Hello once again my friends.

This has been a very, very long week. This time last week we were in the top three, Now we’re trailing behind in fourth by 22 pre-orders. But it was 29 pre-orders this morning! We gained a lot of ground today, and that’s something I think all of us should be proud of. We can’t stop yet, though. We can’t even pause.

Less than three days remain in this contest. The victors will be decided on Tuesday, and I aim to be among them. 22 pre-orders is both so little and so much. So little because it is definitely, absolutely possible for us to get them and catch up to where we were; at the beginning of this contest, we were able to get that many in just a single day, and a few days ago we were able to get 18 all in one day. But...it’s so much because that was then and this is now. That was before I called upon everyone I know for help. That was back when I had enough money to run a couple ads, that was before most of the people I knew I could count on had placed their orders. Right now...I don’t know where those 22 orders are going to come from.

So once again, I’m calling out to you all for your support. If you haven’t yet, talk to your spouse about this. Talk to your parents. Talk to your siblings. Your best friends. Your coworker who’s always reading during lunch breaks. Talk to anyone you can think of; if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this campaign and the one for Tantalus Depths, it’s that you absolutely never know who might be willing to help you when you need it.

The odds are not quite in our favor right now, but I insist on optimism. I must proceed as if victory is a forgone conclusion. If I try as hard as I can and fail, I will be content. If I give up when I could have won, I’ll never forgive myself. So I take the path of positivity, just like our final highlighted character, Katie Salvador.

Katie Salvador

When civil war divided the crew of The Somnambule, it was the first true conflict ever witnessed by the third and fourth generation crewmen. To the naive and isolated descendants of The Somnambule’s original crew, the terrors of battle and mutiny were an awakening, a loss of innocence. For most noncombatants, the mere notion that their fellow crew members were killing one another in the mid-decks was enough to crush the youthful optimism fostered by a lifetime of security. Not so for Katie Salvador.

A fourth generation member of The Somnambule’s crew, Katie was a constant source of positivity and optimism, sharing her excess of cheer with every member of the ship’s crew she encountered. Like everyone else born on the ship, Katie was selected from a young age to fulfill a set of specific roles within the ship’s hierarchy. Katie was selected to join the ship’s medical staff, and while she took to her assigned job with the same zeal she applied to the rest of her life, her natural desire to help others led her to voluntarily pick up additional responsibilities in the ship.

By the age of twelve, she was already spending much of her free time in the hydroponic farms on the ship’s inner decks, taking great pleasure in tending to the various crop plants and helping them grow. She continued with this side work into her teens, even while she began to work full shifts in the ship’s infirmaries.

When Marion Krieg led her rebellion in an attempt to seize control of the ship, Katie pulled double shifts in the infirmary to treat the wounded, and continued to do so until the conflict resolved to a tense stalemate when Krieg’s rebels retreated to the lower decks.

Though the loyalist members of the crew had successfully thwarted Krieg’s initial rebellion, it had come at great cost. Many members of The Somnambule’s security force were killed in the battle, and with the conflict remaining unresolved, new recruits had to be drafted from the ship’s civilian population to replace them. Seeing a new opportunity to serve, Katie volunteered to take up arms and join the security force.

Training under her father, the head of the security force, Katie quickly learned the basics of combat. Her extensive medical training saw her fit well into a support role as a combat medic. Though still only 16 years old, Katie served as a vital member of the loyalists’ makeshift militia, not only for her skills as a healer, but for the warmth of her personality. Katie provided her brothers and sisters in arms with an endless supply of positivity in a time when morale could not have sunk lower...

Well folks, I have news and I have news.
None of it is very good, though.

We continue to fall behind in the contest. Right now we’re sitting at 22 pre-orders behind third place. On the plus side, we have been doing really surprisingly well with getting new orders in every day the past couple of days Everyone else has just been doing better than we have.

We all have good days and bad days, though. I’m hoping one of the next couple of days will be a bad one for them, and that all of mine are good ones. I lack the ability to quit, and I’m still way too close to the top three to seriously consider doing so, so I intend to proceed as if my victory is a given.

In other news, apparently Inkshares goofed and announced the wrong deadline. The contest ends not on the 25th, but on the 27th. So two extra days. Honestly, I would have preferred the closer deadline, but I can work with this too.

Please remember: I have absolutely zero hope of finishing this thing without your help. I’ll be honest here and say I am running out of people to ask, and I have nowhere near the time I’d like to find new ones before the end of this contest. I am heavily dependent on you who have already supported me this far bringing in your friends and families to help me. To that end, please remember I am running this promotion for anyone who successfully refers someone to pre-order. I like to think my art is at least passable enough as an incentive.

Press on, loyalists. Like the dedicated crew on The Somnambule, we are dedicated to one mission and one only: Always keep the ship moving forward.

