Happy Monday, y’all!

First off, A Beast Requires is clinging to 10th Place in the Geek & Sundry Fantasy Contest, with 85 backers. Yea, it’s getting to that part of the campaign where every backer matters, so if you haven’t had the opportunity to back A Beast Requires yet, now is definitely the time. At 107 pre-orders, we’re almost halfway to the Quill goal, which is nice.

So, dragons.

I count myself lucky that so many of you following me are writers. We all know The Struggle. It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve written, or what sort of genre you write, all of our work starts with that first glimmer of an idea. We all cultivate that glimmer, scribbling in notebooks or banging away at a keyboard. We draft, and draft again, searching for beta readers, grammar checkers, and if we’re lucky, an editor. 

While we are all at different places in our writing, we all remember that first book we poured our souls in. Mine was an absolute train wreck of a fantasy adventure, involving a book, a dog, and an angry teenage wizard. I loved it so much, but twenty years later I can look back and say with absolute certainty, it was a complete pile of words. We get better with every story. Hells, we get better with every draft, and we all know the joy that comes from finishing that final edit. But it’s not our final edit, and we all know the frustration and sadness that looms off in the distant horizon.

I like writers. Actually, I like content creators, but I’m particularly biased towards writers. And cooks, but that’s an entirely different story. It’s why I’m so thankful so many writers follow me on Inkshares, and how I absolutely lose my shit when another writer backs A Beast Requires. We all know how rough it is, especially how rough an Inkshares campaign is, so it comes as a welcoming comfort every time one of likes the thing I struggled for. I will always try to back as many writers as I’m financially able to. Support means everything to a writer, especially when  you’re just starting out. There will always be The Struggle, and there will always be dragons, but none of us are ever truly going through all this alone. 

Well, this update was SUPPOSED to go out because we reached 150 readers...and then we right away hit the next multiple of 10! We’re up over 160 readers, and we’re hovering around 10-12 orders behind 3rd place in the Geek and Sundry contest! That’s such great news, I’ve put up Chapter 4! You can find it right here:

https://www.inkshares.com/books/the-fairy-stepmother-inc-/book_segments/chapter-4-21c6c7

Thanks so much for your support! Don’t forget to tell your friends! Quick tip: tell them they need to get you a September gift. And since you want to read this book, what better gift than supporting your new favorite author?

--Maggie