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!

Happy Spring,

Thank you all again for supporting The Wildlife Confessional. I wanted to take a quick moment to share with you an update on the project. For those of you who were key in helping this project meet it’s sales goal, you may remember that we met that goal in February 2018 under Inkshares’ "Quill" program. That program has since been retired, and Inkshares is working their way down the list of Quill qualifiers, of which we happen to be the very last funded. 

And so we - and, in turn, you - are simply waiting in line until our turn comes along to be assigned an editor for layout, design, and production. Otherwise, the manuscript is done and ready for submittal. But we haven’t been idle. In the Jan/Feb 2019 issue of The Wildlife Society’s very own professional magazine, The Wildlife Professional (do you see what we did there?), we ran a teaser for anthology contributor Brian Cypher’s story, The Pirate Kit Fox. If you are fortunate enough to be a member of The Wildlife Society, I hope you’ve had a chance to read it. 

Rest assured, as soon as we hear that we’ve moved up to the front of the line, you - our faithful readers and supporters - will be the very first to know!

Until then, thank you for your patience and understanding.

Regards,

Matthew

The Editors

The Wildlife Confessional

Just wanted to update my faithful followers with the latest red hot news to come my way!  LOUISIANA BLOOD is a FINALIST in the SCREENCRAFT CINEMATIC BOOK CONTEST.  It was always my plan to reverse engineer the book into a film, and this is the first step in that journey.

WATCH THIS SPACE!

Well hello again.

I’ve done my best to not overwhelm everyone’s inbox, but I thought today would be a great opportunity to reach out and check in.  BLUE WATER has been on bookshelves and eReaders for a few months now, and I’m hoping you have gotten a chance to read it and loved it as much as I loved writing it. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s Halloween. No better day to start a creepy novel.

If you bought the book and read it, (THANK YOU) or have even started it and are still turning pages, please leave a review on Amazon. The more reviews the book gets, the more Amazon will push it, the more people get to read it.

As I said, I’ve not tried to inundate you with messages. As an introvert, a crowd-funding campaign is considered nightmare fuel, and having to constantly vie for your attention has been a struggle. One that I’m sure you may have noticed, I’ve been avoiding. But you all got this book out there, and for that, I can be brave and send out a mass email every now and again to say thank you, and let you know I haven’t forgotten.

Oh. And this.

Now, this is early. But man... do I like where it’s headed. There’s nothing to buy, nothing to pre-order yet, but if you liked BLUE WATER, click that link and hit FOLLOW and SHARE. You’ll get all the updates and news when it starts flowing.

Happy Halloween everyone, and thanks again,

Joseph Parcell

Greetings, Adventurers!

It seems I completely forgot about #MuchAnch Monday this week in light of all the busy-ness going on. We’re currently selling our house in favour of moving into a bigger one in a smaller community nearby, and that’s kept us on our toes. 

Also... WE GOT A NEW KITTEN. Meet Mystery, our third fur-child. Our human-child is absolutely enamoured with him, as are we!

As such, I don’t have any updates for you. I’ve been out of the house, cleaning the house, and doing just about everything but writing in and around the house. I haven’t even been cooking and, unfortunately, a whole lot of takeout has been the go-to, so I haven’t even put any new recipes on the blog--not even ones that are done! 

The good news is that this should all be over soon and I should be in a new space before long. I hope so! I have plans for an "office nook", and if you’re interested, I’ll keep you updated on the progress of that. 

In the meantime, please feel free to join me on Instagram @thepracticalescapist and on Twitter @ThePracticalEsc for updates. Please follow me on Insragram, because I’d love to hit 666 followers before Halloween... ;)

That’s it for now, adventurers. 

May your travels be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,

K. M. Cooper

www.thepracticalescapist.ca