So earlier today I was asked by Cara Weston (if you haven't checked out her book, you should...--->;;;;;;;;;;;;; She Is The End ) if I had some idea of who would play the characters in Ghosts of War if it was turned into a movie or TV show. The answer is yes...yes I do.

So here we are, the main characters of Ghosts of War (and a few supporting ones) if it were to become a watchable thing (like...maybe a 10 episode Netflix series...yeah...that sounds nice.)

A few fun facts: 

• Jeffrey Dean Morgan was originally Cole way back in the beginning, until I decided he needed to be younger. 
• I may or may not have written Whil T'Qar specifically for Wil Wheaton... 
• I only 'cast' Gregor, Tobias and Kira in the last 6 months, and now I can't see anyone else being them. 
• Actually that's a lie, I recast Gregor, he was originally Anton Yelchin, but then JJ's Star Trek's happened and it felt a bit on the nose.
• The Oren casting will be obscure for most everyone, but guys, trust me...lol.
• You might have noticed that Whil, Martiss and Sharma are all new. I haven't yet formally introduced them but rest assured they have key parts to play in this book and the next two as well.

Until next time...

Weekly update.

Did another talk-radio interview at a South Dakota station (KORN/KQRN) on Thursday.

But the biggest news of the week was my return visit to the Barnes & Noble in Salem, NH.

A week before Christmas I did a book signing event at this store and the managers told me that it was the most successful author appearance there for all of 2015. At that time my book was set up on a table at the front of the store - so a few days ago I went back to see where Journey had been placed on the shelves for the longer term.

As we all know, the vast majority of books are displayed so that you can only see the spine of the book, so the chances that any individual book will stand out from the rest is minimized.

You can imagine how psyched I was to see that Journey was one of the few to recieve the highly coveted "face-out" status!

That alone is pretty exciting, but in addition to that, by pure coincidence my book just happens to be displayed next to the current best-selling title in the sci-fi / fantasy section!

This happened because books in each genre are shelved in alphabetical order by author last name. So the decision to give my friend Mykl Walsh the cover credit led to an unexpected major benefit. Volume I of my serialized novel, SecretAgentMan is "hidden" inside the short story Journey and there is no mention on the cover that my work is what most of this book actually contains.




If you are ready to review Journey, here are the important links - 

http://www.secretagentman.org/PR.pdf (read this document after you have read the book and Before you review it)

http://www.amazon.com/Journey-SecretAgentMan-Mykl-Walsh/dp/1941758479


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25915392-journey

If you've figured out how cool and ridiculously complex this story is yet, feel free to share it here on Inkshares and on your social media feeds!

On Twitter I'm @RFSaunders

https://twitter.com/RFSaunders

My FB account is https://www.facebook.com/RichFSaunders

Have a great weekend everyone!

Kind regards,

Rich Saunders

My dear Machiners, 

Where do I begin? I will start by saying that I have now had over 48 hours to decompress. I took some extra time before writing my post-Sword & Laser update. I just didn’t quite feel that I was coherent enough to write the update I wanted in the immediate aftermath. At this point, the fact that I can call myself a “soon to be published author” has not fully sunk in. That this story, which I poured myself into, will be in print and on a bookstore shelf is still hard to believe. When I do see it on that shelf, it will be serious reality check time. 

For now I must say Thank YOU. Thank you with all my heart. I cannot thank everybody enough. I want to stress and stress some more that this was an unbelievable team effort. I wrote the story but bringing it to a wider audience through crowdfunding on Inkshares was undeniably a group effort. And a tremendous one at that. Many, many people went above and beyond the call to bring new readers to our cause. 

To illustrate this unbelievable outreach, we can break the campaign into two chunks. There were the first 4.5 weeks of the campaign: We brought in 170 readers and this was phenomenal. We were in a strong 2nd place position and hoped it would be enough to stay in the top 3. Then there was the final 1.5 weeks of the contest - and we brought in 180 readers! In my wildest dreams I would never have expected to more than double what we did in over a month in just 10 days. Thank you for the incredible support to finish this race. I feel honored and humbled. I want all of you to feel that you had a hand in making this happen. Because it’s true. The eBook or paperback you receive is yours as much as it is mine, and far beyond the money you contributed. 

I must give a hearty salute to my co-winners Joseph Asphahani author of The Animal in Man and Craig Munro the author of The Bones of the Past. It was an absolute pleasure to compete against them. An experience that was full of camaraderie and goodwill. Their books are awesome and I look forward to receiving my copy of both. It is well worth your time to go check them out, and also the other excellent work by talented authors in the top 10 in the Sword & Laser contest. The contest was filled with wonderful creative work - those outside the top 10 also deserve your consideration. Here is the rest of the top 10:

Adam Greven and Matt Deller’s The Knight Proper 

Byron Gillian’s The Children of the Forest 

Amanda Ornekc’s Deus Hex Machina 

Andre Brun’s Lies and Deception 

Michael Sebby’s The Inhabitants: An Unremembered Life 

Alexander Barnes’s The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising 

Edmond J. Wedge’s Ocean Black: The Noble Exiles

The journey is just beginning for The Last Machine in the Solar System. There will be future updates as we continue down the road toward publication. This is all new and exciting for me and I am sure I will learn something each day. I look forward to sharing that with you, my benefactors. Without you I would not be here, and neither would this story. 

