A quick note: I still don’t know what’s going on with LandFall and it’s participation in the list. I’m now pretty confident I know what’s happened, but it’s now been 11 days since I last heard from Inkshares and they have not yet offered any ’official’ details on what’s happened.

I’ll try reaching out again this week with my thoughts and see where that goes.

Keep an eye on that horizon.

Dear friends and followers:

Christmas is coming. So is my birthday. If you’re following the Julian calendar, those are on the same day. I think it’s pretty clear what I’d like for Christmas....

Well, the List contest continues apace. Thanks to you, I’m still in second. There’s no place for complacency, though, as I am not convinced that the numbers are entirely accurate: I believe that some of the books behind me have uncounted readers, which puts them a lot closer to knocking me out of position than I’m comfortable with. And things could easily change over the next month.

I’m grateful to all of you for having gotten me this far.

Meanwhile, I have not been neglecting the book itself in favour of selling it. I’ve updated the first two chapters on the site; I’ve worked out the actual calendar-date timeline for the events of the novel, and I am happy to say that the story officially begins on 31 October 1924. I’d very much like to be able to hand this in first thing in the new year, but that’s all dependent on what happens with the List.

Speaking of timelines and the upcoming New Year, it’s been a while since I made any recommendations. So here are a couple that I believe you’d enjoy, and whose authors would also appreciate the Christmas gift of your vote of confidence.

1) "Manifesto", by Daniel Poort. This one’s a psychological thriller about a small-town cop on the trail of a serial killer. Poort promises an escalating body count; and of course nothing says edge-of-your-seat like murder and betrayal.

2) "Shady Place", by David Byrne. A more light-hearted take, I think. A police detective and a mobster retire to the same seniors’ community, and find they have to work together to prevent a murder. If they play "good cop/bad cop", I wonder which would be which....

Until next time: have fun, and keep reading. And tell all your friends!

I am sorry to write you, again, without being able to tell you how Illegal will go forward with Inkshares. I do, as always, want to be transparent with what’s been happening.

On October 14th, Illegal fully funded after selling over 750 copies. On October 24th, a computer glitch gave everyone a refund. I immediately reached out to Inkshares and they told me they were not sure what happened but they would be able to recharge credit cards. However, they would not honor orders that used credits. When the funding period began Inkshares issued credits to encourage participation. They have since discontinued that promotion in part because customers were using credits in ways they did not like. For most of the campaign when a customer made a purchase Inkshares gave a referral code on the site at time of purchase and again in the confirmation email with a message that told them they would receive credits when someone used their link. I believe this is the source of most credits used and sought to establish a baseline with Inkshares to determine what they found acceptable and what not. I’ve asked variations of this question many times over the past month and half and have never received a clear answer what the criteria would be and if the aforementioned example would be valid or not. From the start I told them I would be happy to work with them to resolve the situation but thought completely throwing away all credit orders regardless of criteria was unfair and unacceptable.

While this was going on I was reaching out to various funded authors on the Inkshares platform to try and make sense of this all. I was encouraged to hear that the issue was a big topic among authors who were curious to see how Inkshares would handle the situation. I assumed Inkshares would want to show they had their authors interests in mind. 

In the month and half since the bug that triggered the refund I have constantly been reaching out to Inkshares to try to determine what is happening and when I should expect everything to be resolved.  Not all my emails are answered and I have not been given few specific details, but in the last reply I did receive I was told that they will know more before the end of the year. At this point, I think too much time has elapsed to re-charge credit cards which may mean that ALL orders have been lost. I was cautiously optimistic in the immediate aftermath of the bug but as more time passes without resolution I’m beginning to lose that initial hope and patience. I never imagined that this would have dragged on into December.

I spent nearly a year fundraising for this--which is something I hated doing. So after reaching the goal and having all those efforts taken away stings. A LOT. But, there is a bright side. I have forged friendships with other authors and despite losing all the orders, to know that hundreds of people were willing to spend their money (and often their time) on Illegal is wonderful and validating. I do have the email of everyone who purchased a book and if anyone wants to get in touch with me they can reach me at: j.a.dennehy@gmail.com

I’ll update again when the situation is resolved.