Listen up, Faoii! I’ve got a really short update for you:

I just sent in the revised edit for The Last Faoii. The changes that were made are FANTASTIC and I’m so pleased and excited to be working with this editor. Together, we’re creating a fabulous story for you. You’re going to love it.

Keep up your fighting spirit and if you know of someone that loves Fantasy, strong women, and supporting new authors, make sure to send them over to our barracks so they can pick up a sword of their own. They won’t regret it. ;)

Shields up. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I have more news.

Faoii-Tahani

Important update:

Hello, everyone! 

The manuscript is in Inkshares’ hands, delivered to them this past Monday! It is very exciting. From here, it is an estimated six months before it could be in your hands. So, that means you will either receive the book at the end of this year or very early next year! I’m sorry it took so long, but I wanted to make sure my beta readers could help me polish it up nicely for you. 

I’ve already begun work on book two, and so far my go-to-beta is loving it. That has me super pumped. 

Sidenote:  Consider supporting Evan Graham and his book Proteus. He’s currently in the Nerdist publishing contest and in 4th place. He needs to get into 3rd in order to win the contest and get the full publishing deal, and potentially movie and tv rights. You’d be helping a really nice person who is super passionate about what he does. 

About the book: Cyborg soldier Jacob Sicarius awakens early from stasis to find the crew of his multi-generational colony ship entrenched in civil war. Can he win the war against the mutineers and the malfunctioning AI implant fighting for control over his brain? Sounds cool right? Let’s help him when that contest!

Click here to support Proteus! https://www.inkshares.com/books/proteus

Well, folks...this has been a rough week. We were holding on to third place pretty soundly all weekend, until a new dark horse showed up and blasted past us. We’re more or less keeping pace, but it’s been a rough road, and as of right now we’re back down to fourth place, by three pre-orders.

Less than four days are left in this contest, and we need to make every one of them count. People are going to be fighting tooth and claw over that third place position. I plan to get it, but I’m going to need all the help we can rally.

So it’s time to bring out the incentives.

You know the awesome character portraits I’ve been sharing lately? I drew those (except for the Shakespeare one, that was my amazingly talented sister.) In case you missed them, you can check them out here, here, and here, or just look at the new one below. Pretty cool, right? Well, if you like them, you’ll like this incentive:

From now until the end of the contest, anyone who successfully refers a new reader can have a personal portrait drawn by me, for free. I’ll do it in charcoal (like the ones featured so far) or pencil, your choice. I’ll do a portrait of you if you like, or your kid or girlfriend or whatever if you’d rather have that. If you’re a fellow writer who would like to have someone draw a portrait of one of your characters, I’ll happily do that. I’ll draw you as a cyborg, I’ll draw you as an elf, I’ll draw you as a mutant bullfrog if that’s what strikes your fancy. If you want two or three portraits and you can refer two or three people, they’re yours. The only conditions required for eligibility are as follows:

1. You must have ordered Proteus.
2. You must have referred someone else who successfully ordered Proteus
   
3. You take responsibility for coming to me to ask about getting your reward. You have to opt in for this.
   

I can’t guarantee a time frame for fulfilling those commissions, other than "by the end of the summer." I’ll start working on them as soon as the contest wraps and do them on a first-come first-served basis.

I can’t promise they’ll be works of art, but I can promise they’ll be works from the heart. I take great pride in my work, just like our ship’s new head scientist, Dr. Elizabeth Marshall.
(Am I killing it with these segues or what?

Elizabeth Marshall

Dr. Elizabeth Marshall was one of the brightest and most promising members of her generation on The Somnambule. A third-generation crewman, Marshall was born and raised by parents who were themselves born and raised on the ship. Like everyone else born during the first 75 years of The Somnambule’s flight, Elizabeth knew her fate and function from birth. From the beginning, her education was keyed toward developing a skillset in her that would fill a necessary role among her crewmates. In her case, early childhood dispositional assessments led to her being trained as a medical specialist

While some children born on The Somnambule rebelled against their pre-determined roles in the ship’s hierarchy, or simply took to them with the smallest possible amount of enthusiasm, Elizabeth fully embraced her assigned profession from the very beginning. Learning about the inner workings of the human body fascinated her. She became especially interested in the field of applied cybernetics, and the various ways in which electronics could be used to improve the functionality of the human body.

Her interests and her dedication to learning quickly made her a favorite pupil of head scientist Marion Krieg, herself a brilliant cyberneticist. She worked closely with Krieg from adolescence to adulthood, and by the time Marshall had finished the ship’s most sophisticated medical education programs, it had become clear that Krieg was grooming her as a successor.

