Hello Everyone! 

I have some great news! RUNE's schedule and publication date has just been finalized! Although there are many deliverables on RUNE's production timeline (publishing and marketing a book is a MASSIVE undertaking), the one readers will be most interested in is:

RUNE OF THE APPRENTICE will be published on November 1st, 2016!

Additional good news is that YOU will be getting your copies before this date AND we will also be able to have special early release copies for New York Comic-Con, too! We don’t know the exact date books will be shipped to you, but I’ll keep you posted!

Even though you will be getting you books before November, I know this is still a long way out. Reading this, I’m sure you are feeling the same emotion I initially felt upon hearing the news: disappointment that RUNE will not be published sooner like originally planned. Despite that initial feeling, as I work more closely with both Inkshares and Girl Friday Productions, and see the tremendous amount of work being put into RUNE, that disappointment has been transformed into appreciation and gratitude. While I know you do not see this hard work first hand, I will do my best to keep you updated on our progress so you can see all we are doing to polish RUNE into printed perfection—which will hopefully help curb your disappointment, even if only a little.

I can go on and on about this and am happy to answer any questions over at @StoneJamison, or down below in the comments, however, I want to keep this update quick so as to not fill up your inbox. Although there are MANY milestones ahead, the next important steps are Cover Design and Developmental Edits!

Cover: I have a call later today where the RUNE team will be solidifying our collective vision for the cover so the designer can begin to move forward with samples for review and selection. There are usually three rounds to this process. The early samples will focus on options of several different directions and the later rounds will polish that vision, bringing it into a finalized physical form. The designer’s previous work is fantastic and I am very excited to see what he produces. I will keep you all updated as we progress!

Developmental Edits: Editing a 500+ page Fantasy/Sci-Fi epic is no small feat. Although RUNE has already had several rounds of professional editing, there is always ways to make a novel of this magnitude more engaging, engrossing, and awe-inspiring! I have been tremendously pleased with the pre- Girl Friday Productions edits, and am now very excited to see their continued polish added to RUNE. The next round of Developmental edits should be done by the end of next month, and then wrapped up by the end of March with copy editing and proofreading to follow in the months to come.

As I said, there are many more milestones after that (I have not even gotten started on marketing!) but for now I’ll end this update. The road to publication is a long one, however, I am so very excited to have you all along for the ride. RUNE OF THE APPRENTICE is going to enliven the hearts and minds of readers across the globe, and it warms MY heart knowing that you all are here to partake in this EPIC journey!

Hello there wonderful people

I've decided to do something rash!! 

I've taken off every chapter from Chapter 2 on down from the page and have dedicated myself to do some mad melon editing. I'm taking all the advice of experience gained from this journey and using it to re-edit the chapters posted and will repost them as I finish. I'm doing this due to the restructuring of a couple of them. It would be a bit difficult to do the reposting piece meal so I'm whipping the board and starting over. I have already re-posted chapters 1 and 2 so feel free to take a look and give me some feedback. I would really appreciate it, 

Don't forget to get your pre-order in and get a chance to win a super cozy blanket with Beyond the Code cover art on it. You'll get good karma points for helping little old me make my dream come true and you can snuggle up with a good read and a super soft blanket. 

Thank you all for your continuing support. 

Kelsey Rae Barthel

I only stumbled upon Inkshares last month but I dove right in. And I'm so glad that I did. Besides being a really innovative model that can help democratize book publishing, there's an active and growing community and a very responsive staff. It's been a month and I'm happy with where we are. We are WAY ahead of schedule to hit all the milestones and bring ILLEGAL into the world! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me thus far. It makes me warm every time I see a new pre-order come through.

That said, I also moved to Laos this week and that will surely affect how much and how effectively I can continue to promote pre-orders. I've got some ideas though and some sources still to be tapped. And, of course there is you. If you have a friend that may be interested please help them pre-order today. Every order brings me closer to my goal and publication. After we hit 250 pre-orders I'll add another sample chapter.

You can read more about my thoughts on Inkshares and Illegal on an interview I did here.

Thanks again. I hope your 2016 is off to a great start.

John