Torkiyan missions to Cerulea (the planet Earth) have often ended in tragedy. Travel across the galaxy and a succesful landing must be difficult! The most recent evidence of these tragedies includes the remnants of the spaceship and the dead alien we found in Roswell in 1947, which experts believe was part of Torkiyan Mission 50.

This original illustration by artist Chris Pyke is in the Mission 51 chapter called Roswell Revisited. You’ll have to read the book to get the rest of the story! :-)

Mission 51 remains in 1st Place in the Nerdist Sci-Fi Contest on Inkshares. Like Mission 51, the book in 2nd place also has to do with issues of immigration. This seems to be an important subject for our times.

Mission 51 is a mature Inkshares project. Perhaps that is why it started strong in the contest and has remained in 1st Place for the entire duration of the contest so far. But there is no guarantee whatsoever it will remain in 1st Place at the end. There are other strong authors/stories that can easily displace Mission 51 now in the closing days of the contest. Several of these books are very close to doing so. Only the top three will win a coveted publishing contract on Inkshares.

You can be an integral part of bringing Mission 51 to Amazon, to bookstore shelves across the country and maybe even around the world! You would do it by placing a pre-order. Contestants are ranked by the number of individual people who place a pre-order. If you have been thinking about doing so, it is essential to do it now!

If you think you have pre-ordered but did not receive a confirmation email from Inkshares, it probably did not go through. Be sure you have that confirmation email. If you didn’t, please try again or contact me!

Please help me win a publshing contract for Mission 51 by pre-ordering your ebook or signed copy now. Thank you all so very much for your support!

Peace!

Ferd 👽

NINE DAYS REMAIN

I have great news! Mutants Uprising was picked by the Inkshares Staff Syndicate as their book of the month for June 2017! We gained some readers and are now tied for 6th place. Just one order will put us up and properly into 6th. That’s where you come in - if you’re waiting for the dramatic, last minute save-the-day time to order, we’re there!

First, Second, and Third place keep adding to their numbers so it’s going to be an uphill climb, but WE CAN DO THIS. If you’ve already ordered, please sit a friend down at the computer and walk them through placing an order. This is a huge contest, and winning it means more exposure and good things for the first book I funded through Inkshares, Fae Child.

I’ve sent you the second chapter of the book, temporarily titled "Drive By." I hope you enjoy it!

Do you hear that clock ticking? I do!
~ Jane-Holly

Happy Friday, all!

This is a short one, bc I don’t have much shareable news aside from what I’m about to share with you.

I was admiring my novel’s B&N.com page (we’ve all done it, don’t judge) when I noticed something there that I wasn’t anticipating.

That’s right, y’all. That is a starred review from the Library Journal. It’s not Publishers Weekly or anything, but I still had a mild panic attack when I saw it.

Enjoy your weekends, and happy Father’s Day to those who celebrate.

-J.

Hello dear followers!

We have slipped down to 7th place! Backwards momentum isn’t good. SO, an incentive for you to order, and order now:

If I get 9 preorders in the next 24 hours, I will record myself reading the first chapter of Mutants: Uprising, swears and all. I don’t normally swear all that much, so this could be a disaster. A disaster you’ll want to hear!

Preorder here. Just $10 for an ebook and my undying gratitude!

If you’re interested in Spotify playlists, here’s the one I listen to when I’m writing this story.

Have a great Sunday! I’m off to see Wonder Woman again and get empowered.
~Jane-Holly

Let me paint you all a very pretty picture:

That’s right, Proteus is still sitting firmly in the top three, and only climbing higher. There’s plenty cause for celebration for coming as far as we have, and I owe everyone who’s supported it so far a huge debt of gratitude. But there are some significant impending challenges ahead as we gear up to enter the final two weeks of the contest. What obstacles are those, you ask? One word: syndicates.

Syndicates are groups on inkshares that collect contributions from their members and pour all of them into one book every month. You may remember that Tantalus Depths received support from many syndicates during the last campaign; in fact I’d venture to say the campaign could not have succeeded without support from the syndicates.

So why are syndicates a problem for Proteus? Well, most of them more or less make their decisions about which book they plan to back at the beginning of the month, or even earlier. Some of the bigger ones are already narrowing down their choices to one or two options, and they’ll make their final choice within the next week or so. Because I launched my campaign for Proteus as late as I did, most of the syndicates who might have considered supporting it had already turned their attention to other books in the contest. Some of these syndicates are large, and if they pick a book I’m competing against, that book will instantly jump ahead by twenty or thirty orders all at once.

Long story short, it’s unlikely any syndicate will pick Proteus, and it’s highly likely some will pick competing books. One already has, in fact. This means we can expect some of the books we’ve already passed in the leaderboard to instantly leapfrog over us if we can’t get some more traction and build up a buffer between Proteus and the rest of the leaderboard. Since we can’t count on syndicates, we have to push forward the old fashioned way: one order at a time. So even though we’re doing really well right now by making it to the top three and holding our position, it’s crucial that we keep pushing as hard as we can to increase our numbers.

Remember, please tell all your friends and family to pre-order, and keep sharing our posts to boost our visibility. Victory is in sight, but it’s not within reach yet, and it’s going to take all of us to get there!

Hello all 93 of my followers! I hope you are having a great weekend.

42 of you have already preordered - thank you! If the rest of you preorder, we will have a little breathing room for the rest of the competition. There are 15 days left, FIFTEEN, and we have slipped to 6th place after holding onto 2nd or 3rd from the beginning.

