Greetings fantastic followers, 

It’s coming up on a month since Beyond the Code was officially released and I am on the hunt for reviews and I need your help. 

Anyone of my followers who reviews books on a website, podcast, blog, whatever it may be, I would be eternally grateful if you would consider Beyond the Code for a review. Please contact me by email, facebook messenger, Twitter, or Inkshares direct messenger and I will send you a digital or physical copy, whichever you prefer. 

Kelsey31@hotmail.com or @BTCInkshares

And if you just have you’re fantastic self, please review Beyond the Code on Amazon, Goodreads, Inkshares, or Facebook. I am eager to find out what you think. 

Thank you all so much for following me so far. It’s been one hell of a ride. 

Kelsey Rae Barthel 

Hello Dear Readers,

I’m in a second campaign to increase my followers, so if you like dark fantasy (or know someone who does), here’s your chance to win a great collection of Stephen King memorabilia!

A quick February update!

1)Edits continue to move along, we’re on track to move onto copy edits by April 1st, and I should have some fun developments to share in March (possibly including the finished cover reveal).

2)To amp up my media presence and mailing list numbers before the launch this fall, I’ve teamed up with several other authors to offer a fantastic giveaway!

If you’re a fan of Stephen King or know someone who is, you won’t want to miss this. We’re giving a ton of Dark Tower swag to one lucky winner!

Prizes:

• The Dark Tower 8-Book Boxed Set
  
• The Dark Tower Blu-ray.
  
• Charlie the Choo-Choo
  
• From the world of The Dark Tower Diamond Select Toys: the Dark Tower Movie Gallery: the Gunslinger Pvc Figure, Diamond Select Toys the Dark Tower Movie Gallery: the Man in Black Pvc Figure
• The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy
  
• Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Concordance
  
• The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King’s Magnum Opus
  
• The Dark Tower: The Art of the Film! 

Participating authors:

Russell Nohelty, Devyn Jayse, Shane W. Smith, Russell Newquist, Caleb Thusat, Kyrun Silva, Eli Constant, Katrina Kunstmann, Shane Thomas, Frankie Blooding, Jacqui Castle, Christopher Lee, J.L. Gipson, Susan May, Jason Franks, Joshua Robertson, JD Oliva, Andre Gonzalez, Big Tim Stiles, Dani Dixon, Scott Austin, James Mascia, Craig Taillefer, RJ Blain, and Deborah Munro!

Enter Here!

I’VE UPDATED THE PAGE WITH A NEW COVER AND TITLE!

Meet Sarovek. Knight. Monitor. A hunter. A killer. A noble daughter of a powerful house of Corvidia, the kingdom of sky-dwellers. If you’ve read chapter one of “The Animal in Man” then you know Sarovek leads the attack against the hyena the story’s hero Maxan had been shadowing through the streets and alleyways of Crosswall. 

“A Corvidian knight in plates of polished armor plunged from the skies. Her legs and lower talons led her way, the tips of her hawk wings trailing high behind her, a long spear gripped tight, angled at the clustered hyenas. She fell like a meteor, inches from where the fox crouched on the walkway, then flapped her wings outward at the last possible instant to break her fall. The blast of air sent immense clouds of dirt rolling away. The knight’s spear sank through a hyena’s back and deep into the ground, an explosion of blood changed the dirt to mud.”

Sarovek is quite the badass. I believe she perfectly embodies the type of book I wanted to write. Her character, her choices, her choices all provide the type of experience I wanted to craft for my readers. I grew up reading action-packed stories of warriors gritting their teeth and swinging swords and narrowly escaping grave dangers with their lives. Sarovek may not be a barbarian, but she’s just as ferocious a fighter as Conan. She may not be a drow ranger, but she’s just as stoic as Drizzt.

If you haven’t heard of “The Animal in Man”... If you haven’t had the chance to really dive in and see what makes it so special, then go check it out. Spend a little time in my world.

I have some very, very exciting news to share with everyone coming up in the next update. Stay tuned, My Dear Animals! And as always, thank you for your support and patience!

(Immense thanks to artist Ellinsworth for his amazing sketch of Sarovek! Visit his portfolio for more awesome artwork!)

Months Status Report, Faoii! Look at these numbers:

If you couldn’t already guess, I am so pleased, my warriors. We have done so much in so short of time. I know that it’s been a battle every step of the way-- Hell, even I thought some of those hills were insurmountable. But we’ve done it. And we’re just going to keep forging ahead!

As more of you finish reading the story, I’m still requesting your help in getting our reviews up on the Amazon page. It doesn’t have to be a 4 or 5-star review. In fact, more than anything, I just want it to be honest. I’m already seeing some of my flaws as an author as I make reference to the original story during my work on the sequel, and your input will only help me to be even better moving forward. And if you think it’s worthy of a high rating, please help me by telling me why. Some of the things that I had no particular feelings towards turned out to be fan favorites, so I’m still learning things on both sides of the spectrum.

If you didn’t get a chance to be part of my live #AMA feed, you can look through all of the questions and answers by clicking here. It’s not "live" anymore, but you can still add your own questions and I’ll still answer them. Or you can still share the story with others you think might be interested in it. There were a lot of deep, worthy questions, and I made sure to keep my answers honest and heartfelt. Give it a look.  

