Hey Everybody,

Just a quick update as publishing week continues.

The first of the two podcast interviews is up. Fellow Inkshares authors JF Dubeau and Paul Inman had me on their WriteBrain Podcast. Check it out there or on iTunes. 

Also for anyone in the Chicago area, it’s time to party! I will be at Bucket O Blood Books and Records (3182 N. Elston Ave) tonight starting at 7 PM for my official book launch celebration. So take a break from binge watching Daredevil and eat something. Also, if you know anyone who is in Chicago who doesn’t yet have my book, send them that direction. Bucket O Blood has a Bucket O Copies.

Remember to write those Amazon reviews!!! I can’t stress that enough. Amazon reviews are super important to advertising this little book by a first time author who no one has ever heard of. That’s how people will hear of me or more importantly my book (drinking game...take a drink every time I say book). So please, please PLEASE  place a review on Amazon when you are done reading. Or while reading. Or before reading. I’m not particular. Here I’ll even make it cut and paste easy for you:

I liked this book.

I didn’t like this book.

There. Feel free to post one of these amazing reviews on Amazon.

Before I go I wanted to congratulate the winners of the Nerdist Space Opera Contest Michael Haase, Christopher Leone, and Patrick Edwards. So yeah, those books will be coming down the line, but there are still lots of other worthy stories that didn’t win looking for funding. So continue to check Inkshares to help fill your bookshelves/e-reader space/heart.

Anyway, I have to go deliver more postcards to anyone who will let me (and maybe a few who just won’t notice)...as always thank you.

Good morning! There’s a new post on the Women Like Us Facebook page about the Beagle Freedom Project, which you can find below. Don’t forget 10% of anything I make on book sales will go to this wonderful organization so if you pre-order a book you’re also doing something good for the beagles. Also, please hit that ’Like’ button on the Facebook page if you haven’t already. Meanwhile, the edit and design phases are under way so stay tuned for more updates.  Next week I have a call regarding marketing set up with the Inkshares team, but if anybody has any other good marketing suggestions, please feel free to let me know!  Okay that’s it for now and here’s the link to the book’s Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/womenlikeusnovel/?ref=hl

Hold On, I’m Getting At Something

The backer copies of Asteroid Made of Dragons have all shipped and the wave is crashing down on the East Coast. By tonight – tomorrow maybe – they will have all arrived. My Facebook profile is awash with pictures – pictures of my friends with their copy, the copy they bought a year ago because I asked them to. Some have one, some have three, or five, or more. A gesture of love, of confidence, of faith and it wrecks me.

Writing is lonely. Being a human is lonely.

I don’t do well with moments of connection. Socially, sure. Joking, sure. But a real moment? Something important and true? Not my scene. We’re so unstable, the most unsuitable of symbols. How can I know the things I say are being received in the moment, in the blur of memory and sense and thinking of the next thing to say while half-hearing what you are saying now while also feeling the echoes of other versions of this conversation from before and beyond  on TV, in dreams, from splinter-blinks of fragmented now? I mean, how? Maybe it’s just me.

Being lonely is writing. A human is.

Hold On, I’m Getting At Something. This should be my coat of arms. I’ve written three books now (THREE!), and thousands of other words off in the Grand Margins.  And all in the service of this dimly perceived quest of discovery of meaning – of this THING I’m trying to say, but cannot express. Only glimpse the edges of as I travel forward and back in time. It’s hard to connect with humans – but with words, you have a puncher’s chance. This word connects to that, shapes form. Things stay where you put them. Mostly. Rime is Rime and Jonas is Jonas and Xenon loves graham crackers and Linus snores just a little bit. Now, on my desk is a red ball, the color of summer sunset and it is red, red, red. And it will stay red as long as I believe that it is red.

A lonely human is writing. Being.

So now – I see these pictures, I see these signs of love and faith. And all I can say is – do you see the ball on my desk? Is it red? Is it summer sunset or is it more of a cranberry? Why are you listening? Why are you picking up the signal? Why are you dreaming with me of the three moons that have no name and the Lost and the stupid, stupid power of friendship that keeps the dark at bay?

Being human is writing lonely.

Ah, the simple words. I’ve already said them – but they don’t land right. Thank you. Thank you. You thank, you are thanks. Thanks You. A tic, a nod, a thing we say to strangers and waiters and cats when they heed. An empty thing, not enough, a hollow gourd. A blob of ink at the end of emails and yammering sales pitches. Useless, sere, not enough. I pick up the pieces and slam them together, that’s all that I am, all that I do – all that I can do. With whatever art I have I try to say the Thing.

