After a seemingly random accident, Bette Donovan, piques the interest of the imposing Dept. of Propagation. Here she threads her way through the desperate measures a society will adopt in the name of self-preservation.
Greetings, adventurers!
Some bittersweet news: we are no longer in the running for the Launchpad contest, as we did not make the top 75. A HUGE congratulations to those who did make the cut! Now I get the opportunity to follow several more exciting up-and-coming books. All in all, it was a good experience. Thanks to Launchpad and Inkshares for the opportunity!
So now, to the good news! It’s been another HUGE week, so I have lots to share.
This was another exciting week for the campaign, and another huge milestone! In fact… we hit TWO milestones. Firstly, on Sunday, we hit the 100 preorders mark. Considering we were barely over 50 preorders at the beginning of the month, this was a pretty exciting number to hit. Then, yesterday, we hit the halfway point of the campaign!
So, we’re now over 125 preorders, and we have less than that many to go with a little less than three weeks left. It’ll be tight, but I think we’ll be able to squeeze in the full 250. Thank you to everyone who has been preordering and spreading the word—there are a lot of you!
This week, I was featured on the front page of ThisWeek (see what I did there?), an arts-focused paper distributed weekly to my area. The multi-talented Margaret Eaton came by my house and interviewed me about my creative work, with a focus on Mushroom and Anchovy. Her article was very in-depth and I really couldn’t be happier. Thank you, Margaret!
On the same day Margaret came by, I recorded a little video to try and convince a few other people to preorder. It’s right here if you want to see me yelling about my book (because you haven’t seen that enough already).
I had a couple other points to make, friends, but this e-mail is long enough. I’m just happy I can present this much information for you, because it’s really exciting to me! I am 52% of the way to reaching my biggest goal for this year. Thanks for reading this far and joining me along the way.
May your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
WHAT. A. WEEK. Wow. Since last update, we’ve seen a giant leap in orders. We’ve had over thirty preorders in the past week, we’ve been selected for the SnarkyDarkSy syndicate, and we’ve leapt up to 4th place in the Inkshares contest! We’re about 25 unique preorders away from getting to 3rd place, which, if you recall, will get us published as well, if we retain.
I’m thrilled about the direction the campaign has taken, and I have nowhere to look but to the recipients of this e-mail for thanks. All of you have given me so much hope for a positive result. Thank you, thank you! 24 days remain in the campaign, and, with the forward movement we’ve seen this past week, I am confident we can make this happen.
A little bad news: due to unforeseen circumstances, Wednesday’s live reading had to be cancelled. The good news, however, is that it has been rescheduled to NEXT Wednesday! So, join me at 9 PM AST on my Facebook page next Wednesday the 23rd, and I’ll be reading from chapter 4 live for your enjoyment!
But wait, there’s more! My talented friend (I have a lot of those) Laura Blackbeard drew some gift art of our protagonists! Without further ado, I present to you Patricia "Anchovy" Finnigan...
...and Vladimir "Mushroom" Kalkov!
Laura, thank you so much for feeling inspired enough to draw my characters. I really love these drawings and it’s been hard for me to keep quiet about them until Friday. I mean, everything I’ve discussed today has been hard to keep quiet about until Friday! What a week. If you like Laura’s work, check out her blog. She is also available for commissions.
Thank you for everything, adventurers, and a special thanks to all of you who have been sharing on social media! A reminder that if you’ve already backed the book, you should definitely enter the contest I’m doing on my Facebook page to win a $50 Amazon gift card. Check the pinned post for more details. If you’re going to be sharing on social media, after all, you’d might as well get rewarded for it!
May all your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Hello glorious The Punch Escrow backers!
Monthly update time for Human Resources!
Last month I mentioned the focus of the developmental edit had been on expanding the world-building and firming up some of the science behind the novel. I’m pleased to report that is now complete, I have new beat sheets and scene outlines, and am officially writing pages again!
Speaking of science, the _MIT Technology Review_ just published a very interesting article on CRISPR being used to edit the DNA of human embryos. Why is this interesting? Because this application of CRISPR is a key trigger for the creation of the world in my novel. I’ve uploaded a special new excerpt to the Inkshares site telling the history of the world, from today to when my novel starts. You can read it here.
In other news, I took advantage of receipt trip to Sydney (the setting for the book), to further explore some of the relevant locations for scenes. I use the apple maps 3D city render, along with google street view extensively, but there’s nothing better than standing on-site. A couple highlights below.
That’s all for now — I need to get back to the manuscript and finish writing it so you can all read it.
Cheers,
Robert.
