Kicking the Gods Out

Sep 25, 2023

Hey,

This is Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker series, and I hope you’re excited. Our first Kickstarter is now launching on Sept. 27!

Some things happened not with our books, so don’t worry. We’re fine. But those things forced Melinda, my fearless scribe, to move the Kickstarter back to the date we originally wanted—September 27.

Why that date?

Well, September 27th would have been Melinda’s sister’s 39th birthday. And we have a reputation to uphold. We try to always release a book on or close to that date to honor the promise Melinda made to her sister to publish all our books.

For us characters, September 27 is like Christmas. Because we get to meet new readers!

So we’re really excited the kickstarter is launching this Wednesday. And I’m already in trouble…

What did I do?

I realized last week that the pictures of our proofs didn’t show you how thick these book babies are. So this week, I’m fixing that.

But I made a small mistake. I told Melinda, my loyal scribe, and the author of all the books that star me and a few that don’t, that we need more pictures of the spine.

Melinda took a picture of her hand holding the book. But how will that help when you don’t know how small her hands are?

So I told her that. She wasn’t happy. But she let me direct the next pictures!

And I thought, what better way to show how thick these omnibuses are then by using a ruler!

Unfortunately, Melinda doesn’t have a ruler. So I made do with a measuring tape. That’s much better than a hand right?

The hardcover omnibuses will be 9x6 ish. We used the closest size to that so it maybe a few millimeters taller than other 9x9 hardcovers you own.

We’ve also had a few questions about Kickstarter. So let’s talk for a minute about the way the platform works.

When you arrive on our campaign page, there will be a video with a voiceover recorded by Melinda, my Scribe, and a green button that says back this campaign. If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the story section which has lots of pictures and an explanation of our campaign, its risks and challenges, the rewards, the addons, shipping, etc.

The story is long because we have to explain all the things. But there’s a TOC, so you can navigate through the story easily. We’ll also put sections of our story in our newsletter when it launches.

After you look at the story section, look at the rewards. If you’re on desktop, you’ll see the rewards on the right. If you’re on your phone, you’ll need to go back to the top and click the green back this project button near the video or the rewards tab under the video.

The first option is to back without rewards. Don’t click that unless you don’t want the books. I repeat. ←This option doesn’t give you any rewards.

What are rewards?

Rewards are what you get when you pledge. They’re our thank you for helping to make the project a success.

What does that mean?

It means we put together some packages of books, and you can select the one you like by clicking the green Pledge $XX button under the tier image and description.

If you want to make your own tier, you can do that too. After you pledge to a tier, it’ll ask if you want to add on any other items.

Shipping will be charged extra. We tried to figure out a way to include it, but the shipping costs vary so widely, it was impossible to come up with a number that worked for everyone.

Since this is our first time doing this, we don’t know where backers will come from. So we figured out shipping to US, UK, AU, and CA since that’s where most of our book sales come from.

That seemed like a safe bet. If you live in a country that’s not listed, just message us through kickstarter or reply to any newsletter and tell us what tier you want to back, what country you live in and the zip code to ship to. We’ll figure out the cost, add your country as an option for that tier, and let you know it’s ready for you to pledge.

What if you don’t understand kickstarter or can’t figure out the site?

No worries. We’re here to help.

As much as we want this campaign to be a success, we also want to send books to people who want them. So don’t let the platform intimidate you or get in the way.

Just let us know what books you want and in which format, and we’ll create a private, simplified checkout page, so you can support the project and get the books. It may take us a few days to set this up, so don’t worry if you don’t immediately hear back from us. Magic and tech don’t mix, so we have to wait for the Scribe to make this.

Otherwise, we try to answer emails within 24 hours. But sometimes we need a little longer to find the answer. Or we need to wait for our Scribe. After all, some requests require a human. But for everything else, you get us, fictional characters!

What about paperbacks?

We’ve had a few questions about this. Since the omnibuses are thick as shown in the pictures above, we’re only printing them in hardcover. We fear for the poor spine. We don’t want it to crack, and it might if we printed it in paperback format.

For all our other books, we added paperback bundles to the campaign. We’re still converting the covers so the new printer’s specifications. (We’re using a new printer for the hardcovers, and it just didn’t make sense to get the paperbacks printed somewhere else.)

That way we’re ordering everything from the same place and all your books should ship together. Don’t worry. We’ll have everything ready to print by the end of the campaign.

Will Rogue Gods: Gateway to Hell be included in the kickstarter?

No, it won’t be included. It’s in the final editing stages now, and we just entered it into a contest, and we won’t find out if we won until after the Kickstarter campaign ends. Patrons will get their ebook copy in the next week or two.

When will Rogue Gods: Gateway to Hell launch to retailers?

We don’t know yet. Melinda wanted to hold off on releasing it to a wider audience until the characters did a certain thing they didn’t do in the first book. Remember, this wasn’t supposed to be a trilogy.

And Melinda is still mad about that. She explains all that and more in a podcast episode she released over the weekend. You can watch it on YouTube or listen on your podcast player of choice.

Patrons know what that thing is. They watched the story go off the rails in real time.

Melinda drafted 1/3 of the sequel, Rogue Gods: Summon the Gods. And they still haven’t done that thing yet. But the sequel will be subtitled, Summon the Gods, so maybe that’s what our heroes and antiheroes are supposed to do.

I don’t know because I’m not their sidekick. I need the characters to get to the third book in the trilogy to unblock my next book, Chasing Dragons. And yes, I’m going to keep mentioning it so you don’t forget there’s more father-son magical mayhem coming! Now with even more dragons!

Summon the Gods will unblock Robin’s next book, Rogue Rescue. So that’s a good thing. And I think I rambled enough for this newsletter. I’ll talk to you on Wednesday. But you can hear the Scribe talk about our books in one of his week’s podcast episodes! Check them out below.

And don’t forget to follow our Kickstarter campaign so you get notified when it launches.

New Podcast Episodes & Videos

Listen on our podcast. Watch on YouTube:

Fantasy, Lore, & More: Rogue Gods & Feral Characters (featuring Melinda! And she’s talking about our books.)
Fantasy, Lore, & More: Lamp of Light

Melinda’s Substack

Kicking the Gods Out

New Podcast Episodes & Videos

New Releases, Sales, & Other Book Stuff

In Case You Missed It