Friends

The Catcher’s Trap is out in the world and, hopefully, already in your hands. As you can imagine, releasing the book on Election Day, and on a week like we just had in America has been quite interesting.

Still, two days after the election, over one hundred of you came out and supported the release of my book. This past Thursday, the North Haven Barnes and Nobles was flooded with people attending my first ever book signing. It was beautiful and humbling. Fun fact, the mayor of Hamden gave me a proclamation on behalf of the town. I had no idea that was happening and it was a wonderful surprised.

If you missed me on Thursday, you can come and see me at the Hamden Public Library on Sunday, November 20th, at 2 pm. I will be speaking there as part of their guest authors series.

The next step in this thrilling journey is to get reviews. I need to get as many reviews for the Catcher’s Trap as possible in the next coming weeks. So please, once you are ready, go into the links below and leave an honest review. It doesn’t have to be long, just your thoughts about the book. Trust me your review will make a huge difference.

Amazon

Goodreads

Barnes and Noble

Have a fantastic rest of your weekend.

Best

Ricardo

As I write this, it is the final hour of Remembrance Day--Veterans Day in the U.S., and Armistice Day in the 1920s world of "Murder at the Veterans’ Club". It’s a solemn occasion, for remembering the sacrifices made in the name of one’s country. In Cape Town, South Africa, they began observing a daily three-minute silence from April 1918 onwards; this idea spread through the commonwealth and became, in 1919, an observed two-minute silence from 11:00 to 11:02 AM on the 11 November, the anniversary of the Armistice.

One minute for the soldiers who died. One minute for their families left behind.

To all the veterans out there, to their families, and to the families of those who are not coming back ... thank you.

On this occasion, we had an interview with Regina McMenomy of The Geek Embassy. Dr. McMenomy is the author of "Mothering: the Game", available for pre-order at Inkshares.

And, because it’s a day for remembering our veterans and because my background is in Architecture, here is a link to a news story about housing for homeless veterans in Kansas City, Missouri.

Let us not forget.

Hey guys!
Chris and I delivered the final manuscript to Inkshares on October 20th and we’re just waiting to hear when they’ll be able to move into production. We’ve been diligently posting all of our fancy-dancy art on our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/amaranth_chronicles/

And while you clicking our links check out this 3d view of the Storm Chaser cockpit! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6Pzwn

Budapest is proving the ideal place to get some work done. I’ve made a lot of headway the past two days and am a mere handful of chapters away from finishing this revision of the manuscript.

Once done, I’ll deliver it to John Robin and Michael Haase and they’ll provide the last round of feedback. After that, it’s delivery time.

Hail Bards!

I am reaching out to let you know that the third draft of The Lore of the Aos Sí goes well! Things are coming together in a magical way, it has been so fun crafting this world and seeing my readers enjoy what I have put forward thus far. The Third Draft should be complete by the end of November and it is on to the final leg of the campaign. 

As of today, the book sits at 78 Pre-Orders, which means there is a great deal of work to do! There are 168 of you following this campaign if you have found the story interesting I am calling on you to click that shiny Pre-Order button today! 

If you have already Pre-Ordered and Joined the Order of the Bards, thank you so much. I am calling on you all to please make sure to share the book and spread the news. If everyone who has ordered could share the book with their circle and bring another person into the Order of the Bards the campaign will be in great shape. 

Now back to work for me, I have some very crucial work to complete in chapters six through nine today. 

Blessed Be

My piece for the Washington Post re: the election

Dear All, 

Today I wrote this for the Washington Post. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/11/09/why-this-frenchman-plans-to-resist-president-trump-by-becoming-a-u-s-citizen/

Peace and long life,

Manu

Alright, the deadline for funding and the contest date have passed, and a couple people have asked directly how it went. I expected Inkshares to send out a status update automatically, but I’ll have to write it out myself, instead.

We did not reach the preorder numbers needed to get the book into circulation. Sigh.

According to the Inkshares FAQ, your purchases should have been automatically refunded. Please notify them if you don’t get refunded.

Still, thanks for pitching in and helping me get as far as I did! Inkshares is a very new thing, and the concept of crowdsourcing art is still in its infancy. I know that a lot of people didn’t quite understand the process going into it. As for me, I am new to site myself and didn’t have much pull or inroads into the community to draw on. Dragonford was in 14th place pretty much throughout the contest. While I am disappointed to lose out on a publishing opportunity, that’s just the nature of trying to be an author. 

I encourage you all to go to the contest page and check out the three winning projects. They are still taking preorders, and will be very happy to continue getting support for their projects. Also, I have gone ahead and put up a project page for The Long Highway’s sequel: Dragonford- Wilderness. There’s a sample chapter up. See how our platoon of veterans does when they face the Thral on their home turf, the savanna of the Western Wilderland. Follow that page, as there will be more sample chapters to come. Cheers!

So...that was a week wasn’t it?

Work this week has mostly been focused in three general areas:

1. Doing a general read-through of Ghosts to find things to fix
   
2. Fleshing out ideas and starting on proper outlines for my other project LandFall
3. Watching 2016 continue to go down the toilet...I mean...come on man...

NaNoWriMo is also a thing that’s currently happening, and while I’m not officially participating (like I did in 2014 when I wrote the first 50k of Ghosts) I am at least trying to write every day. As such, here’s a new spreadsheet...

I haven’t quite hit my internal ’1000-words-a-day’ goal, but there’s still plenty of time left in the month to get back on track. Plans for the week include:

1.  Start working through Ghosts and changing/fixing little things here and there as I go
   
2. Get a solid plan for the overarching story for LandFall, so I know where I’m going with it.
3.  Watch this a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPv9yKC76hE (It’s a 24-hour live stream of cats and kittens from a place called the Kitten Academy. If you’re having troubles with how this last week has gone, watch it for a while...it’ll help.)

So, until next time...

PS: If you want to check out LandFall, it’s over here: https://www.inkshares.com/books/landfall . There’s not much there at the moment, but that’ll change.