Hello everyone,

Sorry about the recent radio silence lately, but in truth, there really hasn't been anything happening here that warrants an update. We're currently sitting at 191 copies  of Storm of Fury sold, which leaves us with 59 books remaining and 45 days to sell them.

The number of sales has increased since my last update, which is due to the fantastic efforts of my very generous family. And while every sale is a good one, I can't help but feel disheartened by it. There has been little to no growth in Storm of Fury's following, which is a very bad thing. While I may be able to sell a few here and there, very soon sales will grind to a halt.

As we currently stand, we have to sell more than one copy each day, at the very least, in order to hit 250 copies in time. Some might begin to worry. Others might start to have doubts.

But not me.

I will not doubt this project, not for a single moment and not even in its final day. I do not take my writing lightly, and I've spent years crafting story after story, and I would not dare present one for publishing that wasn't worthy of an audience. I know Storm of Fury is a story worth reading and sharing, I know it's a novel worth publishing. I've seen the reviews my fellow peers and authors have left on SoF's page, and I've seen them rally to support me. The people here at Inkshares have helped SoF rise into the view of potential readers since day one, and I know they'll continue to do so until the end. I couldn't do this without the people I've met here and I couldn't do this without each and every one of you. You, my readers, are the most important part of this whole campaign. You're the reason I haven't given up, for I know that you will someday soon hold a copy of this book in your hands.

Thank you. Thank you for your contributions and continued support.

59 more copies? Peace of cake.

-Andrew

 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

Hey Wonderful, possibly blizzardful people,

Greetings followers!!

The super cozy blankets are on there way and I've drawn a winner for the 50 pre-orders raffle. AND THE WINNER IS...

Thaddeus Woodman!!! Come on down!! Just kidding. That would be unreasonable. Congratulations on winning the first of what I hope will be many 50 Pre-order point raffles. I hope you enjoy the super soft fleece blanket embroidered with Beyond the Codes cover art. 

Lets keep this pace going strong and get Beyond the Code into reality and your hands. Remember that every order gives you a chance in the draw and a special place in my heart. 

For all you wonderful people who have taken a chance on my dream I thank you from the bottom of what I can only assume is a soul and wish you the best of luck next draw. But we need to get 42 more orders to draw again so spread the word. Tell your family, tell your friends, tell you enemies, tell everyone and together we'll make this HAPPEN!!

Kelsey Rae Barthel

Well, as I'm sure you've all seen by now the campaign is over and Exile, Magus did not meet its goal. At the end there were 93 orders between 83 readers, and 291 followers. This was actually far better than I expected when I first started this campaign. As mentioned before I've had this book finished for years now, and going through a cycle of writing query letters then scrapping them before sending any out. When I jumped into my Inkshares funding attempt I did so on a whim, and mainly as a way to knock myself out of that cycle which had been preventing me from truly trying to get this story out there. Jumping in like that with no plan, not enough money to pay for any of the promotional efforts I wanted to, and a very small support base, I never expected to get more than a dozen orders and perhaps twice that in followers. I certainly didn't expect to inspire 83 people to place orders, some of them even for multiple copies, and I'm still blown away by the number of followers. That is why despite not achieving the funding goal I still consider this endeavor a success – it did not me out of the cycle which kept me from really trying to do anything with this story and it finally gave me confidence that there is an audience for this weird tale though it may take a bit longer(and more than a bit of additional effort) for me to bring together enough members of said audience to make a real go of this.

Enough talk of the past though, now on to the future of this book, a future which I am dedicated to it having. First step in my new plan – rest my brain a bit. Combining what is often more than a full time job with also trying to keep the funding campaign moving has kept me in a state of exhaustion, especially in these last couple of months. So for at least a couple of weeks I plan to try and recover from that, catching up with friends and family while I'm at it. My players have likely come to hate me for suspending a long running Dragonlance game(we're up to the 2nd generation of player characters at this point), so I'll try to appease them by returning to my DM duties during that time as well.

