I don’t usually do two updates in one day but...

WE FUNDED!

So let me make something clear: I use the term ’we’ when talking about this campaign because while I write the book, it’s your support and encouragement that makes it happen. These aren’t empty words meant to artificially include you and make you feel like part of the process. The whole point of Inkshares is that this is a community effort. A symbiotic endeavour between reader and writer to help create works of fiction and bring them to the public.

There are a lot of people who have gone above and beyond for this to happen and I’d like to highlight at least three that can benefit immediately from your support:

John Robin, the author of Blood Dawn, spearheaded community efforts to rally people together after I called for help from fellow authors. John is a hard working writer and a helluva guy. Check out Blood Dawn and support it.

Andre Brun, my CEGEP buddy and author of Lies & Deception campaigned for me harder than I could campaign for myself. He leveraged his own book and his salesmanship skills to gather a ton of pre-orders and get A God in the Shed in front of many new pairs of eyes. Lies & Deception is a terrifyingly ambitious book that deserves your attention. Check it out.

Paul Inman, my cohost on WriteBrain and author of Ageless also lent a hand and was a big part of the community, leveraging the release of his own book to help get visibility for A God in the Shed. Check out Ageless, I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Finally, let me plug my buddy Brian Guthrie who was a great help and is currently participating in the Geek & Sundry Hard SciFi contest on Inkshares. Check out his book After Man and support it with all your heart (and pre-orders).

More soon as thing develop and, as promised:

JF

Here we are almost two weeks ahead of schedule and my re-writes and fixes for The Bones of the Past are finished! Not only that, but after struggling with my acknowledgements, I have finished all the associated paperwork and writing Inkshares and Girl Friday Productions need to get the ball rolling on their end. All of this means I should have a schedule for edits and even a tentative publication date sometime in the next few weeks!

I had also been toying with the idea of including a map but hadn’t managed to find an artist that felt like the right fit for my book. Little did I know he was in front of me the whole time. My amazing map was drawn by non-other than John Robin, the author of Blood Dawn (if you haven’t pre-ordered his book yet you can and should do that HERE!). The hand-drawn style perfectly fits with the flavor of my world. I hope you like it!

Thank you all once again!

I’ve made some progress on the concept art for Soulblade, I have still been getting my head around Corel painter and my new Wacom tablet with all the new brushes that I haven’t been able to get with my bog standard Photoshop CS2.

While it has been over a week since my last update, I wanted to let you know of a project that’s very close to it full funding goal (29 pre-orders away ladies and gentlemen) and with only a few days remaining I wish to express how much this book should really get it full publishing.

Check it out: A God in the Shed by J-F Dubeau is a Fantasy/Horror story set in the forgettably small village of St-Ferdinand, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The villagers have been hiding terrible secret for generations, but when their mysterious captive escapes but gets inadvertently trapped in the McKenzy’s backyard shed, it’s up to the Venus and her friends to figure out how to dispose of this terrible and malevolent burden; an Old God of hate and death.

You can find out more about this dark and beautiful, read sample chapters, reviews and pre-order you copy of A God in the Shed by visiting: www.inkshares.com/books/a-god-in-the-shed

You can listen to the prologue as read by Ageless author Paul Inman here: youtu.be/XJw5oZhqtXo

Need more incentive?

• Each pre-order enters you into the ‘I want to kill a reader’ raffle. The winner will have his name and likeness used in the book as a minor character that gets killed off. The author will work with the winner to find the appropriate means of demise to satisfy both the winner and the story.

• Each physical copy of A God in the Shed will be signed and numbered as an exclusive first edition item.

• Free, exclusive A God in the Shed bookmarks will be included with the physical copies and mailed to eBook supporters.

• Orders of three or more copies guarantees your name to appear in the Patrons list printed at the end of the book.

• You get to enjoy the satisfaction and pride at having supported both art and literature.

After some recent discussions, I felt the need to post this to the project page and send it as an update.

