Hello, readers.

If you haven’t already, please check out my new project, 1000 Faces. It’s currently 6th place in the Nerdist sci-fi contest. If it ends the contest in the top 3, it’ll get a full publishing deal. Here are a couple of excerpts from the novel:

https://www.inkshares.com/books/1000-faces/book_segments/excerpt-1-https://www.inkshares.com/books/1000-faces/book_segments/excerpt-2-

Hello friends!

I hope you’re all gearing up for a lovely holiday weekend (here in the States), or a lovely regular weekend (everywhere else). You are getting this update because you believed in me, and my writing, enough to preorder Fae Child - and I have another book to ask you to believe in.

I entered the current SciFi contest on Inkshares (Mutants: Uprising) and am sitting tied for 3rd place (that’s guaranteed full publication). One preorder - your preorder - will make my position more secure. I am only a few readers away from 2nd, honestly. But I can’t do this alone, and I need your help. 

If you can preorder right now, all the better. If you can’t help out until next week, that’s good too. I need preorders then, too.

Unlike Fae Child, Mutants: Uprising is written for adult readers, which is to say there is strong language in it. It already exists as a first draft, and as of now it’s in the running to WIN THIS CONTEST!!!

 
Thank you so much for your time,
Jane-Holly

Hello, readers! Just a quick reminder that my next project, 1000 Faces, is competing to win the Nerdist Sci-Fi contest.  

In a paranoid near-future where every private part of the internet is public, people hide their identities behind digital masks. Desperate for intimacy in this impersonal world, a mask designer risks everything to feel close to another human being.

Sounds cool, right? As with other Inkshares contests, the top 3 projects get a full publishing deal. I’m currently in 4th place and need your help to get a strong position in the top 3.  

Preorder today :)

~ Jenny

https://www.inkshares.com/books/1000-faces

Hello, readers! Long time no write. I haven’t been in touch for a while, and that’s mainly because I haven’t had a lot to write to you about! 

Work on Witherfist continues at a steady pace. Right now, I’m in the process of some fairly large adjustments to the structure of the plot. I’ve heard from other authors in the Inkshares community that there is a lot happening in the way of preparing, polishing and publishing manuscripts - which is really promising. Given the timescales being quoted, and my current progress with Witherfist, it’s unlikely that the book will see publication before 2018, as I’m going to submit my manuscript to Inkshares in Autumn 2017 at the earliest. 

In other news, Inkshares launched a new publishing contest this week, looking for the next big sci-fi novel. I’ve tossed my hat into the ring with an entry! Why not, eh? You can follow the book - tentatively titled 1000 Faces - and if you want to support it, you can preorder right now. 1000 Faces is set in the near future, in a society where all of the internets secrets have been revealed. To try and maintain a modicum of privacy and anonymity in public, people use ’digital avatars’ to mask their faces - imagine Snapchat filters that you wear all day! The book follows a digital avatar designer who ends up tangled in cyber terrorism, government conspiracies and a whole host of ethical chaos. It’s a dash of Mr. Robot meets A Scanner Darkly via Gattaca with an unplanned detour into Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  

As a little bonus, I’d like to share with you a piece of ’flash fiction’ that I wrote for a sci-fi writing contest earlier this year. The World In A Teacup is a story that I wrote in just 48 hours, based on a handful of prompts. You can download it for free on Amazon / Amazon UK. If you don’t use a Kindle, there are other download options available via Pronoun.

Thanks for reading, 

~ Jenny

 

Dear supporters,

The first draft of Fae Child is nearly finished. I have been a bit blocked/busy, but I’m eking out what I can, when I can. However, Abbie’s story arc is completed! I am writing her father Dan’s chapters to catch him up with her. It’s a bit of a switch mentally, but once I get going I think it will wrap up quickly.

Quill books ahead of me in the queue are starting to get editors assigned! They are still looking at a production schedule of 6 or so months before they are published, but there is finally some movement. This is great news for those authors, and for Fae Child as well.

Now, I have a favor to ask: Inkshares has started a new Science Fiction contest, sponsored by Nerdist. I have a story already written that just needs editing, and I have decided to enter the contest! Am I crazy? Probably. Please click the picture below and follow Mutants: Uprising. Once it goes live, I would be so appreciative if you preordered. In the meantime, if you could read the sample chapters/excerpts, and recommend or review it on the site.

 

X-Men meets Call of Cthulhu

It’s hard to be the ’good guy’ when you lead the local cell of the League, a terrorist organization. Gang warfare turns out to be the least of your worries when shadowy organizations start targeting your friends.

Mutants: Uprising is written in SECOND PERSON, and I hope you enjoy it! Just following the project is all I ask. Thank you!

