Good evening Dreamers,

As I begin my road trip to my new duty station, I’m left to try and explain my book in a small motel to a town with a population of 7... sorry, 6 (someone left). I have some... disturbing news. Today marks the day where the actual number of pre-orders matches the projected number of pre-orders.

I know, I know. While it is awesome that this is the very first time the actual number has reached the projection, I would very much like to knock out these last 25 to Quill, so I can continue to push my book to everyone I meet like this creature.

We have a publication date – March 28th 2017!!!

This awesome little addition was made to my Inkshares page last night.

Thank you all for being so patient with me, I know many of you didn’t realize just how long a wait it was going to be when you generously supported my quest to publish The Bones of the Past. To tell the truth, I had no idea how involved the process was myself. I’m now on a schedule to make edits and respond to questions from a sequence of editors through to October.

First up is the developmental edits where plot holes are identified, chronology issues are addressed, fat is trimmed and any big issues fixed. Then comes the copy edits to fix the overall quality of the writing and address any weird word choices I might have made and managed to ignore over my repeated rewrites. Then proofreads, looking at the layout of print and eBook formats… all of which is going to take longer because I can’t manage to tell a story in less than 460 pages… And of course during all that, the interior and cover of the book are going to be designed.

So there’s still lots of work ahead for me, but it’s a hugely exciting process where I get to work with a great bunch of very talented people. The end result is going to be so much better than I ever could have managed alone.

March 28th is a long way off and yet it’s tight for all the work still going into the book and then the marketing efforts that roll out before Bones lands in bookstores. But you won’t have to wait quite that long – Inkshares orders usually show up about a month early! 

Thank you all for your continued support, interest, and *cough* great taste in books! March is just around the corner!

So hey, guys. How was your week?

  

  
So keep reading! Keep reviewing! Keep telling your friends about this great book (or your enemies about this "great book" *snicker, snicker.*)

Hi blood soaked followers!

I’ve changed the first chapter to better set up the area our story is set in, comments more than welcome.  

DEVIL’S SWAMP, LOUISIANA – Oct 1st, 1893

 Devil’s Swamp lay ten miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Very few people passed through it and even fewer visited. The rancid stench from the methane gas bubbling up from the rotting vegetation was one thing; but the desolate swamplands also wore an eerie cloak of melancholy on even the brightest of days.  The source of its name, if not its atmosphere stretched back through the centuries to 1776. 

A German emigrant had cleared some land alongside the bayou, felling cypress trees and scrub. The next day he took a wrong turn into another bayou in his canoe only to see what looked like the exact same land he had cleared, including the specific Cypress trees he knew he had felled, back up again, untouched by his axe.  Not knowing he had taken a wrong turn he believed an evil spirit had caused everything to be returned to it’s original state in a single night…he fled the area never to return, and since then it had been known as Devil’s Swamp.

 Tongues of lightning flickered from the sullen clouds above, bleaching the dark swamp waters either side of a muddy track; throwing harsh shadows across the desolate landscape.  Mangrove roots shuddered in the howling wind, grey tentacles writhing in pain. Through torrents of rain, a black coach with a steamer chest roped to its back, raced ahead of the approaching storm.

The pale, frightened faces of five women stared out from the coach into the gloom.  The driver whipped the horses with grim desperation. His face a ravaged mask framing coal black eyes. A studded leather collar barely covered the livid rope burns around his throat.

Suddenly the wind and rain ceased. They were in the eye of the storm. The coach shuddered to a halt. A skein of cloud tore across the moon, revealing a ghostly silvered landscape. Dark swamp waters shimmering in its pale light.  Beneath the banks of the track, something moved. The hooded eyes of an alligator stared balefully into the night. The horses snorted, eyes rolling with fear. The alligator sank back below the surface.

Inside the coach, the weary women huddled together; it looks like they’ve been to hell and back. They wear identical red scarves around their necks. One of them, blonde haired with an ethereal beauty, looks out of the coach window.  A sudden gust of wind rips the scarf from her neck. Sends it floating up into the sky, a blood red wound cutting into the dark clouds above.

The driver climbs down from the carriage -- reaches into his jacket and pulls out a pistol. He heads purposefully towards the door of the coach. The blonde girl starts to scream. Her voice snuffed out as a wall of grey water engulfs them. Coach and horses cease to exist as the maelstrom sweeps everything before it.