Newsletter

Hi everyone,

I hope you're as well as can be. It’s been hard to be creatively productive during this time - though in the 14th century our man Giovanni Boccaccio used a plague lockdown to shape The Decameron, so who's complaining really?

Armed with morning chocolate and a regular routine, I've been pushing Project Tempest forward into the next phase. In a way the pandemic has been helpful: a stranger world is a place where new stories can grow. And I'm clearer than ever that these stories are about becoming truly human amid the war between knowledge and madness.

This month we've got the beautiful new cover edition of 1862, a free giveaway, a preview of The Billionaire's Last Post, and some great writers in conversation. I'd love to hear what you think!

Thanks

C J Halbard

1862 GIVEAWAY

Kearin created a beautiful new cover for 1862! The background image came from a day spent on the wild cliffs of Seatoun, around Wellington's south coast. We have a bunch of video and still footage that we've started putting into trailers and other things. More to come!

Project Tempest mailing list members (that's you) can grab a free pdf download of the book here.

And if you'd like to buy a digital copy, it's available on:

Amazon 
Smashwords (epub)
All other digital formats

One thing that I've not been good at is encouraging people to leave reviews - but if you can, this helps a great deal :-)

THE BILLIONAIRE'S LAST POST

I've been working on a novel-length story as the next full Project Tempest instalment. Four weeks into lockdown, though, it became clear that hitting 40-50,000 words would be a struggle, so I'm nearly done on a shorter, in-between piece.

The Billionaire's Last Post is the tale of a very rich man with less than half an hour to live, talking into his phone as he finally realises the the most truly important moments of his life. It's still set in Tempest Bay, and starts to reveal more of the philosophy, worldview and emotions buried deep inside Project Tempest. I'm extremely excited to get it out into the world and it'll hopefully even be an audiobook - more soon....

1862 VIDEO TRAILER

Part of Project Tempest is about connecting with readers through non-traditional publishing, and experimenting with approaches more common in other media.

Kearin and I worked on a series of video ads that've brought a lot of new readers into our world - if you missed the main trailer, here it is:

CHANGING THE WORLD WITH STORIES

Finally, some writers I love talking about the future of stories and the reality of the creative life under COVID:

Dmitry Glukhovsky's (author of the Russian sci-fi Metro series) Tedx talk about 'Literature 2.0' - there are english captions available on the video:

Sci-fi writers Gary Whitta and Chuck Wendig in conversation about keeping productive and being kind during lockdown:

Let me know what you'd like to see more of in these newsletters!

Thanks

C J Halbard