Hey guys!

I hope your weekend was wonderful! I had a pretty nice one. I managed to get a new (to me) bookshelf because I’d completely run out of space over the last year. I was starting to look like a hoarder with small stacks of books littering my apartment living room. I’d go into the funny story about how my elderly neighbor stole the bookshelf from me when I left it alone for 20 minutes to dry on the lawn, but I know your time is precious! 

We currently stand at 99 Unique Readers and are 7th in the Geek & Sundry Contest! 

This includes 3 mock-ups and one finished cover. Check out a sample of my work here. I have 5 years of experience in the publication design world, specifically cover design. If you aren’t an author, you can pass that prize on to someone you know who does have a book that needs a cover. If they pre-order as well, they get double the covers. (This excludes illustrated covers) 

Again, if you’ve placed a pre-order, you can help me out by leaving a review! https://www.inkshares.com/books/the-living-god/reviews/new

Aside from the contest, The Living God is 110 pre-orders away from making Quill! That is EXCITING! 

I hope to put a new video up this week. I’m also contemplating doing an audio version of Chapter 1. I’ve heard that those a pretty popular, however you’ll have to endure my southern accent.

Also, the Author Promo Network had me as their Featured Author last week. You can find it here. 

Alrighty! Done with the news updates, on to the fun stuff:

ROWE BLACKWELL

Rowe Blackwell was raised to fear and loath his brother, Keleir, but never did. The two banded together against their abusive parents until Keleir ran away in the middle of the night after killing their father. Rowe’s mother later remarried. When he was ten, his mother sold him to the army in lieu of their taxes. Once in the army, he was reunited with Keleir and followed him down the black path the Rauke led him. He grew increasingly disgusted with himself and what he was doing to innocent people in the name of his king. He attempted to starve himself to death as punishment, but Saran nursed him back to health and showed him the path to the rebellion. He worked alongside her for a year  before Keleir joined their cause.  Rowe Blackwell is a Lightning Mage.

Thank you again for all your support! Chime in and let me know if are interested in audio versions of the chapters or what you’d like to learn about in the next video!

Hello my Knightmares!

I have something special to announce. As of last Wednesday, we officially hit 250! So in visual hyperbole, here’s a 250 point font of the number 250 for your viewing pleasure!

The Knightmares will officially be made into a book for everyone to read. This is the benchmark I needed to hit, and I couldn’t be happier that we made it. 

Thanks to everyone who has bought a copy, those of you who promoted me for the sake of friendship, or just because you’re an awesome person and wanted to see my dream become a reality. You’re all awesome in my book (Ha, book! Get it?).

A special shout out to Jamison Stone (buy his book here!) for helping me to grab several extra orders last week. And another special shout out to Lisa Van Brunt, who nabbed the 250th order to put me over the top.

As the last 24 days run down, please grab an extra copy for a friend, or if you’re one of those people who waits until the last moment to jump on the bandwagon, do it now! Let’s run this up as close to 300 as possible, if not more!

Thanks again, and stay tuned for more updates to come!

Happy #NationalReadABookDay !!!

It has been a few weeks since I last sent out an update, on the day of Welcome to Deadland’s publication, and I wanted to send out a quick message to thank you all once again and say I hope you’ve all been enjoying the novel!

I also wanted to share a bit of a raffle I’ve put together. Some of you already know this about me, but I love and collect postcards. Whenever friends and family travel I only request a postcard as a souvenir, and the cover design elements for Welcome to Deadland were inspired by postcards as well. During the past few weeks I had the opportunity to travel through Europe, and while I was in Munich, London, and Paris I picked up postcards and used them for a handwritten short story set in the universe of Welcome to Deadland. I will be raffling off the postcards/short story, as well as a series of WtD inspired postcards I’m having made, and here’s how you can enter:

1. Order a copy of Welcome to Deadland through Inkshares.

2. Recommend Welcome to Deadland to a friend, and when they purchase a copy, you will both be entered.

3. Rate/Review Welcome to Deadland on Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Each site you post a rating or review will count as one entry, by doing so on all three sites you will receive three entries. If you rate AND review the book, you will earn an extra entry.

4. Tweet me or post to Welcome to Deadland’s Facebook page fun pictures of your copy of the book or fan art from the story!

At the end of the month I will choose one winner who will receive the handwritten story and the Welcome to Deadland postcards, but I will also choose several additional winners for the WtD inspired postcards! There are multiple ways to win, and multiple ways to earn entries!

The best way to help a book, and author, achieve success is through leaving reviews and recommending the book to friends. Each review and rating matters. 

Thank you!

-Zac 

BIG NEWS AHEAD!

Hi, everyone!

Thank you so much! We’re well up over 100 pre-orders, and we’re solidly in 4th in the Geek and Sundry Contest. That’s pretty great, but only the top 3 get published, and we’re a good 20 readers short of catching third place! But just think--if every reader strong-armed one more person into ordering, we’d double our readership like that! Even if you asked persistently but nicely, we’d make a huge leap.

