Great news, friends!
Proteus has had the honor of being supported by its third syndicate! Today, the Great SciFi for the 21st Century and Beyond Syndicate selected Proteus for their August pick. They previously supported Tantalus Depths as well, and it remains as big an honor now as it was then. They’ve supported many excellent books over the past few years, and it’s humbling to have two of my books on the list.
Thanks to them, and a large outpouring of support from many, many amazing people, Proteus has also achieved a second milestone today: we’ve passed 650 pre-orders! We now have less than a hundred orders remaining before reaching that coveted full publication goal. I have been waiting so eagerly to see those numbers go down to double digits for the past year. I can hardly believe we’ve made it this far.
But we haven’t made it all the way, yet. 100 pre-orders is still a lot, and we now have only 12 days to get them. Stay vigilant! Keep spreading the word! The finish line is in sight. We could hit our goal by the end of the week if we really push for it, and I, for one, am pushing as hard as I can.
Time to check in with an update, like it or not.
We’re down to the last 19 days in Proteus’s funding period, and we’re just shy of the 600 pre-order mark at 592. In the past ten days, we’ve brought in 34 pre-orders. Which is impressive, and I could not be thankful for every single one of them. You guys rock.
I have to be honest, though. At this rate, it won’t be enough.
We need to get 158 new pre-orders in the next 19 days, or Proteus won’t happen. Averaging that out, that’s a bit over eight pre-orders a day. That’s more than I can handle on my own. I’ve gone to everyone I know and explored as many other avenues as I’ve been able to find, but the well is running dry. This is where I start getting truly desperate for help.
If any of you are on the fence about ordering, or have friends or family who said they’d be interested but haven’t yet come through, now is absolutely the time. If any of you can manage to support Proteus directly with a second pre-order of your own, I’d be forever grateful.
We CAN do this. I know we can. We’ve done it before. But the key word there is “we.” Proteus will be written thanks to me, but it will only exist as a published novel thanks to you. It’s going to take an army to get this thing done. So it’s time to rally the troops.
Alright friends, the grand finale is approaching.
Technically, it’s more like 28.5, since the campaign actually ends in the afternoon on the 29th, but close enough.
We are now officially in the final month of the Proteus campaign: a campaign that has been running for well over a year now and gathered an astonishing 558 orders already. We have less than 200 left to acquire, then Proteus will receive the same full publication deal that Tantalus Depths has already earned.
Can we do it? 192 orders in one month is no small thing, after all. Even so, the answer is a firm yes. Not only can we do it in that time, but we can likely do it sooner. On Tantalus Depths’ last day campaigning, we gathered more than 80 orders. 80 orders in one day. Granted, two syndicates boosted us that day as well, but my point stands, we could hit that goal in just one or two days of real, solid support.
I don’t expect to reach our goal in two days, obviously. But my point is, we could. Our final goal is absolutely within our reach. My personal goal is to finish the Proteus campaign before Tantalus Depths goes into copy edits, which is likely to happen in the next two weeks. This is an extremely doable goal, provided we really rally for it.
Now more than ever, I need your support. If you haven’t yet ordered Proteus, order a copy. Order two copies. If you have ordered a copy, order a second copy. Get your friends to order a copy, get your family to order copies. Ask anyone you can think of to order a copy. If you can’t afford to buy a copy, please tell everyone you know about this book, share these posts on your social media platforms, be as obnoxious about it as I’ve been this entire past year.
It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be stressful and exhausting. But it will be so worth it.
Let’s do this thing.
Hi Folks!
Guess what? It’s been exactly one year today since The Punch Escrow was published and my life forever changed. The book has now been translated into several languages and I’ve been afforded the opportunity to travel around the world and meet with readers—something I would never have imagined. The process is still in effect! The Korean translation is being published next month.
My little passion project went on to get starred reviews on Kirkus, Library Journal, and Foreword Reviews—where it ultimately was awarded their Gold Award for best indie sci-fi book of 2017.
I wanted to take this time to thank you all, again. Thank you for making this possible. This adventure has been nothing short of amazing. I apologize for not personally replying to the many questions many of you have sent me about the film adaptation. It’s just that I don’t really have anything new to report. I’m in weekly communications with the film’s producers, but—as I’m discovering firsthand—it’s hard to make a movie. I promise to share movie updates as soon as anything solid happens on that front.
