THANK YOU, Inkshares Staff Syndicate!
The Inkshares Staff Syndicate selected Rock of Ages to support and now there’s a fancy badge on the book page and we’re up to 503 orders! I was so excited last night that I was running and jumping around the house! Thank you, thank you!!
53 days left and 247 orders to go. That’s 4.6 orders a day. We’re going to do this! Now is the time to join the list of Super Readers or supporters!
Valentine’s Day is right around the bend. It’s a special holiday with all the blood red colors and the raw beating hearts freshly pulled from the newly dead...not as fun as Halloween, but certainly a day for lovers. Of murder.
So give your lover chills for Valentine’s Day by gifting them these anthologies of delectable horror stories from Dean Fearce and his Black Hat Writers Group cohorts.
Get the Kindle versions for $.99 on promotion this week.
fresh cuts: the Breaking Volume
fresh cuts 2: the Skinning Volume
In other news, Murder is Happening! (See what I did there?) The manuscript for Murder Happens is progressing well. I’ve been meeting my weekly numbers to have it finished this spring. Whether that would put the book in your hands this year or not is hard to say, but wouldn’t that be great? I think so.
I’VE UPDATED THE PAGE WITH A NEW COVER AND TITLE!
Meet Sarovek. Knight. Monitor. A hunter. A killer. A noble daughter of a powerful house of Corvidia, the kingdom of sky-dwellers. If you’ve read chapter one of “The Animal in Man” then you know Sarovek leads the attack against the hyena the story’s hero Maxan had been shadowing through the streets and alleyways of Crosswall. 
“A Corvidian knight in plates of polished armor plunged from the skies. Her legs and lower talons led her way, the tips of her hawk wings trailing high behind her, a long spear gripped tight, angled at the clustered hyenas. She fell like a meteor, inches from where the fox crouched on the walkway, then flapped her wings outward at the last possible instant to break her fall. The blast of air sent immense clouds of dirt rolling away. The knight’s spear sank through a hyena’s back and deep into the ground, an explosion of blood changed the dirt to mud.”
Sarovek is quite the badass. I believe she perfectly embodies the type of book I wanted to write. Her character, her choices, her choices all provide the type of experience I wanted to craft for my readers. I grew up reading action-packed stories of warriors gritting their teeth and swinging swords and narrowly escaping grave dangers with their lives. Sarovek may not be a barbarian, but she’s just as ferocious a fighter as Conan. She may not be a drow ranger, but she’s just as stoic as Drizzt.
If you haven’t heard of “The Animal in Man”... If you haven’t had the chance to really dive in and see what makes it so special, then go check it out. Spend a little time in my world.
I have some very, very exciting news to share with everyone coming up in the next update. Stay tuned, My Dear Animals! And as always, thank you for your support and patience!
(Immense thanks to artist Ellinsworth for his amazing sketch of Sarovek! Visit his portfolio for more awesome artwork!)
425 orders! Amazing!
That means we have 325 to go with 62 days left. I’ve talked to almost everyone I know, so now I need your help. Please send your link to folks you know, in a Facebook message or email (not just posting or tweeting...make it as personalized as you can so folks know you are asking them specifically!). I’m going to be doing some special prizes for my top referrers (Think Amazon gift cards and other good stuff!).
I’m meeting with someone from the Claremont Courier tomorrow and I just recorded with ABC Book Review Podcast so there will be some new press out soon.
We’re getting there! Thank you so much for your support!
THE MANUSCRIPT IS IN!!!
After two months of rewriting and revising, with the help of my friends Peter Ryan and Cari Dubiel, and. of course, my wife, I’ve turned in a fine tuned 76,900-word manuscript after the first round of developmental editing. That’s nearly 10,000 darlings killed. It was probably closer to 15,000 of the original words that suffered their terrible fate, but I changed a couple of scenes and added about 5,000 words back in. It was all for the better, and I’m proud of what this book has become.
I know I promised mid-January for turning in this manuscript, but I’m going to play the sympathy card, because I was hospitalized in January for acute abdominal pain and had my gallbladder removed and subsequently stolen. They wouldn’t bronze it and let me keep it, the jerks, they just took it God only knows where. But, I’m glad it’s out. The good news is that I got my author bio picture in the process:
That’ll sell a lot of books on its own. Might even make it the cover of the book. Not sure my publisher would go for that, though.
Speaking about the cover, design will start happening in a few months, but I already know one thing will be remarkably different when it’s done: the title.
Yup, I am almost sure I’m changing the title. The book is in two parts now, and I’ve named part one "The Madness of Mr. Butler," while part two is "The Courage of Mr. Butler." As much as I love the title as it has been, it doesn’t really sound like a science fiction book, which it mostly is. I’m changing the title of the book to "The Man Who Stole the World," which, for those of you who are in need of improving your musical tastes, is a play on the title of a David Bowie song. (And David Bowie might have a cameo in the story, but I’m not at liberty to say at this point).
wink
So, what’s next?
Right now, we wait. Matt Harry, my editor, already got back to me that he’s currently working on a few manuscripts and plans on starting on mine in a few weeks. So, it’s probably going to be a while before I can report on further progress. But, this means that this year will begin the next levels of edits on a manuscript that is actively in production. I feel great about it all. I’ve had a wonderful experience with Inkshares.
Thank you all for your support. Your investment in me is something I think about and appreciate daily. I’m working my tail off to get you the best version of the book. Thank you for the opportunity. This is all because of you. I hug you.
In the meantime, if you wanna interact outside of email, you can find me on Twitter and Facebook, and fairly soon I’m getting my blog back up after some reconstruction.
Hang in there, it’s all coming together!
Love always,
-Michael
