Dear Backers,

BIG UPDATE – You guys did it! Five hundred and eighty-four of you have successfully funded HERB: Mastering the Art of Cooking with Cannabis!

We’re starting production ASAP and will keep you updated about our progress.  We’ll also reach out for your input along the way – we’d love to hear your thoughts about recipes, book design, and chapters.

We are incredibly grateful for you support and are insanely excited to start this project with you.

More updates soon…

Matt Gray

Dear Backers of Wailing Wall,

I have two exciting announcements and I wanted you to be the first to know!

1) The first draft of Wailing Wall is complete!  What a crazy wild ride. I hear that rewriting is the fun part and I sure hope that's true because getting the first draft out was downright painful! 

2) We have an editor! Anne Horowitz has signed on as the developmental editor for the project. Previously of Soft Skull Press, Anne is now a freelance editor out of Brooklyn, New York. She'll get the first draft in mid-December and start working her magic!

As for me, I'm going to take the month of December off from writing and spend some quality time with the people I love.  And maybe, if there's a good snow, I'll get some skjoring time in with Ezra, Prince Among Dogs. 

Love to all,

Dee

We hit the funding goal (again)!  And this time it's solid, no unintended zeros by well-intended backers. Thank you to everyone who sent out messages on Veteran's Day on behalf of Luke's book. We're now back on track to have the book published next spring.  We'll be sending some excerpts in the coming weeks, so you can get an idea of what to expect.

We appreciate you!

- Julie Strauss Bettinger, co-author (on behalf of Luke Murphy who is traveling to a speaking engagement today)

It’s been a bit of time since I last wrote you, and thetimes they are a changing, indeed.  

 After two major edits, a seriously necessary but nit-picky copy-editingprocess (note to self: maintain consistent use of apostrophe direction i.e. ‘vs. ’), a two-step proofing process involving multiple readers (including thiscomment from an Inkshares intern, which is everything for me: “I have to say,I’m really enjoying this novel.”), an aesthetic conundrum of choosing the bookcover (if you check out the Inkshares page,or Amazonor Barnes& Noble, you can see the final choice), the relief of being done with Itand the subsequent terror of realizing there may still be a typo, and finally letting go, knowing that It’s out of myhands and that you’ll receive the book before Christmas, but that the officialrelease date is February 3, 2015,well [take a deep breath] I can finally return to the only thing that reallymatters: get back to writing. The third novel is underway, and it’s anotherdoozy altogether. But for now I’ll keep that under wraps, except to reveal thethree protagonists’ names: Viktor, Carl, and Elsa.

If you had said one year ago that I’d be doing a panel at Shakespeare & Company for Slim and The Beast, I would have toldyou to shut your mouth, how dare you, it’s a terrible joke, GET OUT! Butthe Shakespeare & Company panel wasa true honor, and I met some really interesting writers and drank beer withthem well into the night. Highlights include debating the future of publishingwith friends and the Shakespeare crowd,and a flustered Soviet woman who used her “question” to rant for seven minutesbecause didn’t understand why no one wants to buy her book of poetry, eventhough it’s beautiful-on-the-inside-you-just-have-to-take-a-chance-and-open-it-alright?

 In other news, I was featured in an article in Writer’s Digest (unfortunately only inprint—the November/December 2014 issue) that spoke about Inkshares as well asmy reasons for choosing them. The woman who wrote the article is a literaryagent who has been incredibly supportive/helpful as I approach the marketing,and has gone so far as to get me some great contacts in the industry.

 The BIG NEWS is I’ll be doing a book tour in February (NCand NY, watch out!). It’s surreal for now, hence my lack of words to describeit. In addition to all of this, including close collaboration with book design (mytwin brother Aaron did chapter illustrations), Inkshares has helped me start awebsite (I’m building it now), has secured a high-profile interview for me, andwithout going into specifics, will be sending dozens of reviewers and a fewestablished authors an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) in hopes of creating a buzzbefore the February release. Needless to say, Inkshares is a legitimatepublishing house. I’m lucky to be on board.

