Hi my (presumable) fellow nerds! Guess what's coming up sooner than soon?

BIG NEWS!  

I've taken a brief leave from my day job to finish the manuscript of the second book in the Maren Kane Mystery Series. The working title is A Timely Murder! Without revealing too much, I can share that one of the main characters from One Murder More (Book 1) runs for office, one is shot (no!) and Maren finds herself in deep trouble  on the strip in Las Vegas.

I also want to share that although I’ve been fortunate to have several agents wooing me, I am staying with Inkshares!  I could not imagine a more reader and author-friendly environment in which to write. But it does mean I need to have sufficient pre-orders to meet the threshold for Inkshares to publish me again—there is no “free pass” for sequels; each work must (appropriately) stand on it’s own. So I will be asking you soon to consider preordering the 2nd book in the Maren Kane mystery series, and to encourage others you know to do so. In particular, the system has changed—for  One Murder More, money could be contributed without being linked to additional books to the backer. Under the new system only money  to purchase books will be accepted, and 750 books total must be preordered to qualify for  full publishing via Inkshares.  This is  true democratic publishing in action—you "vote"  to secure the future of the book by purchasing copies  in advance.  

While all backers in the new system will receive special insider updates from me, I want to ask your input now on recommendations for a special incentive for individuals  who order 10 books or more.  (Upon request, I’ll arrange to have any books  that a backer  does not personally wish to receive  donated to reputable charitable organizations. One I have in mind is the Downtown Women’s Center for homeless women in LA http://www.downtownwomenscenter.org.  I welcome your suggestions for organizations that would similarly benefit from books for adult literacy efforts and for resale for their  fundraising.) 

Your Ideas for Incentives?  In particular, what fits the “Maren Kane Mystery” gestalt?  Also, I will need to be mindful that any incentive will be at my cost for production and shipping. In a general post Inkshares suggests " a t-shirt, mug or coloring book".  Not sure any of those fit though...One idea I had is writing a special short story that would go only to  “super-backers”, prior to being submitted to mystery magazines for publication.

 Finally, I would appreciate your assistance in coming up with a better name than “super-backers” for those who are able to offer more support.  

Thanks again for everything! It’s been quite a journey so far.

Kris   

www.kriscalvin.com

ps Thanks for the  great audiobook  development suggestions! Will keep you posted...

Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying to write this short update for a few days now, but I keep being interrupted with more things to add in.

Friday night, I was having diner with family and my phone as vibrating like it was trying to make a break for it. I usually don’t look at my messages at the diner table but the whole point of having a mobile device is to be available in case of emergencies and, considering I rarely get any messages, I was wondering what was up. Turns out, I had sold a handful of copies of The Life Engineered in a very short amount of time. “Cool.” I thought, making a note to track down what as up later that night.

The thing is, I’m a marketing guy. My instinct when seeing sales is rarely about the money or about the visibility, it’s almost always about ‘where are these coming from?’. So as soon as it was polite to do so, I went to social media to see what had happened. Turns out, The Life Engineered, along with Sword & Laser, were the focus of a short article on io9.com.

I read io9.com daily.

Already that's pretty awesome and I wanted to put up an update about it. Then I got confirmation of this article by Alicia Smock being posted on examiner.com. It’s a great article and was fun to participate in. So I was going to include that in my update.

Then The Life Engineered gets mentioned on Geek & Sundry and I lose my God damned mind. I can only keep a rational, marketing oriented line of thought for so long before I become an irrational mess. This isn’t a client’s product being mentioned in the media according to plan. This is my book.

Finally, another article, this time on Inkshares very own newsletter pops up.

So there you have it my friends. The surreal events of the first few steps of promotion of The Life Engineered. If you’ve ever doubted that this little crowdfunding venture takes care of their authors, I think I can testify that we are handled with much love and care. And that’s just the stuff I feel comfortable putting on a public forum!

But wait! That's not all. Remember when I gave away a model of the character Koalemos to someone at Nerdtacular last summer? Well, I'm making more of these models (7 more for reasons obvious in the book). A couple of them are earmarked for people that need to be thanked for their help, but one is going to be raffled off to the people who pre-ordered during the funding campaign. I know more about building and shipping these things now. It's going to be cool. Check out who got the first model.

As always, you have my gratitude. It’s an incredible ride so far and none of this is happening without your support. Thank you.

JF