Followers!

There are a lot of you. I don’t know where you are, but if any  of you happen to be attending Rose City Comic Con today, I’ll be there. Come findd me and say hi! I look like this:

If find me, say "Molemen Rising." First three to do so get a prize! Hurry! They’re heavy!

Rise is in the wild!  Many of you have already received your copy and have sent images of the book to me.  Thanks for that.  I was in the throes of Post Con Depression following Dragoncon when these images began rolling in.  Instant boost to the happiness scale.

Well guys, that’s it. SQUIDS IN has failed to reach its publication goal! 

The good news is that every single person who supported this project by throwing down some cold hard cash will get it ALL back. That’s right, every last penny will be refunded to you at somepoint over the next couple of days.

 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

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.

In my last update I talked a bit about my love of tabletop gaming, specifically D&D.  That love also makes it impossible for me to not try and figure out how to stat up characters so that they reflect those in my stories, and at the end of this update I’ll be including a 5th edition racial option which I made while in one of those kicks.  First though I’ll talk about my favorite fantasy race, Dwarves, and more specifically how they fit into my own world.

For those of you who’ve read the first excerpt which is posted on Exile, Magus’ page you’re already aware that the Thierdenvolgenlunders are dwarves, but you may be under the impression that they’re the main type of dwarf in my world.  In fact they are the least populous of the 4 types of dwarves in my world, their population existing solely on the Isle of Karpa with the exception of a small handful of exiles.

The other 3 in ascending order of population are known as Sartval, Ansvari, and the most common merely as Dwarves.  I’ll talk a bit more about these 3 in the weeks to come, but for now I’ll focus on the Thierdenvolgenlunders.

The Thierdenvolgenlunders first broke apart from the mainlanders around 10 millenia past, immediately following the conclusion of the Demon Gods’ War(also known as the Demon Gods’ Invasion, the precursor of which you can read more about here) and before the 2nd fall of the empires of Melexi and Thirosia(which you can read a bit more about here).  The exact reason for their exodus is lost to history.  Some theorize that it was their contempt for Magi and their use of magic not granted directly by the gods which caused them to leave the mainland, but others claim that some of the oldest surviving tales speak of each ship having at least one Magus.  Whether or not the Theirdenvolgenlunders’ anti-Magus beliefs arose before or after their separation from the mainland is still a hotly contested topic amongst historians.

What is known is that the lord of the Thierden family(a family which still rules there to this day) gathered together all of his vassals and loyalists, assembled a fleet massive enough for them all to cram themselves onto, and they set sail for the Isle of Karpa.  Once there they launched into a genocidal war against the native goblins and trolls, leading to the extermination of all goblins and their warbeasts on the island.  The Thierdenvolgenlunders failed to eradicate all of trolldom, instead driving them deeper underground than they had previously lived.

Since this initial invasion the Thierdenvolgenlunders have worked tirelessly to fortify their underground holdings and continue pushing forward, albeit slowly now, into troll lands in the hope of one day slaying the rest of those giants.  As such most of the kingdom’s citizens are devoted to war in some way or another, whether through constant training for combat or continuously improving their skills as smiths of both weapons and armor.  Even with the blockades which the Zaltruscan empire has imposed on the Isle of Karpa since their own founding(some say less than a century after Thierdenvolgenlund’s founding) some of the products of these endeavors have slipped out into the mainland over the milennia, causing Thierdenvolgenlunders to have a reputation as both the best smiths and warriors in the world.

I’ll stop rambling on there, and get to what the gamers among you are likely waiting for: the 5th edition dwarven racial option I designed to try and reflect Thierdenvolgenlunders as best I could.  It is only a rough version since I’ve never really gotten around to testing it, but feel free to try it out yourselves, modify as desired, and give me feedback if you feel it needs polishing.  This option does not get the standard dwarven stats, only those listed below.

• Ability Score Increase:  +1 Strength, +2 Constitution
  
• Age:  Typically reach adulthood at around 60-70 years and live up to 450-500 years(though most die in battle before this).
• Alignment:  Can be any alignment, but most commonly are LN.
• Size:  Medium, stand between 3’8" - 4’4", though on vary rare occasions there may be an individual who reaches as tall as 4’6".
• Speed:  25’.
• Dwarven Toughness:  +1 maximum HP per level.
• Armor Training:  Proficient with Light and Medium armor.
• Combat Training:  Advantage on attack rolls against creatures of Giant type.
• Weapn Training:  Proficient with Greataxes, Heavy Crossbows, Warhammers, and War Picks.
• Tool Training:  Proficient with any 1 of the following - Jeweler’s Tools, Mason’s Tools, or Smith’s Tools.
• Stonecunning:  Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.
  
• Second Sight:  This is an ability largely unknown to the world outside of Thierdenvolgenlund, and it is in fact one of the secrets as to why they are such exceptional smiths.  When in complete darkness, they can alter switch to a second sight which allows them to see the energy put off by different forms of matter, both organic and inorganic.  They mainly use this to assess the strength and quality of crafting materials before employing them, and when used in this way it gives Advantage on rolls made with an appropriate artisan’s tool(if no roll is required then it instead causes the final item to have a value 10-15% higher than normal with no increase to construction time or cost).                        This can also be used to see creatures in complete darkness(other than incorporeal or elemental creatures).  Looking at creatures in this way is disconcerting due to the sheer amount of different materials moving throughout a living body, and imposes Disadvantage on all of your attack rolls.
• Languages:  Dwarvish and 1 of the following - Gnomish, Giant, Undercommon, or Common.

Well, that’s it for today.  Hoping some of you lore and gaming geeks enjoyed this one.  Next week I’ll talk a bit on the Sartval and include their racial option.

As always, thanks for your time and support.  Keep reading and enjoying!

Greetings from Dragoncon!

Tomorrow evening at 1900 I’ll be hanging out in the Sheraton Atlanta Downtown in the cafe on the same level as the Grand Ballroom.  Come hang out with me and talk about Rise if you’re in the area.

Tomorrow also I will put Fall up for preorder on Inkshares.  Be sure to get your copy reserved at tiny.cc/fallnovel