Bone Walker

As I sent out in my last Kickstarter update, I’m thrilled to announce that we have now achieved $4,000 and FULL FUNDING!

Accordingly, as promised, here are the next sample chapters of Faerie Blood and Bone Walker!

Faerie Blood Chapter 4

Bone Walker Chapter 4

Since the project is now fully funded, these will be the last of the sample chapters I’ll post! But we do still have eleven days to go, so there are still teasers I’ll be able to share with you–and on Monday, Dara and I will have a music announcement to share for those of you interested in the soundtrack!

Several of you have sent kind congratulations over Twitter or Facebook or in email, and thank you all very much for that! Thank you also for your support and your boosting of the signal!

And remember, if you still want in, there’s still time! There’s always room for more in this kitchen party, up until May 16th! Grab a chair, raise a jar, and join us! Only $358.77 to go until Dara and I can deliver the soundtrack to all backers at $25 or above!

GRACIOUS, a LOT of new backers have come in today! I’m thrilled to announce that we’re at 96 backers now with 94 percent funding!

Only four backers to go until somebody else gets a free ebook copy of the original, Drollerie edition of Faerie Blood, which will cease to be available once the Kickstarter is finished and I deploy the ebook of the new version out for sale! The changes in the text between versions won’t be huge, but they will be there, so hopefully it’ll amuse sharp-eyed readers to find where the changes are.

And only a scant $215.77 to go until full funding of the project! At that magic $4K mark, I will post Chapter 4 of both novels. AND, whoever gets me over that line, remember, is going to get an automatic bump up two reward levels!

AND, because we’re getting down to brass tacks here, people, a note about stretch goals!

As previously announced, if the project cracks $4,500, Dara and I will be offering the Faerie Blood and Bone Walker soundtrack to all backers at $25 or above!

And now I will also announce that if we crack $5,500, I will also throw in Book Three to all backers who have put in for any reward tier that gets them Books 1 and 2–that’s the $20 reward tier for both ebooks, and $50 for the tier that gets you both ebooks and both paperbacks! Book Three will take longer to deploy, because I haven’t even finished Book Two yet–but trust me when I say that that book will be chock full of Christopher-backstory, visit-to-St.-John’s, musical and magical goodness! And if you’re liking Kiri’s gorgeous, gorgeous cover art for Faerie Blood, just imagine how she’s going to draw Elessir and Christopher for the second and third books!

If you want in on the race to the finish line, clickie! Every little pledge will help get us there! No matter what the size of your pledge or the range of your signal boost, thank you, thank you ALL, for the support love you’re showing today. Let’s see if we can get this ship home!

Backer #82 just came in (hi Kaye and thank you very much for your support!), and this brings us to 84 percent with two weeks to go on the project!

We still have time, but as I’ve said before, we can’t get complacent here!

Backer Soula found my project page on Kicktraq yesterday, and Kicktraq thinks I’m going to go over with a lot of room to spare–but that won’t happen unless pledges keep coming in! So if you’d like to help make Kicktraq’s prediction come true, and especially if you’d like to get your hands on the soundtrack, keep the signal boosted. Tell your Facebook friends. Tell your tweeps on Twitter. Tell Google+ and your blogs and mailing lists and forums and anywhere else you think might be appropriate to spread the word!

Speaking of that soundtrack, I’ll tell you this–Dara showed me some lyrics snippets she was writing last night for a little ditty she’s thinking will be called “Anarchy Now”–a song of the Free Court of Seattle. I took one look at those and immediately knew what I’ll need to be reading right in front of that, when we put this soundtrack together.

Seriously, you guys, do you know how awesome it is to have your partner writing music to go along with a book that’s coming out of your very own head? I’ll share some lyrics with you when Dara gets them to a shareable state!

(What’s the Free Court of Seattle? It doesn’t exist in Kendis’ universe, not yet–but it’s coming. There is a power shakeup coming between the Warders and the Sidhe, oh my yes. Muahaha.)

In closing: signal boost! Signal boost! Signal boost! And thank you again for all of your support and everything you do!

A few new backers came in this afternoon, and brought the project very, very close now to the 80 percent mark! This is getting seriously exciting, people. Still two weeks to go and we’re already coming down the homeward slope to full funding.

And now I can share with you these teaser tidbits for who have jumped in to participate on the Faerie Blood and Bone Walker soundtrack!

We do of course have my very own Dara, who has already flexed her considerable musical muscle with her work under the banner of Crime and the Forces of Evil. In addition to commanding the studio equipment, Dara will also unleash her bouzouki Kohaku and every other instrument in her arsenal. She’s already writing chord progressions for music to fit in with Bone Walker, people, and do you know how fabulous it is to hear someone writing music for a story coming out of your very own head? Pretty damned fabulous, that’s how.

We’ll have Sunnie Larsen, mistress of violin and viola, a fixture in the local pagan, folk, and filk music circles. She’s played with the likes of Bone Poets Orchestra, Tricky Pixie, Vixy and Tony, and more!

And we’ll have Leannan Sidhe providing her haunting vocals! She and Dara have performed and worked together, and I’m here to tell you, I can’t imagine a more appropriately-named performer to be joining us on this project. I encourage you all to go check out her own ongoing Kickstarter, not only so that you can get an idea of what she sounds like for purposes of my soundtrack, but ALSO because her second album will be very, very worth your attention. Go check her out and tell her Anna sent you!

Please keep those pledges coming, folks, and if there are places you can signal-boost, do so! Don’t forget, when we get to backer #100, I’ll hand out another ebook copy of Faerie Blood‘s first edition. At the $3,500 mark, I’ll give out one of my two print copies of same, made by Third Place Press as our test run before we do the second edition and Bone Walker!

And at that point as well, I’ll announce what we need to get to in order to bring you not only the soundtrack, but Book 3 of Kendis’ trilogy as well! Stick around, and thank you all, thank you so very, very much, for your support!

Many thanks to incoming new backers today, especially to backer Cyn, who has pushed us over the $3,000 mark! Cyn therefore wins the Dramatic Character Death opportunity, and will get to consult with me on the character to be named as she chooses, in what story the character appears, and the manner of the character’s Dramatic Death!

But that’s not all, folks, because now that we have cracked the 75 percent mark, I can share with you a few more awesome things! First up, as promised, I present to you Chapter 3 of both Faerie Blood and Bone Walker!

Faerie Blood Chapter 3

Bone Walker Chapter 3

Second, and hopefully just as if not more enticingly, I will now make this initial announcement about the stretch goals that are in store if the project goes over its goal!

The first of this will be Book 3 of the Kendis books, as of yet untitled, which is still in the planning stages. Of this book, though, I can tell you this–part of it will be set in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and will provide some followup to the backstory of Warder Christopher MacSimidh, as well as some things I’m laying down in Bone Walker. I’m actually getting to visit St. John’s this summer, and am very, very much looking forward to seeing the place firsthand, in no small part so I’ll be able to portray it properly in the book!

And the second of these, about which my beloved Dara and I are both very excited, is a musical soundtrack to accompany the novels! We are in talks with musicians local to us who are interested in participating, and we will be using Dara’s own studio to record it. It promises to include not only several traditional sets that fit in well with the characters of the books, but also “Something’s Coming” out of Dara’s own work under the aegis of Crime and the Forces of Evil!

Don’t forget, though–the next backer, #75, will get a free ebook copy of the Drollerie edition of Faerie Blood, and I will keep handing those out to every 25th backer. And at the $3,500 mark, I’ll hand out one signed PRINT copy of the Drollerie edition of the book as well!

Many, many thanks to you all, and again, huge congrats to Cyn!