It’s Alive! Alive I Tell You!

The Good News

Out of the Darkness lives! It’s a real book; Elite settings, characters, plot, themes—it’s all in there. The first gamma draft is complete, and pretty polished.

The Scary News

It’s very existence in in great peril. The book is currently with Frontier for approval. Death can come in many forms… can Out of the Darkness survive? If so, will its soul remain intact, or will it be torn asunder, rendered a mere shadow of its former self?

Only one man knows… which side of Michael Brookes’ personality will the novel draw out?

This?

Or this?!

We should know in a little while…

So, backers and would-be readers, as we wait, let us focus on the positive, make optimism our banner, and raise our heads and sniff the roses… the Roses of Success!

More Good News

We have a proof-reader—qualified, experted an’ everfink! I want to thank the awesome Zoe Markham for taking on Out of the Darkness and squeezing us in at the last minute. If you want to check out her work and find out why she’ll be a real asset to the project, you can find her here.

The Plan of Action

Looking from the outside, it may not seem like it, but there is a plan (ish):

Stage 1: Frontier Approval & Writing Front Matter and Blurb etc (approx 2 weeks)

Stage 2: Corrections & Gamma Reading (approx 1 month, but could be a lot longer… see stage 1)

Stage 3: Proof-Reading (1-2 weeks)

Stage 4: Corrections from Gamma and Proofing, plus Typesetting (no idea)

Stage 5: You lot, reading (not up to me! )

Stage 6: Prep of the Paperback (unknown)

Stage 7: Everything is Available, and Selling Millions of Copies.

If there are no major spanners, I hope to have the book out to you all August-September time. I know that it’s been a long wait already, but several of the upcoming stages I have no control over, and they can radically impact the timings of those I can influence. It may be sooner, possibly later, but this is my best guess at time of writing…

Cover Art

I’m currently looking into the possibilities for an alternate cover design. If you want to let me know what you’d like to see, pop over to this thread on the Frontier forums and vote in the poll or comment.

And to Waiting?

Nope, back to writing front pages, backer thank you pages, blurb, finding cover art etc, etc, etc… All for the good of the book, and to keep me from chewing my finger nails, tearing out hair, fiddling with my executive stress toy until it breaks—you get the idea—until I hear back from Michael.

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Image Credits:

Michael Brookes as Dr Evil, located on the Frontier forums. Originator, unknown. Please contact me if you would like an attribution. Michael Brookes as Superman, located on Frontier Development’s ‘Meet the Team‘ thread. Originator, unknown. Please contact me if you would like an attribution.