Thanks for the graphic, Vincent!

It's official, gang! We are OVER THE LINE!

Dax WILL be published. I can't thank you all enough. The show's not over and there's still a TON of work to do, but for now, I'm over the moon.

Now, a couple updates. First, fantasy author C. Brennecke invited me to do an interview for her blog, Myths, Mists & Musings! She had some great questions about the book, and naturally, I rambled on far too long. Haha. There's also a new exclusive excerpt from Dax to read! Check it all out HERE.

Also, be sure to check out Seven Shards: The Colors of Wine. There's about a month to go and plenty of orders to fill. Let's pay it forward and get another great book published!

And finally, a new special video update! I was planning to release it as a "4 days left" video. I guess it's now a victory video. ENJOY!

-Tony

Good morning, Dax fans!

DAX COUNTDOWN: 5 days, 15 orders to go!

In my foolish, sleep-deprived state, I previously forgot to mention a few thank yous in my last update...

Dax received a plethora of amazing reviews during Saturday's Review-A-Thon event. Yes, a plethora, which gave me a big lump in my throat, made me a little weepy eyed, and generally left me about as happy as El Guapo on his birthday...

You know, before the Three Amigos crashed the party.

Thank you to Vincent Lim, Amanda Orneck, Andrew Wood, Jamison Stone, G. Derek Adams, Jason Pomerance, Shannon Saldin, Paul Inman, Landon Crutcher, Thomas J. Arnold, Alan Tucker, Steve Soldwedel, Jim McDoniel, and Chris Robinson.

I've tagged each of their names with links directly to their respective projects, because they deserve your support too! To post all of their kind words about Dax here would be far too self-serving. But I at least have to share G. Derek Adams's epic review, as it is a bit of a hilarious work of art unto itself:

G. DEREK ADAMS
"Comedy is harder than drama. Drama is open to interpretation, discussion, analysis -- everyone knows funny. And you can't force funny via interpretation, discussion, analysis. It is either funny or not funny. The Grand Binary. Dax Harrison is funny. Tony Valdez is funny. I love the setting and the crazy-ass Buck Rogers pastiche, I am 100% on board with the aesthetic and the plot arc I see developing in the first excerpts. Interrogating heroism, public perception, duty - I am HERE for all these grand concepts explicated through a patently silly premise. But what's really exciting me is that this book is funny. The punch lines land, the asides are light and bouncy, it never stops and alerts me that 'THIS IS A JOKE'. This is a rare thing. A precious thing. A shiny, shiny unicorn who wants to take you to McDonalds and talk about Macross continuity. Recognize it and treasure it. Sidebar - if you can watch Tony's video and not make a pre-order then you are a mean person who can't feel joy and puppies hate you."

Sci-fi & Fantasy author Amanda Orneck also posted a lovely review of Dax on her author blog, Immersive Cursive. READ IT HERE!

And last but not least, another big thanks to Amanda and Inkshares team member Avalon Radys for organizing a guest post for me on the official Inkshares blog! READ IT HERE!

Stay tuned, gang. We're in The Final Days of Dax, and we're going out with a BANG!

-Tony

Machiners!

We have entered Winter, officially speaking, but the weather is hardly frightful and our spirits are so delightful. What a day! 

First and foremost, my congratulations to Tony Valdez on reaching 250 pre-orders for his comedic SciFi romp Dax Harrison!  Meaning books will be on the way! This is really well deserved. Great concept, awesome writing, hard work - check all the boxes. Also, amazing to see how the Inkshares community really banded together to push a colleague toward the finish line. Love it. 

OnThe Last Machine front the beat goes on and such a groovy beat it is. 

The Review-a-Thon this past Saturday was fantastic. Thanks to A.C. Weston for coordinating which undoubtedly took much time and effort. It yielded some amazing reviews for the novella, which I am very thankful for. Some of them I have been able to reciprocate already. Others I haven't gotten to yet. But I will. I promise. Thanks to Michael Valdez, AR Patterson, Jason Pomerance, Dave Barrett, and Byron Gillan for their wonderful words. It really does mean a great deal.

We've now surpassed 80 readers!! Thank you to all the new followers and supporters. Because we hit 75, I've conducted a clandestine raffle of unknown scope and substance....

And the winners are Melissa Berg and Peter Birdsall. You have each won a signed copy of Alter Ego No. 91 from January 2010. It's a super cool magazine and has an epic interview covering basically every topic possible with my friend and The Last Machine artist Jack Katz. Here are a couple of images for you:

We're at 81 readers so we might as well shoot for 100. Yeah, why not? Maybe we can do that by Sunday? Let's try. More cool stuff to come if we make it.

This past week was absolutely packed with things both related and unrelated to Inkshares.

Most of it was unrelated, which slowed work on the novel, but was mostly family-related and took top priority. Thankfully, I was able to pump out some reviews for the Review-a-Thon yesterday, but not nearly as many as I wanted.

A huge thanks to Jamison Stone, Yicheng Liu, Jeyna Grace, Joshua Griffith, Thea Tiffany Alger and Kelly Graniel, Stephen Carignan, Steve Soldwedel, and Jason Pomerance for posting reviews of my novel. All of your lovely words made this writer extremely happy!

As I said on the Facebook Review-a-Thon page, I promise to return the favor by writing reviews for all of your novels, but it takes awhile to read all of your wonderful projects, so please be patient with me. I want to give you the most honest and informed review possible. I already bounced back a couple reviews today, so hopefully that will help out your projects a little.

I'd also like to thank Cara Weston for putting the event together. The whole event generated nothing but positive results, and not only did I walk away from it with a page full of reviews, but I also won a copy of Scrivener software to help me organize my writing better! The event also exposed me to other projects that I'm glad I was able to discover through this experience. There's a lot of amazing stuff out there!

In regards to the novel, I am so happy to have bypassed the 30 pre-order mark! Boom! Thank you so much to all my supporters! You are the fuel to my wordsmithing fire.

I do have many words committed to Chapter 4 already as I've been combing through it again with new ideas. I'm constantly being inspired to explore new routes to the same story as I revisit old drafts of these chapters, and finding new ways to approach the universe I've built in my head. It is gratifying for me to deliver improved material to you and get good feedback in return. For Chapter 4 in particular, I decided to take it down a darker path than originally written. You will see when I post it.

Anyhow, I will update all of you with more as it comes along.

Have a good night, and happy dreaming!