For Day 2 of my week of referrals, I want to direct your attention to a fascinating book that’s been campaigning slowly but steadily, amassing a large following without much fanfare. Yet its success so far is no surprise at all; once you do catch sight of this book, it holds your attention from then on.

Murder at the Veterans’ Club is exactly what you hope it will be: a pure love letter to the golden age of detective fiction. Set in post WWI London, Murder at the Veterans’ Club follows Eric Peterkin as he seeks to find the truth behind the murder of a colleague, seeking the answers to a crime the police have no intention of solving.

Christopher Huang has clearly written this book out of a deep-seated love for the genre, and it shows. The tone, plot, characterization and language are all painstakingly delivered in the style of classic detective literature, resulting in a story that reads as if it were a manuscript recently pulled from a vault left sealed for 90 years.

If you yearn for a new Holmes or Poirot novel, you owe it to yourself to give Peterkin a try.

Last week I fought dragons.

 

And we will always fight them. It doesn’t matter how well you plan, or how much you;ve organized yourself, a dragon will always rise. The dragon might be a massive creature, casting a shadow that devours all light. The dragons might be tiny, fearsome beasts, nipping and snarling as they clutter around your path. There will always be dragons, and we will always fight them.

Last week I fought dragons. I knew they were coming; that their approach was only a matter of time. I felt them out there, looming where the light ends. I know my dragons well, after all, that’s a big reason why I write humor. For now the dragons are gone, and though I am a little wearier, I will continue to push forward. A Beast Requires lives, and so do I.

I want to do something a little different this week for my reader updates.
I’ve been slaving away at this campaign for five whole months now, with more than another whole month to go. It’s been exhausting, at times very discouraging, and always very stressful. I’ve been hit with huge obstacles that threatened to bring the whole campaign down, and yet in spite of all that, I’ve come really far. This campaign has grown and become something I honestly never really believed it could. We are, in spite of it all, well on our way to full funding, and I do believe we’ll get there.
I’ve worked my butt off to get here, and you’ve all been immensely supportive. That, honestly, is where the real credit goes. No matter how much time and effort I put into this campaign, it couldn’t have gone anywhere at all without the incredible support from friends and strangers alike.

But not everyone on Inkshares gets that kind of response to their projects.

An unfortunate but inevitable aspect of the Inkshares platform is that, just by nature of how crowdfunding works, it isn’t strictly a meritocracy. People who are good at campaigning stand a better chance of hitting their publication goals than people who are good at writing. I, for one, freely admit that I am terrible at campaigning. I’ve gotten this far as much from luck as anything else. But not everyone here is lucky. I’ve seen so many promising books fail to hit their goals simply because they could not find their audience.

Well...I have an audience. I’ve amassed a surprisingly decent-sized following. Obviously I still need that following to grow larger before Tantalus Depths will be able to get fully funded, but I’m getting there, and I have time. 

So this is what I’m doing this week: for this week, I’m taking a break from actively campaigning Tantalus Depths (at least as far as my reader updates go) and I’m going to spend it trying to bring projects to my supporters’ attention. Each day, until the end of the week, I’m going to highlight a different book that I think really deserves at least as much attention as mine. Please check them out, and seriously consider supporting these projects. Each of them is extremely promising and fully deserves your notice.

I’m kicking this week of recommendations off with One of the tenacious top 3 books in Geek and Sundry’s Fantasy Contest: Storm Song

(This awesome cover was made by another Fantasy Contest top-ten placeholder, Kaytalin Platt, author of The Living God. Check her out too.)

Storm Song forgoes the obvious Tolkeinesque high-fantasy route favored by so many of the fantasy contest’s less original and distinctive entrants in favor of a much simpler, yet endlessly promising premise. This is a story of adventure on the high seas: a true tale of swashbucklery.

It’s a tale of luck (good and bad), of discovery, of danger, daring, and dark magic. The book reads like an old salt’s tall tales in a seaside tavern; Allison’s writing has an effortless flow that almost makes you hear the deck boards creak beneath you, feel the roll of the waves and smell the salt in the air. Storm Song may very well have been transcribed directly from some old forgotten sea shanty and set down expertly in narrative form for our enjoyment. Reading the sample chapters is enrapturing: you’ll finish reading her excerpts before you fully realize you’ve begun.

If you’re interested in an epic tale of seaborne wonder and adventure, place a pre-order for Storm Song. You’ll never regret it.

Hey Adventure Readers, 

Together we have reached 200 preorders!  We still have a ways to go to hit that magic publishing number of 250, but I’m confident we’ll get there with all your help.  With 235 followers of the project and 122 people already placing their order, we should be able to get there this week if half of the remaining followers jump aboard for a high-flying seaplane adventure!!

Also, I’m very excited that todayis the worldwide release (in bookstores and online) of my 2nd Western novel "T.H. Elkman".  If you’re a western fan check it out on my website:  www.leandogproductions.com or on Amazon.com at:  https://www.amazon.com/T-H-Elkman-Western-Novel/dp/1510711864/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473206229&sr=8-1&keywords=eric+heisner

If you have placed a preorder for "Wings of the Pirate", go to my website and I will give you a discount on any of my books or Western merchandise at:  http://www.leandogproductions.com/general-store-merchandise/

Thank you all for your help in giving this novel wings!

Sincerely, 

Eric H. Heisner

Western & Adventure Author

 Well my friends, we did not win a Dragon Award. I was however at the ceremony and must say, it’s a privilege to have been nominated in the first year. There was a level of class (though some tremendous mispronunciation of my name) in these proceedings.

The Dragon Awards, if the they follow this course, may just be the classy award for fan favourite media that we’ve been hoping for. Not that other awards aren’t great, but Dragon Con has always been ’the people’s con’ and having been there myself, I can see why. So it makes sense that their award would follow that ideology.

In other news, I have to apologize. I had grandiose plans to have the campaign for Arch-Android, the sequel to The Life Engineered, ready for this coming weekend. I can’t say that this will be possible. Other obligations have piled up and I have to postpone. Worry not, the campaign is coming and the book will be in the spirit of the first one.

Thanks again for your continued support. Next year... we’ll get that award next year.

JF