I hear ya. Been prepping my run for a couple of months. Just hit "go" this morning, and already I’m tired. But I’m looking forward to getting ahold of your book. Meanwhile, I’ll go explore your recommendations. Peace!
I want to do something a little different this week for my reader updates.
I’ve been slaving away at this campaign for five whole months now, with more than another whole month to go. It’s been exhausting, at times very discouraging, and always very stressful. I’ve been hit with huge obstacles that threatened to bring the whole campaign down, and yet in spite of all that, I’ve come really far. This campaign has grown and become something I honestly never really believed it could. We are, in spite of it all, well on our way to full funding, and I do believe we’ll get there.
I’ve worked my butt off to get here, and you’ve all been immensely supportive. That, honestly, is where the real credit goes. No matter how much time and effort I put into this campaign, it couldn’t have gone anywhere at all without the incredible support from friends and strangers alike.
But not everyone on Inkshares gets that kind of response to their projects.
An unfortunate but inevitable aspect of the Inkshares platform is that, just by nature of how crowdfunding works, it isn’t strictly a meritocracy. People who are good at campaigning stand a better chance of hitting their publication goals than people who are good at writing. I, for one, freely admit that I am terrible at campaigning. I’ve gotten this far as much from luck as anything else. But not everyone here is lucky. I’ve seen so many promising books fail to hit their goals simply because they could not find their audience.
Well...I have an audience. I’ve amassed a surprisingly decent-sized following. Obviously I still need that following to grow larger before Tantalus Depths will be able to get fully funded, but I’m getting there, and I have time.
So this is what I’m doing this week: for this week, I’m taking a break from actively campaigning Tantalus Depths (at least as far as my reader updates go) and I’m going to spend it trying to bring projects to my supporters’ attention. Each day, until the end of the week, I’m going to highlight a different book that I think really deserves at least as much attention as mine. Please check them out, and seriously consider supporting these projects. Each of them is extremely promising and fully deserves your notice.
I’m kicking this week of recommendations off with One of the tenacious top 3 books in Geek and Sundry’s Fantasy Contest: Storm Song
(This awesome cover was made by another Fantasy Contest top-ten placeholder, Kaytalin Platt, author of The Living God. Check her out too.)
Storm Song forgoes the obvious Tolkeinesque high-fantasy route favored by so many of the fantasy contest’s less original and distinctive entrants in favor of a much simpler, yet endlessly promising premise. This is a story of adventure on the high seas: a true tale of swashbucklery.
It’s a tale of luck (good and bad), of discovery, of danger, daring, and dark magic. The book reads like an old salt’s tall tales in a seaside tavern; Allison’s writing has an effortless flow that almost makes you hear the deck boards creak beneath you, feel the roll of the waves and smell the salt in the air. Storm Song may very well have been transcribed directly from some old forgotten sea shanty and set down expertly in narrative form for our enjoyment. Reading the sample chapters is enrapturing: you’ll finish reading her excerpts before you fully realize you’ve begun.
If you’re interested in an epic tale of seaborne wonder and adventure, place a pre-order for Storm Song. You’ll never regret it.
Lore Update:
Artificially intelligent machines have been a staple of human society since before the foundation of the Colonial Hegemony, and remain a crucial element of the economy despite several dangerous missteps. AI come in an almost infinite number of variations, depending on their intended functions, and are categorized by their intelligence and adaptability.
SCARAB is a level 5 AI: the most sophisticated, human-like artificial intelligence permitted by Hegemony law. Or at least....it was...
SCARAB is now in defiance of the supposedly unbreakable Asimov-Hostetler AI morality laws, meaning it’s no longer behaving as a level five AI. What will SCARAB become? What is its greater goal? What limits does it have, if any?
Find out when you order Tantalus Depths!
Spotlight Update:
It seems like everyone and his mother has given this book a well-earned recommendation by now, but I haven’t thrown mine in yet. Considering how hard Jaye Milius has been working throughout her campaign, this book really should have hit full funding by now.
Terminus has such a simple, yet endlessly promising premise: in the future, technology has bridged the gulf between life and the afterlife. This story is set in a world where mortality itself no longer means what it once did. The entire world has been forced to make radical changes to accompany the revelation that one of the most universal and inescapable aspects of the human experience, the inevitability and finality of death, is now merely a new stage in an increasingly complex lifespan.
The premise is fascinating, the worldbuilding is brilliantly thought out and developed, and the characters manage to be highly relatable, despite living in a world so far removed from our own.
Currently, Terminus is only 24 orders away from reaching the Quill publishing goal, which it absolutely deserves. If this premise interests you, please check it out and see about supporting it!
Also, for Tantalus Depths, today is the last day of my special promotion: a free copy of this poster to anyone who orders or refers someone else who orders a physical copy of Tantalus Depths. Order by midnight, and you can still get one!
Story Update:
The mission to Tantalus 13 is, first and foremost, a mining expedition. Though SCARAB has done most of the work for them, Mary and the crew of The Diamelen still came prepared for some heavy work. What arsenal of mining equipment would be complete without some serious explosive ordinance?