What this Book is NOT:

First, this is not a book meant to answer all the questions.  This world the story takes place in is a complicated place where everything has changed owing to the cataclysmic event.  As a result, everything you know about society, religion, politics, genders, gender roles, and much more has changed.  Second, this book is not "women can’t go on without men."  Having lived for 500 years without them, clearly they can.  This book is an exploration of that idea: what would it be like if you take the most basic form of diversity and remove it?  And then what might happen if you reintroduce it?  How would society react?  Third, this is not an anti-feminist diatribe.  It is also not a Complementarian manifesto.  The idea here is NOT to declare one gender is better than the other, or that they can only exist together if they exist in a specific mold.  The idea behind it is to explore what would happen if such an event were to occur, not pass judgment on you or anyone else for how they view or believe on this subject.  Finally, this book is not going to tell you what to believe or accept about it.  This will have a lot of ambiguity in it ON PURPOSE.  This is not to avoid conflict, but to avoid "leading the witness."  The narrative is going to have a lot of opportunities to make small and big statements throughout.  Places where we can hit you right in the face with something just because we want to.  We won’t be doing that.  The idea here is to create a setting where all of these preconceived notions we carry into our interactions with each other have all fundamentally been altered or vanished.  We all are going to approach this story with differing world views and beliefs.  That is fine.  The goal of this story is to take you as you are and, on the other end, leave you where you choose to be after contemplating the ideas and possibilities herein.  

Including today, we have six days left to fund this project.

The next few days are going to be very important. In six days, I celebrate the end of this campaign, whether it is a success or a failure. I’ve already pulled out the bottles of celebratory whisky. The results of the campaign will decide if I’ll be drinking from the first bottle, or the second.

Dear friends,

First of all, let me point you to this article on examiner.com, in which Ms Alicia Smock discusses the Inkshares podcast, "WriteBrain", and some of what constitutes life within the growing Inkshares community. "WriteBrain" had some very good things to say about "Murder at the Veterans’ Club" on their last episode, by the way, and I do encourage people to give it a listen.

As some of you may have figured out by now, I normally send these bulletins out on Sundays. I thought I’d make an exception this week. You see, we’re in a bit of a time crunch. No no, not "Murder at the Veterans’ Club" ... I’m talking about JF Dubeau’s "A God in the Shed". Here’s the press release:

A God in the Shed by J-F Dubeau is a Fantasy/Horror story set in the forgettably small village of St-Ferdinand, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The villagers have been hiding terrible secret for generations, but when their mysterious captive escapes but gets inadvertently trapped in the McKenzy’s backyard shed, it’s up to the Venus and her friends to figure out how to dispose of this terrible and malevolent burden; an Old God of hate and death.

You can find out more about this dark and beautiful, read sample chapters, reviews and pre-order you copy of A God in the Shed by visiting: www.inkshares.com/books/a-god-in-the-shed

You can listen to the prologue as read by Ageless author Paul Inman here.

Need more incentive?

• Each pre-order enters you into the "I want to kill a reader" raffle. The winner will have his name and likeness used in the book as a minor character that gets killed off. The author will work with the winner to find the appropriate means of demise to satisfy both the winner and the story.

• Each physical copy of A God in the Shed will be signed and numbered as an exclusive first edition item.

• Free, exclusive A God in the Shed bookmarks will be included with the physical copies and mailed to eBook supporters.

• Orders of three or more copies guarantees your name to appear in the Patrons list printed at the end of the book.

• You get to enjoy the satisfaction and pride at having supported both art and literature.

A God in the Shed is the first part of a trilogy that pushes the line between beauty and horror by telling a story that changes how we look at magic and the world around us. You have a chance of being part of making this book a reality and supporting a new author on his journey.

However, time is running out! The campaign ends April 22nd. Don’t miss out and order today!

-----

(Dear friends, it might be worth noting that each physical copy of "Murder at the Veterans’ Club" obtained via pre-order is also an exclusive, signed first edition item. Just in case that makes a difference ... but first, let’s get Mr. Dubeau across that finish line.)

As promised, a long overdue weekend update.

I’m currently working to get the 2nd issue of my newsletter up and ready to send out by 5/1, and was happy to make my self-imposed deadline by sending out the 1st issue on 4/1 complete with a map sketch, bit of talk about the future of Exile, Magus, a dialogue between two characters which shed a bit of light on two ancient civilizations mentioned in Magus - Melexi and Thirosia, and a darkly comedic short story poking fun at a few tropes.  For any of you who are interested in reading that first issue then sign up for the newsletter before 4/30.  On 4/30 I’ll send out the April newsletter again to everyone who has signed up after it was sent out.  On 5/1 I’ll send out the May newsletter of course.

What about the progress of Exile, Magus?  Well, its mainly the super dull background work right now.  Polishing, contacting artists, and so on.  For any of you wondering if I’ll be making another go of trying to fund on Inkshares, yes I will.  I just want to make sure I’ve got a full strategy in place instead of jumping in blind again, so for now I’m focused on the dull background work which is why I’ve been so very quiet as of late.  Don’t worry though, I’m still here and I’m still working.

That’s all I’ve got for today, so thanks for your time, have good weekends everybody, and of course keep reading and enjoying!