Hello Foxes!
Confession time. I completely forgot to send the newsletter last week! It wasn’t that I didn’t mean to send one or didn’t want to – I love catching up with you here – I simply forgot!
I suppose the actual forgetting was that I forgot to write it in my diary, and what doesn’t go in my diary doesn’t get done. Never mind! We’re here now. And by here, I mean chaos. There is so much to do.
Do you keep a diary? Tell me your time management tricks! I clearly need them.
Progress updates
I am POWERING through the revisions of Secrets. Nothing like a tight deadline to get Chaos Fox to shake a tail feather, so by the end of next week Secrets will be off my desk and cluttering up my editor’s instead.
That leaves me free to get on with all the other projects, chief of which is planning the Kickstarter! Things are looking exciting for the illustrated first edition of Secrets. I’m painting custom endpapers and planning a reversible dust jacket…
Some of the pretty things will be standard and some are possibilities depending on how the campaign goes. Do we need a slip case AND a dust jacket? You decide! Which brings me to…
What is Kickstarter?
If you’re already well-versed in buying gorgeous special editions on the platform, skip on down to my new Darkhaven video. For those who aren’t familiar, here goes.
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform, but it’s not about asking for donations or a handout. Think of it like a pre-order system, except with far more customisation and personal interaction than you’d get on regular retailers.
How does Kickstarter work?
I create a menu, if you like, of fabulous book things! An e-book, digital art, paperback and hardcover special editions, art prints and other items. You choose what you’d like, and you pledge to purchase. If enough people pledge and we reach the funding goal, we go ahead!
it’s a brilliant way to gauge support for a project and also gain real-time feedback about what you actually want. No point making fancy bookmarks if people don’t want fancy bookmarks (although who doesn’t love a fancy bookmark? E-reader folk, I suppose, but I mostly read e-books and I still love a pretty bookmark).
I’ve seen some fabulous campaigns on Kickstarter (check out One Spark by Holly D. Morgan for an intriguing example) and can’t wait to share this journey with you!
Or if regency fantasy is more your style, there’s this gorgeous campaign from New Zealand author Tilly Wallace:
So you see why I’m excited!
I made a book trailer!
Okay, so I slapped together a book trailer in the spare time I could wrangle last Monday afternoon because someone asked for one at short notice, but it has vibes.
As for reading, I’ve just finished the Doctrine of Labyrinths series by Katherine Addison (formerly published under Sarah Monette). If you’re into dark (and queer) fantasy with a deep focus on characters and the monstrosity humanity is capable of, look it up, but fair warning – it is not fucking about when it says dark. And then please email me about Felix and Mildmay because I’m still in book hangover land.
To fix said book hangover, I’m about to embark on an entirely different journey with Empire of Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson, which promises to be a delightfully fun time.
I’m off to get a monumental amount of editing done in far too little time. Wish me luck!
Kel