Hello everyone!

I realize it’s been a long time since my last update, and I have reasons ranging from a back injury that’s been plaguing me for months (that seems to finally be resolved) and of course, just putting my head down and trying to move The Tide of Madness closer to completion.

I won’t lie, the finish line is still a way off. The first draft had more problems with it than I had hoped. But with so many different points of view, continuity issues are to be expected. The majority of the characters in The Bones of the Past were separate enough that I didn’t have to worry so much about a day here or there. But Tide will see a lot more interaction between the various characters, so I have to be a lot more careful. I’m writing shorter chapters (splitting up each point of view) and tightening up the timeline as much as possible. Still, I’ve been hard at work and I’ve finalized the order for the 57 chapters and made the tough decision to cut a side story out of the book (hopefully just moved to book three but that’s a problem for another day).

The three notebooks in the picture hold – among elements for the following book – the last sections of the Tide of Madness that I need to integrate into the version on my computer. The majority of my creative writing still happens with pen and paper and is one of the ways I make the commute for my day job part of my writing day. This guarantees that I have at least 45 minutes once or twice a day set aside to dig further into my world and fill in the insane puzzle I created for myself.

Most recently, I’ve been getting into the backstory of some of the side characters. Min’s story is about done and was rather refreshing to write – just one point of view and a nice simple story arc. I may or may not put it out there for people to read as a novella in the future, though my focus remains on The Tide of Madness and the as-yet-unnamed book 3 for now. If there are any minor characters you’re curious about, let me know! I’ll be looking for a new side project in a month or so for those days when I’m not able to spend enough time at my computer to make significant headway on the rewrite.

Thank you all yet again for your patience and support!

I got some numbers for you. 

Do you know what this means?!?! I FINISHED EDITING MY NOVEL!!! It was quite a slog for me. I’m not one of those writers that can easily overlook the minutiae in order to focus on the bigger picture. My editor gave me some great notes calling for some big sweeping changes and clarifications, but even still, if I saw something on the page that bothered me (and gosh was there a LOT that bothered me), I had to change it. Staring at pages like these was how I spent what little free time I had for the past four months:

Look at all those revisions!!! Just to be clear, this is not the end of the editing process. It’s back with the Editor / Head of Story at Inkshares, Matt Harry, who’ll look over the changes and make further suggestions. (Hopefully I cleared the higher hurdles the first time around the track and the next lap is easier.) From there, somebody’s gotta clean up my terrible, awful, hideous, redundant word choice… Cover design conversations with the artist… Where is this all going, you ask?! Well, it means it will still be a wait. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a 2018 release, but I can’t say for sure.

In the meantime, I literally don’t know what to do with myself any more. If I’m not working on something, I’m getting ANTSY. While I wait for the Inkshares wheel to turn another notch in Animal in Man’s production track, I’ll be putting more words down for my next novel “The White Shadow”, which you can read the first few chapters of HERE. (I added a chapter to my website since the previous time posting about it, and I’m eleven chapters beyond that point in the writing.) I might even be putting up an Inkshares draft page for the book soon. Who knows.

To all of my supporters, all of you who’ve hung in there this long and longer: Thank you.

I have a tendency to disappear sometimes. Actually, to escape. And at times escape so thoroughly that it’s like I can feel the whole Earth turning beneath me, forgetting it’s left me behind. ...but then I snap out of it, and I realize it’s really just my fault. I’ve been quiet a little too long. This reader update is long, long overdue.

As of this writing, The Animal in Man has sold 495 copies. As of months and months ago, that number was practically the same. I realized today I would very much like to see 500, and I’m asking all of those who have followed the novel recently to make a pre-order and help me achieve that goal. Of course, I’ve also been working on my sales pitch:

The Animal in Man is like Lord of the Flies, but instead of asking whether young men beguiled by the beast inside can ever be human again, the story asks if there’s something human already in every beast. Instead of stumbling, terrified, through a jungle of fear, they are born in a world of constant violence, perhaps designed that way by its creator. Are we so very different, I wonder. 

The original description I typed years ago when I first launched the inkshares page are still true, perhaps more than ever before: The Animal in Man “is our story. The story of mankind." But if words alone aren’t enough to earn your pre-order, then consider these images.

When you read The Animal in Man, what you’ll see first is this:

But it’s really all about this:

It’s about why anyone would ever think violence could be the answer. It’s about my belief that all of us at some point in our life have heard that whisper inside our hearts that says this it might just be. 

Is it?

Oh you. I haven’t forgotten about you.

I wanted to let you know that CHAMPIONS OF THE THIRD PLANET is still coming your way. I got interrupted recently with some TV projects – mainly a pilot for Disney XD and this crazy thing for Fox Network: http://deadline.com/2016/11/neil-gaiman-angry-films-fox-network-the-building-series-development-1201854827/

But I’m back at work now finishing CHAMPIONS, which I still love with all my heart. I think it will be worth the wait and you will dig it.

 Thanks for being patient.

 I love you.

--Chris

Which do you want first: the Good News, or the Good-er News?

Fine. Good news is I’ve finally had the epiphany I should’ve reached months ago (which, by the way, is why you’re receiving another update so soon after the last). I’ve decided to SPLIT THE ANIMAL IN MAN IN TWO. Yes, you’ve read that correctly. Fellow authors, publishing industry gurus, inkshares itself, close friends and relatives - all these folks had been asking me for so long “why not just split the novel? Honestly, my dear animals, working on The Animal in Man had become a lot like sculpting pottery: the wheel spins and spins at a constant, but the larger the pot I was trying to make, the more likely it was to start coming apart and ultimately wind up an unrecognizable ruin. I’d rather make something beautiful - keep the pattern intact - and I figured you’d rather read it that way.

So what’s the Good-er News?

I re-submitted the manuscript last week! This means the ball is now in the publisher’s side of the court. I’ve done a little research that should make all parties involved (including you and me) much happier: An author with multiple books develops a better readership. Trilogies sit better on store shelves and are more likely to be stocked & re-stocked by booksellers. Imagine you’re just Joe-Schmoe Bookreader at the B&N down your street, just browsing the Sci-Fi Fantasy section like you always do, and you spot book one, book two, and book three of The Animal in Man all side-by-side. You are more likely to wonder what you’re missing out on when you discover a trilogy for the first time.

Yes, I said “trilogy.” That, in fact, was the straw that broke this camel’s back. The original, monstrously-oversized Animal in Man ended on a the mother of all cliffhangers, and I’d originally intended to leave it as-is (frankly I like unfinished endings, like Watchmen or Inception). But the ideas just kept gestating in the dark, warm, moist recesses of my brain, fed by the questions. What would happen to so-and-so? Did so-and-so make it out alive, and if he did, what would he do next?

Stay tuned to find out. Because of the decision to split the book, it won’t be as long of a wait.

In the meantime, check out some of the AMAZING sci-fi novels burning up the leaderboards on Inkshares’ Nerdist Contest. The second I read the description of Jenny Graham-Jones “1000 Faces” I knew I had to have a copy. That kind of dystopian, bleak-future vision of our world - where everyone wears a mask and all is never as it seems - is my kind of jam. Take a look at the submissions, you’re sure to find something great.

Until next time, my dear animals.