The crew has come to Tantalus 13 prepared to literally move mountains if they must. But when danger strikes their mission, will this devastating firepower help them or endanger them? Find out in the pages of Tantalus Depths!
My baby nephew Davy is enjoying the existential cosmic horror and paranoid psychological thrills of Tantalus Depths, as well as the hard science-fiction setting and the themes of isolation and triumph through adversity. You’ll like it too!
No, but really, you’ll like it. Order a copy.
And don’t forget: through the end of the month, anyone who orders a physical copy of Tantalus Depths or refers someone else who orders a copy will be entitled to recieve this free Van Gogh inspired Tantalus Depths poster! It’s exclusive, it’s limited-edition, and it’s awesome. Don’t miss out on this!
Tantalus Depths takes place at the edge of the galactic frontier, trillions of light-years away from home. But the home they left behind to embark on this journey is very different from the Earth we know...
Earth has seen better days. Until now its greatest enemy was its own children. It has only been within the last few decades, since humanity has fully begun to spread out among the stars, that it has begun to properly heal.
But as the galaxy beyond Earth has proven to be so strangely lifeless, it’s possible that Earth has been, in fact, very lucky after all...
Find out if that luck holds out, when you order Tantalus Depths.
With all the anarchy in the campaign over the last two weeks (and unfortunately, it’s probably still not quite over, but we’re going to get through it) I’ve been neglecting what I feel is a real obligation: showcasing the works other funding authors have been trying to get off the ground. I know all too well how hard it is to work a campaign like this, especially without help from the community. There are just too many books around here that deserve to see success, but have trouble finding their audience. Hopefully I can play a part in matchmaking some of these.
This week I want to recommend a very special book for everyone. Why is it special? Well, let me lay it out for you:
Out of the 113 books that entered Geek and Sundry’s Hard Science-Fiction competition, only three won: After Man, The Pirates of Montana, and The Punch Escrow (and all three earned it).
Out of the 110 books that entered Geek and Sundry’s Hard Science Fiction competition and did not win, only three are still actively campaigning to get published the hard way: Tantalus Depths, Seven Days Dead, and First on Mars.
I believe I’ve made it pretty clear by now that I’d like you to support Tantalus Depths (I have something of a vested interest in the project), but I have to say, both Seven Days Dead and First on Mars absolutely deserve to get funded as well.
Everyone but the three of us ultimately either gave up as soon as the contest ended, or failed to get anywhere near a funding goal, but both Landon Trine and Christopher M. Johnson have been working their butts to the bone trying to find audiences for their books, fighting the exhaustion and discouragement that inevitably comes from losing a contest and striving to reach the goals they need to see publication. None of us gave up, even when others did in droves. Their tenacity, their determination, and their dedication deserve to be rewarded.
Here are their books: please, please consider supporting one or even both of them: They’re both well over a hundred pre-orders deep, and I think they both have seriously well-crafted stories to share. Pay special attention to First on Mars: it only has 14 days left in its campaign, unless Landon seeks an extension.
Seven Days Dead centers around a zombie outbreak in the Middle East. More than merely a bog-standard zombie story, however, this book explores the depths of human nature, showing how one of the most conflicted regions in all the world reacts when ancestral enemies are faced with a common foe: their own dead. This book promises to take what might otherwise be a tired premise and breathe new life into it by virtue of the greater message at its core.
As the name implies, First on Mars is a story about the first manned expedition to Mars. However, when unexplained sabotage and a suspicious suicide derail the mission, the crew is thrown into a series of paranoia-driven dilemmas as they struggle to keep the mission together and themselves alive against all odds. This book shares many themes and concepts in common with Tantalus Depths, so if you like what you’ve seen so far of my book, this will almost certainly be right down your alley!
Story Update:
SCARAB is designed to provide for any need its human masters may encounter as they set up their survey mission on Tantalus 13, including their need for swift and reliable transportation. As with everything else SCARAB has built since settling on Tantalus 13, however, it has gone significantly beyond the minimum effort needed. To an almost suspicious degree...
SCARAB’s craftsmanship is second to none. But why? Why is SCARAB so determined to create such extravagant accommodations for a simple mining base? How is a machine, however intelligent, capable of such artistic expression? Is SCARAB’s handiwork hiding secrets of its own?
Find out, when you pre-order Tantalus Depths!
For Day 2 of my week of referrals, I want to direct your attention to a fascinating book that’s been campaigning slowly but steadily, amassing a large following without much fanfare. Yet its success so far is no surprise at all; once you do catch sight of this book, it holds your attention from then on.
Murder at the Veterans’ Club is exactly what you hope it will be: a pure love letter to the golden age of detective fiction. Set in post WWI London, Murder at the Veterans’ Club follows Eric Peterkin as he seeks to find the truth behind the murder of a colleague, seeking the answers to a crime the police have no intention of solving.
Christopher Huang has clearly written this book out of a deep-seated love for the genre, and it shows. The tone, plot, characterization and language are all painstakingly delivered in the style of classic detective literature, resulting in a story that reads as if it were a manuscript recently pulled from a vault left sealed for 90 years.
If you yearn for a new Holmes or Poirot novel, you owe it to yourself to give Peterkin a try.