Okay, whew. I ran out last Friday to pick up my son, and then we left for a camping trip. I didn’t get the chance to do proper thank yous, so here it goes:

A huge, huge thank you to my supporters. It was amazing on Friday at 11:30 am to have people come out of the woodwork and push me into 2nd place. I absolutely could not have done it without you all. Thanks to my wife for finding this contest and encouraging me to enter. And thanks to all the Harveys and the Clearys and the Mills who bit their nails alongside us. Thank you to Simon Winchester, Brian Baldwin, Sean Garcia, Hannah Davis, and Ryan Weilert. In the end, it was your willpower that won me 2nd place. I’m in awe of all of you.

Great work to everyone else in the competition. There was some serious talent I was competing against. Alisa King ran a fierce campaign. Congrats to Peter Ryan, who really does seem like a genuinely nice guy. I can’t wait to read Too Many Controllers. And as I’ve said before, Andrew Fantasia is a great writer. I hope his novel Sidescroller gets funded so we can all give it a read. I also want to give a shout-out to G.A. Finocchiaro and his book Knightmares. He helped me a ton, and his book looks awesome. 

So what’s next? Sweeping changes. I’ll soon be deleting the prologue that’s up on Inkshares. Years ago, I had written IN BETA as a feature film. At the start of this contest, I was simply adapting the film into novel form. The farther I went down that path, the more I realized I wasn’t excited about a book that followed the rigid formula of a Hollywood comedy. So during this contest, I made significant revisions to IN BETA’s setting and plot. The concept and the characters are the same, but I’ve moved the locale from Seattle, WA to a rural town in the Cascades. The setting works better for a number of reasons. If anyone is interested in the mechanics of "why", ask and I’ll happily distract myself from writing by geeking out over my decisions. Otherwise, just satisfy yourself with the knowledge that I’m not content to deliver a shit novel.

I’m very excited about IN BETA, and I can’t wait to share the new prologue with the world. Thanks everyone for this amazing opportunity. I’ll try to be regular with my updates, and I’ll let you know the timeline of this process once I figure that out.