Greetings, adventurers!
HAPPY DOUBLE LORE WEEK!
Before I get into today’s lore entry, I want to say a great big THANKS! We had an awesome weekend for preorders and jumped up by quite a few! Thanks to everyone who’s preordered so far, and everyone who’s been sharing the link. We’re just 6 preorders away from chapter 4. We’re so close! I’d love to give you something new to read for the coming weekend!
Without any further ado, here’s your first dose of lore from Double Lore Week.
THE PANZEROTTI GROUP
The Panzerotti Group was founded nearly 75 years prior to the events of Mushroom and Anchovy, by Roberto Lombardi. Lombardi was heir to a family restaurant, but felt the call of adventure from far beyond the confines of his humble home. Lombardi tossed pizzas in the air and folded panzerotti, and he pantomimed the toppings as adventurers travelling. Yes. He really did that.
One day, while working front of house in his family restaurant, he overheard a couple of travellers talking about finding a statuette in an abandoned church and getting rewarded for it. Roberto initiated a discussion with these two gentlemen, and the next day, he closed his shop for the first time in years and ventured out with these two men.
The trio found the statuette and brought it back to the standing church—and they received a lofty reward. The three split it evenly and started talking about more adventures to come. Before they knew it, they had a waiting list worth of treasure to be found—and they needed more adventurers. They began to outsource, and Roberto found he also had to outsauce as his restaurant was being neglected.
Roberto “Crust” Lombardi, Abramo “Marinara” Conti, and Salvatore “Mozzarella” Romano became the three founding fathers of the Panzerotti Group, which then grew and flourished into the entity you will read about in Mushroom and Anchovy.
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See you on Friday, adventurers, with another Lore Day update and, hopefully, another numbers update.
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
The Wednesday reading went well, despite some technical/parental? hiccups. You can watch the reading right here! I’ll do a reading of chapter 3 in a few more weeks--around mid-July. After some feedback, I’m going to try and keep the live readings to a shorter amount of time, keeping it just to the reading.
I announced my backer contest on the live stream on Wednesday night as well. Here are the rules!
The prize? A $50 Amazon egift card (in YOUR CURRENCY). This contest will be going on until July 31st.
The Nerdist contest is officially over, so I imagine people will be looking to the LaunchPad contest now. This would be a great time to preorder and help Mushroom and Anchovy move up the contest ladder. We’ve dropped down to 6th place as another contender has swooped in to 5th! We still have several months of the contest left, however, so it’s still anyone’s game. I will continue to keep a close eye.
Speaking of the Nerdist contest, congrats to everyone in the Sci-Fi contest! Special congrats to backer and author of Curio Citizen Katherine Forrister, who got 2nd place! As you know, I was really pulling for her, so I’m so happy for her that she got in the top three! I can’t wait to read Curio Citizen!
I changed the name of the backer categories to something a little more in-universe: Adventurers are ebook tier, Agents are print book tier, and Commander is the 3-copy super backer name-in-the-back-of-the-book tier.
I know this is Lore Day but I’ve already inundated you with so much today that I don’t want to hold your attention too much longer! I’ll move it to Monday instead so you can get a DOUBLE LORE WEEK next week, and I’ll try to keep the updates to a minimum. Unless something awesome happens.
A final note: I’ve been submitting a press release for the book to multiple sources, and will be reaching out to different avenues over the coming weeks. As well, we’re just 11 preorders away from the chapter 4 posting. I hope to be able to share that incredibly zany chapter with you soon!
Whew! That’s a lot. Thanks for your attention, folks. Next week’s e-mails will be a lot more fun. ;)
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Hey adventurers,
I wouldn’t normally send an update outside of the Monday-Friday schedule, but this is pretty urgent!
