Holy $#(^!!!!!! Okay, let me explain… Hwa ha ha ha ha!!!!! SO HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness, YES!!!!! Dreams are AWESOME!!!!!!!! OWWWWWW! Okay, dreams are awesome, and so is my next door neighbor, but running through my backyard to tell her that I just funded leads to splinters. Geesh! Well, it’s only a little blood, so… Worth It!!!
Okay, breathing. Good. Thank you all SO EXPLETIVE much!!!!!!!!!
I’m kinda glad I wrote the bulk of this letter yesterday. I’m so excited I keep typing in circles but that’s okay cuz I HAVE FAITH IN EVERY LAST SOUL OF HUMANITY!!! Seriously! All of you are amazing, wonderful, PHENOMENAL PEOPLE OF WORTH!!!!! OWW! Doesn’t matter if my foot hurts from that twig-thorn, I’m too happy not to dance!!!!! Okay, the rest is from yesterday, so it’s probably cogent. Love y’all. Genuinely. Love. I… I’m gonna paint mugs and work on my short story and tell people they’re awesome and make the whole world feel as amazing as I do RIGHT NOW!!!
For anyone who was looking to get the limited-run prize, tomorrow is the last day to pick up two or more copies of Borehole Bazaar. This is a super-awesome opportunity to get a uniquely hand-illustrated collection of cute short stories mailed diretly to your home well in advance of your copy of Borehole Bazaar. That said, I’m hoping BB will be up and ready SUPER quickly so it can get into all your happy hands!
This week, I hit 250!!! What this means is that I have yet another three RAFFLE WINNERS!!! The lucky winners are Rebecca Rubin, Crwebber707 and Lauren Huffman!!! I’ll be getting ahold of you to hear your choice of prizes, but they include an etched glass mug, a hand-painted ceramic mug, a laser-etched coaster (or four!) or an entirely wooden (with hinges) book from those listed below! If there is something else you would prefer, please just let me know! I’m fairly crafty and I love my small power-tools!
The list of books should all be child-friendly but I’d advise giving each a once-over, especially A Simple Game and Forgiveness in a Latte. This week’s selection, Kalla Names a Pup, is indented and alludes to cannibalism and death, so use extra caution with it.
---->;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Kalla Names a Pup
As always, please Chase Your Dreams. It’s worth it, as are you.
Okay, whew. I ran out last Friday to pick up my son, and then we left for a camping trip. I didn’t get the chance to do proper thank yous, so here it goes:
A huge, huge thank you to my supporters. It was amazing on Friday at 11:30 am to have people come out of the woodwork and push me into 2nd place. I absolutely could not have done it without you all. Thanks to my wife for finding this contest and encouraging me to enter. And thanks to all the Harveys and the Clearys and the Mills who bit their nails alongside us. Thank you to Simon Winchester, Brian Baldwin, Sean Garcia, Hannah Davis, and Ryan Weilert. In the end, it was your willpower that won me 2nd place. I’m in awe of all of you.
Great work to everyone else in the competition. There was some serious talent I was competing against. Alisa King ran a fierce campaign. Congrats to Peter Ryan, who really does seem like a genuinely nice guy. I can’t wait to read Too Many Controllers. And as I’ve said before, Andrew Fantasia is a great writer. I hope his novel Sidescroller gets funded so we can all give it a read. I also want to give a shout-out to G.A. Finocchiaro and his book Knightmares. He helped me a ton, and his book looks awesome.
So what’s next? Sweeping changes. I’ll soon be deleting the prologue that’s up on Inkshares. Years ago, I had written IN BETA as a feature film. At the start of this contest, I was simply adapting the film into novel form. The farther I went down that path, the more I realized I wasn’t excited about a book that followed the rigid formula of a Hollywood comedy. So during this contest, I made significant revisions to IN BETA’s setting and plot. The concept and the characters are the same, but I’ve moved the locale from Seattle, WA to a rural town in the Cascades. The setting works better for a number of reasons. If anyone is interested in the mechanics of "why", ask and I’ll happily distract myself from writing by geeking out over my decisions. Otherwise, just satisfy yourself with the knowledge that I’m not content to deliver a shit novel.
I’m very excited about IN BETA, and I can’t wait to share the new prologue with the world. Thanks everyone for this amazing opportunity. I’ll try to be regular with my updates, and I’ll let you know the timeline of this process once I figure that out.