Elizabeth was involved in the development of Krieg’s new quantum cortical implant, though she did not volunteer to be implanted with one. Krieg claimed the implant could give its user the ability to view future events, and while Elizabeth did not actually believe this to be possible, she did believe the implant had the potential to significantly improve its user’s mental sharpness and processing speed. The first human test subjects made a compelling case for Krieg’s claims, but Elizabeth remained skeptical that they could actually see the future.

That is, until Krieg claimed to have perfected the implant. Wishing to be implanted with the new device herself, Krieg was unwilling to entrust the delicate operation with anyone but Marshall. Reluctantly, Dr. Marshal agreed, and implanted the new quantum computer into Krieg’s brain.

Immediately upon completion of the procedure, Krieg’s demeanor changed. She claimed to have seen terrible things in the mission’s future; a horrific cataclysm at journey’s end. She tried to convince the crew that the mission must be aborted at all costs, and began amassing a significant following among the crew.

When Krieg attempted to convince Marshall to join her resistance faction, Marshal refused. As much as she’d respected Krieg most of her life, she believed the woman had begun to finally grow senile in her old age, and suspected that something may have gone wrong with her operation. Beyond that, Marshall held on to the values that had been instilled in her as a child; her greatest calling in life was to preserve the mission and the lives of the colonists the ship carried. She would not play a part in mutiny.

Mutiny came, nonetheless. When Krieg made a play for taking over the ship, Marshall remained loyal to the captain and the ship’s mission. When Krieg’s initial attempt at an uprising failed and her rebels were pushed back to the lower decks, Marshall took Krieg’s place as the ship’s head scientist.

Krieg’s rebellion against The Somnambule’s mission felt like a personal betrayal to Marshall. The woman she’d looked up to as a mentor her entire life had betrayed the most important purpose any member of the crew could have. As heartbroken as Marshal was about Krieg’s uprising, she was determined to put all her skills to work in preserving the mission, the precious lives of the ship’s colonists, and the final defeat of Krieg’s insurrection.

Important update on the status of Mission 51 and the Nerdist Sci-Fi Contest.

We remain in 1st place, where we have been since day one, thanks to so many wonderful supporters. Thank you all so very much!

The contest is now in the final 5 days and our lead has significantly diminished. The contestants in 2nd through 5th place are all in a position to possibly take the lead. Needless to say, it is crucially important for us to keep pressing on with pre-orders if we hope to stay in the top three and win a coveted publishing contract with Inkshares!

Mission 51 now has 324 official followers. That’s amazing! Of those, 139 of you have helped with a pre-order. That means that 185 are still on the sidelines. If you are contemplating a pre-order at some point, this is the time! Your pre-order can truly make the difference between placing in the top three or not. Please, do not delay!

Again, I want to thank everyone for your support so far. If there is anyone in your life who you think would enjoy Mission 51, please pass on the link, or better yet, consider buying them a pre-order as a gift. Here is how you do it: Just sign out of your Inkshares login, then click the pre-order link, and enter your loved one’s email address when prompted for an email. You can then use your own credit card to check out. Every unique email counts towards the contest.

Five more days! Let’s do this!! :D

Peace and love, everyone!

Ferd 👽

https://www.inkshares.com/books/mission-51

Now is the cryonic stasis of our discontent…

Just kidding. That would be super goofy. Though, for Proteus, it would be fitting. As I’ve mentioned throughout the campaign, Proteus is indeed an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Richard III. Up until now, I haven’t really gone into any great depth on what that means, and I’m sure it’s had some people baffled. How does one take a 435 year-old historical play about a conniving English king and set on a massive spaceship full of cyborgs?

I’ll tell you.

The idea of taking Shakespeare’s stories and retelling them in new settings is not new. It’s possible you’ve even seen one without realizing it (The Lion King, for instance, or Ten Things I Hate About You). By far my absolute favorite of these stories is a cult classic 1956 science fiction film called Forbidden Planet.

You may recall that I’ve spoken about Forbidden Planet before: it was a huge inspiration for Tantalus Depths. The exploration of a planet filled with ancient technology left behind by an extinct race, the pervasive tone of dread that permeated the movie, the presence of a robot that can build anything its master demands, these are the elements of Forbidden Planet that influenced Tantalus Depths. Something else about that film inspired the very concept of Proteus, however.

Forbidden Planet is a direct adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. From the moment that I learned of this connection (which was long after I’d seen the movie several dozen times) I became obsessed with it. In several classes throughout my academic career, I wrote lengthy essays deconstructing the parallels between The Tempest and Forbidden Planet. Some parallels are obvious: the planet Altair IV is home only to a brilliant scientist and his naïve daughter, who has never known the outside world. This lines up easily with the wizard Prospero who raised his daughter alone on the island they’d been marooned on. Both Prospero and Dr. Morbius discover sources of incredible power on the island left behind by long-gone predecessors: the hyper-advanced technology of the Krell in one case, the lingering magical influence of the witch Sycorax in another. The comparisons go on and on.

