Spend the next 6 days promoting like you’ve never promoted before. I want to see this book come to life!!!
EXCLUSIVE: Tentative release date for Sunshine is Forever announced! (Published by Inkshares) Check out my brand spanking new interview with The Nerdy Girl Express!
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT THE TENTATIVE RELEASE DATE: https://thenerdygirlexpress.com/2016/10/31/interview-with-actor-and-author-kyletcowan-via-tdmiller820917/
Thank you all for the support!
Kyle T. Cowan
We did it!!! With your phenomenal last minute support, we pushed all the way into a strong 2nd place, just seven orders shy of first.
This was an amazing experience all the way through. This past hour I’ve been getting calls, posts, and messages from everyone, all rooting for me and doing their best to post another pre-order or two. My heart has grown three sizes today from all the love I’ve received.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart!
So what happens next? I’ve received some documentation from Inkshares I need to complete, Crypt TV (who sponsored the contest) has to choose one book to make into a TV special or movie, and I need to polish my second draft and submit it for Inkshare to edit. There will be lots of back and forth over the next several months. The ebook will likely come out sooner than the paperback copies, which I expect is about nine months out. I will keep you posted with updates all along the way.
You all rock my world! Thank you, thank you, thank you. :)
Cheers, Debbie
Only 6 days left in the campaign, and only one more update after this one (not counting a post campaign update). So if you’ve been holding off on preordering don’t delay much longer or you’ll miss your chance. Thanks goes out to everyone who has supported me this far, and here’s hoping we can manage to get at least 187 more orders in 6 days.
I was going to continue sharing bits of background on my world and its peoples/creatures with this update, but a few days ago one of my fellow contributors to the Too Many Controllers anthology, Brian Guthrie brought up something more important. There has already been an update sent out from the TMC page, but in the off chance that any of you reading this Exile, Magus update don’t also follow TMC I want to share it here as well.
Just an update for you about an event some of the Inkvengers will participate in this Fall.
BLUF: Support the Inkvengers as we raise money for the hospital that saved the lives of people close to us. Go to Extra Life to find out more.
This weekend, gamers around the world will come together for 24 (25 with the time change) hours of gaming raising money for children. The event is Extra Life and all the money the gamers raise goes to support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals across the US. The event has raised $22 million up to this point, over $8 million last year alone.
This event is particularly close to the Inkvengers’ hearts. We all know people who have been in a children’s hospital, many in our own family. Brian Guthrie’s niece was born into Providence of Alaska at 26 weeks. They helped keep her in the womb as long as possible, safely delivered her, and saved her life during her 72 day stay in the NICU. She’s now a happy, bubbling kid full of life thanks to that hospital. All of the funds he raises go to Providence of Alaska. To give you an idea of the need, the bed his niece lived in for those 72 days costs almost $10,000 to replace. In 5 years, Brian has only managed to raise $4300. The need is great.
Many, many more gamers have similar stories about the hospitals they support. In fact, the entire event was inspired by Victoria Enmon, a little girl diagnosed with cancer that wanted to do something for the other kids around her that were more sick. You can learn more about her story in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHSZ_82wiJg . Warning: tissues should be nearby.
So, what can you do? Well, you can join in and support a hospital. Learn more at Extra Life. But, if you’d rather just support a gamer, you can go to that site and find someone also doing this. Some of the Inkvengers will be participating during the main event this Saturday, others on another day. You can find Brian and Amanda Orneck by searching for their names on the event page or you can support their team. They are on a team called the Pixel Sharks, which is spread out across the world, mostly current or former military service-members wanting to help others. And don’t worry if you can’t donate right away. You have until the end of the month to help.
Dear Friends
What better day to release The Catcher’s Trap e-book than the first day of Halloween weekend!
This afternoon you will receive an e-mail from inkshares with a link and instructions to download your digital copy of The Catcher’s Trap. Fear not, if you purchased a physical copy you will receive yours very soon. The e-book is just a nice perk Inkshares offers to their readers so you can have access to your books on the go.
You all have done so much for me already, but I have to be shameless and ask you for more. Getting reviews on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads is key for a book to succeed. There is, actually, a magic number: 100
Books with over 100 reviews are featured more prominently on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Visibility is key when you are a new author trying to make a splash in an industry that releases over 3,000 books a day.
Please follow the links and leave an honest review. Seriously, be honest. If you love The Catcher’s Trap as much as you love your mama, then leave a five stars review, but if not 4 or 3 are perfectly fine. A book with all five stars reviews looks fishy to readers.
