Just another Art Update. Here's the interior of Aurelius's planet hopper, "The Storm Chaser" from the latest chapter entitled "Extenuating Circumstances"

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Happy all the things!

I don’t care what you celebrate, just make sure you enjoy yourself.

Before I go off and eat all the food and drink all the alcohol, I have some cool news to share with all of you. It’s done. I’ve approved the printer-ready files for both the interior and cover of The Life Engineered. This baby is going to press. The final cover is maybe a little different than you remember though. Have a look:

Oh what’s that? Can’t make out the blurb there? Here, enjoy a close up:

I’m a pretty big Battlestar Galactica fan, so you can imagine how awesome this feels for me. If you don't know who Leah Cairns is, look it up. She's awesome.

As always; I couldn’t have done it without you and hopefully this train keeps rolling forward. I’ll see you guys in the new year. In the meantime, do me a favour; stay safe.

JF

Season’s Greetings!

There might not be any snow on the ground (at least not for most of us), but the final days of December are, in fact, here. As of today, Seven Shards has exactly ONE month to finish funding. I’m pretty confident that we’ll make it. So confident, in fact, that I’m not even going to ask for your help.

...Aw, who am I kidding? I could always use some help! If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, please do! And if you haven’t given the book a shoutout on your favorite social platform yet, well now would be a great time to do so, please and thank you!

(Or if you’ve done both of these things already, please sit tight. I continue to be tremendously thankful and couldn’t possibly ask for anything more!)

So, onto updates! Let’s see…

This past Saturday was the Inkshares Review-a-Thon! Thanks to the enormous efforts of powerhouse A.C. Weston (author of She Is the End ), the event was a great big success. Ginormous, even!

I’d like to give a shout-out to each of the wonderful people that left me a review on Saturday! Thank You to:

• Peter Birdsall, author of Feyside, a character-driven fantasy adventure that combines the wonder of steampunk with the magic of fairies.

• S.M. Hillman, author of The Faceless, a sci-fi tale of revenge, discovery, and difficult choices.

• Stephen Carignan, author of both The Sleeping Man (an immersive and imaginative fantasy) and Labels and Jellyspoons (a collection of poetry). Both are in the ‘Draft’ stage and well-worth following!

• Alan Tucker, author of The Devil You Know, an apocalyptic sci-fi with a heavy dose of humor.

• Andrew Wood, author of Storm of Fury, an epic fantasy with a truly unique antagonist.

• Thomas J. Arnold, author of Exile, Magus, a true epic fantasy full of adventure and exotic dangers!

• Jamison Stone, author of Rune of the Apprentice, and action-packed epic fantasy that is already attracting a huge following.

and

• Deborah L. Smith, a great family-friend-aunt and all around wonderful person!

Many, many, maaaaannnny kind words were said and I'm still buzzing from it. And blushing. Lots of blushing.

A new Author Interview is up on Myths Mists & Musings, featuring Tony Valdez. I, of course, recommend giving it a read. 

And to those that occasionally check my blog, you may have noticed that I never posted a NaNoWriMo: Week 4 entry. Fret not! This doesn’t mean that I bailed on NaNoWriMo, it simply means that I haven’t gotten around to blogging about it. In case it ends up on the back burner indefinitely, let me say now that words were written and it was good.

And as of yesterday, I finished all of my Christmas shopping! Whew!

That’s all for now. I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday full of family, friends, warmth, and at least a few hours spent curled up with a book!

Phew that #inksharesreviews day though!  It was super fun to spend the day reading other people's submissions.  Thanks to everyone who reviewed DHM and Shadow of the Panther.  Your words about my words were incredibly touching and make me want to write!  We also reached out 50 order mark, which means I got to celebrate with my pizza party!  Congrats to Peter Birdsall for winning the $20 worth of pizza.  I hope you get to nom nom to your hearts content whilst reading awesome things.

Listening to the post Review-a-thon livestream now.  It was a good day overall, even if it did nearly destroy my hands.  Only got about 1/3 of the way through my list of books I wanted to review today at 9 reviews posted.  In the interest of keeping this update brief, I'll post up the links below, and let you go to the book page to read the reviews if you're interested.

Anabelle's Dream and Other Stories by A.R. Patterson

Captain by Artie Sievers

Daughter of the Mara by Alex Bittner

Dax Harrison by Tony Valdez

Deus Hex Machina by Amanda Orneck

Feyside by Peter Birdsall

Seven Shards: The Colors of Wine by C. Brenneke

She is the End by A.C. Weston

Storm of Fury by Andrew Wood

Finally, we didn't hit the threshold for me to start posting Chapter 6 of Exile, Magus, so instead I'll be posting Chapter 1 section 3 of Exile, Hunted.  Definite spoiler concerning Palkaz in this one, and to a lesser extend Pentaz and Talari(you haven't met her yet in the current early Exile, Magus chapters).

Thanks for your time and support.  I need to rest my poor, swollen hands now.