Hello everyone!
I have not reached out through this platform in a long time, but the publication of Mission 51 is imminent, and I wanted to mention a few things.
First of all, my heartfelt gratitude goes to everyone who purchased a pre-order, especially those who did so during the Inkshares/Nerdist Sci-Fi Contest of 2017. Those pre-orders kept Mission 51 in the top 3 of all contestants and garnered a full publishing contract. Since that time, Mission 51 has been in production, progressively improving the story. It is now fully polished and ready for publication.
The publication date is February 15, 2022.
I am signing the pre-ordered books as we speak.
IMPORTANT:
For those who pre-ordered here on Inkshares, like everyone did during the contest, it’s time to update your address. If you moved since that contest in the summer of 2017, you need to update your address with Inkshares so the book will find its way to you.
If you have not yet placed an order but wish to do so now, it remains available for purchase here on Inkshaers, and is also available on Amazon, B&N, Target…
Thanks again, everyone, for your support and your patience, and I do so hope you enjoy Mission 51!
Ferd Crôtte
Greetings friends and supporters. We’re certainly due for an update on the state of Tantalus Depths, and I am thrilled to say this update is a really good one.
About a week ago, I received my first round of copyedit notes for Tantalus Depths. They were wonderfully thorough and picked up a ton of minor punctuation and grammar errors that managed to elude my notice through more than a dozen full readthroughs. They were easily fixed, and the book feels much cleaner for it.
You’ll remember that the development editing process took almost two years to complete, due to extensive rewrites and passing through multiple draft stages. Copyedits, I am happy to say, are much simpler and more straightforward, and mostly just involve clicking "accept" on every grammar change my copyeditor suggested. I made sure to read each sentence in context to ensure that none of the suggestions accidentally changed the meaning of the sentence, and I caught a couple that would have done so, but even with that close attention to detail, I am proud to say that it still only took me a few hours to make every single change expected of me for this stage of the process. While it took me months to get through a round of development edits, I was able to finish all my copyedit notes and send them back to my publisher in less than a week.
This very well may be the first time in our five-year development process where we’ve actually been ahead of schedule, and we are rapidly nearing the end. My copyeditor will go over the changes I’ve made, and barring one or two more potential correspondences to correct a few outstanding issues, we will soon be done with the copyediting process and be ready to move on to the proofreader. After that, Tantalus Depths will at long last be completely finalized and ready for its release.
It’s been a long road to get here, friends, but we are rapidly gaining momentum in the last stretch before the finish line. Expect some very exciting announcements in the next few months, including a cover reveal and our long-awaited official release date.
I never thought it would take this long to get this book into your hands, and I do hope future projects will move more smoothly now that I know what to expect. But I can definitely say with confidence that the book is ten times better now than it was before this process began, and I could not be more excited to see what happens when my world finally enters yours.
Stay tuned, my friends, and watch the skies.
The Void is calling...
Dear readers,
I hope you have not forgotten me. It has been quite a while, and I admit that things have progressed far slower than I’d hoped. I feel that much of that is my own fault, and that has made me reluctant to post any updates. However, it looks like we’re finally over the slump, and have something real to report.
The book went into copy edits just last month, and should be moving on to the next step within the next week or so. Apparently we have a publication date set for February 2022, so here’s hoping things go according to schedule.
As I’m writing this, the International Agatha Christie Festival is just entering its last day. I was invited to say a little something about Christie’s post-WW1 world, though the ongoing plague means my contribution has had to be online only. Rather a shame not to be there in person, but being "online only" means the video is now available on YouTube. Check it out here: Agatha Christie: Clues to the Post-War World. While you’re there, why not check out some of the other online talks and events for the festival?
Cheers to everyone; stay healthy, and happy reading.
Greetings, longsuffering friends. I have some news! It’s not THE news, but it is A news. Actually, it’s TWO news. But it’s definitely GOOD news!
The first news: my friend and fellow brilliant authorial mastermind, Kaytalin Platt, was gracious enough to interview me on her website about my most recent short story, Reliquary, which debuted in last year’s Writing Bloc anthology, Passageways. We get deep into my creative process and worldbuilding approach, not just for Reliquary, but for the entire Calling Void series as a whole. It’s a great interview, and I’m very excited to share it with all of you. Check it out here, and while you’re there, check out some of her other interviews from authors in the Passageways anthology, including her own!
And now, the second news, which I think will be even more relevant to your interests.
I can FINALLY proudly announce that Tantalus Depths is officially out of the development editing stage of production.
Those of you who have been following my updates for a long time might be having a “Wait, didn’t we already do that?” moment right now, and you’d be right. We officially finished development edits more than two years ago and were cleared to move on to the copy editing stage. BUT, what we did not expect or plan on at the time was that Adam Gomolin, the CEO of my publishing company, would take direct personal interest in my book and want to go through an additional round of development edits one-on-one with me. While it was definitely a bit frustrating to jump right back into development edits right after I thought we were done, that frustration was hugely outweighed by the opportunities that additional round of edits provided. Adam and I worked tirelessly together to transform Tantalus Depths into an absolutely brilliant book that I’ve never been prouder of, and even though the work was exhausting and the wait has been long, I think it will absolutely have been worth it.
