I’ve just launched my first Kickstarter campaign for my novel Angel from the Rust.
The novel is complete and 100% written and edited.
I plan on releasing it at the beginning of 2023. It will be available as an ebook, paperback, and hardcover. If enough funds are raised, I will be able to hire a narrator and release Angel from the Rust as an audiobook.
As a “thank you” for the support of my backers, I have some great rewards in store…
Tiers & Rewards
Angel from the Rust is being offered in four different formats:
- ebook
- audiobook (if the goal is met)
- paperback
- hardcover
I’m also offering two of my online courses as rewards:
- World Building Workshop for Fantasy Writing – a bestseller on Udemy with over 10K students (over 4 hours of video content)
- Writing Your Fantasy Novel – the foundational work you need for writing and finishing your fantasy novel (over 4 hours of video content)
The tiers hold a variety of combinations of rewards. Check out the tiers and find which one you like most.
Note on tiers with paperback and hardcover rewards: I will be using a print-on-demand service that will ship to the US and certain countries. If your package ships outside the US, you will be responsible for any tariff, customs, and/or VAT taxes.
Note on tiers with course rewards: If your reward tier comes with access to one or more of my writing courses, you will receive a coupon code(s) that will give you free enrollment in my course(s). These coupons last for only one month (31 days), so it will be your responsibility to redeem the coupon before expiration.
The Story
To give you a little more information about the book, here’s what I plan on putting on the back cover…
They say Earth was a place of wonders. Where towers pierced the clouds, where cities lit up the night, and where flying machines streaked across the sky. It was magic. But the magic conjured up the End War. Fire fell from the sky, and metal beasts leveled the cities.
That was six hundred years ago. Now the ruins of the Ancient world are buried or overgrown. People live in settlements where horses plow fields and swords keep the peace. And the “magic” of the Ancients is strictly forbidden.
Corvala, a young musician on the run from the law, never intended on getting mixed up with the things of history. But when a murderer falls from the heavens and sets himself up as a god, Corvala is driven into the wilderness and discovers an Ancient secret embedded in her bloodline: a code that could save thousands—or plunge her into madness.
To defeat the tyrannical god, Corvala must confront something more terrifying than the demons of Earth’s history. She must confront her own.
Want to read more? Here’s a link to read a sample from the novel.
The Book
The novel is 116,000 words long, and the audiobook will be approximately 13 hours in duration. As mentioned before, it’s completely written and edited.
It can be read (or listened to) as a stand-alone story; there are no cliffhangers at the end. But it also serves as the first book of a six-book series. (Kind of like how Mistborn: Final Empire and The Hobbit can be read on their own but serve as the beginning of their respective series.)
So I have plans for future books. If my campaign goes over my goal, the extra funds will go towards promoting Angel from the Rust and the editing and cover design of the next book in the series, Desert of the Beast (its first draft being nearly finished).
How I started writing this story
Angel from the Rust started out with a question: “What if our planet Earth turned into a fantasy world?” For that world to exist, I figured three things would need to happen:
- society sinking into the dark ages
- the development of a magic system
- and the creation of mythical creatures.
I began to wonder how these things could happen in a plausible way. A WWIII kind of event was what made the most sense. Because of the war, Civilization would collapse. Animals from futuristic biological experiments–resembling dragons and other creatures of myth–would break from containment and grow feral in the wild. And, as time went by, technology would become rare and misunderstood, becoming this dystopian Earth’s “magic.” (So in a sense, I was beginning to create a sci-fi world dressed in fantasy.)
As the world developed in my mind, so did the story. I wrote a few drafts and presented them to my weekly writer’s group whose critique was brutally honest but fair. They helped me refine the story and characters, and over the course of a couple of years of working and reworking my drafts and a round of beta readers, I ended up with a story of which I’m so proud.
Why Kickstarter?
After sending my manuscript out through the query process, I was signed with a small publishing company that loved my manuscript. Their preliminary readers all agreed that Angel from the Rust is a quality story that needs to get out into the world. So my book was put in the hands of a great team who worked on making it the best it could be. And it looked like production was going well.
Then, unfortunately, the publishing company went out of business. Now I find myself in charge of finishing my book’s production.
The publishing company took care of a big chunk of the work (editing and cover design), but one major thing was left undone: the audiobook. This is a big expense for an individual to cover, which is why I’m turning to the Kickstarter community.
Costs
- Audiobook production: approximately $2,800
- Kickstarter fees: $340
- Taxes and other fees: $360
Your Support
Thank you for considering supporting this campaign. If you’d like to back this project, please go to my Kickstarter page (by clicking this link) and pick a tier to back. Thank you for your support!