9 days left in the funding campaign, and 83 pre-orders to go to reach the Quill publication goal. It seems daunting, but not impossible!

Can you help get Mission 51 published? If you haven’t gotten your pre-order(s), there is no time to hesitate! Please, get one (or more) now! Why not be on the short-list of Super Readers!?  :-)

If you are an author with an active project, get mine and I’ll get yours!

Remember, if I reach Quill, I will match the amount of money that people have invested in me and Mission 51 with a donation to the Ronald McDonald House Charities and their mission to help families with sick children.

Mission 51 is ready to launch. All it needs is YOU!

Thank you for your support! :D

18 days of funding left and we seem to be stalled at 162 pre-orders, which is not really close to the 250 required for publication by Inkshares. But I am not going to worry too much about that. My plan is to keep refining the Mission 51 manuscript, which I think is already a riot (of course I would think that, it is my book, LOL) and just keeps getting better all the time! It will get published one way or another when the time is right, and maybe this is just not yet the right time.

So, the other part of Mission 51 refinement relates to the art. Chris Pyke just finished another piece, this one to go with the chapter "Roswell Revisited." Take a look. It is too spectacular for words. Absolutely awesome talent! :D

Note from the author:

On this historic date 47 years ago, Mat the alien chose to make his escape from captivity, holding the late JFK to his word. He adopted this day as his Earth birthday.

And the Winner of the Mission 51 Raffle is...

Jaye Milius!!

Congratulations, Jaye! You have won an original, personalized, signed sketch by Mission 51 artist Idan Carré! :-)

Woohoo!!  Mission 51 just passed the 150 pre-order mark! This is very exciting! Do you know what that means? It means we can run the Mission 51 Raffle!

I will now enter the names of every person who pre-ordered Mission 51 so far into Riffle Raffle. Here is a link to the original post and rules for the raffle. The winner will be chosen randomly, electronically.

I’ll announce the winner sometime this weekend. Good luck! :-)

And please, keep pushing Mission 51 to all your peeps. We still have 97 pre-orders to go, and only 22 days in which to do it, for Inkshares to publish this book! We can do it!!! :-)

I am interrupting my day at work because of this unbelievable happening, and I simply had to share it with you! I have gotten the highest honor I have ever received for my writing! I was notified a few minutes ago by @Matthew Isaac Sobin, the syndicate lead of the GREAT SCIFI for the 21st CENTURY and BEYOND SYNDICATE that Mission 51 is their July selection!!!!

Like I told Matt, this honor has left me spinning with feelings. I am humbled that anyone would think of me and my work like this. I am overjoyed! And I feel like a funny fear has been lifted, a fear that my thought and words are insignificant. This honor is very encouraging!

Here is what Matt had to say:

The SciFi syndicate is thrilled to support Mission 51 with our July selection! Ferd Crôtte has created something truly intoxicating. The perfect premise, which takes one of the great mysteries / intrigues of the 20th century and puts us directly in the alien’s shoes; it’s SciFi and historical fiction wrapped into one. In addition, there is special artwork which illuminates the story with a deft touch. We can’t wait to read more, and for this story to become a book on our shelves. We encourage our fellow Inkshares authors and readers to support this praiseworthy project!

Matt, thank you very, very much from the bottom of my heart for this valued honor! I am re-energized to continue making Mission 51 the absolutely best it can be! Thank you!!!

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! :-)