First Draft is Complete!

Thursday night at about 10:30 I wrote the final words of the Deus Hex Machina first draft. I had been pressing to get it done by the end of June, and through some help from motivational guru and all around fabulous person Elayna May Darcy (seriously go order  They Are the Last, it’s funding now and it’s awesome), I was able to get all twelve chapters finished on time.

So what happens now? Well, first off I’m going to celebrate with some gaming. Then probably Tuesday I will start working on my short story for Too Many Controllers. After that is complete it’s time to start planning for the Shadow of the Owl sequel, Shadow of the Panther. I know many of your have been waiting to find out what happens to Mylena in [spoilers], and I promise you I haven’t forgotten her.

That’s not to say things aren’t progressing on DHM. My cover designer is already working on comps and I have a developmental editor lined up and waiting. But first, I want to get the first draft in its raw, unfiltered state into the hands of a few select readers to get initial impressions. If you are someone who likes to help make a good book better, I am trying to build a beta reader group. Please email me amanda [at] goldleafbooks [dot] com and let me know that you’re interested. Warning: must love cyberpunk and have an eye for spotting egregious errors in the plot.

Once I have the round done, I’ll head into the second draft and fix anything that stood out to me and my readers (I have a mental list of weak areas I want to shore up). After the second draft is complete it will be off to dev edit land, and hopefully, plot perfection. 

Thanks for following along on this journey. The book is done! Let’s celebrate!  

Happy Friday all,

I have a few updates for this weekend, but having already sent an update this week, I’ll make it snappy.

(1) 14 Orders left to reach Full INKSHARES Publishing !! That’s right, you can stop rubbing your eyes! We have 15 days to get less than an order per day.. are we up for it?!

(2) Please check out my interview on Nell Walton’s great blog. Nell offered this feature even though the novel has nothing to do with SciFi or Fantasy , I did say I’ll look into sticking a dragon in there... Khaleesi John maybe? ;-)
(credit due to Miss Emily Dital for colouring the caricature below)

(3) The Syndicate I lead here on Inkshares "Thriller Night" now has a Goodreads group. This is in effort to increase exposure of thrillers, mysteries and suspense novels on Inkshares; and to increase Inkshares’ visibility on Goodreads. We let authors who are nominated for our backing pitch their books, and a few have already done so. We encourage membership from everybody, not just paying syndicate members. You are invited through this link.

Again, thank you all for the amazing support!

JD

Caricature: drawing - Joni D, colouring - Emily D

Lore Update!

Here we take a sneak peak under the hood of The Diamelen and learn the basics of superluminal drive technologyin Tantalus Depths.

Also, Tantalus Depths has just passed 400 pre-orders! Thank you all so much for the continued support, this is really moving thanks to your tremendous help. Keep it up, and keep spreading the word!