Until next time, 

 -Matthew 

Dear backers and friends of Trekonomics,

I just posted the final, revised and expanded introduction to the book (minus a few still-ongoing copy-edits!). Cover will be revealed and shared will all of you this week. We are on schedule!

You may read the new introduction to Trekonomics here: 

https://www.inkshares.com/projects/trekonomics/book_segments/introduction-3720

In addition, if you are so inclined, I invite you to read my latest column celebrating the 15 years anniversary of Wikipedia: http://fusion.net/story/256371/wikipedia-15-years-old/. 

As always, 

Live Long, and Prosper.

M.

We won!!!!

 I can’t seem to make myself fully believe it, still so I have to keep saying it! :)

I am incredibly grateful to each and every one of you for all the help and support getting word out about my book. The last month has been one of the most exhausting experiences I can remember – Sleep? No time for that, I have to message people in other time zones! Writing? After work, there’s only time for promoting the book!

I would like to take a moment to thank my family who went above and beyond in getting me through this contest, in particular - my sisters Kirsty and Laura, my brother Keith and my brother-in-law Cyril who each worked at least as hard as I did promoting the book; my parents Scott and Elaine who reached out to more people than I can count; and of course my lovely wife Margo who not only worked tirelessly alongside me, but also somehow managed to keep me sane.

I was also greatly helped in my efforts by a number of great friends including Sebastien Genest, Mathieu Pralus, Sara Hernandez, Isabelle Pottier, Eddy Lesert and so many others that I just can’t list everyone. Again, I am grateful beyond words.

And I can’t leave out the amazing authors who helped me out and made (and continue to make) the Inkshares experience as amazing as it is – John Robin the author of Blood Dawn and backbone of the whole author community, Julian Green the co-author of Suffrage – the First World Key, Cara Weston the author of She is the End, Billy O’Keefe author of These Are My Friends on Politics, Michal Sebby author of The Inhabitants: An Unremembered Life, and Janna Grace author of the Talkers are Talking, not to mention my co-winners Joseph Asphahani author of The Animal in Man, and Matthew Sobin the author of the Last Machine in the Solar System. All of their books are amazing and well worth checking out if you’re looking for something else to read!

 And now, I’d like to make my small gesture of thanks to my supporters: here is the video link of the 4X50$ gift card draws, and the draw for a themed cake by Lolai’s Yummies. Congratulations to the winners!

 I’m looking forward to a little break - picking up Fallout 4, maybe even making it in to see the new Star Wars movie, and most importantly getting back to my writing! I’ve started to miss my characters and wonder what they’ve gotten up to in my absence! There are also still some edits and rewrites I need to finish before the manuscript is ready to be turned over to Inkshares so that the process of getting it published can get under way :)

 Thank you all!!!!

I won.

When you read that, how do you hear it? If it’s something in your mind like a soft, shocked whisper, the kind of sound you hear when someone speaks in the stillness of a slow snowfall, then you’re pretty close to how I’m hearing myself say it. I won. I won… I won? ...I WON!?! 

Whether it’s the Sword and Laser’s Tom and Veronica, journalist Alicia Smock, or other authors mentioning my name in their own reader updates or raffle videos, the experience of being exposed and showered with praise for my story has really validated all this hard work I’ve done.

And, …. wow… this campaign has been some hard work.

Somewhere in an article or something I said to somebody that I was back on what I call “The Skyrim Sleeping Schedule.” (I’m sure some former students of mine will recall EXACTLY how loopy I got soon after 11/11/11.) Basically 4 to 5 hours of fitful sleep every night for the past month has really racked my body. Even as I type this, my mind’s eye glances over its shoulder and sees my body tapping its watch, shaking its head. I hear it say “Joe, it’s time, man.” And I’m like, “Hey, wait! I got a raffle video to do! Six new winners, six more $20 giftcard giveaways, six titles gone from my priceless video game collection!” But in this vision, my body wraps its arm warmly around me and escorts me from the premises of health, and it says, “Maybe this weekend, pal.” So I’m about to give in and just get sick…

I am utterly exhausted. ...and I’m kind of numb. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m typing this all right now secretly from my work cubicle, clicking back to the work window whene….. …. …. …. ver someone walks by. But right at this moment, I can’t celebrate. I’m happy. I’m BEYOND EUPHORIA, in fact, but I can’t jump for joy just yet.

I haven’t yet mastered the art of embedding gifs or whatever the cool kids are doing these days - so this little graphic here will have to do to express my current state of existence:

(!!!!)

(What? I’m a man of letters, I tell ya!)

“Thank you all so much.” I know that track’s been on repeat for quite some time, but there’s no other phrase that can contain all of my feelings and gratitude toward your support. Thank you.

Happy New Year, book lovers!

May your 2016 be full of travel goals and casual wine drinking.

xxo