Novellablog: Halfway there on the Most Amazing Kickstarter Project Ever*–and it Still Needs You!

It’s May 12, a month after the Kickstarter campaign to fund The Kairos Mechanism started. With 29 days to go and the help of 110 backers and many others who’ve given time, blog space, and moral support, as of noon today, the campaign stands at 88%. (This excludes cash/check contributions made at Wednesday’s Happy Hour, which will be used in June to begin mailing out rewards, since Amazon holds backer contributions for two weeks after the close of the campaign.) Wow, guys. Thank you. Really, really, thank you. Now, time to get this project funded, so we can move on to the next phase.

As a quick reminder, the minimum amount that must be raised for The Kairos Mechanism to be funded is $6500. But what happens after that?

We keep going.

The next milestone will be the $7500 mark, at which point the thirteen reader artists’ compensation for their illustrations will be bumped up.
At $9500, I’ll be able to commit to a second volume of the Arcana series, and (unless someone backs the campaign at the $1000 level, at which point they earn the right to choose the next volume themselves) within the next few days I should be able to tell you what that book will be so that you can start getting excited about it.
At the unthinkable sum of $13000, I will be able to pay another group of reader-artists, and will be able to commit to an illustrated edition of Arcana #2.

With nearly a month left to go, I feel really good about our chances to accomplish all of these things. In order to shake things up at the midpoint, I’ve added new rewards to the Kickstarter menu, including:

Signed prints by Andrea Offermann
Original artwork by several of The Kairos Mechanism‘s reader artists
Advance copies of The Broken Lands
Kairos Mechanism-inspired jewelry made by the jewelry club at my high school, South River High in Edgewater, Maryland, from bits and bobs collected from my writing room. You can’t see it well, but the necklace I’m wearing in the Kickstarter video is one of their pieces. Not only do they make really lovely stuff, but part of your contribution at this level has gone (in advance) to the high school.

I also have a habit of making random additional reward offers on Twitter, so you should follow me there (I’m @katemilford). So far they’ve included cookies and poems, but goodness knows what oddball things I’ll come up with as we get closer to the point where I can commit to Arcana #2. Follow me and stay tuned.

You can also help the campaign in a couple other ways, if you’re so inclined.

You can grab The Kairos Mechanism’s Kickstarter widget for your own blog or website (if you do, be sure to let me know so I can send you a thank you). The embed code can be found on the project page, right under the video widget.
You can also invite me to your blog for an interview or a guest post. Just remember, the campaign ends June 9th, so time is of the essence.
You can also now find The Kairos Mechanism on Goodreads.

And…let’s see…oh, how was the Halfway Happy Hour? Well, as far as I’m concerned, the best moment by far was when second-youngest guest, four year-old Cate Cagnazzi, took the clock key I gave her as a party favor and immediately decided–with no prompting from me–that it meant her dad was a giant toy she had to test (repeatedly) by winding him up at the kidney. Sorry, everyone else who attended: Cate won. She gets me. None of the rest of you found the clock keys in the party favor bowl and tried to wind up a fellow guest.

That’s all I’ve got for you right now, except that, as always, I can’t thank you enough. I’ll keep trying, though.

Happy Friday!

*Sensationalist title chosen specifically with Natalie Chan in mind. She knows why.

Kate