Thank you Break the Bechdel Syndicate! It is such an honor and truly a dream to have your mark of approval!

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