Finally, don’t forget to join me on Thursday, November 10th, at 6 PM at North Haven Barnes and Noble, to celebrate the release of The Catcher’s Trap.
Have a thrilling weekend!
Well today’s errand got a tad bit busier(and more expensive) than I’d expected, so this update is now about 3 hours behind schedule. Hopefully you won’t mind the delay too much. We now have just barely over a week left in the campaign now, and we’re still very far from making even the Quill goal, so if you want to see Exile, Magus published via Inkshares definitely continuing recommending it to others and trying to get the word out alongside me, and if you haven’t already ordered then do so. Thanks to everyone for the support you’ve shown these past months, and hopefully will continue to show going forward. Now, on to dragons.
As mentioned with last Friday’s update, the nature of each dragon is largely taken from their Progenitor with the differences between species typically being due to their other ancestor, whether father or mother. Last time I covered jungle dragons which resulted from a mating with a (mostly) corporeal entity. This time I’m going to touch on a draconic species which originated from a mating between their Progenitor and an elemental queen, presumably one of air or water with some theorize that the elemental was actually a crossbreed of air and water itself. The species in question are the ice dragons. I’ll paste a description of one that appears in Chapters 12 (Reunion) & 13 (Ascencion) of Exile, Magus.
It is a massive beast, being at least twenty feet tall at the shoulders with its long neck bringing the top of its head to nearly twice this height. Its body is sleek and powerful, the might of its muscles apparent even under its thick scales. These scales are an icy blue at their base blending to a snow white at their rims. As they progress up its neck the scales shrink from the large, shield sized scales of its body to the nearly pebble sized scales of its face. The light piercing the snowstorm glints off of the scales in a manner which only serves to highlight their icy appearance. The beast’s head is smooth and serpentine along the top with large forward facing milky white eyes. The motion of these pupiless eyes is noticeable only by a slight change in the subtle patterns on their surface. Its teeth are short for its size with razor sharp backward curving fronts and inward curving, almost invisibly serrated backs. It slides its short, pointed tongue along the inside bases of these fangs while anticipating the meal it will soon indulge in. Small horns with only a very slight rear curvature protrude from the bottom of its jawbone, and these are covered by multiple thin layers of ice which only adds to the illusion that icicles hang from the beast’s jowls.
The one described above has reached adulthood, although not so advanced in years to have reached its full growth (as such, for my D&D players/DMs the stat block I intended to be posting up at the bottom of this update was for an adult ice dragon, as opposed to the young jungle dragon from last time, but I forgot that I had only stat’ed up an ancient, so you’re getting the biggest). The elemental nature they inherited from their mothers ties them more closely to the elements themselves than would be the case if the Progenitor had been the race’s mother. As such they draw most of their sustenance from the elements themselves. In the ice dragon’s case this means that the cold, snowy nature of the frozen north provides them with most of the energy they need to live, though they do still love to kill eat living creatures such as mountain goats(or even the occasional dwarven trio who dares trespass in their domain). The amount of such physical food necessary to sustain them is much less than one would imagine from their size, an ice dragon of the size described above could conceivably survive on 2-3 goats a week. Ice dragons tend to have a gluttonous streak though, so they’ll typically try to eat the equivalent to 1 goat a day however.
Ice dragons also tend to be on the lazy side, preferring to lay around on their treasure hoard (after carefully arranging and kneading said horde of course, much as a cat does to a pile of blankets). In their younger years they’ll spend much of this time reading or listening to the lessons of loremasters/skalds they’ve forced into their service. As they age they grow lazier, however, until eventually they tire of lessons, casting out books/loremasters/skalds(though they are just as likely to just eat the former two when properly aged) and moving to less intellectual entertainment such as jesters, comedians, circus performers and the like. Eventually they reach an age at which they can’t be bothered to wake up except to hunt and eat, at which point they typically eat whatever performers they have forced into service first.
Due to their lazy nature, ice dragon lairs are among the most simple in their layout. Typically its only a large central chamber to serve as the dragon’s bed chamber/treasure horde vault with either a short tunnel leading to the entrance/exit or simply a hole in one wall that leads outside, and a tunnel sloping down from this into which the dragon can expel its physical waste. When a dragon does have a chamber beyond this, it is typically just a small chamber with straw covering the floor in which it makes any captured servants live when they are not entertaining/educating her.
