Howdy, folks. Hard to believe it’s been almost three months since my last update. This summer has vanished way too fast. I hope you are all staying safe and keeping as well as you can.

The Good News: Bane of All Things is almost ready to go to copy editing.

The Bad News: In The World that Was, this would have meant we were about seven months from a publication date – the day BoAT would be on bookstore shelves and up for purchase online. And most importantly – in your hands. But alas, we are stuck with The World That Is. Because of that, we are looking at a publication date in the summer or fall of 2021.

“Why is that, Leo?” you ask.

In short, it sucks right now to be trying to publish a first novel from a debut author with a reasonable hope of a successful launch. “Successful” being a mercenary measurement of how many books we actually sell in a particular period of time. 

I of course don’t want to just publish a book – I want to build a career as an author. And publishing a first book under circumstances where it isn’t likely to do well is a surefire way to sabotage that.

“But aren’t people stuck at home and reading more right now?” 

Yes, but the books that are doing best are generally the ones available from established authors…and anything about Trump.

Bookstores across the U.S. are still operating with skeleton crews and curbside pickup. The usual machinery of book promotion and launch is stuck in low gear and many people have been laid off (I mean across the industry, not at Inkshares – in fact, Inkshares just hired a new chief operating officer away from The Onion, but that’s another story).

These impacts of the pandemic on book retail and book promotion works against first-time authors like me most of all.

So in the interests of giving BoAT the best possible chance to do well, and me as an author to do well, the prudent course is to aim for that time frame a year or so from now, when we hopefully have a vaccine and the world is returning to some semblance of normal.

“So, what are you doing in the meantime?”

I’m glad you asked. Since we have the time to spare, we are doing some final additional tweaks to BoAT. This is all my idea. In fact, on our call last night, Inkshare’s CEO Adam Gomolin said he thought the book was in a quite strong place and we could just push it into copy editing now. But I figured we’ve got the time, so may as well use it.

In case you’re wondering, all the revision and tweaking up till now is what’s considered “developmental editing.” Copy editing is the real brass tacks nit-picky spelling and grammar stuff. BoAT is already pretty clean, so I wouldn’t expect that a lot of work of this sort remains.

But wait, there’s more!

BoAT is intended as the first of four books. I am just completing a second draft of Book 2 – The Crucible Tree. By the time BoAT does publish, the odds are good I will have already completed a first draft of Book 3 – tentatively titled Throne of Souls. Or maybe I will pick up where I left off a couple of years ago with the revamp of something entirely different – my post-apocalyptic weird western novel. We’ll see.

And on the cancer front

I continue to chug along – four months down, eight to go with my gene therapy meds. At present only mild side effects from the meds. Otherwise, doing well.

That’s all for now. As always, stay safe and be kind.

Hello, 

Here’s a quick update about the release of Richly Drawn. While the original plan for the novel was to release it in the fall of 2020, the COVID19 pandemic has caused some delays. Right now, it is nearly impossible to market a new book, as many of the tools and pipelines a book is fed through are out for the count.

Inkshares feels the best course of action is to delay the release of Richly Drawn until the second half of 2021, and I agree with them. What does this mean for you? Well, it means there are still several months left before you get your copy of the book. Sorry about that! So while you wait, stay safe and healthy!

Thanks aplenty,

Wolf Kraft

Pleased, bordering on giddy, to announce I’ve completed the latest draft of The Unforgiven Dead. It’s been a hard slog, but this super-dooper, new-and-improved version is gonna knock your socks of when it’s published later this year (probably October). 

Unbelievably, it’s been over a year since The Unforgiven Dead was chosen as a winner of Inkshares’mystery and thriller competition. To say this book has been a long time coming is a wee bit of an understatement, so thanks everyone for your patience. 

Cheers! Fulton

It’s been a while since the last update, and I’m happy to report that a new draft of the novel is complete. I put it aside for a couple of weeks, while I was busy with a work project and finished re-reading it yesterday. The story has come together much better than the earlier drafts. On the advice of my publisher, I stripped out quite a few complications that were cluttering things up. 

That said, there’s still work to be done. It’s possible that things were pared back a bit too much. I need to spend some time beefing up the opening chapters to give them more breathing room and adding more depth to the main character, detective Jack Waters. But it’s the first time I’ve re-read a new draft and not been embarrassed. So definitely good progress.

I don’t when the next round of edits will be completed, it’s likely going to take a few months. I will also likely tap into a couple of beta readers to provide an objective perspective. The publisher has set a very high bar for this book and I want to make sure it is as good as it can be.

In the meanwhile, thank you for all your support and encouragement. This has been a tougher project than I ever expected, so thank you also for your patience.
--Zack
PS. I attended BoucherCon, a mystery writers conference in October and met a many authors including fellow Canadian David Morrell, who wrote the book First Blood, which became the basis for the Rambo series.