Lonely is being. Human is writing.

Thank you. You thank. You are thanks. Thanks are you.

Lonely human thanks you. You are writing.

Writing is you.

You are thank.

The ball is red and it is not so lonely. Thank you for coming so far with me.

Well, the Nerdist contest is over and I’m very happy for those who made it into the top three. Congratulations!

For the rest of us, the story doesn’t end here. Some have chosen to move on to other publishing options, while many have chosen to stick it out with Inkshares. I, for one, am going to stick it out for the remainder of my campaign and see if I can at least hit my Quill goal, if not more. I keep having this very positive feeling that things are going to move in a very good direction from here on out.

I have some friends who have their own podcasts and I will be plugging the book on both shows. I have passed out postcards all over Asheville and haven’t even hit the bookstores yet. I’m going to try and reconnect with some of the press outlets I reached out to a while back just to cover all my bases. 

If you were holding back on supporting me because of the contest (which I totally get), now’s the time to get your pre-order in! It would mean the world to me to at least see the book make it into Quill. It will open so many doors for me and I will be one step closer to realizing my dream of being a full-time writer. 

But, enough about me, don’t you all want to see how my quirky, retro-sci fi spy story turn out? Avalon, idyllic home of the human race has remained a neutral bastion for alien refugees escaping from across the galaxy. The Sons of Mars want to turn the system into a staging area to wage their own war for dominance. The fate of the galaxy all rests on the shoulders of a badass secret agent, a scientist completely out her element, a blue-skinned tech specialist and a somewhat obnoxious A.I. 

There’s still time to come along for the ride and make sure the "ride", as it were, becomes a reality for everyone to enjoy!

THANKS!

Jason

Top of the Evening to You, Space Crew!

First, a humungous congratulations to those who won the Nerdist contest. That would be Christopher Leone, Michael Haase, and Patrick Edwards. These guys not only have great-sounding stories, but they put in countless hours of marketing and pitching to get their books where they are today. Please consider supporting them if you haven’t already, because their books will definitely be released in the near future.

Where does that leave us? Let me break it down for you. 

First of all, thank you for being the most amazing space crew that’s ever existed. I hope to get around to thanking each of you personally once I’ve had a bit of time to recover from this chaos, but for every one of you who ordered, who pitched to your friends and family, who gave me encouragement along the way—thank you so much. You just may have been a glimmer of hope on a bad day or one of many reasons to smile on a great one. 

In the end we finished 6th. Which, out of  96 entries isn’t too shabby at all! I was extremely focused on the contest throughout this campaign, so I failed to explain the alternative routes. I’ll do that now. First, let’s feel good about how much we accomplished for a moment.

Now we go back to being regular Inkshares book-funders. Let me try to explain this as simply and eloquently as I can.

All the orders we’ve accumulated are going to stick around until May 5. On that date the total orders will be counted and one of three things will happen:

At 750 total orders (note: these do not have to be unique orders), the book will get the same fabulous treatment as the Nerdist contest would have provided. Full service editing, marketing, publishing, and distribution from Inkshares. This is the dream.

At 250 total orders (we’re extremely close already), we reach the "Quill goal". The book will be published via Inkshares with fewer of these fancy services. 

At less than 250 total orders we won’t be published on Inkshares and you’ll all be refunded. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road, but that we’ll need to look at alternate routes to get my writing into your hands. That said, I believe this to be a highly unlikely scenario. 

You can check the progress bar on the book page to see how we’re doing. This is us right now, at 199 total orders:

So what should you expect next? I’m gonna cut back on the daily spam until we get closer to the May deadline. It’s a bit much for me to keep up, and I have some "bigger picture" ideas of how to pull more people into the project. 

In the meantime you can definitely keep sharing The Traveller’s Cup with your friends, since reaching 750 won’t be easy. If you use the recommendation links on the book page you’ll earn Inkshares credits too, which will let you pick up other people’s books.

Our ship hasn’t quite reached its destination yet, but that’s okay. We’re still a crew. And thanks to your support in this contest, we’re several pixels closer to our goal. 

Heading into overdrive. Man your stations. And...we’re off!

Your-Inarticulately-Indebted-Space-Captain,
-AC