I also wouldn’t normally send an update about someone else’s book, but, well, this is pretty urgent. ;)
Katherine Forrister’s book, Curio Citizen, is entered in the Nerdist Sci-Fi competition, which ends today. She’s been a great supporter of Mushroom and Anchovy and is so very close to first place! I’d love to see someone else’s dreams come true. Would you consider giving her book a preorder as well?
That’s it from me for now. I know you’ve heard from me a lot this week. Good luck, Katherine!
Greetings, adventurers!
Not much to go over today—it was a quiet weekend, seeing only one preorder. The past few weeks have been similarly quiet, but I really feel this is the quiet before the storm. Thanks to all of you who have been sharing the link! Please continue to do so!
A little reminder about live reading of Chapter 2 on Wednesday night at 8:30 PM AST, plus a contest announcement, over on my Facebook page. Come tune in!
This Friday will be another Lore Day. Please give me a shout if there’s anything about the world of Mushroom and Anchovy that you’d like to know more about. I’ll see you then, and hope to see some of you on Wednesday, as well!
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
It was unfortunately a pretty quiet week, but thankfully, I was prepared—I saw this coming due to the end of the Nerdist Sci-Fi competition. A lot of focus has been on that particular contest as it reaches its completion. I don’t know how, but we’re still managing to hold onto 5th place in the Launchpad contest. As soon as the Nerdist contest is over on the 27th, though, focus should return to the Launchpad one. A couple of preorders to secure our fifth place position and work up the ladder would be extremely helpful at this point.
Here’s an update on our current numbers: we’re 14% of the way to the light goal (250 preorders) and 4% of the way to the full goal (750). There’s lots of time, still—the campaign is going until early September—so please keep sharing the link! This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Next week, I’m going to be doing a live reading of chapter 2 on Wednesday night at 8:30 PM AST over on my Facebook Page, as well as answer any of your questions, should you have any. Plus, there will be a special announcement about the backer-exclusive contest on Wednesday night!
Lastly, I did promise I’d be giving you a bit of information on the lore and world of Mushroom and Anchovy, so here’s a bit for you to enjoy.
THE CITY OF BURDON
Burdon is Particia “Anchovy” Finnigan’s hometown, where she resides in a modest flat at the time of the first book. It boasts a population of approximately 800,000, and is the world’s largest manufacturer of steamcars. It also happens to be where the Panzerotti Group’s main headquarters is located.
Exports include steamcars and locomotives—to which there is a massive station just on the outskirts of town—travel, and clockwork mechanics. People come from all over to have their vehicles and machines repaired by the industry’s top professionals. It is considered to be somewhat of a hub, where people go to travel, or stay on their way someplace else. It is central to a lot of cities and countries, including the neighbouring city, Merconia. a city of schools and universities.
That’s it for this week, folks! I’m hoping I’ll have more to report next week, and I hope to see some of you on Wednesday night!
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
The campaign has truly begun now. I’ve been reaching out to businesses, I’ve been passing out flyers and I’ve been working double time to get the word out about Mushroom and Anchovy. There’s even more to come this week, and I hope to have a big update on Friday!
We’re still holding down 5th place of the Launchpad contest! This is great news. The Nerdist Sci-Fi contest is finishing up this week, which will likely mean that more focus will be drawn to the Launchpad Contest after it’s over. This may mean other books jumping up in the leaderboards. 1st and 2nd place are pretty far off right now, with both surpassing 250 preorders, so if we want to get a guaranteed publish, we’ll have to see a real surge in numbers.
I’ve decided that Fridays are going to be “Lore Days”, in which I will introduce you to some aspect of the world of Mushroom and Anchovy. I’ll choose one part of the universe to describe to you—please let me know if there’s anything from the first three chapters that you want me to elaborate on!
That’s it for the first half of the week, folks. I hope to hear from some of you soon about Lore Day!
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!

These gorgeous flyers will be going out to various places in my stomping grounds: the Greater Moncton Area. They’ll be trickling out starting today. I’m hoping to get more interest this way.
