I totally thought I sent this out last night, but it didn’t go through, I think. 

We have reached Quill! 

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

First Draft is Complete!

Thursday night at about 10:30 I wrote the final words of the Deus Hex Machina first draft. I had been pressing to get it done by the end of June, and through some help from motivational guru and all around fabulous person Elayna May Darcy (seriously go order  They Are the Last, it’s funding now and it’s awesome), I was able to get all twelve chapters finished on time.

So what happens now? Well, first off I’m going to celebrate with some gaming. Then probably Tuesday I will start working on my short story for Too Many Controllers. After that is complete it’s time to start planning for the Shadow of the Owl sequel, Shadow of the Panther. I know many of your have been waiting to find out what happens to Mylena in [spoilers], and I promise you I haven’t forgotten her.

That’s not to say things aren’t progressing on DHM. My cover designer is already working on comps and I have a developmental editor lined up and waiting. But first, I want to get the first draft in its raw, unfiltered state into the hands of a few select readers to get initial impressions. If you are someone who likes to help make a good book better, I am trying to build a beta reader group. Please email me amanda [at] goldleafbooks [dot] com and let me know that you’re interested. Warning: must love cyberpunk and have an eye for spotting egregious errors in the plot.

Once I have the round done, I’ll head into the second draft and fix anything that stood out to me and my readers (I have a mental list of weak areas I want to shore up). After the second draft is complete it will be off to dev edit land, and hopefully, plot perfection. 

Thanks for following along on this journey. The book is done! Let’s celebrate!  

As you see, I need your help. I’m told when you hit 100 reviews on Amazon, your life changes drastically. I’m assuming ending world hunger will be involved...but what do I know?

I need your help getting to the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. We are already more than a quarter of the way there. So, if you haven’t reviewed let me help: 

1. CLICK HERE for Ageless on Amazon. 
   
2. Choose a number of stars from 1-5 (... ... let’s shoot for closer to 5 than 1)
3. Copy and paste either "I loved it!" or "I didn’t love it. Here’s why____________" 
4. Click submit and rejoice in knowing you changed my life for FREE! 
5. If you’d like, do it all again on GOODREADS.

Here are a few great new reviews to read to help you if you get stuck. FYI - They contain SPOILERS. Click at your own risk! 

Ageless reviews from TheWarblerBooks.com and CulturedVultures.com

For much of my life I have felt like an outsider, out of place. I am older now, and I have come to believe that this is a common way for many if not most human beings to feel. I have my personal reasons.

My family came to this country from Mexico when I was six years old. Then we moved back to Mexico for one year when I was eight, then back to the US. It was a lot of moving, a lot of goodbyes, a lot of losses. I remember my mother crying, she felt so alone much of the time. She had very little support. Telephone communication to Mexico was difficult at that time, and expensive. She didn’t speak English very well, making her feel even more isolated. As kids, we pick up languages faster and more easily, so I remember having to help her communicate from time to time. We had no other family to lean on. I know now how scary it was for my parents, and how brave they were to face the challenges of immigration, all in order to give their children a shot at a better life. They are true pioneers.

So I grew up in the US without extended family, and when we did visit our family in Mexico, it always felt too brief for the sense of disconnection to totally disappear. Even though I have made many, many friends and acquaintances over the years, and I now have a family of my own, I still carry that feeling of being alone, etched into my soul from my early experiences.

I’m totally okay with all of that now. I have an incredible lot to be grateful for. I am okay with my life’s story, with my challenges, with my successes and my failures. I am in a good place spiritually.

So why am I saying all this? Answer: for you to know a little background information about the spirit of Mission 51. My protagonist Mat is an alien from space, the ultimate outsider! He is the one who came in 1954 to southern Nevada, the place we now know as Area 51. My parents were married that same year, and then came to the US, in their mid-twenties. I was born here in 1955. Mat’s story is an immigrant’s story, like that of my parents. He encounters the challenges of fitting in, the difficulties in mastering a different language and culture, he has to deal with loss, and has to adapt to survive. Mat does these things, like my parents did. He finds freedom. He pursues happiness, as is our American right. And he almost finds peace at the end of Mission 51. If the book makes it to publication and finds an audience, Mat’s story will continue in book two, already taking shape in my crazy head.

So that’s it, a little background information for you to better understand why I wrote this story. Thank you all, for your interest and your support of me and Mission 51!

Peace! :-)

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.