If you’re still on the fence about whether The Fairy Stepmother, Inc. is for you, perhaps this will help. This is an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from Part 3!

“No! I assure you, Madam, we did not mean to insult you!” Lady DeVries cried.

“Your protestations are unbecoming. For your insolence, I will lay upon your daughter an ancient curse! Be warned: If the child sees even the smallest ray of sunlight before her first birthday, she will suffer a fate worse than death!”

Well, she had certainly borrowed a page from old Millie’s book, I thought. The violet-clad noblewoman laughed and spun on her heel. She spotted me in the crowd and smiled a sinister grin, while my mouth hung open. It was her. Here. My old finishing school nemesis, Millicent Carabosse.

I was left staring at the door while Sarissa (and many of the other guests) burst into tears.

“Pull all the blinds!” Sarissa shrieked. The entire party leapt into action, shutting out every bit of natural sunlight. That got my attention.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “That was Millicent Carabosse. I went to school with her. She can’t really curse anything!” The women all stared at me blankly.

“Evelyn, you can’t risk something like this,” Maribelle insisted.

“You saw what that fairy did to me, Mom!” Fanchon whispered.

I bit my lip. “Yes,” I said carefully, “but there’s no way in the world old Cankles Millie is actually a fairy!”

What’s that, you say? That sure doesn’t sound like Cinderella? You’re so right! Evelyn’s got way too much story for just one fairy tale! So if you’d like to see Evelyn fight her way through the likes of Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, and a handful of obscure but delightful tales, pre-order today! And please, sit your friends down and make ’em work those credit cards!

-Maggie

Happy Labor Day everyone!

Here is an awesome picture by Phil Rood to celebrate a day off work, some tasty demon hearts, and the workers that brought us this holiday!

Hello everyone!

It’s been a while since my last update and I have lots of news!

First, the developmental edits are done. This was a massive job I’ve been tackling for the last 5 weeks that even involved me taking two weeks off work and doing nothing else for the entire time. I’m happy to say the time was well spent and the book has improved in leaps and bounds. My amazing developmental editor gave me lots of work that mostly involved adding in more of pretty much everything and making sure the story and wording were clear. Usually editors recommend cutting chapters, characters or even entire story arcs at this stage, so being asked to do the opposite was a very positive sign!

I’ve uploaded the most recent versions of the sample chapters onto my Inkshares page for anyone who’s curious about the changes. We still have copy editing to get through and then proofreading so these samples will get polished up a little more yet before going to print.

Second, the publication date has been pushed back to May 30th, 2017. There were a number of production and marketing reasons for the change. But the positive side of it is I got a couple extra weeks to work on developmental editing and a slightly more relaxed schedule for the following stages.

And finally, I should have a couple early versions of my book cover back from the cover designer around September 15th which I will be sure to send out to gauge everyone’s opinion!

Thank you all for your continued patience and support! The Bones of the Past is well on its way and it’s going to be awesome!

 Cheers!

Hey you beautiful people!

We are still bouncing back and forth between 5th and 6th this week. Right now we have 94 Unique Readers and we need 23 more Unique Readers to pre-order in order to get into the Top 3. The gap is widening, but I’m not going to be disheartened by it. As much as winning this contest would open a lot of life-changing doors or as much as I think my book is worth making it into the Top 3, it is definitely a matter of how many people you know and  I’ve almost reached the end of my network. I have a lot of maybe’s on the fence, but not 23 of them. I desperately need your help.

I can’t repay you with pre-orders, because I don’t have the monetary means to do that. But I can repay you with graphic design work like cover art, bookmark design, fliers, etc (excluding illustrated work). I can also repay you with recommendations and reviews on your work. Just message me! 

Anyway! Onward to some cool things. How would you like some history about one of the main characters? 

KELEIR AHRIMAN

Keleir was born cursed with the soul of a Rauke at war with his own. A Rauke is a creature forged from the excess matter left over at the birth of a universe, and can only exist by taking a human child as a host. Like all children born with a Rauke, Keleir was surnamed Ahriman, which means darkness. From the time he was born, until he turned five, his village tortured him in the hopes that it would save him from his curse, but it ended up unleashing another, more terrible one instead. He killed his father and brought a Blood Curse upon himself, which allowed the Rauke control. He fled and was taken in by the Adrid army, where he fought for them and earned the bloody reputation: Lifesbane. For thirteen years the Rauke was in control of Keleir’s body until Saran found a way to give his consciousness the reins again. Keleir has spent the last five years atoning for his sins by helping the rebellion he almost crushed and fighting to keep the Rauke at bay. Keleir Ahriman is a Fire Mage.

Second treat: A short, old bit of writing I did a few years ago |Click Here|. 

Next week I’ll have another character profile up and another random bit of writing for you to enjoy. Have a great weekend guys!