All, thank you for your support so far. 

The universe (or something–maybe subconscious resistance) seems to be conspiring against me posting the chapters I already have of the novel every day, as I planned to. A great-aunt of mine, whom I loved dearly, passed away at the end of May, and I’ve been struggling with the loss of an entire generation in my family. I have a deep and abiding respect for my elders, and I feel utterly lost without their grounding force in my life.

I attended Great-Aunt Margaret Ruth’s funeral yesterday, and the loss I feel is incredible. She was one of the most faithful, kind, and classy women I’ve ever been blessed to know. She and her generation, including my grandparents, have been such an important feature in my life, and I don’t know what to do with myself now that they’re all gone.

The other reason that I’ve been unable to post until today is that I’ve been a very busy pet parent. My puppy, Doc Holliday, was attacked Friday night after escaping from our yard, and he had to have emergency surgery that night. I’ve been busy caring for him since then, as he has 30+ stitches in his right front leg. Being a mom is hard sometimes, even when your babies are all fur-babies.

Anyway, I’m back, and I have several updates for you.

1. My interview on The Hangin’ With Show will take place this Thursday (June 2). I will let you know when it is posted.

2. I may be interviewed by Local 15 News in my hometown of Bay Minette, Alabama about my Inkshares campaign. This is not a sure thing yet, but fingers crossed!

3. I’m making several editorial changes to Frost, and I believe they’re going to make it a much stronger story. You won’t see these changes until I’ve uploaded everything, including the final chapters of the story, which I’m writing right now. I will be finished with my initial draft of Frost by the time this Inkshares campaign ends. The changes include changes in location to all real places I’ve personally visited. Cypres Cove, Florida, will become Bay Minette, Alabama. Rosehaven Downs, England, will become Chicopee, Massachusetts. I believe this will lend more realism to the Earthly locations in the novel, and provide even greater contrast to Daraglathia. There are other changes I can’t share yet because they would mean sharing some spoilers, and I’d rather you discover them organically, as you read.

That’s all for now, but I’ll share more soon!

I hate to do a double-update, but I accidentally left some really cool news out of my earlier update today. Frost: An Otherworld Tale and I are being featured on The Hangin’ With Show soon! I’ll let you know the exact date as soon as I have it. I’m really hoping that will give our campaign the boost it needs.

First of all, I’d like to thank you for the support you’ve shown so far. We only have 63 days left in this campaign, and still have 219 copies to go before Quill publication is a possibility. I’m going to be honest with you, I’m getting a little disheartened, but I’m trying hard to keep my chin up. I have several things I’d like to share with you, so I’m just going to go down the list.

1. I am going to finish uploading my first draft of Frost to Inkshares today, which is currently rough and in need of editing/polishing.

2. Over the next few days, I will be writing the remaining few scenes of Frost "As If" to complete the novel. (Meaning: I’m writing the remaining scenes as if I’ve already made the changes/edits I plan to make to the previously written scenes.) These "as if" scenes are bound to raise some huge questions, of course, but I promise it will all make sense after an edit and polish of the overall work.

3. Once I have everything uploaded as is/as if, and the story is complete, then I’m going to go back and make some critical edits to the story. These edits will include significant changes to certain settings, characters, and plot choices. I did some much-needed story mapping last Tuesday, and the changes will make the story stronger and more cohesive overall.

Last but not least, I would like to encourage you to share this campaign with others whom you know would enjoy and support this book. I need to get 219 more pre-orders over the next 63 days to achieve publication. I know you believe in me, or at least in this story, and I’m asking you to please share it as much as you can over the next 63 days. Publishing this book is a lifelong dream of mine, but I can’t make that dream come true without help.

P.S. For those of you who invested in Frost on JukePop before their publishing program went "on hold," please remember that I will be sending you your shares of the profits from these pre-orders if the campaign is successful. I would like to encourage you to share this campaign with as many people as possible because the more pre-orders Frost gets, the more money you make as an investor. 

With only 70 days to go in Frost’s campaign, I thought it might be pertinent to share a little more about why I’ve chosen to seek publication via Inkshares with you all. Originally, the plan was to publish via JukePop, where I was writing Frost as a serial, but they had some technical difficulties and will not be publishing Frost as a novel anytime soon.

I am almost done with my first draft of Frost, and Inkshares has the sort of distribution options that I believe Frost needs to bloom. I am in the process of writing the final scenes, and I’ve made note of several changes I’m going to make in the text during the editing/polishing process.

Some of you are probably wondering why I chose to go ahead with an Inkshares campaign if I wasn’t quite finished yet. Well, I didn’t intend to start a campaign so soon, but I’m willing to see it through, and it’s been great motivation to me to go ahead and finish my draft.

My mom asked me today why I chose to do a 90-day campaign, and I think that’s a good question. Statistically speaking, 90-day campaigns tend to be more successful than either longer or shorter campaigns, so I decided just to roll with it.

So, in all honesty, I didn’t mean to start the campaign as soon as I did, and I probably should have allowed for more time than just 90 days. However, decisions were made, and although they probably weren’t the most well-advised decisions I’ve ever made, I intend to stand by them. As Orison Swett Marden says, "Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great."

With your help, I believe we can make Frost great.

Greetings you magnificent human beings, 

Today is the last day of the campaign so I thought I’d take a minute to thank you all for carrying Beyond the Code to Quill. I’ll do my best in forging through the mostly unknown (to me) world of publishing to bring you the best book Beyond the Code can be. 

The selling campaign of Beyond the Code was started kind of by accident before I was really prepared but I always strived to do the best I could. Thank you for your patience and support as I stumbled like a drunken four year old through the world of crowd funding. Your kindness and pulling together to help me with my dream has touched my heart in a way you couldn’t imagine. 

We are at 257 orders so I’ll let you what. If we make it to 260 orders by the end of this campaign I will post the next chapter and I’ll do another prize draw to end things off right.

Thank you all again for bringing me this far. I’ll keep you posted on what comes next. Brave new world.