Chloe, a girl from a broken family, has been tortured, mind-wiped, experimented on, and trained as an assassin.
Dear backers,
Hopefully by now, you've all received your copies of "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside." Thank you so much to everyone who has been posting about it online (please check out the collage I put together below), especially Bailey, Tiffany, Galen, Corey, Elmer, Laura, Julian, Julie, Ollie and Alexandra. Oh yeah, and my mom. She has been repping the book HARD. Thanks, Mom!
I hope you're all as pleased as I am with how the book turned out. After all, it's your support that made this possible. I'd also like to take this as an opportunity to recognize the teams at Inkshares and Girl Friday Productions, who've been working tirelessly over the past several months to ensure you receive such a beautiful finished product. This experience has been a true team effort, and after 4+ years of writing, that's a great feeling.
Moving on, I have a few exciting pieces of news to share with you. First, I have confirmed a reading at The Tattered Cover (Colfax Avenue location) in Denver, CO on January 14th at 7pm. Big thanks to Andrew Fink and the Langer family for helping make that happen. You can find a link to the Facebook invitation here. I'd love to see you there, but if you don't live in the area, it'd be awesome if you could mention it to anyone who does. As a reminder, I'm also going to be hosting readings/parties in Oakland and Boston over the next month. Stop by my website (www.quincycarroll.com) for details.
Next, Tony D'Souza, author of "Whiteman," a highly-acclaimed novel similar in theme and subject matter to mine (only set in Western Africa) has agreed to take a look at the book. I'd strongly encourage anyone who enjoys #upMdownC to check it out. Adam Granofsky, lead singer of The War on Drugs (and a fellow alumnus of The One True School), has expressed interest, too. There's no guarantee that they'll like the book (or even read it), but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't excited. Fingers crossed.
Barring any celebrity endorsements, I am counting on word of mouth to help publicize this novel. That's why I'd really appreciate it if you could post a short, honest review of the book once you're finished reading it. It doesn't have to be 5 stars (although that would be ideal). I want to thank Rector, Mark, Pete, Lauren, Gaynor, Hathaway, Jason, Spiro and Beidi (and Mom) for doing this already. We sent out copies of the book to interested media outlets last week, so it's great that there are already a few reviews posted on Goodreads and Amazon in case they look it up online. The book jumped 20,000 spots on Amazon over the weekend!
And last but not least, Inkshares is running a promotional giveaway on Goodreads. Twenty copies are up for grabs, so if you know anyone who uses the website, let them know! Here is a link to the contest. If you're a Zhongguotong and want to run your own competition to get your extra copies out there, that would be great, too. Try to think of who might embrace the novel most in your immediate social/professional circles. THANKS!
Quincy
Ladies and gentle men, I come to you with some good news, nay....great news.
Ghosts of War is getting published by Inkshares.
How can this be you ask? Well, today Jeremy Thomas (Inkshares' CEO) announced some changes to the way Inkshares will work going forward and the changes mean only good things for Ghosts of War.
You can read the full blog post about the changes here, and I recommend that you do: http://blog.inkshares.com/post/131749557025/inkshares-funding-goal-announcement
But these are the most important points for right now:
Any project that reaches 250 pre-orders will qualify for the “light-publishing” option with a new, yet-to-be-named Inkshares collection. These books will receive a light edit, an ISBN, and limited distribution (including physical and digital on Amazon.com). Backers will receive physical copies printed through our print-on-demand service. We will reserve the right to push any of these books through our full production process, and as with all of our books, the rights will remain non-exclusive if the author wishes to publish elsewhere.
So that's pretty awesome, but there is a small catch: After October 30th the pre-order prices are going up.
Now this bit is all in bold because it's the most important of important things.
If you pre-order a copy of 'Ghosts of War' before October 30 (or have previously pre-ordered a copy), you will still get it for $9.99 with free shipping.
Any copies ordered after that will cost more, so if you've been on the fence about it, please, dive in, especially those of you who are in Australia or other non-US countries. Right now is when you can get the best deal.
In closing, I want to thank every one of you who's ordered a copy so far, you got me here and it's because of you that Ghosts of War is getting published. I can't thank you all enough.
I think it's going to take a while to sink in that this is really happening, but until then...we can have a party.
A nice lady walked up to me last week and said: "Our book club is reading your book." "Which one? " I asked (I've written seven). "The one you're writing," she said. So this update is for her and her club.
Many of you still refer to Haida Gwaii as "The Queen Charlotte Islands" or "The Charlottes." You really have to stop doing that. This short paragraph from the last chapter explains why.
On June 17, 2010 the Haida invited the Premier of British Columbia to visit their islands for a sacred ceremony. He agreed to come and arrived to find a large gathering of the most powerful and respected members of the Haida Nation, all dressed in full ceremonial garb. They had invited him there, they said, to give him something … well to give something back. It was the name “Queen Charlotte Islands” which a British colony had bestowed upon the islands 150 years ago. The name for the entire archipelago would once again be “Haida Gwaii.” And the Haida wanted the Premier to know that they were not renaming the islands or “taking back a name. We’ve always known this place to be Haida Gwaii. We’re giving you back a name given to us by the Crown.” Before the Premier could express his gratitude the President of the Haida Nation added this: “What we are really doing here is unwinding colonialism.”
