It’s time for your news roundup!
New VIP Story!
All VIP subscribers and all Kickstarter backers now have access to Dogs of War, a story suggested by backer Wender Wu. He kicked this sucker up to the highest tiers of awesomeness, which earned him the right to tell me to go forth and craft his tale. Did he wish to read an epic adventure, a tragic romance, or a legendary yarn for the ages? No, he wanted something about a hot dog vendor. And his wish is my command!
Read “Dogs of War” now! (NOTE: You must be a member of the VIP club to use that link. Kickstarter backers, I’ll be sending your backer-only link soon.)
I welcome feedback about this story; I suggest emailing me directly, though, instead of posting on the blog. Spoilarz, and all.
Kickstarter Progress!
The Kickstarter’s going great; we’re fully funded now, although by fully funded I mean “a few hundred in the red” due to reward fulfillment costs. Printing and shipping books costs money, yo. Hoping we’ll get a few more backers to help offset the costs, and eventually start adding towards future projects.
What you can do to help is spread the word about City of Angles itself. I know I’ve said this several times, and I apologize if it feels like high pressure sales tactics or anything like that, but word-of-mouth is basically the only good way to get a web novel promoted. Even if we don’t get backers from it, if we can get more readers in general, that’ll help me going into the future!
eBay Auction!
I’ve got an eBay auction up for a rare misprinted version of Anachronauts: Stars Fall! It’ll be autographed and dedicated, too! Right now it’s going for less than an actual copy of Stars Fall, which is a real steal for this is a one-of-a-kind item. Who will be the one to outbid the dread lord of the Sith, Darth Wiggles? Anachronauts calls do you. Don’t deny its call.
TVTropes!
We’ve got a TVTropes page now! There’s not too much there, so I welcome any tropers who want to take a poke at it and add a few things that were missed. Same goes for adding City of Angles to other trope pages, linking back and forth.
TVTropes is responsible for quite a bit of traffic to the anachronauts site, so if I can get a healthy page going for CoA, it may bring in more readers!
Survey Says…!
I’ve collected 21 surveys from the volume//002 survey. Here’s the interesting bits.
Ratio of Returning vs. New Characters: Between 50/50 and mostly returning. So, I’ll be focusing largely on returning, but I do have plenty of new characters who will be dropping in to say hello.
Major Character: Kelsey Jones beat out the others, which is nice since I wanted to do more with her in vol//002. There’s also a lot of love out there for Hollister, who hasn’t been the star of the show yet… maybe I can do something about that. The Wei sisters got very little support so I might keep them on the backburner for now, depends on if I can find a compelling plot for them.
Minor Characters: Grandma Scarlett ran away with this one, which is surprising since I was figuring her story was over. I’ll have to see what I can think of for her; I can’t promise anything since I have no idea what else could be done with her. Next up though are Lucas and Milly, everybody’s favorite suburbanites, and I absolutely want to revisit them.
City Aspects: A wide variety of responses, here. The top ones were Sideways Signals (great for a Kelsey chapter), independent mappers (maybe a new character?), and the various weird areas like Sideways, Endless Highways, and Undefined Spaces. Near the bottom were Salvagers, but I have a story involving them planned out already. I think you’ll find it worthwhile given WHAT they’re salvaging, though…
I’ll be talking more about my vol//002 plans in April. For now, we’ve got a new VIP story, we’ve got the Kickstarter, and we’ve got time to push awareness of City of Angles to the moon! Thanks for all your support!