Last month, I took a trip to Europe with my brother Mike to o some research for scenes that take place in Europe in 1945 during WWII. We visited Antwerp, Koln and most importantly Nordhausen, site of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp and the underground factory known as Mittelwerk where 20,000 slave laborers dug out tunnels in an old gypsum mine and manufactured the V-2 rockets used to bomb London and Antwerp.   

While I had done research for these scenes, there is an additional level of verisimilitude that gained from walking the same steps that scientists like Wernher von Braun did when he visited the camp, or where the 104th Infantry rode tanks into town to liberate the prisoners. 

I’ve received helpful and detailed feedback from the publisher on the most recent draft. The bad news is, there’s still a lot of work to be done. The good news is, it’s mostly about stripping out a lot of complexity that has grown into the story so that it can be more focused on the historical fiction elements. In the coming weeks, I’ll be re-assembling a new outline before diving back into the next draft of the novel that will be even better than the last.

On a sad note, my co-author Roxie passed away a couple of days ago. We knew she had cancer for the last couple of months and I’m grateful that she had so much energy and enthusiasm right up until the end. The house is eerily silent without her. 
—Zack    

Howdy, one and all. Four months have already passed since the Inkshares crowdfund campaign for Bane of All Things ended in success so it’s time for an update.

(BTW, this is still the placeholder cover -- you will definitely be the first to know when concepts for the true cover arrive, but that is still a long way’s off.)

Things move slowly in the publishing business and that’s just par for the course. As much as I can’t wait to have the finished product in my hands (and in yours), it takes time and plenty of sober second thought to polish a novel from a debut author, and develop its marketing plan, to ensure it has the best chance of standing out from the crowd and doing well.

My editor at Inkshares continues to work on my Editorial Letter. This comprehensive assessment of BoAT’s strengths and weaknesses will give me a handle on what edits and revisions I must make to ensure this story is the best version of itself that it can be. The plan a couple of months ago called for me to have my Letter by now, but it’s taking a little longer than first expected.

In the meantime, Inkshares has already set up my Properties page. Properties is the side of the Inkshares platform reserved for talent agents, other publishers and movie and TV producers. This is where they come to scout out interesting books they may want to licence in some way, or even opt for the Hollywood treatment. So who knows what could happen there!

Also, I vowed as part of the crowdfunding campaign that I would donate one dollar from each copy pre-ordered to non-profit Autism Ontario on behalf of my autistic son and nephews. That donation has been made, rounded up to a nice even $500.

Thanks again to each and every one of you for making all this possible. Stay tuned for further updates as the production process for BoAT moves ahead!

Cheers

Leo

The calendar has flipped eight times since my last update, but I finally have some good news to share about my novel Lost in the Fog!

As mentioned previously, Inkshares is a small company with limited resources, and they can only put out so many books each year.  Most of you reading this update have already purchased/backed my book, and I wish you had a copy of it in your hands right now.  I submitted my final draft last summer, and my manuscript has unfortunately been collecting digital dust since then. 

But I’m happy to say that Lost in the Fog is finally in production! 

An editor from Inkshares (Mr. Ryan Quinn) recently did an excellent copy edit on it last week, and I got the opportunity to review it.  My job was to go through all his comments, answer his questions, and then either make changes or respond with “stet”, which means “let it stand”.  Then I had to review all of the tracked changes he made (mostly punctuation, formatting, and keeping the manuscript copacetic to the Chicago Manual of Style), and either accept or reject them.

Thankfully Mr. Quinn did not have many questions (I attribute that to the great job of my first editor, Ms. Caroline Tolley), and all of the changes he made were technical ones that I accepted.   But I still took about 6 days with the manuscript, figuring this is likely the last time I will be able to make any modifications to it (I ended up making some minor tweaks of my own).  I am very happy with this new and improved version of Lost in the Fog, and I submitted it to Inkshares on Friday.     

Once a book begins production, Inkshares says the process is approximately four to six months to when backers (that’s you) will receive your copy in the mail.  Lost in the Fog still needs to go through another round of edits, a design pour (whatever that is), design updates, cover design, printing, and shipping.  I’d love if my novel could be released by Christmas, but to be safe let’s target January/February of 2020.

I’ll know more soon, and as the timeline gets firmer, I’ll keep everyone updated.

Thank you!