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.

Hey Everyone,

Quick update for today.

Yesterday Weaponized was featured by the fine folks at Daily Dead. Head here to check out their coverage---->;;;; Horror Highlights!

On another note. We’re quickly climbing toward 75 pre-orders. Once we hit that number I’ll be releasing what I consider to be the most controversial chapter of the novel. It’s something I’ve been hesitant to share but given the overwhelming support - I figure it’s time to dive into this insanity head first. 

For those of you still on the fence, I’m working with some comic artists to get some crazy good incentives for those of you who have pre-ordered. Stay tuned for that.

Until then,

Thank you! And keep the infection spreading!

Hey there, readers!

My TimeHop app on my phone just informed me that today marks two anniversaries...

1) Today is one year to the day since I joined Inkshares and started my book campaign.
2) 26 years since the classic Disney cartoon TaleSpin premiered in 1990.

Anyone around my age probably has the theme song stuck in their head now. You’re welcome. (If not, here you go)

They really just don’t make them like they used to. Seriously though, bush pilots and air pirates in 1930s-40s style serial adventures? This is the kind of stuff that fuels me. Granted, Dax takes place in the far future, but the spirit is the same.

Speaking of which, I hope you all are enjoying the early ebook! I am both excited and terrified to hear your reviews. :) In the meantime, I’m continuing to occupy myself with a few things on my to-do list.

1) A proper book trailer
2) Scraping together all my notes and carving out an outline for Dax 2. Ooooh I want to talk about it so bad but I don’t want to spoil anything!

I’ve also updated the synopsis on the book project page to better reflect what I think might be the back cover copy. Again, I’ll keep you all posted on the publishing date.

Until next time!

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.

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 

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!

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 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!