Today is a great day, thanks to you, and Inkshares. 

I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am without the experience I had working with Inkshares on Sunshine is Forever. I have had both negative and positive experiences with the company, but I know their editorial process really improved my writing and taught me a ton. I want to thank Inkshares and all of you for supporting me with this book. You helped elevate me to the next level.

I’ve been querying to get a writing agent for 7 years. Well, I can finally announce that I have officially accepted representation with Jennifer Soloway at Andrea Brown Lit. I am thrilled! Here’s to a long and prosperous writing career! 

http://www.andreabrownlit.com/

I appreciate all of you! Don’t forget to review Sunshine is Forever on AMAZON!

Kyle T. Cowan

Happy New Year my friends!

Well, 2017 won’t be accused of being uneventful. I think it’s safe to say that it will go down as a year with many bitter memories for some. I lucked out however and, because of you, 2017 turned out to be an awesome year. I say ’you’ because you are responsible for A God in the Shed becoming a reality. You helped us get to over 5300 books sold. We’re staring down the barrel of the sequel going into production and all of it is because you took a chance on this book.

My gratitude knows no bounds.

But, I will be asking you to trust me again.

I have another book currently funding on Inkshares. It’s a science fiction novel called Arch-Android. It’s the story of our robot descendants and how they’ve lived without human interference for centuries, but now, as signs of humanity making a comeback start to appear, they have to decide how best to prepare sharing the galaxy with us once again. Check out the sample chapter and please, consider pre-ordering a copy (or more!). It’s not horror but I swear you won’t regret it.

Again, thank you so much for your continued support. Great things are coming in 2018 and I’m looking forward to sharing that journey with you.

JF

Now that we’re one month into release for "Skavenger’s Hunt," I wanted to send you all a quick update. Following the incredible amount of support both this summer and fall, along with the strong word of mouth from early readers, I’m happy to say the book’s debut has exceeded my most hopeful expectations.

Most gratifying, of course, has been the notes and reviews from you, the reader. When I set out to write this book, it was with the intent of telling a story I’d be proud to share with my grandchildren (like Harper and Jack below, apparently Hunter was off in the Cars 3 section). But seeing it receive such strong response not only from the middle reader and YA crowd, while also spreading its wings to adult readers, has been the very best holiday gift I could have imagined. 

So again...thank you! If you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, please take a moment to write a one or two sentence review on both amazon.com and goodreads.com. As a best-selling author told me a few months ago, "the only thing harder than writing a book is getting someone to read it."

Happy Holidays everyone!

Yesterday was the holiday party at Mysterious Galaxy BookStore in San Diego! And apparently they let just about anyone in there. Look! Here’s some silly sci-fi writer peddling his wares...

Surprise! It’s me.

Many many thanks to everyone who came out, including some very awesome friends and family. Not to mention the dozen or so other authors signing books, mingling, and likely ingesting copious amounts of holiday sugar. Here’s just a small handful of folks in attendance...

Shared a table with these funny guys.

La familia. (Aunt and cousin)

Behind every creative dork is his mom cheering him on.

Even had a few hoodlums from the old day job show up!

I think we all wanted to take that insane tentacle tree home.

Somewhere there is video of me rambling into a microphone for a couple minutes. Perhaps I’ll share that around later. Huge thanks to Mary Elizabeth, David, Kelly and the rest of the Mysterious Galaxy staff for inviting me to join their little shindig. It was super fun, and I’m looking forward to partnering up with them again, hopefully in the near future. (Plans are a-brewin’...)

And finally, a massive thanks to my wife Meg. She not only cooked up a storm and entertained everyone at our Christmas party at home Friday night, but then worked a short shift the next morning, came home, and journeyed down with me to San Diego to support me at the book event. All on little-to-no sleep and fighting a nasty cold. She’s amazing, and probably reading this now, shaking her head at the disgusting levels of exploitative cheesiness. (Them’s the breaks. She knows who she married.) 😁

ONE LAST THING! (There’s always one last thing) Just another reminder that I’ve got a handful of these books left to sell directly to the world. I know I’ve been encouraging everyone to buy from the stores, but if you want to grab a copy from me, I’ll have it personally signed and in the mail for you before Christmas! Drop me a line at rockhollywood8@gmail.com.

Cheers!
-Tony

I’m sitting at my desk this lovely morning, watching the snow fall out the window of my mountainside home and feeling very grateful for all of you. This update is coming a little later than usual, and for that, I apologize. I was waiting to hear back on a few points so that this update could be a bit more substantial than the last few. And, it will be!