 On a not-wholly unrelated tangent before I wrap this up, inthe publishing industry there’s this thing called a Tip Sheet (I learned whatit meant about one month ago), which is essentially a one-page document thatserves as a resumé for your novel. My distributor sends this to bookstores, andif bookstores are interested, they pre-order copies (a random bookstore inSouth Carolina did this, which is both baffling and exciting). Inkshares and Iworked on this Tip Sheet, and I’ll have a copy of it by next week. If any ofyou—wherever you may be in the world—are interested in keeping a distinctivegrass-roots twinge to Slim and The Beast,I’d be honored to send you the Tip Sheet and hear about your experience walkinginto an independent bookstore and saying, “Good morning. [Bell above doorrings] I know this is a bit strange, but I know this guy, see? And there’s thiscompany, see? It’s called Inkshares […] Would I like to sit down? Why thankyou.” It’s a bold move to just walk into a bookstore like that, but I did ithere in Paris at WH Smith and it worked. The smug Madame said, “We only workwith the biggest distributor in America, Ingram, and I doubt you are associatedwith them. Good luck with your—what was it, a short story? Bonne journee.” When I said, “Oh, no problem. Interesting youmention it, though … in fact I work directly with Ingram,” she immediatelychanged her tone and made up for it by giving me the director’s contact. Boldmoves move mountains, and you made the boldest move of all backing me whenpublishing was a far-off reality.  

 Which brings me to the most important part of this update: arenewed thank you for all of your support. Book tours, interviews,Shakespearian panels  … the onlyreason any of this is happening is because there are 232 of you. Whatever happens once the book comes out—whether itsells 5 or 5,000 copies—I’ll no longer have to dream about what it would be like to publish a novel. Success or failure willbe based on the novel’s merit or lack thereof. I’m ashamed/relieved to say it: Imay or may not be secretly terrified that in fact the novel is shit. “What wereyou thinking?” an evil voice might say. “You’re an idiot and a fraud.” But thenI’m reminded that you believe(d) in me. Whatever happens, there will be luckand marketing strategy and all the rest of it, too, but one thing is for sure: Slim and The Beast will be “out there”soon, on a dusty bookshelf in Australia, or on a Parisian coffee table, or in abookstore in Springfield, Wherever, USA, and that is only because of you.

Jumping right into things . . .The book is an actual book now and most of the backers have received their copies and I could not be happier. This is my first book featuring in equal parts my illustrations and text, and I have a different feeling about it than I've had with my novels. Between you and me, I don't think of The Cat's Pajamas as a children's book (though it is); I think of it as  . . . a book. A book with both sides of my brain in it. Writing, for me, does not come easy: I have high standards for prose which, by now, I should be more comfortable falling short of. But I love to draw, and I'm content with my limitations as a drawer of things. Ladies and gentlemen, these here drawings are about the best I can do and I don't feel the need to do it much betterer. So it is a kid's book, I guess, in that it makes me feel like a kid. Happy.

All, 

In the meantime, we've been working with a couple of folks to experiment with food photography for the cover of the book.  Matt (our CEO) flew to Denver to pull together a couple of shots.  In this first one, we experimented a bit with lighting, and with what turned out to be an overly imaginative configuration of cannabis.  This one went quickly to the cutting room floor. 

We did end up pulling together a couple of nice shots, though, like these:

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Inkshares also worked with a photographer on their end, and came out with some promising shots.

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And some not so promising shots (what is he cutting?):

Oh yeah, and here's a glamor shot of our CEO, Matt, for good measure:

Dear all, I've just hit the 50% funding milestone! Thank you for backing this project and supporting me as I chase my dreams. I still have another 50% to go, but I'm confident it can be reached :)

Anyway, if it's not too much to ask, I would really appreciate it if you could share my project with your friends again. Some of them might have overlooked it the last time. When you do so, please visit your funding receipt email and click on either 'Facebook', 'Twitter' or 'Email'. These options would share your referral code attached to the project link. The publisher would top up 5USD whenever someone funds my project using your referral code. That would be a huge boost for each new funding! Thanks in advance! 

I'm certainly looking forward to the day this project is a success. And, I do hope you would enjoy my book when you finally get your hands on it! Thanks once again and have a good week :)