Hello, everyone! It’s me, in your inbox. 

There’s an exciting fortnight ahead of us.

5 days until Witherfist’s first convention appearance. Yes, next weekend I’ll be out and about, trying to find more support for Witherfist at a local convention. I’ll have a lot more on this to share after the event - including pictures of me in a rather fetching Witherfist t-shirt - but in the meanwhile, any good luck you can send my way would be most appreciated!

15 days until the Geek & Sundry Fantasy Contest ends. Witherfist is currently in 9th place, which is just incredible.  At the time of writing, the book is 5 readers away from 8th place. With just over 2 weeks to go, there’s not long left for you to place your preorder and make it count towards the contest results. 

15 days left to win one of two Amazon vouchers. The giveaway I’m running, for two Amazon vouchers - worth £25 and £10 respectively - is running for the duration of October. Each copy of the book you order, or refer someone else to order, counts as one entry to win one of these vouchers.


As always, thank you for your support.

~ Jenny

Witherfist is now in the Geek & Sundry contest top 10. This is a huge milestone, as it’s the first time since the beginning of the contest back in August that the book has broken into the top 10.  In a contest with over 380 entrants, it’s a real honour to be up there and in the company of so many other brilliant authors and their books.

How did this happen? Over this past weekend, Inkshares syndicates - groups of like-minded readers who band together to support books - began choosing their monthly picks. Witherfist was fortunate enough to be nominated and chosen by the members of the ’Break the Bechdel’ syndicate, whose support added a whopping 32 new preorders to the preorder total. A massive thank you goes to Tahani Nelson, author of The Last Faoii, for putting Witherfist forward and for all of the syndicate members who voted to make this possible.

What does that mean?  If you visit the contest page, you’ll  now see the Witherfist cover listed along with the rest of the top 10 entries. This will give the book extra visibility to contest visitors and, should it be fortunate enough to stay in the top 10, this ranking will remain frozen in place once the contest ends on November 1st.

Does this mean Witherfist will be published?  It certainly helps towards that goal! We are now 50% of the way to the 250 copies needed for publication and being in the top 10 puts Witherfist one step closer to the top 3 (who are all guaranteed a full publishing deal). Although the Geek & Sundry contest ends at the beginning of next month, Witherfist has until December 31st to reach the big 250.

We’re now halfway there. 

We can do this.

~ Jenny

Hello, all! It seems like just yesterday I was writing to you, to share with you some character concept art from my book, Witherfist. (Oh, right, that’s because it was yesterday.)

I’ve unexpectedly got some more art to share with you. This is drawn in a different style and is another image of Witherfist herself, Irusai. This is a different Irusai to the one you can read about in the first chapter of Witherfist. A much more composed, calm woman, in her days as a respected provincial governor - before she tattooed the true name of an ancient spirit onto her arm and became the notorious fugitive she is today. 

Hello, all! I am running a small giveaway associated with Witherfist. This is to celebrate not only the final month of the G&S contest but also my appearance at a local convention where I’ll be promoting Witherfist on October 22nd and 23rd! 

I will be giving away one £25 / $32 and one £10 / $12 voucher for Amazon to two random readers who order during October. I will select the two winners at random from anyone who orders during this month. 

If you have already ordered, you can enter the contest by referring another reader to purchase the book. Additionally, each copy ordered will count as one entry into the contest - so if you purchase a copy and refer a friend to buy a copy, you will get two entries. To refer a friend you can either use the recommend links on the project page or just send me a message to let me know the name of the person you have referred. 

While I’ve got your attention, here’s a little teaser of some new artwork of Arren to match the awesome piece of Irusai that I shared with you previously.

 You can read about Arren in her excerpt chapter: https://www.inkshares.com/books/witherfist/book_segments/arren-1

It’s October! The final month of the Geek and Sundry Inkshares contest is here, and Witherfist is still fighting to find a spot in the top 10. We’re in 13th place, unlucky for some, but not for us. 

This morning Witherfist reached 83 readers! Thank you to everyone who has helped to support the book.To celebrate, I thought I’d share with you all something very cool indeed: the first concept art of Irusai Daud, the woman known as Witherfist herself. 

What do you think? Does she look as you imagined her? Let me know.

70 preorders!

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have 80 by the end of this coming week?

After the excitement of last weekend’s Gollancz Festival, there’s another fantasy lit convention happening in the UK this weekend: Fantasy Con By The Sea. Witherfist is one of the books featured in the event programme booklet, so I’m hoping that we’ll see some #fcon2016 attendees joining the Witherfist reader count.   

It’s still a while before October’s syndicate picks are made, but Witherfist has already gotten nominations in the Break the Bechdel syndicate and the Rite of Passage syndicate. Amazing!

Thanks for your continued support. If you like to read more of my thoughts on writing Witherfist, you can check out the second part of my interview with blogger and author Natacha Guyot and my chat with Jim Vines, on his blog Jim Vines Presents.  

 ~ Jenny

Hello, everyone. Hope you’re having a great start to the week! 

The last seven days have been brilliant for Witherfist, as we reached and surpassed 25% funding. I hope that the rest of this month will see our readership continue to grow. 

The book now has 138 followers. If you’re one of that number and you’re unsure about preordering, head over to the project page and have a read through the first three chapters. 

Once you’ve done that, why not check out some other great projects on Inkshares:

• Mothering: The Game
  
• Weaponized
• Fae Child
• The Last Faoii
• Black Cloud

~ Jenny

Witherfist is 25% funded!  

Yes, you read that right. At 63 preorders, Witherfist is now a quarter of the way to being published. In her  ’G&S Contest: 11-25’ thread, Jane-Holly Meissner identified that Witherfist is currently placed 13th in the contest. That’s 13th out of over 350 submissions. Wow! We’re 26 readers behind the number 10 spot in the contest - and I’m hoping that we can close that gap by the end of the month.

I mentioned in a previous update that the Epic Fantasy Syndicate was considering selecting Witherfist as their book of the month. The recipient of that honour this month was my fellow contest entrant, The Living God, so a big congrats goes out to Kaytalin Platt!

In other exciting news...

• This weekend, I’ll be at GollanczFest in London, listening to panels on the sci-fi and fantasy community and the impact and importance of an author’s online presence. Don’t worry, I’ll be taking notes, which I’ll share in the Inkshares community forum. 

• I’m also happy to share that Jay Lockwood (author of A Beast Requires) was randomly selected to the win the art giveaway, which I ran for the first 50 readers to preorder. A pack dragon is currently preparing to paddle its way across the Atlantic with Jay’s prize.

• Lastly but not least, I recently completed another author interview, this time with Jim Vines - so if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on the writing process, have a peek.
  

Thanks for your support. We’re so close to the top 10 and making great progress with funding. I know we can make this happen!

~ Jenny

Hello, all! A quick Monday update to share that we’re now at 57 preorders! In just 6 orders time, we will be 25% funded and a quarter of the way to Witherfist being published.

At the time of writing this, Witherfist is currently a nominee for the Epic Fantasy Syndicate’s monthly pick. The syndicate supports "Grand epic fantasy with magic, a fully immersive secondary world, and series potential -- stuff that will make Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Wheel of Time fans tingle with excitement."

It’s a real honour to be considered for the syndicate’s support and especially when there are so many brilliant fantasy books funding at the moment. I’ll write to you later this week to let you know what the outcome was!

~ Jenny