A woman discovers a legendary living sword. The sword wants her to be a great hero. She'd rather pawn it for drinking money.
If you can't wait to see what happens next with the cast from The Graverobber's Sword, check out The Dragon's Contract! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jesseneon/the-dragons-contract
It's been a little over a year, and I'm happy to announce that The Dragon's Contract campaign is going to be going live in the new few weeks!
THE LINK: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jesseneon/the-dragons-contract
This is a little bit of a long update, so strap in! There are two parts; The Final Few, which addresses the straggler copies of The Graverobber's Sword, and The Dragon's Contract, which addresses... well, The Dragon's Contract.
The only thing that stands between this copy and 100% fulfillment is a very few copies of the book, and those handful copies are either being replaced or taking ten thousand years in transit for whatever reason.
Back in June, I posted This Update Right Here using the tracking data from one of the backers whose copy hadn't arrived. Canada Post had marked the book as being received on June 1st, showed it as being in transit for 21 days, and predicted it would take 4 to 10 business days to arrive.
When I posted the last update asking for anyone whose copy hadn't arrived to reach out, that same backer, unfortunately, had to reach out again because it still hadn't arrived.
Here's the updated status (as of TODAY) on that same book:
Unless my math is wrong, it's been in transit for a whopping EIGHTY-THREE DAYS.
I don't know why this has happened, and I'm doubly confused as to how folks from Germany and the Netherlands and the UK (and, and, and,) are seeing their copies arrive but other people in those same regions or in much, much closer regions are getting either no useful changes/updates to their package or no updates whatsoever.
The situation is out of my hands in every sense of the word, but it's one I want to remedy to the best of my ability.
I spent much of last week combing through tracking information for folks and as of right now a total of 23 replacement copies are going out tomorrow morning for the folks whose copies seem to be completely lost in the postage backlog:
Paul R, Scott F, Lyssa F, Henric A, Christian C, Kristiana J, Patrick H, Emily W, Jack P, Dean W, Justin C, Ethan W, Andrew T, Luke F, Kenneth O, Torrie S, Jenny C, Charles P, Michelle F, Mekala N, Oyvind N, Mitchell P.
Couldn't have asked for a more random spread of geographic locations for these missing copies, which is just odd... but then, 4 to 10 business days worth of transit becoming 80+ days of transit kind of trumps everything, so I give up trying to understand it.
When I say 'missing' and 'completely lost', what I mean is that the tracking information hasn't changed/moved/updated ever for these copies, and as of right now those are the only copies I'm considering truly 'lost' and in need of replacement. Every other copy reported as not yet arrived has been confirmed to still be in transit, and as I said that's not something I can control or affect in any way.
(83 days to Arizona... I can WALK to Arizona in less than 83 days.)
Once again, if your book has NOT yet arrived and we haven't connected about it since the previous update OR if you didn't see the previous update and your copy still hasn't arrived, please reach out to me!
I don't care if it's here, or Twitter, or Discord, just reach out! Despite everything else, I am determined to make this as positive of an experience as I possibly can. You all gambled on me/this book/this story, and I intend to make good on that.
...What I wouldn't give for an agent/publishing house who could handle all this stuff for me, but I have to hope that as long as I keep doing my best those things will come in time.
For those of you whose copies are still in transit, all I can do is keep apologizing and gesturing vaguely to the state of the world, especially those of you in the US who had to deal with border delays, COVID delays, and now apparently government-induced anti-mail delays?
It's madness, just pure madness, but we're going to get through it.
Because of what's going on with the above, I am not okay launching The Dragon's Contract next month as planned and will be pushing it back a month to early-to-mid October. Call it what you will, but I just don't like the idea of promoting book two (with sample chapters included as per this campaign) while some of you are still waiting for book one. If I were on the backer end of things, I'd be disappointed as h e c k if something got revealed or spoiled that would take away from my enjoyment of reading the first book, and that's just not a pain I want to inflict on my fellow bibliophiles.