Time is running out. We need at least 8 preorders to reclaim 3rd, and the other contestants are continuing to add to their numbers. Please preorder now if you can, or share the project with friends and talk to them about preordering their own copy!

There is some good news: I just made a book trailer! Click the banner above, or any other link in the update, and check it out on the book page. I hope you enjoy it! You can also like me on Facebook, and share the pinned video with your friends to help spread the word.

Thank you so much! Have a good rest of the weekend -
Jane-Holly

I was taken completely by surprise this morning with some wonderful news and I am still reeling in the excitement of it! Mission 51 is the June 2017 selection of the Rite of Passage Syndicate!

I want to thank the Syndicate Lead, Christopher Lee Eichenauer, and the entire syndicate membership for this incredible honor! I humbly join a remarkable group of authors and works and I am greatly encouraged by their faith in me and Mission 51. Please check out the Rites of Passage Syndicate and consider becoming a member of this supportive group of amazing human beings.

This boost gives further momentum to the Mission 51 campaign in the current Nerdist Science Fiction Contest on Inkshares. We remain in 1st place out of more than 160 contestants. But the contest is far from over. There are many remarkable books by talented authors in the competition. We need to keep pressing on!

I am eternally grateful to everyone who has pre-ordered a copy of Mission 51! If you have yet to pre-order, I ask that you click on the green pre-order button below. It is through your kind and generous pre-orders that Mission 51 will become a published reality. Be a part of it!  :-)

Thank you again to Christopher Lee, the Rite of Passage Syndicate, and everyone who supports Mission 51. You have all touched my heart more than you can know!

Peace!

Ferd

Today’s big announcement has almost nothing to do with Tantalus Depths, but it is still a very big announcement.

As many of you already know, Inkshares is teaming up with Nerdist right now to host a science fiction novel contest. The top three books at the end of the contest will win the full publishing treatment, the same deal we earned for Tantalus Depths last year, but without the agonizing process of having to round up 750 preorders first.

I deliberated for weeks about whether I should enter the contest or not. The book I wanted to enter is one of my boldest endeavors and I’m incredibly proud of it, but in many ways I feel like I’m still recovering from my last campaign, and I’m definitely not excited about taking that plunge once more. But ultimately the deciding factor that made me decide to go ahead and go for it was the competition. Right now, with just 20 days to go, the pre-order numbers on the current leaderboard are unusually low for a contest like this. At the time of writing this, I could make it to the top 3 with less than 50 pre-orders. That’s a far cry from 750, and I feel I must capitalize on this opportunity.

So I’ve entered the fray: my second full novel, Proteus, is now available for pre-order. It’s a sci-fi psychological thriller set in the same universe as Tantalus Depths, but featuring completely different characters and events. It’s ambitious to the point of impertinence, as it is a direct adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Richard III that also deals with themes of wartime PTSD, transhumanism, and the duality of man.

I can’t do anything halfway, it seems.

Here is the link, please check it out. There will be a wealth of new information coming every day for the duration of this intense but very short campaign. I wouldn’t have entered this contest yet if I didn’t think we could win it. The support we raised for Tantalus Depths was simply mind-blowing, and if we can recapture just one fifteenth of that miracle again, we’ll have not one but two books entering the production process. This could make the difference between me being an author as a hobby and me being an author as a career.

Before you go, I want to pre-emptively answer some questions I expect will be raised by this announcement:

Q: You jerk, I already ordered a book and I still don’t have it. WHERE’S MA BOOK???

A: It’s coming! I sent the manuscript in about a month ago. It takes months for a book to go through the production process, and that timer doesn’t begin until the manuscript is submitted. Tantalus Depths will probably not be released until the end of the year at the absolute earliest, more likely early next year. BUT anyone who’s ordered it and is particularly eager to get their hands on a copy and doesn’t want to wait until then, I will happily send you the current draft upon request. If you don’t mind reading an in-process manuscript, that is.

Q: What happens if you lose the contest?

A: You get your money back. If I fail to place in the top three, I could continue to campaign the normal way until I raise enough pre-orders (that’s exactly what happened with Tantalus Depths) but there’s no way I’m putting myself through that right now. I’ve set my campaign to only run one week past the end of the contest, at which point it will expire and anyone who ordered a copy will be immediately refunded. Either I win this contest, or nothing. Not until a future date when I’m more ready for it.

Q: How will this campaign affect the production of Tantalus Depths?

A: It won’t. Tantalus Depths is top priority. The only reason I have time to campaign right now is because I’m still waiting to be assigned a production team; at the moment, there’s nothing I can do for Tantalus. During the production process, there is a lot of going back and forth between me and my editor, so there will be patches of time when I will be working on Tantalus and when I won’t be. Any time I have to choose between working on Tantalus and working on Proteus, Tantalus will always take priority.

Any other questions or concerns, feel free to message me about them.

Hello, everyone! 

If you qualified for a giveaway during Funding, I’ll be messaging you in the next month for your address so I can get that to you! 

In the next two weeks, I’ll be passing the manuscript off to Inkshares for publication. That is exciting as well as terrifying. After I pass it off, it will be around 6 months before the novel is in your hands. I’m 11 chapters into the rewrite of the sequel, The Book of Kings. I’d share it with you but... spoilers. I’m not sure when to start sharing information on the second novel. I’d like for the first one to land in your hands before I start sharing chapters or synopsises for the next one, for obvious spoiler reasons. A lot happens towards the end of The Living God, and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you. 

 I also noted a cool little thing at the top of The Living God page. It is the 16th best selling Fantasy book on Inkshares. Do you think we could get it in the Top 5 once it’s in print? Hmm... 

I’ll be in touch!