Greetings, adventurers!
…I’m not going to lie. I did not expect to be saying that again so soon.
Mushroom & Anchovy appeared on shelves one week ago today, and what an eventful week it’s been! I decided to let our two main characters speak on some of it…
So… there you have it. Through Amazon Canada, we breached the top 50 in the cozy fantasy category. It’s been fluctuating—as of the writing of this e-mail, we’re #107—but the highest we’ve gotten is #44, which is absolutely incredible considering I wouldn’t even consider this book cozy fantasy beyond like… a couple of elements. But it’s definitely a fantasy book and a great fast-paced summer read! There has also been a small delay in the books getting to Amazon and it currently appears as sold out in the American store, but I assure you that will change soon! If you’ve been waiting for them to be available there, please keep checking.
Pre-orders have started trickling in, and people are getting their copies at last. A friendly reminder to please check your junk folder if you preordered a paperback, because ebooks came free with those! Meanwhile, I only have a handful left of my own copies and may need to replenish soon. Many have been going on the shelf at Comic Hunter Moncton, and some to friends.
This past Sunday, the fine folks at Chapters in Moncton/Dieppe had me in to do a book signing. We started the day with 20 books, but we sold out and then took orders for 10 more. They’re in the midst of restocking, and when they do, I’ll be signing ALL of their floor copies!
Aside from selling out, though, the signing was a truly magical experience. People from all parts of my life came by to wish me well. Some brought in copies they’d gotten beforehand, some bought them the day of, and some were waiting on their preorders but wanted to say hello anyway. I received an adorable handmade gift from my good friend Vicki, and other good friends Pat and Tasha brought me flowers. I met some new people who heard about the book online and came to pick up a copy and chat as well. It was a very busy day, but my heart was so full!
Right now, there may be a small delay to get books out as there has been a humbling demand! Please do keep checking, and make sure to ask your local libraries and bookstores to consider ordering copies in!
I know some of you are in the midst of reading the book, so we have yet to get any reviews—it’s a hefty 480 pages due to being 3 shorter novels in one, so I would be surprised if any of you have finished already! That said, when you do finish it, please consider leaving a review on any major platforms to help me out. Thank you in advance!
I’m not sure when I’ll check in about Mushroom & Anchovy next. I had thought I’d be quiet after the release, but it has all gone so well that I had to say something. Whether you hear from me in another week, a month, or longer, please know that the release week of Mushroom & Anchovy will be a time in my life that stands out in the absolute top 5. If we take out other life milestones like “marriage”, “childbirth” and “home ownership”, it might just be number 1. I also have another book announcement, but I’ve wanted to give Mushroom & Anchovy its hard-earned and long-awaited time in the sun, first.
May your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers!
The big day has finally arrived. At long last, Mushroom & Anchovy has made its way into the world. Thank you so much for your incredible support and unwavering patience. Hopefully, some of you have started to receive your copies. If not, they will be here very soon, and your ebooks are available today, as well! Make sure to double-check your junk folder if you haven’t seen your ebook yet.
Nearly 9 years is a very long time, but you’ve been so incredibly patient and I can’t thank you enough. Yesterday was our first (and only?) State of the Onion Address, where I took the time to chat with some of you and thank you out loud. You can go back and watch it on my Facebook page if you’d like. I tried to keep it succinct, despite my tendency to yap, but there was a solid 5 minutes of technical difficulties (including me accidentally answering my phone while live--STREAMING FROM THE PHONE) that reminded me why I don’t do Facebook Live and why I’ll just freaking do it on Twitch next time, if there is a next time. I really wanted to make sure to thank you all in person, though.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge here that there are some supporters who are sadly no longer with us. My grandmother, Peggy; my theatre friends Jeanne, Kathleen, and Dianne; and my former fellow manager friend, Jane. A solemn reminder of the sometimes grim reality behind long projects. Their friendship and support will never be forgotten.
A lot of people have been asking me how to get the book so that I can be supported the best, and I appreciate that question more than I can say. My answer is in a few steps and depends where in the world you are.
The book’s distributor is a far-reaching American distributor called Ingram, so even if you’re not in North America, you should be able to get a copy from most major bookstores. You may have to ask or special order it in, but many stores will have it. I have it on good authority that several UK stores are able to get it, as well.
A reminder that I’ll be at Chapters in Dieppe NB on June 7th for signings. You can pick up a copy there or feel free to bring your own by, or you can just come over and say hi, honestly. I’d love to see you!
