Guys...this is it.

There’s only one day left in the Nerdist contest, and we are STILL in fourth place, despite seeing some absolutely remarkable support the past few days. Our competition is simply seeing as much success as we are, if not more. We were able to close the gap between our position and third place down to just twelve pre-orders...right now it’s climbed back up to 17 and still rising.

Remember: third place is as good as first for this contest. All three get the same prize: that coveted full publication deal. If we place in fourth, though...nothing. I could campaign the hard way and gather 750 pre-orders like I did for Tantalus Depths. But I won’t. I can’t. The last campaign was the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do by far, and I do not have the energy, stamina, or resources to do it again. My physical and mental health probably would not allow for it. Not any time soon. I knew that from the start when I entered the contest: I either make it, or I don’t.

It’s all or nothing, folks. I want to tell this story, but if we can’t place in the top three, it’s going back on the shelf indefinitely. You’ll get refunded, but the book won’t see the light of day for who knows how long.

So I’m appealing to you all one more time: if anything in Proteus seems interesting to you, please support it with a pre-order. If you already have, please get a friend or loved one to do the same. Remember, referrals will get you a commissioned art piece if you want it! Win or lose, I’ll honor that promise.

Thank you all, for everything you’ve done for this campaign so far.

Now cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.

Good lord...I don’t even have words...

We did it. We finally did it.

After campaigning day and night since March...after losing literally hundreds of orders in the credit abuse scandall....after extending the campaign a whole two extra months...We’ve done it. We’ve reached the full publishing goal of 750 copies.

Tantalus Depths is a book now. It’s an honest to God book with a full publication deal. It’s happening.

It took 461 people and six syndicates to make this happen. Of particular note is the Idosyncraticate Syndicate, which swooped in out of absolutely nowhere and pushed us over the final line. Thank you all, from the depths of my heart. I love you all for this.

I’ll have more words soon, when I can process them. For now, I can only say: thank you.

My life changed forever today. I owe that to you.

At long last, an update on the progress of things! Tantalus Depths​ is officially 100% funded, and I am so, so thankful for that. I couldn’t have possibly managed any of this without your extensive help. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for making this happen. So what’s next?



Watch the vlog for details, but here’s the summarized version: I’m working on my final round of edits before I send Inkshares my finished manuscript. There’ll be a wait before they can pair me up with an editor and put me into the production process, and the entire process could take quite a while. But we’re on our way, and the greatest obstacles are well behind us now. Happy Thanksgiving to all, and congratulations to Kelly Miloro​ for winning my "name-a-planet promotion" thing. You’ve earned it :)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the newest world in the Colonial Hegemony: Miloro.

 

As a promotion for Tantalus Depths’ campaign, I promised to name a planet after whoever brought in the most referrals to the campaign, and that honor went to Kelly Miloro. Technically, this is a moon, but it’s close enough as far as I’m concerned.
Progress is still well underway with the final revisions of Tantalus Depths. I’m further behind than I meant to be, because I was waiting to hear feedback from my last beta reader. I’ve now received it, and it opened my eyes to a lot of things I want to adjust to improve pacing and the buildup of tension. I want to make this book as good as possible for everyone, so these revisions are well worth any extra wait. It’s possible that I won’t be able to finish them by the end of the year, however I will release that exclusive prologue I promised before the year’s end.
Pre-orders are still very much open, if you haven’t already put yours in. Maybe order one for someone’s Christmas present? It’ll probably be done by...next...Christmas...

Also, if you missed the previous update about the other exoplanets of the Colonial Hegemony I released during my campaign, you can check them out below. Just click a planet and you’ll be sent to its full bio.

My friends, we’ve made another strong push for progress today. We’ve narrowed the gap between us and third place down to only 18, and I’m still pushing to reduce that further. As much progress as we’ve made today, though, a lot more remains. Our competition is still moving forward relentlessly, and I fully anticipate a last-minute surge. We are down to the last two days, so if anyone’s been holding out to the end, now is the time for reinforcements.

No long update today, because I’m honestly too busy trying to drag in pre-orders to write one, so here’s this instead. Share it with your friends! This is not a story about heroes. Nobody comes out of this one with clean hands. This is a story that deals in shades of monstrosity. If you’re ready to see some deeply messed-up characters deal with some even more messed-up situations, hop on board and pre-order this thing.

Hello once again my friends.

This has been a very, very long week. This time last week we were in the top three, Now we’re trailing behind in fourth by 22 pre-orders. But it was 29 pre-orders this morning! We gained a lot of ground today, and that’s something I think all of us should be proud of. We can’t stop yet, though. We can’t even pause.

Less than three days remain in this contest. The victors will be decided on Tuesday, and I aim to be among them. 22 pre-orders is both so little and so much. So little because it is definitely, absolutely possible for us to get them and catch up to where we were; at the beginning of this contest, we were able to get that many in just a single day, and a few days ago we were able to get 18 all in one day. But...it’s so much because that was then and this is now. That was before I called upon everyone I know for help. That was back when I had enough money to run a couple ads, that was before most of the people I knew I could count on had placed their orders. Right now...I don’t know where those 22 orders are going to come from.

