It is a new year! I hope 2017 finds you happy and healthy. Fae Child is sitting at 152 copies sold, which blows my mind (in a good way), but there’s still a long way to go. 98 copies to pre-sell before the end of February, which, I don’t need to tell you, is only a month away, and the shortest month of the year.

I am doing a Twitter takeover for Young Entertainment Magazine ( @youngentmag ) tomorrow about my experiences as a first time author, which should be entertaining at the very least. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, my handle is @hanejolly - I look forward to seeing you there!

Progress on the first draft is continuing on pace. I’m very happy with how things are turning out, and I think you will be too.

Lastly, I have a favor to ask of you. Can you send one friend an email about Fae Child? Here’s a sample email you can copy/customize for your own use:

Hi (insert name)!

I just pre-ordered a new YA fantasy book called Fae Child. It’s a sweet, exciting book about a girl who accidentally falls into the land of the Fae, and her father who will stop at nothing to find her. You can read some sample chapters, view a book trailer, and order a copy at https://www.inkshares.com/books/fae-child

I really think you’ll like it!

Cheers,
(your name)

We are now approaching THE FINAL WEEK for The Phantom Forest to hit its publishing goal! It is, as they say, the final countdown. We’ve had an awesome week with tons of orders coming in (THANK YOU to everyone who jumped on the wagon!), but we still need 59 more for Inkshares to pull the trigger! 

So please do continue to tell your friends, your book clubs, your Twitter followers, etc! If you’re already a follower of the book here on Inkshares but haven’t yet pre-ordered, I’d love your support this week. And of course, MAJOR THANKS to everyone who has nominated the book for syndicate picks thus far! That is huge, and I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed for good news on that front next week. 

This will be my final transmission until we hit the goal. So... GO TEAM! You know what to do!

Liz

Hey! Long time no update. But happy new year to all, and I thought I’d give thanks one more time to everybody who helped make a scene like this happen (this was at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena shortly after the book was published. Pasadena is largely where the novel is set, so pretty appropriate, huh?)

The book often sells nicely when it’s promoted on one or another book-buying site (especially eBooks) and I’m so grateful to be able to hold it in my hands. That feeling never seems to wear off. If you have read the book -- whether you liked it or not but preferably you liked it! -- please leave an Amazon review. The more reviews there are, the more the book gets promoted on Amazon. Here’s a link to the page. Just scroll down to Write a Customer Review.  It can be as brief as a sentence.

https://www.amazon.com/Women-Like-Us-Jason-Pomerance-ebook/dp/B01IOZUBEW/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Also in 2016 my novella Falconer was published in four parts on Nikki Finke’s Hollywood Dementia, with amazing artwork by John Donald Carlucci.  In case you missed it, here’s a link. Nikki recently made a deal with HBO to develop properties that were published on the site, so keep fingers crossed!

http://hollywooddementia.com/nikki-finke-fiction-falconer-part-one-by-jason-pomerance/

But it’s a new year and on to the new. Two things to report on the book front. I’m in the process of finishing up edits and revisions on Celia at 39, a new novel, one that falls more into the Chick-Lit category. Here’s a little blurb about it: 

Celia Bernhart thought she had her life all figured out. She should, right, because she’s turning 39 in a week. She’s a success in her career. She’s about to marry her longtime boyfriend Barry. But then a package gets mis-delivered to the house she and Barry share -- Actually, it’s the right address, but it’s nearly forty years late! Celia becomes determined to deliver the package to its rightful owner, but when she does it turns her very well-ordered life completely upside down. 

We’ll most likely be trying to go down the more traditional publishing route on this book since it falls more neatly into a genre. Stay tuned for more -- hopefully good news -- about this. 

But if you’re interested in supporting another Inkshares book, read on. Many of you know that we have not one but two beagles, George and Derric. George was adopted as a puppy from some folks who couldn’t handle him, but Derric’s adoption story is very, very different and, frankly, a little more disturbing. We came to Derric from a wonderful organization called the Beagle Freedom Project, which negotiates to get animals being subjected to laboratory tests freed.  Until we had stumbled on the Beagle Freedom Project, we did not know that thousands of beagles were spending their lives in cages in labs all over the world.  There are some who think these animals can’t make the transition from lab life to freedom, but Derric has a different story to tell, and that’s what this book is about. In fact he’s helping me write it.  Click the link below to read more about this new book, and please follow its progress. Even better pick up a pre-order if you can.

https://www.inkshares.com/books/love-derric-my-journey-from-laboratory-experiment-to-freagle-who

So that’s it for now.  Thanks again, and I hope everybody has a happy and healthy 2017.

My heartfelt congratulations to the winners of Inkshares’ first-ever The List contest! @James Rasile for Cape’s Side Bay, @Christopher Huang for Murder at the Veterans’ Club, and @Matt Harry for Sorcery for Beginners. Awesome books! Well-deserved!! Wow!!! :D

I’ve been here before, sitting in the quiet before the end, wondering what lies on the other side of the storm. I am the crazy person who has entered four contests on Inkshares, one of which I won with a group of amazing talents much larger than mine.  Four contests in a year. I can mark them like seasons in my life on Inkshares.

The first contest was my introduction to Inkshares as a whole. The Nerdist contest came along at a time when I was waiting for my final edit to return on Shadow of the Owl, when I had already written a book, created a cover, bought my ISBNs and prepared to self-publish. I hit submit assuming many things, not the least of which was that it would easy (not unlike self-publishing on its own).

Next I tossed Deus Hex Machina into the Sword & Laser the Sequel contest, largely because I already had a funding campaign for Shadow of the Panther up on the site and didn’t want to resubmit. I’m glad I made that choice, because while I didn’t win that contest, I did get far enough to grab interest in the project from outside and even eventually get the book a light publishing contract. The outside interest ended up pushing me to write a book while I was funding it (something I highly suggest no one ever do), writing a book I originally thought would never see the light of day. It was at this point that I promised I would never do another contest, by the way.

When the Nerdist Video Game contest came along, I was at the right place at the right time with a group of writing colleagues who wanted to try something crazy -- submit an anthology. The result was a first place win for Too Many Controllers, to which I submitted a story I had been working on for years that is currently titled "Final Boss." I am incredibly proud of that story, mostly because it represents my overcoming a huge fear of short fiction that’s hounded me since I let fear push me out of the fiction side  of my creative writing degree at USC. 

And now, The List 2016 is drawing to a close. In little under six hours I will be ending my first year with Inkshares the way I began it: Watching a contest end. I  find myself introspective (obviously) rather than dejected at the results of this contest. Sitting seventh in a contest that I was invited into is a rather big honor. I have a finished manuscript waiting until the contest closes today, one that I firmly believe is the best writing I’ve ever done.  No matter what result happens from this contest, I will be able to look back at this year with Inkshares and smile. I have one book published, two more in production once I send in DHM, and many more projects. I have found a community of disparate writers from around the world, and a strange and wonderful company that links them all together in this crazy publishing fever dream. 

What’s next up for me in 2017? I am about to write another couple of short stories in the Shadow of the Owl universe. Once I have those done and published I’ll be planning out the sequel to DHM and then hammering out the next (and final) version of Shadow of the Panther. That book needs to be finished -- it’s been restarted so many times at this point that it must assume I don’t love it. Luckily I have the outline complete on what it’s going to look like, and I think I’ve settled on a premise that will fit the fantasy of the series while still innovating within it.

Two stories, two books, zero contests: that sounds like a great year to me. If 2016 was the year of funding books, I think 2017 will be the year of writing books, and maybe even publishing a couple too.  That sounds pretty great to me.