Speaking of Chapters, they actually got my book a couple of days early and tossed it on the shelf on Friday morning! A friend texted me with a picture, and so the whole family and I went over to see the books in person. I hadn’t yet received my personal copies and, quite frankly, I had to make sure they really did exist with my own two eyes. As I was on my way over to the shop, I got a phone call from my dad, who asked me to meet him in the parking lot there. He had just been in the store and was the first to buy a copy. Thanks, Dad!
And so, friends, our adventure has come to an end. We really have been through a lot together on this publication journey and I’m really proud of our perseverance. I can assure you that it will NOT be another 9 years before my next book, and that you WILL hear from me again very soon. For now, please enjoy the book. I hope it makes you laugh and maybe scratch your head in confusion from time to time.
Thank you, for everything. A special thanks to Noah at Inkshares, as well, for being so great through this whole process. I really can’t stress enough how much this day means to me. While I won’t be as active here anymore, I encourage you to follow along with me on my Substack. I may touch base here every so often to say hi, though!
For the last time, may your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers.
Our long journey—one that began for me in 2008, and one that began for us together in 2017—has nearly met its conclusion. Yes, this adventure of 18 years in the making is now reaching its apex, for Mushroom and Anchovy will now be released in just one month’s time—32 days, to be exact. I’m sending this a day early as I will be very busy tomorrow (and this is when I kindly remind you all to support your local comic shops on Free Comic Book Day).
To say I’m a cauldron of goopy green mystery feelings would be… well, pretty accurate, actually. 18 years is a long time for a project to come to fruition—a novel, no less, which feels like it should have come out sooner. But I’ll give you a brief history of this book in particular, since we’re nearing the finish line, just so you have some insight as to why it’s taken so long to see the light of day.
Mushroom and Anchovy started off as a silly little “what if”. I was working at a Tex Mex restaurant where all of our call names were Texas themed. In my non-working hours, this prompted a question that I don’t think anybody else on the planet has ever asked before: what if there were adventurers who had pizza topping code names, for some reason?
Like most weird ideas or questions I ask, this grew into a novel. I hammered out book one in its in entirety in November 2008. Then, the following year, I wrote book two. After a few years of redirecting my focus, having written and self-published my novella Hub City Survival in 2010, book three was written in 2012, the year after my husband Brad and I got married.
The books sat in a state of limbo for several years. Every so often, I’d open them up and edit them. As I’m sure you can imagine, book 1 in particular has received extensive editing and rewriting over the years, but it still retains its original themes and story. I considered submitting the entirety of the book under an alias on a fiction website but never ended up doing it. I considered self-publishing it, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to self-publish them as a trilogy. I considered reaching out to publishers, but the book itself didn’t feel particularly marketable. What publisher would take a flyer on an adult adventure-comedy trilogy with characters who use pizza toppings for names? My target audience for this book was always “adults with a weird sense of humour” and I had no idea what publishers would take on a completely unknown first-time author with a risky title, premise, and target audience. I didn’t know if it would be worth the legwork of finding out. I didn’t know if I ever WOULD find out.
I wrote other books in the meantime, some to completion, but Mushroom and Anchovy always sat in the back of my mind. It seemed a shame not to do anything with the books. But where could they go?
In 2015, our first child was born. I went back to work in 2016, and, at this job, ran into a writer friend of mine, who was putting up posters for their crowdfunding campaign. This friend is A. C. Baldwin, author of the also Quill-published book The Traveller’s Cup, which sits on my bookshelf. They told me about Inkshares and instantly I knew what my rogue trilogy about pizza-codenamed treasure hunters was destined for. I would publish the books as three segments of one book.
I finally launched the crowdfunding campaign in 2017 after some planning. I actually stopped it and started again to give myself more time to prepare. In the fall, we hit 250 preorders, which was the goal for Quill at the time. The night we hit the 250 mark, I came home to my husband pulling a celebratory bottle of champagne out of the fridge.
We didn’t expect such a long process, but with paper shortages, a pandemic, and the birth of our second child thrown into the mix, there were long periods of silence from both ends. The future for my silly book felt uncertain, and I felt silly for worrying so much about a book that I wasn’t even sure deserved to see the light of day. Nevertheless, through delays and imposter syndrome, I pressed on, until I got that fateful email from Noah at Inkshares informing me that it was my turn. More edits and rewrites ensued. Then, finally, we selected a date: June 2, 2026. A date that is now rapidly approaching.