So once again, I’m calling out to you all for your support. If you haven’t yet, talk to your spouse about this. Talk to your parents. Talk to your siblings. Your best friends. Your coworker who’s always reading during lunch breaks. Talk to anyone you can think of; if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this campaign and the one for Tantalus Depths, it’s that you absolutely never know who might be willing to help you when you need it.

The odds are not quite in our favor right now, but I insist on optimism. I must proceed as if victory is a forgone conclusion. If I try as hard as I can and fail, I will be content. If I give up when I could have won, I’ll never forgive myself. So I take the path of positivity, just like our final highlighted character, Katie Salvador.

Katie Salvador

When civil war divided the crew of The Somnambule, it was the first true conflict ever witnessed by the third and fourth generation crewmen. To the naive and isolated descendants of The Somnambule’s original crew, the terrors of battle and mutiny were an awakening, a loss of innocence. For most noncombatants, the mere notion that their fellow crew members were killing one another in the mid-decks was enough to crush the youthful optimism fostered by a lifetime of security. Not so for Katie Salvador.

A fourth generation member of The Somnambule’s crew, Katie was a constant source of positivity and optimism, sharing her excess of cheer with every member of the ship’s crew she encountered. Like everyone else born on the ship, Katie was selected from a young age to fulfill a set of specific roles within the ship’s hierarchy. Katie was selected to join the ship’s medical staff, and while she took to her assigned job with the same zeal she applied to the rest of her life, her natural desire to help others led her to voluntarily pick up additional responsibilities in the ship.

By the age of twelve, she was already spending much of her free time in the hydroponic farms on the ship’s inner decks, taking great pleasure in tending to the various crop plants and helping them grow. She continued with this side work into her teens, even while she began to work full shifts in the ship’s infirmaries.

When Marion Krieg led her rebellion in an attempt to seize control of the ship, Katie pulled double shifts in the infirmary to treat the wounded, and continued to do so until the conflict resolved to a tense stalemate when Krieg’s rebels retreated to the lower decks.

Though the loyalist members of the crew had successfully thwarted Krieg’s initial rebellion, it had come at great cost. Many members of The Somnambule’s security force were killed in the battle, and with the conflict remaining unresolved, new recruits had to be drafted from the ship’s civilian population to replace them. Seeing a new opportunity to serve, Katie volunteered to take up arms and join the security force.

Training under her father, the head of the security force, Katie quickly learned the basics of combat. Her extensive medical training saw her fit well into a support role as a combat medic. Though still only 16 years old, Katie served as a vital member of the loyalists’ makeshift militia, not only for her skills as a healer, but for the warmth of her personality. Katie provided her brothers and sisters in arms with an endless supply of positivity in a time when morale could not have sunk lower...

Apparently, it’s been a good four months since I gave an update about Tantalus Depths, which, frankly, is inexcusable. Particularly given that I’d said my next updates would have come by the end of the year. Turns out I am really bad at setting deadlines for myself, and this is something I am going to work on fixing going forward.

Fortunately, the update I have for you is a great one.

 

Yes, after far too much deliberation with my personal final round of edits, I have finally submitted my manuscript of Tantalus Depths to Inkshares, along with the various other paperwork necessary to get the production process going. My last round of feedback from my beta readers gave me a lot of ideas for things to work on, and I’ve incorporated lots of changes into the book that greatly improve the pacing and tension.

Technically, Tantalus Depths was more or less submission-ready as soon as the pre-order campaign ended, and I could have sent it in right then. I’ll be getting extensive help with editing as a part of the production process, with professional editors, so I could have thrown my manuscript to them right at the beginning for them to sort out. I could have done that…but I really couldn’t have done that. This story is too important to me, and I feel that you, as my supporters, deserve a book that is as good as it can possibly be. I’m confident that the extra time and effort put into the manuscript before submitting it to Inkshares will improve a story that I’m already proud of, and I think you’ll be really pleased with the result.

Now, because people are going to ask, submitting my manuscript does NOT mean it’s going to be published immediately. Technically, the production process hasn’t begun yet. It’s going to be a while before Inkshares has time to devote to Tantalus Depths; other excellent, well-deserving books are ahead of me in line, and Inkshares can only work on so many projects at once. What this DOES mean, though, is that the timer has officially started. I have personally done everything I have to do to get the production process started; the ball is in Inkshares’ court now, and they’ll get it rolling as soon as they can.

The production process for a book can take a year or longer, so realistically, don’t expect Tantalus Depths to come out until sometime in 2018. I can promise you, though, that I will update you on its progress in production as soon as I’m updated myself (realistically, there’s no possible way I’ll be able to keep quiet when I hear the news that they’ve launched production)

Do expect to see more other Tantalus Depths-related content in the future. I haven’t forgotten my campaign promise to release an Inkshares-exclusive prologue to the book (I temporarily tabled it to focus on the book people paid for), and I have many other irons in the fire. I look forward to bringing them all to you before too long.

Strap yourselves in, folks. Our voyage is just beginning. 