Have a great Tuesday!
Jane-Holly

 

Once upon a time there was a friend. This friend asked me to join a contest, and I didn’t think about it too much and just did it. First mistake: had I known what I was getting into, I would never have pulled the trigger on Inkshares in August ’16 and started the journey that culminated in a publication deal in March ’17.

Second mistake: She asked me to join another contest, this one a flash fiction writing contest from Sci-Fi-London (the 48hr Flash Fiction Challenge), and I did that too. On April 8th I opened the site to view my story requirements. A title, a line of dialogue, and an optional bit of science. The maximum word count was 2,000 words, and I had just two days to write it in.

Title: NOT ON MY WATCH
Dialogue: When the clouds are this low it can be a nightmare to get a clean signa
lScience (optional): Augmented reality becomes so good we neglect reality, when the system to fails, the decay is revealed.

Except I worked all day on Sunday, so I really had just one day. And then I knew that in all honesty I probably just had Saturday morning to write it. The good news was I already had a pretty good idea what I wanted to put to paper. I popped open Scrivener (worth it’s weight in gold), wrote out descriptions for about seven story points, and then just...

...wrote.

I finished up a little over 2k words before noon, trimmed it down, sent it to some friends to read, edited the mistakes, and then sent it off. I’m not sure how I got that word count done so fast, but my brain was sizzling with ideas and I just let it get on with it.

And now YOU can read it! I published the short story through Pronoun, making it available for free on all major ebook retailers’ sites, and you can access it here: NOT ON MY WATCH.  If you download it, please rate and review it! It’s only 8 pages, so it shouldn’t take you long at all. Every review or rating helps boost it’s status among other ebooks, and in return gives my author page more recognition, and all of this will help me when Fae Child comes out.

I don’t know if I’ll win the Sci-Fi-London contest, but hey, stranger things have happened? And those things I listed as mistakes at the beginning of the post? Actually they were probably the best decisions I could have made, regarding my writing. Thank you Jenny!

~ Jane-Holly
p.s. Of course, the work on Fae Child continues! We are #2 on Inkshares in Teen and Young Adult, how cool is that?

 

Dear Readers,

Since my campaign for Fae Child ended, SUCCESSFULLY, I’ve been a little quiet. Part of this is the fact that my family got a cold and then I got it (and still have it) and part has been just hunkering down to type out the last bit of the book. I have it all in my head, I merely need to transcribe it. I have also nailed down the last bits of my character motivations that were bugging me, which has led me to the realization that this could be a trilogy of books. But, of course, first things first.

I have secured an editor to help me polish the manuscript! I am very excited about this, and eager to see how much better the book can become with some professional notes.

Inkshares has also made the decision that they are discontinuing the practice of offering signed books. They fulfilled this in the past by mailing all the books to the author, and then shipping them back to Inkshares HQ for fulfillment. This cost Inkshares a lot of money (not necessarily covered by preorder dollars), and I can understand why they are stopping, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me, or for backers who purchased ’signed paperbacks.’ Unfortunately this means that once Fae Child is in physical form, I will not be sent the books to sign, and when you receive your copies they will not be signed. I am very sorry that this is the case, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.

Of course for backers local to me (Pacific NW) I will certainly sign any book I am within arms length of (even if they’re not mine!), and will probably be having a signing party after the book has been published. I am looking into bookplates, which are stickers with my signature that can be fixed into the book, but of course, first things first.

Thank you all for your continuing support,
Jane-Holly

p.s. You probably have noticed that the Cover has undergone several transformations. It is certainly closer to it’s ’final form’ but it may change again!

Hello, readers! I hope you’re all well. 

This month’s Witherfist update is a relatively short one as there isn’t a lot that’s changed since the last time I was in touch, aside from the number of words that I’ve written. Work on the manuscript is coming along nicely and at the steady - sometimes galloping - pace that I’d hoped for. No news, as they say, is good news. 

One new thing that I can share with you, though, is a new piece of character concept art.  This is Oriku. She’s an assassin, and that’s all I’m going to tell you about her for now ;-)

~ Jenny

 

Just a quick update to say: YOU ROCK!

Fae Child is SIX orders away from securing a place in Quill, Inkshares’ light publishing imprint. I almost can’t believe it. There are five days left in my preorder campaign - the one I started in August 2016 as part of the Geek & Sundry Fantasy contest, without any idea what I was going. Once Fae Child reaches 250+ orders, it will become just the tenth book from that contest to earn publishing. And that is thanks to YOU. I didn’t place in the contest, but I kept going, and look at where we are now!

Thank you so much to all my backers and readers - I couldn’t do this without you.

~ Jane-Holly