On Monday, June 1, at 11 am Atlantic time (10 AM EST), I’m going to do a quick Facebook live check-in—my first, and probably only, State of the Onion Address. I want to take a moment to thank you all, out loud and in my own voice, for your incredible support over the 9 years we’ve been adventuring together toward getting this book into your hands. As well, on Sunday, June 7, I will be at Chapters book store in Dieppe New Brunswick to do a signing event from 12pm-4pm. Please feel free to bring your books in so I can sign them! And, if you haven’t managed to get one yet, Chapters will have them for sale.
I do have other finished books, but I’ve wanted to wait on the next steps with them because I don’t want to start asking for more of your attention before putting this book in your hands. Should you wish to hear from me about these future projects, I invite you to join me over at my Substack, where I post somewhat regularly/when the mood strikes.
So, all this said, I hope you’ll join me on Facebook live on June 1st. For now, I’ll leave you with a profound thank you for all your YEARS of support. It sounds cliche to say “I couldn’t have done it without you” but it’s the truth. This book exists in this form because of you, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
One final reminder to please update any part of your address that may need updating with hello@inkshares.com ASAP! The books are heading to print soon, after all!
For now, I leave you again with immense love and gratitude—more than you can ever understand. Rest assured I won’t be disappearing after the book is out and will have further news for you shortly after its release. But until June 1st, I am signing off.
May your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
K. M. Cooper
Greetings, adventurers.
Greetings, adventurers!
We are just 4 months away from Mushroom and Anchovy’s release. Even as I write this, I feel a little flutter of nerves and excitement in the pit of my stomach. If we are going by a daily countdown, then we have reached a new milestone: we are less than 100 days until release at just 92 days left.
And so, I come to you with a new and very exciting update today. Other than the fact that we have only 1/3 of a year left until release day, I also have a shiny new FINAL COVER to share with you today.
"But Kate? I thought you already had a final cover?" Indeed, I did! After several years of working the floor at a local bookstore, though, I have decided that the cover was not indicative of the fast-paced adventure novel that was within. The previous cover was absolutely beautiful and would have been fitting should the book have been a different genre. This is my fault as I didn’t have a proper grasp on what kind of cover would have been fitting for a book like this. I went with Inkshares’ in-house designer who is known for his quality covers--some of which I have on my bookshelf right now, in fact.
I hope you love the cover as much as I do. In fact, when I first started marketing this book, I had commissioned local artist Mel Sivret to create a bookmark for me, and some similar imagery was used in the final cover!
Anyone still have one of these?!
Books have started popping up for pre-order in independent shops across North America, in addition to big box retailers. I am negotiating with a few local spots about possible in-person events as well, and I hope to have some news about that in the months to come. For now, and as always, thank you for your support!
May your travels be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
Kate Butland (K. M. Cooper)
Greetings, adventurers!
Greetings, adventurers.
So. Here we are. It’s January 2, 2026. Happy New Year to all of you, and I hope you all had a wonderful, or at least neutral, holiday season!
In addition to it being a new year, I am also checking in because this is finally the year that you will have Mushroom and Anchovy in your hands at long last. And, what’s more, that date is exactly six months away from today. On June 2, 2026, Mushroom and Anchovy, after an extremely long wait, will be available to the world.
So… the countdown is on. 151 days until this book reaches a bookshelf near you.
I feel a strange mixture of emotions in writing this to you, but nothing, I don’t think, will compare to that actual feeling of holding that book on June 2nd. I won’t go into too much detail now—I’ll save extensive commentary for the release date. But, I will update you monthly with a countdown and with other various tidbits.
For my part, I will say that I have completed three books from a different setting altogether within the time it has taken for Mushroom and Anchovy to get out into the world. I’m hoping to tell you more about that by the time the fall comes around. But, rest assured, writing is in my veins, and Mushroom and Anchovy is not the last of me. In fact, it’s only the beginning.
It’s kind of funny. I created the project here on Inkshares on June 1, 2016. I didn’t launch it then, but I started thinking about putting the project through this platform then. It was how I started my thirties, and now the book’s release is how I’m about to start my forties.
I can’t believe how much time has passed since then, but you’ve all been incredibly kind and patient. As the date draws closer, I am filled with a mix of apprehension and excitement. I really, really hope you all like the book.
This is a reminder to make sure your address is updated—e-mail the folks at Inkshares at hello@inkshares.com should you need to update it.
I’ll check in with you again on February 2. See you then.
May your adventures be fraught with wonder and just enough peril to keep them interesting,
Kate Butland (K. M. Cooper)