Good day, everyone. Now that this campaign has finally crossed the century mark in pre-sales, it’s time to announce something near and dear to my heart.

For those of you who don’t know, I am Canadian and live in our nation’s most populous province, Ontario.

One dollar (in Canadian dollars) from each copy of Bane of All Things sold during this campaign will be donated to Autism Ontario (www.autismontario.com). This registered charitable organization is the leading source of information and referral on autism in the province and one of the largest collective voices representing the autism community in Canada.

Why am I doing this? Simple. His name is William. He’s 13 years old and he’s my son. And he has two cousins, Aidan and Tristan. All three are autistic. 

I will make this donation whether or not my Inkshares campaign is successful. That’s right – even if we fail to reach the target, that gift will be given, on behalf of all of you who kindly offered your support.

But, the more books sold, the larger that donation will be. 

In closing, I want to give a special thanks to all of you who came on board to support this campaign since my last update. It doesn’t matter what level of support you have provided, you matter. My deepest thanks. Please continue to spread the word if you have any friends or family whom you think will also enjoy this gritty, fantastical tale.

I do want to give a shout out to Linda Simpson. Not only did she come on board as a Super-Reader last week, she promptly recruited two other Super-Readers.

(Linda runs Performance Plus Rehabilitative Care Inc. (www.PPRC.ca), which specializes in providing personal employment counseling services to Ontario residents with physical, psychological or developmental disabilities looking to enter the workforce.)

That’s all for now, happy reading.

Cheers

Leo

Hello everyone!

I realize it’s been a long time since my last update, and I have reasons ranging from a back injury that’s been plaguing me for months (that seems to finally be resolved) and of course, just putting my head down and trying to move The Tide of Madness closer to completion.

I won’t lie, the finish line is still a way off. The first draft had more problems with it than I had hoped. But with so many different points of view, continuity issues are to be expected. The majority of the characters in The Bones of the Past were separate enough that I didn’t have to worry so much about a day here or there. But Tide will see a lot more interaction between the various characters, so I have to be a lot more careful. I’m writing shorter chapters (splitting up each point of view) and tightening up the timeline as much as possible. Still, I’ve been hard at work and I’ve finalized the order for the 57 chapters and made the tough decision to cut a side story out of the book (hopefully just moved to book three but that’s a problem for another day).

The three notebooks in the picture hold – among elements for the following book – the last sections of the Tide of Madness that I need to integrate into the version on my computer. The majority of my creative writing still happens with pen and paper and is one of the ways I make the commute for my day job part of my writing day. This guarantees that I have at least 45 minutes once or twice a day set aside to dig further into my world and fill in the insane puzzle I created for myself.

Most recently, I’ve been getting into the backstory of some of the side characters. Min’s story is about done and was rather refreshing to write – just one point of view and a nice simple story arc. I may or may not put it out there for people to read as a novella in the future, though my focus remains on The Tide of Madness and the as-yet-unnamed book 3 for now. If there are any minor characters you’re curious about, let me know! I’ll be looking for a new side project in a month or so for those days when I’m not able to spend enough time at my computer to make significant headway on the rewrite.

Thank you all yet again for your patience and support!