Dear friends

I’m writing to you from beautiful but, currently, cold Chile. Unfortunately, I had to travel here responding to an unexpected family emergency, but even when dealing with difficult times, visiting my country and my family is a blessing.

We are four months away from the release of The Catcher’s Trap and Inkshares has officially started the marketing efforts to promote the book. The Catcher has been pitched to media outlets, a couple of interviews have been scheduled, and the release party is being planned. All exciting news. Even more exciting, the fact that this is only the beginning.

As for the first official The Catcher’s Trap event, if you are in the mood for meeting a hard-working new author, come and meet me at the CT HorrorFest on August 27th, at The Matrix Conference Center in Danbury, CT. I will be there sharing advance copies of the book and paving the road for an epic release on November 8th.

More info here.

Finally, don’t forget I’m participating in the current Nerdist Contest as part of an amazing anthology with 14 other, talented and creative authors. Check out our project and get your copy of this collection of short stories.

Too Many Controllers

Have a fantastic weekend.

Are you there Inkshares? It’s me, Tony.

Greetings! Continuing in the theme of my vampire post a few weeks back, I’m going to bring you some Western Esotericism today.

Magical occultism that was highly popular during the early nineteenth century and the driving force behind the magical rules system in the world of The Seventh Age. 

Don’t worry. I’m only going to give you 3 fun facts about it. 

1. L.W. Delaurence (1868-1938) was one of the great tricksters who preyed on the rich. Conning publishing houses into printing books with his name listed as the author and selling door to door pamphlets on hypnotism. Curiously, he founded a Chicago occult society called "The Order of the Black Rose" which worshiped a cigar store Indian.  This allowed him to smuggle in occult supplies for US shipping from Jamaica. Without tax evasion, many hoodoo and other poor occult sects would of died off. 
2. If you want a masters degree in Hermetisicm, regarded as one of the highest arcane spell casting and sorceries in the world, you need only go to the University of Amsterdamn. As of 2008 they offer official programs.
3. Occultism and the rich have always had a love affair. Their parties and association with Freemasons, The Order of the Golden Dawn, and other bodies continue to this day. But one of the most infamous is the 1972 Rothschild Party. I’ve attached some pictures for you. 

Illuminati Ball 1

Illuminati Ball 2

Illuminati Ball 3.... this is the table setting!?

Inspiration for The Seventh Age is taken heavily from these occult societies and their oddities in the shadows. A future update will focus on the other side of the fence: The anarchists. 

Greetings Jackolytes,

No Sync! Surely not! I turned on the TV at an Airbnb place in Toronto and was greeted with this screen. 

But fear not! Sync City and Jack are deep in production and will be coming to you in the not too distant future. Sync City is more than set to ride (and still available for pre-order!).

In the meantime Destiny Imperfect continues to battle for a top three position (now sitting fifth) in the Inkshares/Nerdist contest. Some of you have already branched out and pre-ordered this project. Thank you so much! It would be absolutely awesome if more of you could go and check out chapter one of Destiny Imperfect and pre-order. If the project doesn’t finish in the top three, it’ll be pulled and you get your money back.

I’d love this project to succeed but, to put it simply, without your help, it won’t. Be wild. If you want to take Destiny into your own hands, pre-order here.

Cheers,

Peter

Inkshares just released a new blog post where they asked the current top ten authors in the Nerdist video-game contest to single out one (or more) of their competitors, either inside or outside of the current top ten, that has caught their eye.

Greetings everyone!

It’s been a while and I have some news for you guys.

First of all, I’m not dead and are just trying to juggle work and daily life alongside my goal of someday getting this book out there. Yes, I’m still working on making the book better and have officially called the first draft to an end.

Thus far, due to the fact that I no longer have to deal with the stress known as crowdfunding, I had got my stuff together and started the second draft and started to rewrite the story so that it make sense and sound less like it written with the ’visionary’ ideals of an eight-year-old ("Action! Explosion! Globetrotting! Boom!"). 

Though the overall plot and ending remained unchanged, the journey starting from chapter 4 onwards are going to radically different from the first draft as many unneccessary characters and shoddy scenes are going to be cut; and bad puns are no exceptions either. 

I plan to finish draft two within the next two months and decide on whether to submit it to the publishing companies that I had spent hours reasearching or publish it myself. So, with the help of a clear goal in mind and a much more detailed outline this time around, I shall give self-doubt and procrastination the finger. 

Until then,

Yicheng Liu.

Hi Everybody!

Today is a sad day because unless Squids In finishes in the Top 3 of the Nerdist Video-Game contest, the illustration below might well be the last time you guys get to see Hendrix the octopus. Luckily the final illustration for Chapter 3 is a great one. It shows the burgeoning friendship between Toby and Hendrix, when Toby finally realises that the octopus has been without food for a good few days and so finds some crab meat with which to feed him.

Once again, this illustration was done by Eugene Karasz who I found over on DeviantArt. If any of you guys need an artist for any of your projects, let me know and I can put the two of you in touch.

For a brief period yesterday, Squids In surged up the leaderboard to 4th place! Sadly the book has dropped back to 5th today. It seems that the books sudden surge has pushed our competitors into action. 

If you have yet to commit to ordering this silly book about a video-game playing octopus, please give some consideration to doing so and have a read (or listen) to the chapters I have uploaded. 

It’s gonna be a fun few weeks. Remember, the contest ends on 15th July at 7am in the UK (which probably means I will be up all night trying to scrap the last few orders I can from some Australian supporters)!

Matthew