We are getting close! Itchy Pig officially launches 22Mar2016.  Everyone who has pre-ordered will receive their books this month! I am so excited to share this with you....FINALLY!  An official launch/release event will be in March.  Stay tuned for details! Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Check out my blog below:

http://blog.inkshares.com/post/138489421630/inkshares-qa-with-author-nicole-bruno-cox

Dear friends and backers, sentients of all class and model, it is an important day indeed. While The Life Engineered is only releasing to the general public on March 1st, to those of you that have supported this project and have been the pillars upon which this dream has been built, the digital copies are being released today.

If you haven’t already, you will soon receive an email from Inkshares with instructions on how to get your digital version of The Life Engineered. It’s my sincere hope that you will read and enjoy it. Writing and editing it has brought me great pleasure, logic should dictate that you the readers are next in line for that joyful process.

However, I do have one more favour to ask.

Once you’ve read it, if you enjoyed the book, it would mean the world to me (and be favourable to book sales and thus my writing career) if you would be so kind as to rate and review The Life Engineered on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

Rankings are insanely important and reviews are a large part of it all. You wonderful intelligences have already done a lot for me but I know I can count on you to help with yet another step.

Again, thank you so much. I won’t lie; a big part of why I want these reviews is because I’m dying of curiosity to know what you thought of the book. I’m eager to engage in conversation about this story and, if you want to discuss it with me or other readers, join me on Facebook at my writer’s page.

Cheers my friends, and good reading.

J-F Dubeau

Good morning, everyone.

I suppose I must have lied about scaling back my updates to a monthly basis. See now, I’ve got some news to share that simply can’t wait.

For starters, Inkshares has launched their latest publishing contest in partnership with the Nerdist network! If you’ve got an epic “Space Opera” science fiction story hyperdriving through the wormholes in your brainspace, then I encourage you to chart a course t… Okay, enough. Just enter the damn contest HERE!  The beauty of this crowdfunding model is that all you really need is an idea for a story. Write something up - a synopsis, some character descriptions, a first chapter, whatever - and post it up on Inkshares. “What’s a space opera,” you ask? For you TV nuts think Firefly or Battlestar Galactica. The movie buffs should envision Guardians of the Galaxy or that little franchise Star Wars maybe. Gamers like me should recall Mass Effect and Destiny. And bibliophiles (a term only bibliophiles could love) should check out Iain Banks’ Culture series (my favorites) or Asimov’s Foundation series. 

If you’re serious about entering, I and some fellow contest winners shared some winning advice recently on inkshares blog. The fact that many of us had different versions of the same tip is quite insightful on that particular tip’s utility (you’ll see). But I would add another that I don’t think was mentioned: Be Organized! I had a massive spreadsheet I updated with all my campaign activity during the Sword & Laser contest. I couldn’t have done it without it. 

Finally, two more bits of news:

I am writing “The Animal in Man” every day, every night, with a daily goal of 1,000 words that I’m pleased to say I’ve often overshot. I thought maybe I’d just clean the early chapters up a bit, but geez was I mistaken! Instead I’m pretty much tearing the house down and rebuilding everything from the ground up. I’m almost done revising chapter three, and work continues steadily.

John Robin, the extremely talented author of “Blood Dawn,” had reached out to me about sharing some details of my story’s world in greater depth. Of course I agreed! Here’s an amazing picture I found that captures my own personal interpretation of the animal-human creatures that inhabit Herbridia:

(Credit to Adrean-BC on deviantART) If you want to pore over some more of the background knowledge - and go fishing for a hint or two about what’s really going on in my novel - then click here to visit John Robin’s World Building page on his blog.

And for gah’s sakes, pre-order your copy of John’s book. It comes with my absolute highest recommendation.