As for the sequel. Well, I have the whole thing pretty much outlined. I can tell you the working title is The Hash Collision. That’s news, I guess! I’m holding off putting pen to paper until Lionsgate finalizes the first book’s film adaptation so that I don’t risk breaking serious continuity with the sequel (some things will inevitably be different, but I don’t want to write major plot points in the sequel for characters that somehow end up dying in the film adaptation of The Punch Escrow).
Last: In case you missed it. I’ve had a short story published in the Hugo and Nebula award winning Apex Magazine. It’s called Kerouac’s Renascence, and I invite you to read it. You’ll find it’s a very different tale than Punch.
My deepest gratitude and well wishes,
Tal
Great news everyone!
First of all, the glitch that was making it appear that we had lost all our pre-orders seems to have been fixed. The number of pre-orders currently displaying on our Inkshares production page now seem to accurately reflect the number of pre-orders we’ve sold, which brings me to our other piece of good news:
Those numbers just got an unexpected boost!
The Staff Syndicate has chosen to support Proteus this month! I had honestly given up any hope of getting any more syndicate support for Proteus, so this came out of absolutely nowhere. Thanks to their sudden surge of support, we’ve gained more than a dozen brand new orders all in one day, and have been brought up to 537 preorders. That means only 213 more to go!
We’re getting so close to the final stretch, and I plan to ride the momentum from this unexpected windfall as far as it will go. The next couple weeks are going to be a wild ride.
Well, folks, we’re due for an update, and I have some good news.
We’ve passed the 500 pre-orders mark!
We’re at 510 right now, with 40 days left ‘til our goal. That means we only need to sell 240 more copies to get Proteus its publication deal. We are over two-thirds of the way there.
Unfortunately, this has been a much busier summer than I expected it to be, so progress has been slow the past couple of weeks. I’m gearing up for a super intense August, but it’s still going to take every scrap of support I can gather from now until the campaign’s end. We should be getting approximately 6 pre-orders a day to stay on target, which is no easy thing to do when I’ve already asked everyone I know for support. This is why now, more than ever, I’m dependent on you all to get the word out. If each of you could find just one person who’d be interested in supporting this book, we’d absolutely crush our goal I cannot stress enough how much I can’t do this without your help.
It may feel like we’ve been treading water this entire time, but we are truly making progress that we should all be proud of.
I’ll leave you this week with another lore update. In the spirit of the long and agonizing stasis this campaign has endured, let’s take a look at the technology the Somnambule uses to keep its 50,000 colonists safely preserved during her 150 year journey. Cold stasis is gruelling, painful, and invasive, but just like our campaign for Proteus, it’s a necessary hell with a paradise on the other side.
So the several year long journey of getting Ghosts of War: Retribution to publication day has finally come to an end. Many, many hours of writing and editing and deadlines and design and planning and crowdfunding and...
I got a cold on release day, proceeded to be wiped out, and forgot to do an update...
Go me.
But fear not! The book is just as released today as it was yesterday and here are three simple things you can do to help the book as it takes it’s first steps into the wider world.
1. Read it!
Unsurprisingly the first step is to actually read the book. If you haven’t yet received your print copy (they’re on the way!), you should be able to download the ebook from the Inkshares website. If you haven’t bought it yet, and would like to here are a few places you can do that:
Physical
Ebook
2. Leave reviews!
The next step is to head over to Amazon and Goodreads and leave your reviews. I believe the magic number is 50 reviews for Amazon before it does something magical with their algorithms. So lets aim for 50.
Every review helps grow the books profile, and will help to get it in front of more peoples eyes.
3. Tell some people about it! (or everyone even)
Spread the word. Tell people about the book. Encourage them to buy a copy (and leave a review!)
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I think that’ll do for the moment. Lastly though, I want to thank everyone that helped make this thing a reality, you’re all awesome. It still feels weird. It still doesn’t feel real. But I am a published author today (er, yesterday) because of all of you.
I do really need to go lie down now though.
