I want to do something a little different this week for my reader updates.
I’ve been slaving away at this campaign for five whole months now, with more than another whole month to go. It’s been exhausting, at times very discouraging, and always very stressful. I’ve been hit with huge obstacles that threatened to bring the whole campaign down, and yet in spite of all that, I’ve come really far. This campaign has grown and become something I honestly never really believed it could. We are, in spite of it all, well on our way to full funding, and I do believe we’ll get there.
I’ve worked my butt off to get here, and you’ve all been immensely supportive. That, honestly, is where the real credit goes. No matter how much time and effort I put into this campaign, it couldn’t have gone anywhere at all without the incredible support from friends and strangers alike.

But not everyone on Inkshares gets that kind of response to their projects.

An unfortunate but inevitable aspect of the Inkshares platform is that, just by nature of how crowdfunding works, it isn’t strictly a meritocracy. People who are good at campaigning stand a better chance of hitting their publication goals than people who are good at writing. I, for one, freely admit that I am terrible at campaigning. I’ve gotten this far as much from luck as anything else. But not everyone here is lucky. I’ve seen so many promising books fail to hit their goals simply because they could not find their audience.

Well...I have an audience. I’ve amassed a surprisingly decent-sized following. Obviously I still need that following to grow larger before Tantalus Depths will be able to get fully funded, but I’m getting there, and I have time. 

So this is what I’m doing this week: for this week, I’m taking a break from actively campaigning Tantalus Depths (at least as far as my reader updates go) and I’m going to spend it trying to bring projects to my supporters’ attention. Each day, until the end of the week, I’m going to highlight a different book that I think really deserves at least as much attention as mine. Please check them out, and seriously consider supporting these projects. Each of them is extremely promising and fully deserves your notice.

I’m kicking this week of recommendations off with One of the tenacious top 3 books in Geek and Sundry’s Fantasy Contest: Storm Song

(This awesome cover was made by another Fantasy Contest top-ten placeholder, Kaytalin Platt, author of The Living God. Check her out too.)

Storm Song forgoes the obvious Tolkeinesque high-fantasy route favored by so many of the fantasy contest’s less original and distinctive entrants in favor of a much simpler, yet endlessly promising premise. This is a story of adventure on the high seas: a true tale of swashbucklery.

It’s a tale of luck (good and bad), of discovery, of danger, daring, and dark magic. The book reads like an old salt’s tall tales in a seaside tavern; Allison’s writing has an effortless flow that almost makes you hear the deck boards creak beneath you, feel the roll of the waves and smell the salt in the air. Storm Song may very well have been transcribed directly from some old forgotten sea shanty and set down expertly in narrative form for our enjoyment. Reading the sample chapters is enrapturing: you’ll finish reading her excerpts before you fully realize you’ve begun.

If you’re interested in an epic tale of seaborne wonder and adventure, place a pre-order for Storm Song. You’ll never regret it.

If you’re looking for some new fantasy to read while waiting for your next Inkshares book to show up, consider "Women in Practical Armor," an anthology from Evil Girlfriend Media.

It’s about... oh, well, you’ve already figured out what it’s about? Cool.

Hello to the 111 followers and 47 readers (wow!) of Witherfist.

A slightly different update for you today, as I share with you a little of the ’behind the scenes’ worlding building that goes on when I’m working on Witherfist. Today, I’d like to show off some of my newly acquired amateur cartography skills. After all, what would any decent fantasy novel be without a map to refer to? 

Though it’s still a work in progress, here’s a little glimpse of the geographic region featured in the sample chapters of Witherfist. It’s by no means the full view of the world, and even this small section isn’t fully labelled yet (where are the dragons at the edges?!) but here it is! 

If you squint, you might be able to read what it says...

There’s plenty still to add and I’m hoping to be able to share more of this map with you very soon.

~ Jenny

 Well my friends, we did not win a Dragon Award. I was however at the ceremony and must say, it’s a privilege to have been nominated in the first year. There was a level of class (though some tremendous mispronunciation of my name) in these proceedings.

The Dragon Awards, if the they follow this course, may just be the classy award for fan favourite media that we’ve been hoping for. Not that other awards aren’t great, but Dragon Con has always been ’the people’s con’ and having been there myself, I can see why. So it makes sense that their award would follow that ideology.

In other news, I have to apologize. I had grandiose plans to have the campaign for Arch-Android, the sequel to The Life Engineered, ready for this coming weekend. I can’t say that this will be possible. Other obligations have piled up and I have to postpone. Worry not, the campaign is coming and the book will be in the spirit of the first one.

Thanks again for your continued support. Next year... we’ll get that award next year.

JF