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! 

 Last week was INCREDIBLE. We started off at just 13 preorders, and by the end of Saturday, we’d flipped that number around and made 31! We more than doubled within a span of about 24 hours. I’m so pleased! There’s a lot farther to go, of course, but we’re making a great pace.

 We’re really close to the 50 preorders mark, by the way, which means I can upload chapter 4 soon! 

 Are you looking for other ways to help get the word out? There are free ways that do an awful lot for me!

• re-tweet me on Twitter  
• share my link on social media 
• share a picture of the book cover on Instagram, along with the link (and please tag me so I can thank you personally!)  
• get a Street Team package from me! I will ship you some business cards and bookmarks—get in touch with me to make this happen. Please keep one of the bookmarks for yourself! 
  

 Also, did you know that if someone buys the book from your referral link, you’ll get credits to spend on Inkshares? There are lots of amazing books on this site to support, so that’s a great way to do it! (Or you could just… order another copy of Mushroom and Anchovy. If you want.) 

At the moment, we’re sitting with 32 preorders and 50 followers. That’s a big difference in numbers, so I’m just wondering: what can I do to get you a bit more interested in preordering a copy? What would grab you? More chapters, some art, a trailer? Better e-mails?! I’m all ears, folks: give me a shout. Also, since the first reading went so well, I’m going to make myself even more uncomfortable and do a reading of chapter 2 in a few weeks, if there’s interest in that. 

A quick thanks to everyone taking this journey with me so far. There’s still a long way to go, but this is a marathon, not a race--I’m in it for the long haul!

May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,

K. M. Cooper

Greetings, Adventurers! 

I’m here with a brief Friday update. Lots of good news today! 

First of all, here’s a link to the Q&A and reading from Wednesday this week. I was so far out of my comfort zone doing this, but it looks like it paid off--we had plateaued at 13 orders for some time, and then, within a 24 hour span from May 31 to June 1, we got 10 orders! Amazing!

We have hit an important milestone as of this morning: we’re already at 10% of our light publishing goal (250 copies). We’re at 3% of the big goal, which is also a start, and I still believe we can get to it as we have a lot of time to do so. I’m going to be spending the next couple of weeks reaching out to different outlets in an attempt to spread the word. As well, Animaritime has offered to hand out some promotional material, and Mushroom and Anchovy will have an advertisement in the convention schedule, as well. 

A little contest update, too: we’re down to 6th place, but we’re very close to getting back to 5th. The contest takes into account unique preorders--i.e., it doesn’t take into account multiple orders from the same account--and we’re only 2 unique preorders away from getting back there. I’m not stressing about it, though--the contest still has a long way to go. 

 As I said in the live vid, at 100 followers or 50 preorders (whichever comes first) I’ll post chapter 4 for your enjoyment. If you liked the silliness of chapters 1-3, you’re going to really have fun with chapter 4. 

 May your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting, 

 K. M. Cooper

Greetings, Adventurers! 

 At a little over a week into our campaign, we’re starting off with 14 preorders. Despite having to start over, I feel that this is an excellent beginning. We have a long way to go, but I’m putting my feelers out and talking to as many people as possible about this book. 

 In order to reach our 750 preorders goal, I’ve done the math and come up with 50 preorders a week. That seems like a pretty doable goal. That’s just 7 preorders a day. Even if we’re starting at a slight deficit, we can definitely make that up. An ad for Mushroom and Anchovy will be appearing in this year’s Animaritime booklet, for instance, and some cards and bookmarks will be going out there as well. 

 Once we’re 1/3 of the way through the campaign—approx. 33 days in--I’m going to kick off a contest for those who have preordered ONLY, with a prize to be announced! It will run until the second third is up. Then I’m going to do another one! Be sure to preorder before then so you’re eligible to enter. 

 Hey also, you know what helps sell books? Being able to tell people what the book is about. (Hey... I’m new here). Here’s the synopsis I posted up on the book’s page the other day. Please share it with anyone who may be interested! 

 Patricia “Anchovy” Finnigan was just about ready to give up on being a professional adventurer with the Panzerotti Group, but the thrill of being the first to discover the Lost Jewels of Tu’ji’qutani was too strong. Prestige, treasure, a cursed cave? It ticked off every box on Anchovy’s list of requirements for an exciting job. 

Then she met Mushroom. A former secret service member with a twisty moustache, just enough risk-taking to make him interesting, and a flair for always looking put together, Mushroom was Anchovy’s adventuring match. 

 When a fellow agent is murdered, the fun stops, and the real work begins. Mushroom and Anchovy must learn to work together if they’re going to find treasure AND solve murders. Especially since anything can happen in a cursed cave…

 Spanning three separate stories, Mushroom and Anchovy is an adventure in every sense, and follows these two professionals as they work in a chaotic steampunk world where magic is untamed and time travel is just a train ride away. 

 I also mentioned before that the reason we had cancelled and re-started the campaign was for the contest. We’re currently in 5th place in that contest, and 3rd place isn’t far away. If we reach the top 3, Mushroom and Anchovy will be given the full publishing treatment. So please, if you haven’t preordered yet, this is a great time to do so! And if you can convince a friend or two to follow the project, that would also be incredibly helpful. 

 As a final note, I will be giving a LIVE reading of chapter 1 over on my Facebook page this Wednesday night at 8:30 PM AST. I will also be hosting a Q&A during that time, so please feel free to bring any of your burning questions to be answered. It will be archived after for those who have to miss it, but I hope to see some of you there! 

 I’ll be back on Friday with your final update before the weekend. 

 May your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting, 

 K. M. Cooper