Kickstarter 2016 Progress Report

I’ve been busy all this week prepping for SJS DIRECT 2016 Cover Kickstarter. (Yes, that’s the title.) And for that project I’m planning to raise funds to pay for the covers for three or possibly four titles.

I spent all of last week writing the final book in the project, a sequel to Isis: Night of the Vampires. Next year’s titles will include:

Isis: Bride of Dracula- A follow-up to Isis: Night of the Vampires Where the goddess next door and John Haynes take on the Lord of the Vampires,

John Haynes: The Man Who Rules the World- The sequel to The Temptation of John Haynes, 

E’steem: The Witches of Eastland- An E’steem series adventure with a mix of horror, fantasy and comedy, 

And Isis: Imitation of Life- A fantasy flashback tale set in the 1930s inspired by the 1934 film Imitation of Life dealing with Intra racism, racial identity and the role of Negro women in the pre-Civil Rights era.

Some readers have been asking me to write YA fiction for Black males and I’m finally ready to add more of those stories into my catalog. Both Isis: Bride of Dracula and John Haynes: The Man who rules the World feature an intelligent Black male hero who is authoratiative, assertive and has strong masculine traits.

All four of the titles have their first drafts completed and I’m in the middle of revisions right now. I’m planning for an April 2016 launch for the four titles in the SJS DIRECT Cover Kickstarter and I want the titles to be the best quality possible.

I’ve talked to an artist and the tentative budget for the project is gonna be about $2500 if I do four books, $2000 if I do three. This year there will be eBooks as part of the rewards in addition to the paperbacks. If we can surpass the goal for funding the project I may be able to afford to provide some cool bonuses like a print featuring all the characters or do something really cool like offer donors a copy of The Temptation of John Haynes with a brand new cover for helping me raise fund past the intital goal!

There’s still a lot for me to do regarding this project like drawing up model sheets and creating page layouts for the .PDFs. So things may change between here and January. But I’m working hard towards a January launch for the SJS DIRECT 2016 Kickstarter. At that time I’ll announce the artist for the project and list all the rewards for everyone.