New Project: Shafter's Shifters

Greetings Patrons!

(And since this is a public post, greetings to anyone else who has stopped by!)

Howard has been writing some Schlockiverse fiction, and we’re getting pretty close to being able to share it with you. We have actually arrived at a point where we can tell you about it, though!

WHAT IS IT:

Shafter’s Shifters will be a series of ‘cozy sci-fi mystery comedy’ novellas featuring Jud Shafter, Lunesby, and their three amorph friends.

“What’s a novella?” you ask.

It’s like a novel, but smaller. Each Shafter’s Shifters installment will be around 25,000 words long.

“And what’s a ‘cozy sci-fi mystery comedy’?”

Let’s take this in pieces: a ‘cozy mystery’ is typically a story about an amateur detective who solves mysteries without doing any action-movie stuff, like shooting people, or getting shot at.

When we throw ‘sci-fi’ into the mix, we’ve moved the mystery from, say, Cabot Cove, Maine to a space station in orbit above Damaxuri a thousand years in the future.

And of course ‘comedy,’ means that this whole shebang will be funny. Which, given the party responsible for doing the writing, should surprise none of you.

Even with a working definition of ‘cozy sci-fi mystery comedy’ it might be useful to describe it in other terms.

Imagine Guardians of the Galaxy meets Murder, She Wrote.

“What would that even be like?” You may wonder. 

We’ve dropped a rough draft of the first chapter, absolutely free, with this post. Enjoy it. Share it, even, with our blessing.

HOW YOU GET THE REST OF THE CHAPTERS:

Did our sales pitch work? We hope so! And we have good news!

• Everyone at the “High Res Officer’s Corps” ($5) pledge level will automatically get downloads of every digital format we create for this book. 
• The $5 pledge level patrons will also have the opportunity to serve as beta readers!
  We’ll post to that pledge level directly (in the next week or so) to explain our expectations for beta readers, but the short version is this: you don’t need to be an editor, or a grammarian. You just need to like to read, and to talk about what you’ve read.
• We'll run a crowdfunded project to allow you to pledge specifically for this book and to fund special add ons and other physical media items. You can join the crowd for funding without being a monthly Patron.
• After the crowdfunding is complete and orders fulfilled, this book will be available directly from our store, and from other retailers such as Amazon.com.

SCHLOCK MERCENARY BOOK UPDATE:

More good news! We haven’t forgotten Schlock Mercenary volumes 17 through 20. And if you’re a patron here, you won’t forget about them either. In fact, Patrons (at the $5 level) will get insider info, including the opportunity to read the bonus stories before they hit print.

Scheduling is still up-in-the-air, but our plan is to stagger the Schlock Mercenary collections between the Shafter’s Shifters print editions.

Thank you so much for reading and laughing with us. Your support at any level is greatly appreciated and helps us to continue making things for all of us to enjoy.

– Howard and Sandra