I've got a number of thoughts on how to proceed with the book, and I'll be letting those percolate in my mind while resting. Just so I'm not keeping everyone in the dark I suppose I'll share some of those ideas, and I'll also invite anyone who has their own ideas to share them with me(the best places would be on my Facebook page linked here or via Twitter @ Thoasoold). The most obvious idea is to return to the query letters and actually send them this time. With what I've learned of pitching through this campaign I may finally be able to craft a letter I'm satisfied with.

When I was originally writing Exile, Magus it was with the intent of trying to serialize it, an idea I abandoned around Chapter 4. With that in mind I found it odd/amusing when I was contacted towards the end of the campaign asking if I would be interested in contributing some serialized fiction to a website. This caused me to look around and discover what I'm sure I'm that last to find out, that being that there's a few options for releasing serialized fiction online now. With that knowledge the serialization becomes an option, though it is one I ultimately view more as a way to raise the money I would need to pay for the various artwork as well as a development edit in order to get this book looking the way I've always dreamed of it looking.

That leads me in to the next potential plan – self publishing. If I did so my budget would demand that it only be print on demand, a thing I've researched for years now so I've pretty much already picked out which services I would use. This plan will take longer than the others though, because I would not take this step until I have gotten a developmental edit, and gotten all of the artwork. The current cover art would be moved to the front piece of Part 4-Llanchland since that is the scene I always intended to proceed that part. Then I would need to commission art for the other 12 parts, as well as a new cover. I have no ideas(that I'm happy with anyway) for what that cover would look like.

I'll take a break from my potential plans here to briefly cover something else I'd not mentioned before. That being the restructuring of parts. Some of you may have noted that the currently layout has Llanchland as part 3, but I just noted it as part 4. That's because for some time I've been meaning to split the current part 2 into parts 2 and 3. The new layout would be as follows: Part 1 (Thierdenvolgenlund); Part 2 (Exile); Part 3 (Warrior); Part 4 (Llanchland); Part 5 (Cruise); Part 6 (Academy); Part 7 (Graduation); Part 8 (Hunter); Part 9 (Proposal); Part 10 (Rescue); Part 11 (Ansvari); Part 12 (Reunion); Part 13 (Ascension). I'd actually already made these changes to the structure over at my Wattpad page some months back.

Enough of the break from potential plans. The most obvious remaining plan is to try to fund through Inkshares again. Before I do so I would have to make sure I'm ready next time. This would involve both getting the new artwork mentioned above, and coming up with a real plan. Also looking at my order statistics I would also not move forward with a new campaign before hitting at least 500 followers, with a preference for 750 followers. In the meantime I will be keeping the draft page active with all of the Parts and their composite chapters(yeah, I'm just going to start calling the “sections” chapters from now on, whereas the former “chapters” are now parts) uploaded remaining in place. In addition, at every 50th follower I will upload a new chapter, or 2 new chapters when one chapter is particularly short. We're now at 293 followers, and at 300 followers I'll upload the final 2 chapters of Part 6(soon to be renumbered Part 7).

Beyond all of these plans though, I intend to stay active on Inkshares. Every other Sunday starting with tomorrow I will still be sending out updates to recommend currently funding projects to you all. Now that I have a bit of free time I'm also going to start completing several side projects such as the short story detailing a bit about the ancient civilizations of Melexi and Thirosia or at least the legends concerning them, a narrative gazetteer detailing the continent on which Exile, Magus takes place, and the maps of said continent. I'll be posting these on my blog, or if I can find a home for them in other, higher traffic venues I 'll do so there instead. Either way, I will let you all know when such things are posted.

That's about all I have for today. Thank you all for the support you showed during the campaign, and I hope you'll continue following. Now that the campaign is over and I can get my brain to focus on things other than getting more preorders, I also hope that you all will feel free to communicate more directly with me. I'm always up for a good conversation, even those which have nothing whatsoever to do with my own book. I linked my Facebook and Twitter above, and they are still the best ways to reach me. You can also find me on Goodreads, and as mentioned and linked above on Wattpad. If you're feeling particularly nosy and of a mind to see what kind of pictures I take you can also check out my Instagram, though I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to. The point however, is that you should feel free to both follow and contact me at any of these places.