I’VE UPDATED THE PAGE WITH A NEW COVER AND TITLE!

A favor and some exciting news...

First the favor: the more reviews I get on Amazon, the more Amazon sees traffic going to my page, and the more they work their Amazon magic for my book. Getting past the 100 review mark would be huge.  So PLEASE go to the link below and WRITE A QUICK REVIEW.  It doesn’t have to be much, just a sentence or two saying what you thought of KILL CREEK (hopefully good things).   Just click the link below, go down to Customer Reviews and click "write a customer review."  It only takes a few minutes.  I’ll wait while you did it:

https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Creek-Scott-Thomas/dp/1942645821/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518405122&sr=1-1&keywords=kill+creek

Sweet!  Thanks for the review!  Now on to the exciting news.  KILL CREEK has been officially nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel!  The Stoker Awards are one of the most prestigious and well known awards in horror literature, honoring fiction, nonfiction, short stories, poetry and screenplays.  This year’s ballot includes huge names like Stephen King, Owen King, Joe Hill, M. Night Shyamalan, Guillermo Del Toro, David Lynch, and Jordan Peele, among many, many others.  Past recipients include Stephen King, Thomas Harris, Dan Simmons, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub--you get the point.  This is HUGE, and I know it’s a cliche, but it truly is an honor to be nominated.  The awards will be announced at a banquet in Providence, RI, (home of H.P. Lovecraft) on March 3, so I’d appreciate it if you’d cross any available fingers for me.

The book continues to gain momentum with over 5,000 copies sold and a steady stream of very cool responses on Instagram and Twitter, including an amazing tweet from Joyce Carol Oates, who called KILL CREEK an "intensely realized & beautifully orchestrated psychological Gothic/horror first novel set in once-Bloody Kansas."  I’m thrilled and humbled to hear people from all over the world saying how much they enjoyed my book.  I couldn’t have done it without the support of all of you.  Thank you for believing in this novel and for helping me make this lifelong dream a reality.

Hope 2018 is treating you all well.  I’ll be back soon with more updates.

Oh, and if you didn’t stop to write that review while I waited earlier, why not do it now?  It’ll give you a few more minutes of "staring at your phone" time, and who doesn’t want that?

Best,

Scott Thomas

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!)

Months Status Report, Faoii! Look at these numbers:

If you couldn’t already guess, I am so pleased, my warriors. We have done so much in so short of time. I know that it’s been a battle every step of the way-- Hell, even I thought some of those hills were insurmountable. But we’ve done it. And we’re just going to keep forging ahead!

As more of you finish reading the story, I’m still requesting your help in getting our reviews up on the Amazon page. It doesn’t have to be a 4 or 5-star review. In fact, more than anything, I just want it to be honest. I’m already seeing some of my flaws as an author as I make reference to the original story during my work on the sequel, and your input will only help me to be even better moving forward. And if you think it’s worthy of a high rating, please help me by telling me why. Some of the things that I had no particular feelings towards turned out to be fan favorites, so I’m still learning things on both sides of the spectrum.

If you didn’t get a chance to be part of my live #AMA feed, you can look through all of the questions and answers by clicking here. It’s not "live" anymore, but you can still add your own questions and I’ll still answer them. Or you can still share the story with others you think might be interested in it. There were a lot of deep, worthy questions, and I made sure to keep my answers honest and heartfelt. Give it a look.  

I think that’s it for this month, Faoii. I’ll send out another status report in March, but if anything important or exciting happens between then and now you’ll get a missive about it. You can also follow my Facebook page if you want more regular updates. 

As always, I thank you again for standing so strong and getting us this far. The war isn’t over and I still need your help in spreading word of our army, but I have no doubt that we can do it. We are Faoii, after all.

Shields up.

Faoii-Tahani

WE DID IT! I AM WALTZ has officially released EVERYWHERE! 

Thank you to everyone who supported me in making this book a possibility. I hope everyone is enjoying the book.

Making the book exist is one thing, letting everyone else know about it is another, and I still need your help.

Once you finish the book, I’d be very grateful to you if you leave a honest review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. We currently have 7 reviews on Amazon, but lets get this into the hundreds ASAP! The more reviews, the easier getting I Am Waltz 2 out will be!

To review click the links for Amazon - Goodreads, or click the image below!

Also, be sure to tell your friends about the book, lend it to them, encourage them to pick up a copy. Share on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, real life, your blog, etc.

Thank you all so much, and stay tuned for updates on I Am Waltz 2 which I am working on now, through the working title I Am Waltz: Project Monarch.

Blessings to you all,

Matthew D. Dho

@MattDho

fb.com/iamwaltz

Hi, readers! We did it!! 260 copies as of today. I’m so excited. We’ve raised $32 for Babywearing International of Akron Youngstown, and this book is going to happen!

I’m taking a break from campaigning - once I know more details, I’ll continue to update. I’m putting together a marketing plan, and I need to revise the book when it comes back from its manuscript review. I will also be posting companion short stories on the Lost Memories Inkshares page. I have some blog posts set up for my website. Finally, I’m drafting a new novel, which is not part of the MindTech world, but I hope you’ll love it too. 

I don’t want to overwhelm your inboxes, so please follow me on social media for all the good stuff :-)

FB: https://www.facebook.com/caridubielauthor/

Twitter: @caridubiel

Instagram: @cb1281

Website: www.caridubiel.com

And, if you didn’t already know, I’m the cohost of a book review podcast, and Beth and I have just begun recording again. The ABC Book Reviews is on Soundcloud, and our RSS goes out to Stitcher and iTunes as well. We just posted an interview with fellow Inkshares author Becca Spence Dobias, author of Rock of Ages. Check it out!!

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

Hello everyone, welcome to 2018!

Work on Blood Capital has been progressing at pace since NYE and we are now close to completing the developmental edits (at last!). Check the progress chart below and you can see I’ve almost completed the rewrite, and that all of Acts One and Two have had my second pass. Once this is complete, it should just be a matter of getting the final development notes from my editors and incorporating them, then we move into copy editing (grammar and spelling).

Everyone has been wonderfully patient with me over the past year, and that has made this process so much easier. Thank you. I’m aware the journey has been long — I had no idea how long it would be when I entered the competition back in 2016. To provide an idea of the work behind the scenes, I’ve been averaging almost 18 hours a week on the novel, which multiplied out over nine months (roughly how long I’ve been working on edits), adds up to more than six hundred hours so far. 

We are now on the home straight, and Blood Capital is set for release at the end of July. A marketing plan is coming together to support the launch, and I’ve now seen an early version of the cover art. As soon as the cover art is finalized, I’ll send out a special update, but for now I can tell you it’s going to stand out on shelves.

Cheers,

Robert
https://robertbatten.net 

Hello, everyone! This has been a fabulous week. Thank you all for your enthusiastic support. I went from 188 copies on Monday to nearly 250 today. I am confident we are going to sell those last two books today!

Don’t forget to join me on Facebook for my Day of Reckoning event - the last day of the campaign, February 9. 7pm EST. https://www.facebook.com/events/1033802110094056/

I’ll be doing random giveaways all night, including copies of the book. I’ll give updates on where we’re going next, too. Finally, I’m giving $1/copy sold from Feb 1 - Feb 9 to Babywearing International of Akron Youngstown, so I’ll announce that total. I just realized it’s right before the opening ceremony for the Olympics, so we’ll probably wrap up a little early so everyone can watch that. 

I am so excited to bring you this book!!