We’re still sitting with relative comfort in 5th place in the Launchpad contest, but with more and more people entering every day, that could change at any moment. A note that entering the top 3 of the contest will mean publication, and possibly more. 5th place is pretty amazing, considering over 100 people have entered, but we still have more work to do!
I had a twitter Q&A on Wednesday, and I’m going to do another live video reading on the 28th on my Facebook page.
We’re getting closer to that milestone of 50 preorders (OR 100 followers), at which point I will post up chapter 4 for your reading pleasure. Please be sure to share the link with your friends so we can get that number up and get you some more reading material!
As always, may all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
We’ve climbed back up to the 5th place in the LaunchPad contest! We have a ways to go to get to fourth, so won’t you please consider throwing in a preorder to help nudge the book a bit further, if you haven’t already? Remember: sharing your link drives referrals, which earns you Inkshares credits! More books for you!
After a quiet week, I’m ready to return the the campaigning world. I’m currently awaiting some very nice flyers in the mail and plan on reaching out to all kinds of people over the coming weeks. Though I can’t make it to Animaritime this year, promotional materials will be handed out there, and there will also be an ad in the registration book.
I’ve decided to do a couple more Q&As—one of them will be through my Twitter account (https://twitter.com/nekonezume) this Wednesday (14th) night at 8:30 PM, and the other will be, again, on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/kcooperwriting/), the Wednesday after next (28th). The latter will include a live reading of chapter 2, as well. I’m trying to make up for all the time I lost last week while my household was a bit topsy-turvy.
That’s all for the moment! I’m hoping to have more to report on Friday.
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
I’m afraid I don’t have much news this week, as there hasn’t been much movement on the preorder front. I am not discouraged or concerned, however--in fact, I partially blame myself. I was unable to do much media contact this week (or, really, anything else) due to some big movements in my personal life. It’s been an incredibly hectic week and I’m afraid next week is shaping up to be about the same--hopefully to a lesser degree. I’m hoping I can start to pick up the pieces later on next week and get right back on the campaign.
Despite it being a quiet week on my end, we did still get a couple of preorders! If we can do that on a quiet week, I’m sure we’ll do fantastically on a busier week!
We’re only 17 preorders away from the next chapter being posted. We can get that in no time! I will check in again on Monday, and hopefully next Friday’s update will be much more engaging.
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
I want to give you a really brief numbers update. I’m afraid I don’t have great news. We’re already over a third of the way through the campaign, but we’re not even at a full 1/5 of the orders we need to fund in time for the campaign’s end. We have lots of time, but action is starting to get critical and necessary. As it stands, we’re at 18% of the Quill goal and 6% of the Inkshares goal.
So, now I’m faced with the reality that my humble book won’t make the cut, and whether I should continue to try getting it published should the campaign fail.
That’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it, folks. For now, I’m going to keep getting the word out in any way I can, and hope for the best. Unfortunately, I do need to keep a small amount of realism, but I want to remain optimistic.
In any event, I DID promise Double Lore this week, so I have come to deliver!
ISLE OF JAMDERO
Jamdero is an island south of Burdon, with a giant bridge built atop the waves to house train travel. The journey takes about 8 hours, and the climate changes drastically during that time. The latest and best locomotive technology was used to craft a train and bridge able to traverse such a distance, and Burdon is currently the only station to travel to the island.
In addition to beautiful beaches, sun, breathtaking flora, and vacation spots, Jamdero also has its share of secrets. A dense jungle leads up a mountain to the entrance of the Forbidden Cave, so named due to its dangerous nature. People who go in there rarely come back. It is said that the Cave houses historical artifacts and riches, but no one has been able to venture deep enough to prove it.
The island itself is home to a single large city and a few smaller communities, as well as a thriving tourism district on the outskirts of the city.
That’s it for now, folks. I’ll see you all on Monday!
Don’t forget about the contest over on my Facebook page if you’ve already ordered a copy of the book!
’Til next time, may all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper