If someone offered you a $100 bill or the chance to keep everything you might find on a sunken treasure hunt, which would you choose?

ENHANCED finished 12th out of 335 in the Nerdist/Inkshares Contest, and we celebrated that achievement knowing we did so well because of you. Because our families and friends have generous spirits and a staunch belief in us and our book. Because total strangers -- many of them authors on Inkshares -- saw something worthwhile in our story and our writing.

Thanks to the author-friendly mission the Inkshares team promotes, we've even earned the right to Quill publication. We could put at least 315 copies of ENHANCED in our supporters' hands. On demand. Under a non-exclusive rights agreement.

Sounds like a golden opportunity, right?

But our favorite agent in the publishing industry informed us, "If the book is under contract with anyone, the agent will not represent it, unless it's self-published and selling really well."

So we had to choose between the $100 bill and the sunken treasure hunt.

What's life without risk and uncertainty? We're grabbing our scuba gear and heading for the Caribbean.

Three things before we go:

1. ENHANCED is currently being evaluated for its adaptability to film and television in the Book Pipeline Competition. The best part is that you don't have to do anything. But we hope you'll wish us well and follow our progress on Facebook  and Twitter.

2. Please support these worthwhile projects from the Nerdist/Inkshares Contest:

Single Version by Scott Barsotti -- so much more than just an extremely well-written Roach Punk story with an utterly original take and style.

Disintegration by Steve Soldwedel -- gritty and cinematic, diverse and multi-layered, with tyrannical aliens, never-say-die warriors, and spaceships. It's like old school scifi, but better. 

Ghosts of War by Paul Robinson -- fast-paced action + memorable characters + classic scifi dialog with a twist of now = an exciting story.

Presenting Complaints by Jamie Brindle -- a laugh-out-loud skewering of England's National Health Service, which Jamie just released on Amazon, iBooks, and Smashwords.

Current by Thomas A. Fowler -- reminiscent of Michael Crichton’s work, it promises tense adventure/mystery based on environmental progress. Fowler is currently querying agents.

And maybe most important,

3. Thank you, Inkshares for the possibilities you offer and the lessons you provide about marketing, competing with class, and how to persevere. Your entire team is a bright light showing aspiring authors hope and how to make it real. Special thanks to Avalon. What would we have done without you? You're warm, patient, knowledgeable, and encouraging -- the best kind of human being. We'll keep coming back to our Inkshares family to discover new authors and new favorite books. And who knows? Maybe we'll present something new of our own right here to see how the world feels about it.