Hey guys!

The Living God finished its 3rd round of dev edits a few weeks ago. I’m waiting to hear about next steps, I suspect it will go back through a copy edit. I’m also anxiously awaiting the new cover! I haven’t seen or heard anything yet.

In the meantime, while you await the release of the book in March 2019, I’m posting chapters of a book I started working on a while back before getting The Living God published took up a majority of my free time. It was my NaNoWriMo project for 2014! I dusted it off and I’m polishing it up for you. Check it out! Be sure to follow to get updates on new chapters.

The Seven Kings of Purgatory

Nina learned two things when she woke in Purgatory: Death was dead and she’d been there many times before. 

With no one to usher the dead to their proper resting place, Nina has been trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth. Having burned through her allotted reincarnations, she must find a way to right the natural course of Purgatory, or risk fading out of existence forever.

Dear friends and followers,

We’re at the three week mark for the Inkshares Mystery & Thriller contest, with 71 readers counted and 102 pre-orders. We’ve still got some distance to go, and about five and a half weeks to make it in. There’s been an issue in the past couple of weeks of orders not being processed as expected, so please check to see if "Cat’s Paw" is listed on your account bookshelf under "Purchased". I make sure to send out thank you emails during this pre-order process, so if you think you’ve ordered but received no thanks from me, that’s usually a sign that something’s gone wrong somewhere.

Meanwhile, there is also the Inkshares Horror contest, with its own host of entries. The one that’s caught my eye at the moment is "Ereshk", by Frederick Street which pits "an alcoholic ex-cop, a washed-up arms dealer, and a fugitive stripper" against a mysterious cult. I guess I’m attracted to it because it borders on being a crime story, and, well, you know me and mysteries.

I was recently in touch with J. T. R. Russell, author of "Wake Up Call", which was returned to draft mode after its initial campaign a year and a half ago. I remember being disappointed then, as I was looking forward to this story. I thought it had a certain Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams quality about it -- perhaps it reminded me a bit of Adams’s "The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul". Not to worry: Russell apparently still has plans for the book, and I would recommend following it in case he opens up a new campaign or does anything else with it.

In the meantime, keep reading, and have fun.

Dear readers,

For all of you in Canada, let me wish you a happy Thanksgiving. May your families all be more functional than the Linwoods of "Cat’s Paw" turn out to be. (Roger Linwood, as the story begins, would tell you that his family is very functional indeed -- he doesn’t know yet that it’s all built on a lie.)

I’ve described "Cat’s Paw" as being "Agatha Christie’s ’Ordeal By Innocence’ meets H. G. Wells’s ’The Island of Doctor Moreau’". The first part is easy enough, knowing that Roger Linwood and his siblings are adopted. But, knowing that I’m steering well clear of science fiction and fantasy, can you guess how "The Island of Doctor Moreau" fits in?

Family obligations over the past week mean I haven’t been able to devote as much time as I would have liked to working on "Cat’s Paw", and I’m sorry to say that we appear to have slipped down to third place in the Mystery & Thriller Contest rankings. I sincerely hope each of you might be able to introduce this book to a friend; and if you’re still on the fence, that you might consider adding your backing to it as well. We can still do this.

And for all of you who’ve done anything at all -- by promoting it elsewhere or especially by backing it yourselves -- I offer my heartfelt thanks. It’s Canadian Thanksgiving, after all.

- Christopher Huang

Hello all! 

I’m just sending a quick update this time. I just finished a big ol’ heap of revisions to my manuscript and sent them off to my editor for critiques. He is working on a couple of other manuscripts at the moment, so he will be getting back to me in a few weeks. I am really excited about the changes we’ve dreamed up, and I think this book is really shaping up into something that will be worth the wait! As always, I will keep you informed as the process continues.

If you or others you know haven’t pre-ordered a copy of Curio Citizen yet, it is available here: https://www.inkshares.com/books/curio-citizen

I think it would be amazing if we could get the number of pre-orders sold up to at least 500 before publication! The more orders and copies printed at launch, the better chance Curio Citizen has to succeed once it’s out and about in the world. 

Thanks again for everything!

--Katherine

"Today, I did a crazy thing,” I said to Joan. She’s a Dev Editor, and one of my cohorts in the Black Hats Writers Group. She got me mixed up in this Inkshares meshugas in the first place. God bless her for that.

Last year when the Inkshares Horror Contest was heating up, Michael Welch and I had a friendly rivalry going. Some even called it a bromance. (That might have been me.) Mostly, he was kicking my ass. He floated the idea of collaborating on a project. We even discussed plot ideas, characterization, and what-not in some detail.

“Hell no,” I said back then. "Maybe later when this contest is over."

When it was over, I needed to write, and so did he, and now I’m re-writing and yes, I have high hopes that book might drop in 2019. I’m talking about MINE, of course, which started out as Murder Happens. I’m still not settled on the title, but MINE works for me right now.

Today, Mike floats the idea of putting the collaboration together again because Inkshares has a new contest going. The first of this year. Might be the only one of this year. And, it’s a Mystery Contest.

“I can’t ask my supporters to fork over for another book when the one I promised isn’t done yet,” I said. 

There might have been more swearing involved. Or maybe that’s a conversation that occurred in my head. Still, the excitement of the contest worked its way into my evil little brain. Next thing I know, Mike’s putting us up as a team. He even gave me first billing in the author profile. It should be him. The concept is his. But, I’m going to grab a hunk for myself. That’s how I roll. The creative tension between us will be epic. Definitely worth the price of admission, right? 

Oh, wait. I need to give you a link so you can go follow the book. I’m not going to ask, beg, extort or otherwise pressure anyone to pre-order. (But, shit happens.) I’ll throw this link out there, and let you decide what to do. The URL has 666 in it. That’s righteous. 

https://www.inkshares.com/books/ruining-boise-060666

There’s some serious talent running away with this contest already, and I’m sure I’ll support those projects, but hey, just call me crazy.