For those of you who are not familiar with the publishing industry’s inner workings, a “development edit” is a round of edits that focuses on story-related things like plot development, character consistency, tone, pacing, and so on. Basically, the meat of a story. Development edits tend to involve significant rewrites; in my case, I’ve rewritten several chapters, added a few new ones, and reworked dialogue and narration to make the story sleeker, deeper, with a stronger core identity. The story and the characters are still absolutely true to my original vision, and the book overall is still the story I always wanted to tell. In fact, even though I’ve rewritten probably 80% of the words in the story at this point, I’m really just telling the exact same story I always have with much better words.
And so, after approximately 8 different drafts, I have finally gotten Tantalus Depths to a point that both Adam and I agree is ready to move on to the next step. The story is locked in now, and will change very little from now to publication day, but there are still a few steps to go in the process. The next big step will be the copy editing stage, which is another full round of edits that will, thankfully, take much less time. Copy editing focuses on simpler, more mechanical aspects of writing, such as grammar and word usage. This stage will not involve significant rewrites and should not require more than one or two drafts to resolve. I’m not going to throw out any time estimations, because I’m very, very bad at predicting things like that well, but where a draft of development editing could take me months, a draft of copy editing should take days.
Before we slide into copy edits, however, I have one special bonus surprise! Adam is hooking me up with an actual, honest-to God physicist to do a special “scientific accuracy pass” on the book. Tantalus Depths has always been designed with scientific accuracy in mind, but for all the hours of research I’ve put into it, I’m still just a layperson with a Bachelors’s in education. This special bonus round of edits will give us the chance to improve the accuracy of the science presented in this science-fiction book, and I couldn’t be more stoked about it.
So yeah, really big stuff is happening with Tantalus Depths! I wish I had a release date to give you all, but we aren’t quite there yet. I have been given a tenuous one, but Inkshares’ release schedule is still pretty flexible, and depending on how long the next phase of production takes, our actual release date could move forward or backwards, so I don’t want to announce anything until it’s more definite. Stay tuned, though! We are really making progress now.
April 29, 2021
Hello!
I am beyond excited to let you know that your copy of The Devil Inside is coming soon! The official release date is May 11, 2021!
Back in the fall of 2017, you were kind enough to pre-order a copy as part of my funding effort to get the book published. It was supposed to release last year, but—as with many things—the pandemic delayed it.
I am grateful and appreciative of your support (and your patience) while the book waited in the queue for its turn with the editor and proofreader.
Right now, it is with the printer, and it should take about two weeks to print the hard copies. From there it will ship to the fulfillment center and then it will be on its way to you! If you ordered a paperback, you will also get a free e-book copy as well. The link for that will arrive in your email when it is ready for download. If you don’t see it, be sure to check your spam folder!
But I want to make sure you get your copy after all this time, so this next part is important: If you ordered a paperback and have moved to a new home since September 2017, you will need to make sure Inkshares has your shipping address and email. Otherwise, they will send your book to the wrong place.
If you have any trouble with that, contact Inkshares customer service at and they’ll be able to help you out.
Thank you again for all of your support. I’m looking forward to all of you getting your copies, and I hope you enjoy the story (and when you’re done, I would love to have you leave a review on Amazon or GoodReads!).
Take care,
Susan
PS. And if you also see this message via my author newsletter, I apologize for the double message. There are, however, a few people on the Inkshares platform that have not subscribed to my mailing list and I don’t want to accidentally overlook anyone!
To all my dear friends,
I have brief news regarding Curio Citizen. A few months ago, my developmental editor decided that my manuscript was ready to be sent to the CEO of Inkshares for his assessment and news on next steps. I spoke with him this week, and he is hoping to read it soon. Unfortunately, what has already been a slow process has slowed down even more due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Books that were supposed to be released in 2020 have been pushed to 2021, which means Curio Citizen will be delayed further. I hope that Inkshares and I can work together this year to make sure Curio is all set to go for a 2022 release, but I have no confirmation yet for whether that will be the case.
So, here’s the thing. As I mentioned in my last update, a different novel of mine, Lodestone, has been acquired by a separate publishing company and will be released this April 21, 2021. In addition, a second novel, The Hand-me-down Maiden, is now under contract with that same publisher and is slated for a 2022 release. I am beyond excited for these novels, but to be honest, I feel rather awkward that Lodestone will be released before Curio Citizen when you all so generously pre-ordered Curio over three years ago. There is also a distinct possibility that The Hand-me-down Maiden will also be published before Curio Citizen will be released.
I want to again assure you that Curio Citizen is still in production and will eventually be in your hands. I have been working very hard with Inkshares on and off for the past three years to ensure it will be its best self prior to release, and though the long waiting periods have been frustrating, I believe the novel will be worth it in the end.
In the next three months, I will seriously be ramping up marketing for Lodestone on all of my author social media accounts, especially since pre-orders have now opened in preparation for its April release. That being the case, I wanted to use this update to reassure you that Curio Citizen is still happening, despite the fact that it will likely be my third published novel by the time it is out in the world. I apologize for what I feel is an awkward situation, and I again want to thank you all with my utmost sincerity, truly from the bottom of my heart, for your support and patience during this process. I would not have made it this far in my career without your generosity.
If you are interested in following news regarding my other books and projects, I invite you to join my new email newsletter! I’m so excited to share my author-ly pursuits with you, and I promise I won’t flood your inbox! Sign up here!
Thank you again, everyone. I will update about Curio Citizen here as soon as I have more news. In the meantime, I wish you all the best health and happiness!
Sincerely,
Katherine