I have multiple exciting updates to share with you!

1) Developmental Edit Progress

Since my update at the end of October, I have concluded another round of developmental edit rewrites. The book is now back in the hands of my editor. He is going through one more time (he estimates this will take about two weeks), and then he plans to send the book to a beta-reader to get some third-party, objective feedback. We will then use that feedback to do one more pass before forwarding the book to a copy-editor.

2) Title change

While I like The Walls are Closing In (and we may still use it as a tagline for the book), we have decided that a different title is more marketable, provides a bit of mystery, and is catchier for the future selling of property rights (fingers crossed).

So, without further ado, the new title is:

The Seclusion

3) Genre Change

We are making a few changes to the plot and market the book as YA(Young Adult). This will only marginally change the story but will double the audience. It allows us to not only market the book to fans of books such as 1984, Fahrenheit 541, and The Handmaid’s Tale, but also to fans of books such as The Hunger Games and Divergent.

3) Release Date!

The book has been assigned a tentative release date and an ISBN number (this second part is probably not exciting to anyone but me).

The Seclusion is currently set to publish on:

October 2, 2018!

This is a bit later than I had hoped, but I am beyond thrilled that there is an official trajectory. Between now and then I will be doing everything in my power to ensure that the launch is a success.

One last note - the first two chapters on the book’s page have been updated to reflect the changes that we have been making. Feel free to check them out!

Until next time,

-Jacqui

Hello everyone, 

The year is almost over! This should be my last update for 2017 so I wanted to wish you all a happy holiday period and New Year. 

Things have been hectic in the world of Blood Capital. Inkshares and I are pushing hard to get the book ready for print, and it’s been all hands on deck. I’m still in edits, but things are getting pointy — the last week has seen long hours devoted to getting a sample of the book ready for sales reps from the major bookstore chains. There’s also been more progress on development of a final cover. As soon as I have that, I’ll be sending out a special update.

Everyone always asks how the book is going, and I love that people haven’t lost interest yet. I’m really excited by the way the story is developing with support from the Inkshares team and putting as much time and love into the project as I can. To keep me honest, and to keep you all in the loop, I’ve upped my game for tracking work on the novel. I’ve created a Tableau Public Dashboard which I update at the end of each writing session. Tracking of my hours is new, so there’s only three weeks of data for that, but hopefully it shows I haven’t been slacking. With a toddler and a demanding day job, it’s sometimes difficult to find the time. Thankfully, I love writing, so I’ve upped my coffee intake and am putting in the hours to get this done. Below is are some static screenshots of the dashboards, but if you follow this link you’ll get an interactive version.

PS: When I started the major rewrites as part of this developmental edit, I pulled most of the samples of the novel from the Inkshares website, as too many details were changing. Over the next month I plan to put a few new samples back up, so keep an eye out for a taste as to how the story as developed from those early days.

As always, thank you.

Robert

https://robertbatten.net

Dear all,

This is a short update about the publication of "Everything is Normal."

The book is fully finished. At this stage the publisher is reaching out to relevant authors for "blurbs" – quotes about the book to be printed on the front and the back covers. Here are a couple examples received:

“Like walking through the looking-glass into 1970s-80s Leningrad... funny, shocking and occasionally even tender... prepare to be transported back to the CCCP.” —Lisa Dickey, author of Bears in the Streets

“A rare glimpse of life in Soviet Russia before and during perestroika. Everything is Normal is the tender and often funny story of a personal journey paralleled by seismic changes in the country itself. A captivating read.” —Elena Gorokhova, author of Russian Tattoo

In January, the publisher will be sending electronic and physical copies of the book (first off-set print run) to various media players in the book world (editors at the NYT, WSJ, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, etc.), as well as to top influencers, book reviewers, librarians, etc.  Fingers crossed, it will generate good reviews and interest.

The book is already getting orders from small independent bookstores in the US  almost every day. This is pleasing. It is also already available for pre-orders on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., and for reviews on Goodreads.

https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Normal-Life-Times-Soviet/dp/1942645902/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1511930598&sr=8-5&keywords=everything+is+normal

So, so far so good. It has been an interesting journey, which is now coming to its conclusion. Thank you very much again for your support, pre-orders and patience. As planned, you will be receiving the books in March.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New Year, and Happy Festivus for the rest of us.

Cheers,

Sergey