Hey all,

Been awhile. Sorry for the, uh, "conservative" backer updates.

I am not, for the record, lying dead in a gutter, presidential protests trampling my lifeless body, hand still clutching the rain and blood soaked pages of IN BETA. Nor am I in Tijuana, peeling off green leaves of Inkshare backer money to buy another round for the Los Locos biker gang.

I am working diligently on IN BETA, every day, and I’ve finally crossed the halfway point! As I mentioned forever ago, I originally wrote IN BETA as a feature film. I found early on, though, that the comedy and action from the script didn’t feel right for a novel. It reminded me of that novelization of Terminator 2 I read in back in fourth grade, which I didn’t enjoy even as a fourth grader, and would be embarrassed to hand over to you.

So there have been a few radical departures in the story to make it work. For instance, instead of Seattle, I moved the setting to a rural high school in the Cascade Mountains. This works better for a number of reasons, primarily because I can better draw on my own high school experience (fun times), and because a microcosm seems to help ground things and make the premise a little more believable. Gives it kind of a Truman Show-vibe. I’m watching Westworld, and yeah there are some similarities there, too (though much lighter in tone).

Thanks again for your patience everyone, and your support. This has been a lot of work, and a lot of fun, and I think you’ll get a kick out of it, once it’s ready.

TLDR; Good book. Coming along. Promise me be better re: updates.

Good morning Dreamers,

Well, a dream of mine has come true, or at least is now guaranteed to come true. We’ve reached the pre-order goal and The Sleeping Man will be a real thing. I don’t have an update as to specifically when, but do know it’s happening and once I know, you’ll know. I have some work to do on the second draft, and then I’ll get some feedback. and then we’ll put this out!

As a reward to everyone, here’s some spoilers from the last chapter:

The Sleeping Man awoke from a dream, where he went on some epic journey to some Compendium or something. The lights that woke him came from outside, where he saw a spaceship land and off load a horde of pirate zombies and attractive teenage vampires. He had to do something, The Sleeping Man, or Dave (as it said on his birth certificate), ran to his closet and pulled out a modified machine gun which fired chainsaws. Noting it was surprisingly light, he selected flaming full auto mode and went outside to save the world. 

The hoard turned as one, except for a zombie in the middle who tripped and is completely unrelated to the story, and started towards Dave. Dave screamed at the approaching wall of death, "Get off my plane!" and pulled the trigger. 

Chainsaw after chainsaw chewed into the horde and right before he began to actually wonder how this gun was firing flaming chainsaws, the gun clicked on empty. This was it, with only half the horde taken care of, Dave was sure to die. A voice called from the sky, "It’s dangerous to go alone, take this."

Dave caught the handle of an unknown device and asked, "What is it?"

"It’s a photon cutlass."

"Like a lightsabe-"

"No, we don’t have the rights to that."

"Got it."

"Stop pointing it at your face."

"Who’s even talking right now?"

"I don’t know, the author stopped identifying the speaker."

"My name is Emma."

"Emma please stop, I’m typing everything I"m hearing right now."

"Daddy, can I have cheesecake for breakfast?"

"Yes."

"This is Dave, what the hell is going on?"

"Shut up, Dave. I could kill you with a thought."

"Sorry."

"Daddy? I ate all the cheesecake."

"Holy shit that was fast."

"This is Dave, isn’t there still a horde?"

"No, you killed them all when we were talking."

"Neat."

"Yup."

"So, is that the end?"

"Yes."

"Cool."

THE END