  No particular news for Tantalus Depths itself right now. I’ve not heard anything from Inkshares about the next step in the production process, but it’s still early and I hadn’t expected to yet.
I am currently working on the promised prologue chapter, but I’m toying with the idea of making two smaller ones instead of one larger one, as I have two interesting ideas that can’t be easily combined. We’ll see how that goes.
My main purpose for this update is not for me, or even for Tantalus Depths. I wanted to take an opportunity to show my heartfelt appreciation for a good friend. 
I met Tahani Nelson through Inkshares during our mutual pre-order campaigning period. Her book, The Last Faoii, caught my attention quickly. Kaiya, her resolute protagonist, has a knack for overcoming impossible hardships without giving up even in the bleakest of circumstances, and is exactly the sort of character I strove to depict with Mary Ketch. I kind of see the two characters as cross-genre sisters.
As I’ve gotten to know Tahani better as a person, I’ve learned the true extent that the character imitates the author. She’s overcome no small number of impossible obstacles, and though they continue coming her way, she resolutely pushes through them without giving an inch of ground. She’s a real-life Kaiya, and so, in many ways, a real life Mary.
I felt a person like Tahani deserves to be immortalized in writing. The universe of Tantalus Depths is an unforgiving, dark place. Human civilization is a constantly imperiled thing; a child swimming obliviously among sharks. Yet, one of the core tenants of Tantalus Depths and any associated stories, is the notion that, in spite of these dangers, humanity endures. We may always be at the brink of destruction, but through determination and sheer force of will, we survive against the odds.
Tahani represents this to me, in life. To properly show what that means to me, I’ve named a planet for her, which I will include some capacity into the Tantalus Depths universe. If I can sneak it into Tantalus Depths somewhere during the revision phases to come, I will. If I can’t find anywhere to slip it in where it feels natural, it will be referenced at some point in the upcoming sequel. Either way, the presence of this planet in the Colonial Hegemony is now and forever canon.
Shields up, Faoii.  

 

Today’s big announcement has almost nothing to do with Tantalus Depths, but it is still a very big announcement.

As many of you already know, Inkshares is teaming up with Nerdist right now to host a science fiction novel contest. The top three books at the end of the contest will win the full publishing treatment, the same deal we earned for Tantalus Depths last year, but without the agonizing process of having to round up 750 preorders first.

I deliberated for weeks about whether I should enter the contest or not. The book I wanted to enter is one of my boldest endeavors and I’m incredibly proud of it, but in many ways I feel like I’m still recovering from my last campaign, and I’m definitely not excited about taking that plunge once more. But ultimately the deciding factor that made me decide to go ahead and go for it was the competition. Right now, with just 20 days to go, the pre-order numbers on the current leaderboard are unusually low for a contest like this. At the time of writing this, I could make it to the top 3 with less than 50 pre-orders. That’s a far cry from 750, and I feel I must capitalize on this opportunity.

So I’ve entered the fray: my second full novel, Proteus, is now available for pre-order. It’s a sci-fi psychological thriller set in the same universe as Tantalus Depths, but featuring completely different characters and events. It’s ambitious to the point of impertinence, as it is a direct adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Richard III that also deals with themes of wartime PTSD, transhumanism, and the duality of man.

I can’t do anything halfway, it seems.

Here is the link, please check it out. There will be a wealth of new information coming every day for the duration of this intense but very short campaign. I wouldn’t have entered this contest yet if I didn’t think we could win it. The support we raised for Tantalus Depths was simply mind-blowing, and if we can recapture just one fifteenth of that miracle again, we’ll have not one but two books entering the production process. This could make the difference between me being an author as a hobby and me being an author as a career.

Before you go, I want to pre-emptively answer some questions I expect will be raised by this announcement:

Q: You jerk, I already ordered a book and I still don’t have it. WHERE’S MA BOOK???

A: It’s coming! I sent the manuscript in about a month ago. It takes months for a book to go through the production process, and that timer doesn’t begin until the manuscript is submitted. Tantalus Depths will probably not be released until the end of the year at the absolute earliest, more likely early next year. BUT anyone who’s ordered it and is particularly eager to get their hands on a copy and doesn’t want to wait until then, I will happily send you the current draft upon request. If you don’t mind reading an in-process manuscript, that is.

Q: What happens if you lose the contest?

A: You get your money back. If I fail to place in the top three, I could continue to campaign the normal way until I raise enough pre-orders (that’s exactly what happened with Tantalus Depths) but there’s no way I’m putting myself through that right now. I’ve set my campaign to only run one week past the end of the contest, at which point it will expire and anyone who ordered a copy will be immediately refunded. Either I win this contest, or nothing. Not until a future date when I’m more ready for it.

Q: How will this campaign affect the production of Tantalus Depths?

A: It won’t. Tantalus Depths is top priority. The only reason I have time to campaign right now is because I’m still waiting to be assigned a production team; at the moment, there’s nothing I can do for Tantalus. During the production process, there is a lot of going back and forth between me and my editor, so there will be patches of time when I will be working on Tantalus and when I won’t be. Any time I have to choose between working on Tantalus and working on Proteus, Tantalus will always take priority.

Any other questions or concerns, feel free to message me about them.