Firstly, apologies for not following up my Ghostbusters post for the second movie. I’ll be doing a review of the remake though, once I see it. But for now, I thought a nice piece of Demon Haunted might be in order, at least beyond the first chapter. I will, of course, post snippets with no spoilers to the main plot. Mostly, these will be interesting bits and bobs from the first half of the book. This first teaser introduces the Hanging Judge himself. Enjoy!
News
Big Demon Haunted News
I apologize to anyone who only follows this blog and not Twitter or Tumblr or even Facebook but you’re getting a big update today.
Year One
Holy shit, guys, gals, and hellbeasts. A Demon in the Desert came out a year ago. And it’s been a hell of a year. I’ve made 101 sales, had a successful crowdfunding campaign for the sequel, and a slew of reviews both constructively critical and excited. I’ve met a lot of folks, gotten fan art, learned a lot of things, and I’m like 10,000% sure that Demon Haunted is gonna make you guys even happier than the first book. What a ride.
And hey, if you enjoyed the book and left a review, thank you SO MUCH. If you enjoyed it but haven’t, it would mean a lot to me if you left one. And if that’s something you’re not comfortable with, badger your friends and loved ones in my name! Cause Tim Marquitz thinks Demon Haunted is a great book and this hype train needs to get rolling.
New Art And Site Colors
Now that I’ve got a shiny new piece of art to share, I figured I’d update a few things around the site. First up is a new color scheme and a new header image. Demon Haunted takes place in a plains region called the Sapphire Plains so the new header reflects that (original stock photo). We deal with ghosts and spirits in this one too, so the colors reflect that a little better.
After that, I updated the landing page to be a little more chill. Just a welcome…and the lovely promo picture of Grimluk done by Bob Kehl! The piece is below if you don’t feel like clicking away. And for anyone curious, the first header I used was The Wasteland by Genesis-Orbit.
One Hundred Sales!
I’m pretty ecstatic about this! One hundred sales for A Demon in the Desert! And in less than a year of actual release (I do count my original twenty-six kickstarter backers but I lump it in as pre-orders). That feels pretty damn good.
A Whole Mess of News
For those of you reading on the site itself, you might notice the first bit of news: ashearmstrong.com is now mine. I upgraded my wordpress account. Yes, I could’ve gone ahead and set up my own site via hostgator or one of those but honestly, this was the least stressful option and it works just fine. I can fully decorate the site now and I have the domain name. That’s some good stuff.
Secondly, the Indiegogo campaign is over and finished out with a total of $987, just barely shy of half my intended goal. But that’s okay, I can more than work with that thanks to some awesome folks. That grand total is all thanks to a last minute backer who took the highest reward tier, the $300 Governor, which means that he gets to name not only the governor of New Gilead but also the name of the capital city. Very cool and very appreciated.
Moving forward, I’ll be finishing up the edits on the last chapter of Demon Haunted and then running through the rewritten second chapter one more time before declaring the second draft DONE and starting the process of getting this bad boy edited. Should be able to get all that done this week as chapter 19 is just waiting on me and I need to get some character names from a couple of backers.
Indiegogo says I’ll have my funds on Tuesday, and then I can slam down sweaty fistfuls of cash on Bob Kehl’s desk and get the art side of things started. This time around, I’ll have a full sleeve and I’ll be getting a character piece of Grimluk on top of that for promotional use and the second bookmark.
I’m hoping to have the last draft, and maybe even all the formatting and everything else done by the end of August. If everything goes smoothly, I’ll put up a pre-order for the Kindle version on September 1st and release print and digital on October 1st. Should be a good Orctober celebration this year.
And even though it was WAY early, I snagged the Halloween slot for r/Fantasy’s Writer of the Day, so that should be fun. I’ll figure out what all I’ll do in celebration once it gets closer and for those who prefer to stay away from reddit, I’ll have all my other avenues of social media open as usual.
Beyond that, I have a couple of ideas for blog posts I may do soon and if anyone’s interested, I’m thinking about doing a Ghostbusters franchise retrospective leading up to the release of the reboot in July. I’d cover the movies, the cartoons, the main IDW comic series, and the 2008 video game. Let me know what you think about that.
I think that’s everything for now. There will be art updates as they come though the Indiegogo backers will get everything first. Take care y’all!
Plan B
Okay, well, the Kickstarter campaign was unsuccessful and the update for that has gone out. Plan B was a new, flex fund campaign is on Indiegogo. What does this mean? Well, if everyone who backed me on Kickstarter, backs me on Indiegogo instead, then I’ll actually get to keep what I raise. New information about all this is in the Cost Breakdown section.
Hopefully I can pull in most of my backers again.
70 Hours Left Until Doomsday
Wait…not Doomsday, until the Demon Haunted Kickstarter campaign ends. And, wow, I’m up to 55% funding, $1112 of $2000. I was feeling rather pessimistic about the whole thing getting any higher a few days ago but between yesterday morning and this morning, I had a big surge in backers, including someone who backed me in the Demon Hunter tier (which means they get all the goodies you can get AND a demon hunter named after them). That would be awesome enough but they’re an Aussie, which means they also pledged the 26 bucks for shipping.
So now I’m sitting here wondering what will happen by 1pm on Tuesday when things end and hoping that I’ll catch interest in a few more heavy hitters like the aforementioned backer. I’m cautiously hopeful considering the flow over the past 24 hours but realistically, the campaign is probably going to fail. I have back-up plans. Several. Chiefly making a gofundme campaign with far less rewards. Cause I could get all the artwork and editing I want for $1000 but then I can’t offer anything other than digital rewards. Part of why the Kickstarter was $2000 was due to covering the base price of printing and shipping to ME to then get sign it and get it to the READER.
So we’ll see what happens.
Kickstarter Update
For those curious, I’ve posted a second update on Kickstarter.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ashearmstrong/demon-haunted/posts/1486428
Kickstarter is Live
And with that, we’re off and running. Grimluk 2’s official name is Demon Haunted. You can look at the campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ashearmstrong/demon-haunted
Ashe Armstrong 