be entirely natural. I know I need the break, and the way I've been harping on ordering lately I suspect you all likely do as well. Mainly within the past few days I realized that this campaign is nearing both the 5 month mark and end date, and I've never really bothered to introduce myself or tell you about myself at all really, and that just feels a bit rude to me. I'll try to remedy my rudeness as quickly as possible with this update, though when being natural I tend to ramble so I apologize if I go overlong on this one.

I suppose I'll start with one of the chief elements which led my brain to the above thought, that being the number of times I've recently seen/heard remarks about how odd it is that there is such a significant difference between the number of followers for Exile, Magus and the number of orders placed for it. I'd thought the same myself at first, but I pretty quickly came to what I at least think is the answer: that I'm horrible at sales/marketing/promotion. This isn't a new revelation to me as I have pretty much always been my own worst advocate, and beyond that almost entirely incapable of creating anything resembling a sales pitch. This means that plenty of people think it sounds interesting enough to eventually check out so they follow, but then my lack of promotional ability ensures that I fail to draw them back to actually check out the project while also not driving them away and thus my follower count stays high without a proportional increase in sales. At least that's my theory, but I could be wrong.

With that being said, I have actually done far better than I ever expected to despite of my poor promotional skills. Admittedly, I have perhaps an overabundance of self-doubt so I may have not given myself enough credit going into this. Beyond my perceived promotional inability, I also saw my years of putting off even attempting a start at platform-building and my own somewhat extreme introversion to be insurmountable obstacles as well. I suppose to best illustrate the introversion I should point out that of my preorders only 7 have come from my own familial/social network, the rest have come entirely through pitching on Inkshares. With these thoughts in mind it may seem odd that I would launch the campaign to begin with but the reason for that is simple: I needed something to kick me out of a seemingly endless cycle(at that point it had been going on for 5 years since the completion of Exile, Magus' rough draft) of revisions(often very nitpicky & unnecessary ones), writing books further in the series, and writing then scrapping a now untold number of query letters without ever mailing a single one.

I'm sure at this point its likely seeming like this is intended as a negative/moody update, but that's not actually the point. Really the point of this update(and my own convoluted train of thought) comes down to a key point of the previous paragraph: all but a very small portion of the orders I've gotten for Exile, Magus have come from people who were complete strangers to me before I stumbled on Inkshares through the Nerdist contest this past August. Beyond that, of these strangers who I've gotten to communicate with many of them have shown what certainly feels to me to be quite a bit of faith in Exile, Magus, even going above and beyond anything I would ever ask/expect of them by reaching out to their own networks on my behalf. I feel a bit bad about not naming names here, but I'm trying for as much brevity as possible here and the list has grown quite large at this point. You all know who you are though, and if you read this know that your support and belief have been both humbling and heartwarming and I cannot thank you enough.

To come to a conclusion, and the full point of this update. It was only about 6-7 months ago when I was completing the most recent revision of Exile, Magus in preparation for writing a new round of query letters that I finally reached a point where I truly accepted what my primary beta reader had been trying to get across to me for years: this book is worthy of being published. Even with that realization I was still left with the doubt that there would be much of an audience for my peculiar tale - one which a person could describe as a mixture of teenage angst, human loneliness and the desperation it brings forth in a person, and the hopefully temporary and often unnoticed madness brought on by loss and survivor's guilt wrapped up and made palatable by the guise of high fantasy with an almost comic book style approach to action. Sure, it was perfected suited for me what with my own oddly nebulous points of interest/fandoms, but I felt certain that there could not be more than a dozen, maybe two dozen others the world over who would actually be interested in that sort of thing.

Well, now thanks to this experience and the people I have encountered(albeit only online) through it I realize that there is a larger audience out there. I've found far more of you than I ever expected to in a relatively short period of time, and this lets me know that I must continue digging to find even more like you. It won't be an easy task, especially since I will have to fight my own social anxieties every step of the way, but it will be worth every bit of exertion. It will continue to stretch my abilities and self in ways I hadn't before thought possible. Example: I'm not far from completing my first short story(kind of). Before they had always expanding out of control to be anything but short. Hopefully I can continue to create short fiction and maybe even write a non-rambling article or few to post on my blog and/or try to get published on other blogs/publications.

In conclusion, regardless of the outcome of this campaign, I couldn't be happier that I made the rather rash decision to jump into this Inkshares thing during the Nerdist contest. It was exactly what I needed when I needed it. And, at least as important, maybe more important, I can't thank you all enough for your time and support. Enough of this emotionalism though, I'm signing off here now. I'll see you all here again Saturday when I returning to my shameless attempts to get everyone to buy my book. Until then, be good, be safe, but most importantly – have fun!

Tuesday update time!  Except its Wednesday because I forgot until late last night that yesterday was Tuesday...  The hecticness has done a number on my ability to remember days apparently.

Only 9 days left to get Exile, Magus into Quill and your hands!  We have continued to make progress with daily sales in the low numbers as well as daily follower gains, but ultimately the sales are not coming in as quickly as they need to be considering the short time remaining.  I'm continuing to push hard, but if we're going to get Exile, Magus out with this campaign then I really need all of you who have followed but haven't ordered yet to please order now.  We're currently at 84 sold between 76 readers, and with 280 followers that means if the 204 of you who haven't ordered were to order then we would be at 288 preorders which is well above the Quill goal.  Help me get this book published and into your hands!

Sunday update time.