They are also short of temper when they find someone to be annoying, and often this temper is the only thing (aside from hunger of course) powerful enough to overcome their laziness. With their abilities gained from their strong ties to their elemental ancestry, they are even more formidable opponents than they look. In addition to being able to breathe out a forceful blast of supercooled vapor which can freeze most creatures solid (a bit like being dipped in liquid nitrogen really), they are also able to use more primal elemental magics to command the air and water(furthering the theory that their elemental ancestry was herself a hybrid). These abilities are of course in addition to their deadly teeth and claws, which they actually prefer not to use to kill their quarry. Their favorite tactic is to merely freeze their opponent solid with their breath, then use their claws to break off chunks and pop them into their mouths leisurely. They very much enjoy both the sound and texture experienced while eating frozen chunks of meat, bone, and related viscera.
Well, that’s a fun last sentence to end on, so I’m gonna call this update done with that. By the time my next update comes out the contest will be over and I’ll only have 2 more updates before the end of my campaign which only just noticed is also election day (11/8). My 3rd update from now will then either be to celebrate hitting goal, or to discuss what my plans for the future after failing to do so are. We’ll see which it is when the time comes. For now though, I’m going to try to have another map done by this coming Wednesday. I ran out of monsters/races I intended to cover a bit earlier than expected, so if you have any you would like to know more about then feel free to let me know, either through commenting on the project page or direct messaging me. For now though, I hope everyone enjoys their Halloween/Samhain. Thank you for you continued support, keep reading and enjoying!
Ancient Ice Dragon
Large Dragon, Neutral or Neutral Evil
Armor Class 21 (natural)
Hit Points 350 (20d20+140)
Speed 30’ / Burrow 15’ / Fly 60’
Str 26 (+8), Dex 8 (-1), Con 24 (+7), Int 16 (+3), Wis 14 (+2), Cha 12 (+1)
Skills - Perception +16, Stealth +6, Survival +9
Senses - passive Perception 26, Darkvision 120’, Blindsight 60’
Saves - Dex +6, Con +14, Wis +9, Cha +8
Languages - Draconic, Common, Primordial
Challenge 23 (50,000 XP)
Immune Cold damage.
Vulnerable Fire damage
Change Shape The dragon magically polymorphs into a humanoid or beast that has a Challenge Rating no higher than its own, or back into its true form. It reverts to its true form if it dies. Any equipment worn or carried by it is absorbed or borne by the new form (the dragon’s choice). In a new form the dragon retains its alignment, hit points, Hit Dice, ability to speak, proficiencies, Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma scores, as well as this action. Its statistics and capabilities are otherwise replaced by those of the new form, except for any class features or legendary actions of that form.
Icewalk ignores movement restrictions caused by ice and similar slick surfaces.
Innate Spellcasting (Charisma Based, DC 16, can cast the following innately without the need for material components)
At Will - Sleet Storm, Gust of Wind, Fog Cloud, Resistance
3/day each - Control Water
1/day each - Commune with Nature
Legendary Resistance (3/day) When the dragon fails a saving throw it can choose to succeed that saving throw instead.
Multiattack Frightful Presence, 2 Claws, and 1 Bite
Bite melee weapon attack, 10’ reach, +6 to hit, 2d10+3 piercing (14)
Claw melee weapon attack, +6 to hit, 2d6+3 slashing (10)
Tail melee weapon attack, +7 to hit, 2d8+4 slashing (13)
Frightful Presence This targets all creatures of the dragon’s choice within 120’ that can be seen by the dragon and see the dragon. Each targeted creature must succeed at a Wisdom Save at DC 16 or be Frightened for 1 minute. Creatures can reroll this save at the end of each of their turns, ending the effect for themselves on a successful save. Once a creature has successfully saved it is immune to this dragon’s Frightful Presence for 24 hours afterwards.
Breath Weapon 90’ cone of freezing Cold. 12d8 cold damage (54) to all creatures in the area and be Chilled for 1d6 rounds (disadvantage on attack rolls and on Dexterity saves, advantage against fire-based spells). All creatures are allowed a Constitution Save DC 23 to reduce the damage as well as the Chilled duration to half. Any creature reduced to 0 hit points by this breath weapon is Frozen - treat as Petrified but will thaw out within 2d6 hours (or 2d6 minutes if actively warmed).
Legendary Actions (3/turn) The dragon can choose to use 1 of the following actions after another creature/character’s turn. It regains all 3 uses of legendary action at the start of each of its turns.
Detect (1 action) The dragon attempts to detect using perception.
Tail (1 action) The dragon makes 1 tail attack.
Wing Attack (2 actions) The dragon beats its wings and lifts into the air. All creatures within 15’ of the dragon must succeed at a Dexterity Save DC 24 or suffer 2d6+8 bludgeoning damage and be knocked prone. The dragon can then move up to 1/2 of its Fly speed.
Dearest Readers,