What interested me even more than the parallels between the stories were the areas where they diverged, however. For instance: Prospero’s two servants, the ethereal spirit Ariel and the treacherous troglodyte Caliban are essentially merged into one character in Forbidden Planet: Robbie the Robot. Morbius himself is less of a direct interpretation of Prospero and more of a dark mirror, showing what could have happened if Prospero allowed his pursuit of knowledge and power to go too far and consume him.

I could go on and on for ages about this (and I have, as several of my professors can attest) but obviously you’re not here for an essay on Forbidden Planet. So let me tie that in with the story I’m telling in Proteus.

The story of Richard III is, to oversimplify things terribly, about a man’s quest for power. Richard is the youngest of three brothers, and last in line for the throne. After having played an integral role in securing the throne for his family following a lengthy war of succession, Richard now finds himself underappreciated and ill-used. His physical deformities and his notoriety on the battlefield have left him ill-suited for a time of peace, and he feels that society has left him behind.

So Richard goes on a campaign of regicide, manipulating and backstabbing his way to the top with a devious plot George R. R. Martin wishes he was twisted enough to conceive. Richard kills off his own siblings and their entire families down to the last child, he seduces the widow of a man he killed at his own funeral purely to see if he can get away with it. He relishes in his own villainy as he stabs his way to the top, and, for a time at least, he gets everything he wanted.

This is the story I’m adapting. Jacob Sicarius is my Richard. He was destined to receive a crown of his own when The Somnambule arrived at its destination, but when his pod is sabotaged, he loses that promised glory forever. Like Richard, he too is “deformed, unfinished, scarce half-made up,” but rather than physical deformity, Jacob is a cyborg, with mechanical parts replacing those he lost in his own war. He too has three brothers, all three of which posing a threat of some kind to the kind of order he wishes to establish on this ship.

As Forbidden Planet took some plotlines and characters and reworked them, so does Proteus. While Richard gleefully states “I am determined to prove a villain,” Jacob is more morally complex. He is capable of horrific deeds, but his goals are noble, and his constant conflict with the targeting AI fighting for dominance of his brain creates even more complexity in his character. The war in Proteus is not about seizing a throne for a ruling family, but about preserving the fate of the thousands of colonists aboard the ship.

Many characters have been changed. Some have been combined, some have been flipped around to mirror versions of themselves. Some are as perfectly true to their original nature as they could be in an environment so unlike Shakespeare’s version of the tale. If you’re familiar with Shakespeare, you will certainly find dozens of fascinating interpretations of the original story. If you aren’t, you’ll get the benefit of reading a story ripped off of one of the best storytellers of all time, so either way, you can’t go wrong!

We now officially have less than 9 days to go in this contest. This next week will be absolutely crucial to the success of Proteus, and there is so, SO much that can happen. We remain at number three in the contest, but we are still just barely ahead of the competition, and the number two position is still rocketing up the ranks, soon to be threatening first place. I don’t feel anywhere close to safe about our place on the leaderboard. Right now, all it takes is two orders for the book behind us, and we’re back down to fourth again.

I know some of you were waiting on paychecks to come in this weekend before putting your orders in, so if you’re able, PLEASE consider ordering it now! We’re in a position where we can regain some lost ground if we can get a surge of support right now. It’d be really helpful if we could close this week off on a high note.

Meanwhile, I give you another little piece of lore from the shared universe of Proteus and Tantalus Depths. While the entire story of Proteus is set on the vast colony ship Somnambule, some of the defining events of our central character’s 

life occurred on the freak desert world of Buyan: a treacherous world of the Expansionary Coalition, bombarded by deadly sunlight on both sides at all times...

Jacob Sicarius and his brother Lucas were both shaped by their traumatic experiences on Buyan. In some ways, literally. Jacob’s injuries on that world led to his transformation into a mechanized killing machine, and the scars both men received on that harsh world manifested as much in the mind as the flesh.

But just how deep was the damage, and how lasting its effects? What else did Jacob lose on Buyan? Events were set in motion then that will soon culminate in a struggle over Jacob’s very soul. 

Find out how it all ends when you pre-order Proteus today.

Exciting news, Faoii! Listen up!

I just got The Last Faoii back from my editor. I should be in bed right now, but how can I sleep with such exciting developments? I read through every comment on the manuscript immediately, and am so excited to improve the story with the suggested changes. I have to get it back to Reedsy within a week, and have various appointments/obligations every day between now and then, but that will not stop me. 

Hold on, faoii. It’s going to be an exciting 7 days!

Shields up. I’ll see you in a week.

Faoii-Tahani