I think that’s it for this month, Faoii. I’ll send out another status report in March, but if anything important or exciting happens between then and now you’ll get a missive about it. You can also follow my Facebook page if you want more regular updates. 

As always, I thank you again for standing so strong and getting us this far. The war isn’t over and I still need your help in spreading word of our army, but I have no doubt that we can do it. We are Faoii, after all.

Shields up.

Faoii-Tahani

THE MANUSCRIPT IS IN!!!

After two months of rewriting and revising, with the help of my friends Peter Ryan and Cari Dubiel, and. of course, my wife, I’ve turned in a fine tuned 76,900-word manuscript after the first round of developmental editing. That’s nearly 10,000 darlings killed. It was probably closer to 15,000 of the original words that suffered their terrible fate, but I changed a couple of scenes and added about 5,000 words back in. It was all for the better, and I’m proud of what this book has become. 

I know I promised mid-January for turning in this manuscript, but I’m going to play the sympathy card, because I was hospitalized in January for acute abdominal pain and had my gallbladder removed and subsequently stolen. They wouldn’t bronze it and let me keep it, the jerks, they just took it God only knows where. But, I’m glad it’s out. The good news is that I got my author bio picture in the process: 

That’ll sell a lot of books on its own. Might even make it the cover of the book. Not sure my publisher would go for that, though. 

Speaking about the cover, design will start happening in a few months, but I already know one thing will be remarkably different when it’s done: the title. 

Yup, I am almost sure I’m changing the title. The book is in two parts now, and I’ve named part one "The Madness of Mr. Butler," while part two is "The Courage of Mr. Butler." As much as I love the title as it has been, it doesn’t really sound like a science fiction book, which it mostly is. I’m changing the title of the book to "The Man Who Stole the World," which, for those of you who are in need of improving your musical tastes, is a play on the title of a David Bowie song. (And David Bowie might have a cameo in the story, but I’m not at liberty to say at this point).

wink

So, what’s next? 

Right now, we wait. Matt Harry, my editor, already got back to me that he’s currently working on a few manuscripts and plans on starting on mine in a few weeks. So, it’s probably going to be a while before I can report on further progress. But, this means that this year will begin the next levels of edits on a manuscript that is actively in production. I feel great about it all. I’ve had a wonderful experience with Inkshares. 

Thank you all for your support. Your investment in me is something I think about and appreciate daily. I’m working my tail off to get you the best version of the book. Thank you for the opportunity. This is all because of you. I hug you.

In the meantime, if you wanna interact outside of email, you can find me on Twitter and Facebook, and fairly soon I’m getting my blog back up after some reconstruction. 

Hang in there, it’s all coming together!

Love always, 

-Michael

Hey, kids.

She Is the End is almost done.

My book! MY ACTUAL BOOK!!!

Thank you all so much for your support. I’m sorry the journey took so long... I think it’ll be worth it.

Hello everyone, welcome to 2018!

Work on Blood Capital has been progressing at pace since NYE and we are now close to completing the developmental edits (at last!). Check the progress chart below and you can see I’ve almost completed the rewrite, and that all of Acts One and Two have had my second pass. Once this is complete, it should just be a matter of getting the final development notes from my editors and incorporating them, then we move into copy editing (grammar and spelling).

Everyone has been wonderfully patient with me over the past year, and that has made this process so much easier. Thank you. I’m aware the journey has been long — I had no idea how long it would be when I entered the competition back in 2016. To provide an idea of the work behind the scenes, I’ve been averaging almost 18 hours a week on the novel, which multiplied out over nine months (roughly how long I’ve been working on edits), adds up to more than six hundred hours so far. 

We are now on the home straight, and Blood Capital is set for release at the end of July. A marketing plan is coming together to support the launch, and I’ve now seen an early version of the cover art. As soon as the cover art is finalized, I’ll send out a special update, but for now I can tell you it’s going to stand out on shelves.

Cheers,

Robert
https://robertbatten.net 

Today’s the day!! 

Yes, today is PUBLICATION DAY!!

That’s right. Now you can go into most major book stores and ask for Beyond the Code. You can go to Amazon and order it right now. It’s AVAILABLE!!!! The long wait it finally over! 

I am officially a published author and it feels amazing, but I’m not done yet. Now I have the task of making Beyond the Code a success and you can help. If you haven’t pre-ordered Beyond the Code, you can go to any major book like Indigo, Chapters, or Coles, and ask for Beyond the Code. If enough people show interest, they might think that Beyond the Code deserves a place on their shelves. Not only would that make it more accessible to people out of the loop, it would make a dream of mine a reality. 

If you already have a copy and you still want to help out in building the books success. You can go to Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, or Goodreads and leave a review or rating to let me know what you thought. The more reviews Beyond the Code gets, especially through Amazon, the more exposure it will receive. Reviews are an authors best friend. 

Thank you all for following me clear to the finish line and I hope you love this little slice of my imagination. 

Kelsey Rae Barthel