In the meantime, I'm spending time crossing t's and dotting i's in advance - ALMOST LIKE I LEARNED SOMETHING FROM THE GRAVEROBBER'S SWORD OR SOMETHING - in order to preemptively make it as painless as possible.
Cover art: Will be done by Jason Rainville once again, continuing the theme and series of the first cover. We've connected in order to confirm rate and availability, and we're all set.
Editing: I've started the rate/contract discussion with The Editor Known Only As Beth who did most of the final edits seen in The Graverobber's Sword. As it stands, she is on board!
Shipping: Since I have to pick up more supplies to mail out the replacement copies of TGS, I'm going to just stock up on bubble mailers at the same time. Backers will all be covering their own shipping next time around, holy mother of god.
Publishing: I'm having a difficult time connecting with Tablo for whatever reason, but as of right now the plan is to go ahead with them once more. The customer service was top-notch, and frankly working with them was the least painful part of the previous campaign.
Math: Much of The Graverobber's Sword's campaign math was speculative or based on inexact quotes, and that's no longer an issue. The data and costs from this campaign are accurate and valid enough to use as a benchmark, and so I have a MUCH clearer idea on what costs are going to be.
Goals: Not sure yet! The cold, hard truth is I would really like to clear 5 grand so I afford to get a mortgage and have some life security in place for myself and the family during these troubling times, but that's essentially hoping for the next campaign to do as well as this one did but for it to face absolutely zero hiccups and my life just doesn't work that way :)
I'll be putting together the Kickstarter this week in order to put it up for September for folks who want might be interested in signing up to follow the campaign.
Is that it? I think that's it!
Actually no, it's not - The reason I've been trying to touch base with Tablo is to confirm/clarify the changes I want to make to the base edition of The Graverobber's Sword (the About the Author page, the special thanks page, the map, and revised back-of-book text), but as I said I haven't had any luck connecting with someone for whatever reason.
That IS actually it, so I'm out for now!
Cheers,
Jesse
Hey everyone, I'm at that dreaded point with The Dragon's Contract where I need to start talking about it/promoting it/sharing it if I hope to make the campaign more successful than this one, but I am NOT going to do that until I know for certain that EVERYONE has received their copy of The Graverobber's Sword.
Canada Post is reportedly still dealing with loads of mail that are equal to or larger than what you'd expect around Christmas time, and have apparently been fighting to deal with backlog since April (Seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWUPmOd65zc). That said, I've only received (and re-sent) four Return to Sender copies so far and want to hope that's the last of it?
I know that I've started being able to send and receive in-provine packages with a turn around time of about a week to a week and a half again, and that I continue to get a steady flow of messages of people saying their copies have arrived, but still -
If you have NOT received your copy, a replacement copy (if we've already spoken about it), or if your Canada Post tracking has stalled, please reach out to me directly!
If I don't hear from you by the end of the month, I'm going to assume that means you got your copy - but that doesn't mean it's the cutoff for fulfillment or anything, it just means that if I don't hear from you by then I'm going to assume it's safe to start talking about The Dragon's Contract.
I really want to write a great big 'HERE ARE ALL THE THINGS I LEARNED FROM THIS PROJECT' and expand on how much of a learning opportunity this campaign and experience was for me, but there are still some of you who have not received their books yet and I don't feel right saying 'mission accomplished, let's debrief' until that's welly, fully, truly the case.
It will be very soon, but given that it took six weeks for an expedited parcel from Ontario to Arizona to arrive, I dread to imagine how long it will take for those of you from the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany to receive your copies...
Still, it looks like more and more are arriving every day, and that is great to see/hear!
There are a few of you that I'm waiting to hear from (and a few I haven't heard from at all,) but if I had to ballpark it I would say all but the last 10-20% of backers have received their books by now (question mark?), and that's AWESOME.
If everything keeps going at its present rate, I'm hopeful that this will be either the second or third last update I post before one that says THE DRAGON'S CONTRACT CAMPAIGN IS LIVE, but that's still a ways off.
That's it, that's the update!
Cheers,
Jesse