I’m getting excited again. Working a ton of hours on little details and sweating bullets because I can never quite get things exactly like I want them. So … yeah … you’ve got it down. It all adds up to mean that I’m pushing work on a new Kickstarter that will feature For the Heart of the Game, which is a new, third book in the PEBA Diaries, which is my odd little series of cross-genre baseball crime/mystery adventures. Of course, you can get them all here.
You can also get the initial pre-release eBook version of only Heart at the Escape 2026 StoryBundle, which I chatted about last post.
These are always a lot of fun, but they are also always a LOT of work. For me, anyway. Other people keep telling me they are so easy, but when I get to it … well … let’s just say the financial rewards at the end are almost certainly sub-minimum wage. Maybe it’s because my ideas of “good enough” are off? I don’t know. As an example, today I spent a second cycle pushing covers up to IngramSpark—which I use to fulfill the print versions of the books. This is important because in the process of launching Heart, I’m rebranding the whole series. The first pass, IS accepted five covers (three Hardcover, and two Paperbacks), but rejected one. They are, of course, all the same size, so I still have no idea why it’s rejecting the one. Regardless, though, an hour-plus later, the books are all properly aligned and proof orders are placed.
Yay me.
I also spent another hour struggling to find a replacement for one, single word on the Kickstarter “Story,” which is the main sales page that readers land on, and is therefore the thing that readers new to me will base their decisions to give me a chance on. Of course, despite spending an hour trying new ideas on for size, that one word still hasn’t changed. My brain is now percolating, though. Maybe the right change will hit me.
Still, I love the platform, and I’m quite excited to note that the pre-launch page is available now. I suspect that I’ll be adding a free thing or two to it over time, so if you click to get notified of the launch, I expect you’ll eventually get notified of all the free stuff, too.
Which is another thing I like about Kickstarter.
More later, of course, because even though I’m kind of a crappy marketer, I’m not without my sense of persistence (inside reference for long-long-long-time followers!)