Dear Friends today is my birthday!!

 I have many reasons to celebrate and one of the main ones is that my dream of becoming a published author will become true on November 8th, and that is thanks to all of you.  

Because it is my birthday, I want to ask you for a small present. Don’t worry it won’t cost you a penny. I want you to please log into your Inkshares account and follow the project for my second novel Worlds Walker.

Here is the link

Worlds Walker is the second book in The Catcher’s Trap trilogy, which I’m currently writing. My vision for this second book is exploring the darkest side of human nature. The first book was all about the evil magical creatures from The Mist and the horrors that human slaves had to endure. I want the second book to speak about our own capacity for cruelty and the idea that humans are not only victims or heroes, we are also aggressors.

I will continue working on this draft while uploading chapters and sharing content with you.

My plan is to launch the actual campaign on April 20th, 2017. Yup, you heard right. A year from today, on my birthday, I will be reaching out to all of you for support, so World Walker can become a reality.

Thanks again and have a drink on my behalf!

I don’t usually do two updates in one day but...

WE FUNDED!

So let me make something clear: I use the term ’we’ when talking about this campaign because while I write the book, it’s your support and encouragement that makes it happen. These aren’t empty words meant to artificially include you and make you feel like part of the process. The whole point of Inkshares is that this is a community effort. A symbiotic endeavour between reader and writer to help create works of fiction and bring them to the public.

There are a lot of people who have gone above and beyond for this to happen and I’d like to highlight at least three that can benefit immediately from your support:

John Robin, the author of Blood Dawn, spearheaded community efforts to rally people together after I called for help from fellow authors. John is a hard working writer and a helluva guy. Check out Blood Dawn and support it.

Andre Brun, my CEGEP buddy and author of Lies & Deception campaigned for me harder than I could campaign for myself. He leveraged his own book and his salesmanship skills to gather a ton of pre-orders and get A God in the Shed in front of many new pairs of eyes. Lies & Deception is a terrifyingly ambitious book that deserves your attention. Check it out.

Paul Inman, my cohost on WriteBrain and author of Ageless also lent a hand and was a big part of the community, leveraging the release of his own book to help get visibility for A God in the Shed. Check out Ageless, I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Finally, let me plug my buddy Brian Guthrie who was a great help and is currently participating in the Geek & Sundry Hard SciFi contest on Inkshares. Check out his book After Man and support it with all your heart (and pre-orders).

More soon as thing develop and, as promised:

JF

As promised, a long overdue weekend update.

I’m currently working to get the 2nd issue of my newsletter up and ready to send out by 5/1, and was happy to make my self-imposed deadline by sending out the 1st issue on 4/1 complete with a map sketch, bit of talk about the future of Exile, Magus, a dialogue between two characters which shed a bit of light on two ancient civilizations mentioned in Magus - Melexi and Thirosia, and a darkly comedic short story poking fun at a few tropes.  For any of you who are interested in reading that first issue then sign up for the newsletter before 4/30.  On 4/30 I’ll send out the April newsletter again to everyone who has signed up after it was sent out.  On 5/1 I’ll send out the May newsletter of course.

What about the progress of Exile, Magus?  Well, its mainly the super dull background work right now.  Polishing, contacting artists, and so on.  For any of you wondering if I’ll be making another go of trying to fund on Inkshares, yes I will.  I just want to make sure I’ve got a full strategy in place instead of jumping in blind again, so for now I’m focused on the dull background work which is why I’ve been so very quiet as of late.  Don’t worry though, I’m still here and I’m still working.

That’s all I’ve got for today, so thanks for your time, have good weekends everybody, and of course keep reading and enjoying!

Pop (champagne)! Hurrah! Cheers!

whooping 252 orders means that "And The Wolf Shall Dwell" will see the light of day!

I want to thank EACH and EVERYONE of you that have ordered. This was an intense month+ and you guys made it happen, on to phase two, which means trying to get this book to a staggering 750 orders (!) which will get the big Inkshares oiled machine behind us promoting and pushing. doable? not sure, but i will give it everything i got.

On with the update:
(1)
 #250 is Yan Liu (congrats!). She will have a character named after her that will have at least one line. #251 coming milliseconds after her is Roger Potter. Since i am a affable guy -some people now would smirk (or shout) -  Roger too will have a minor character named after him. and before you condemn me as a wise-guy, even though the novel takes place mostly in London, and Roger is a fairly common English name, there was no Roger thus far. There will be now (congrats!). 

(2)
Now that the book is a fact. I urge you (if you can afford it) to order again a "Spymaster" which is 3 REAL BOOKS. This will automatically get you in the Patron List inside the book for all of eternity .
Btw - all pre-ordered physical books come signed, and whoever meets me later on with his copy (or send it to me), will get a personalized message next to the signature, so stop asking me to do it, i humbly would do all 750 copies if it gets me there ;-)

(3)
Huge thanks to Vicki Goodwin who featured "And The Wolf Shall Dwell" & Inkshares in her blog this week: https://vickgoodwin.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/new-book-publishing-concept-have-you-heard-of-inkshares/ - check out her blog, it’s fab.

(4)
There are a few books worth mentioning that are on the verge of Quill (250 orders). If you liked Inkshares, the concept & you like thrillers. Please consider ordering Louisiana Blood by Mike Donald. An excellent thriller, trust me I’ve read some of it.

That’s it for now.. very excited here and again huge thanks to all... to celebrate I have two baths to run and diapers to change (LOL just kidding) ..
keep sending it to people you know - let’s shoot for 750 with your amazing help. You guys rock!

x
- Joni/Jonathan/Yoni/Jon anyway you want it tonight is fine by me.

Happy Friday.  The production process continues on Women Like Us, with the copy edit due back to me for review next week. I can’t wait to see it!  In the meantime, cover design is almost complete as well.  There’s a new post on the book’s Facebook page, and you can check that out here (and by the way soon there will be a page for the book on Amazon too). Here’s that Facebook link. Please hit the like button on the page if you haven’t yet.

https://www.facebook.com/womenlikeusnovel/

Also, while I have your attention, check out fellow Inkshares author JF Dubeau’s A God In The Shed, which is almost at full funding and is most worthy of your attention.  Here’s that link:

Check out JF Dubeau’s new book, A God in the Shed: https://www.inkshares.com/books/a-god-in-the-shed?referral_code=68914607

Thanks all, as always, for the support.