We are very happy to announce that after 9 days, we have reached our initial goal of $40,000! This means that, no matter what else happens, this Kickstarter has been a big success!

58% of publishing projects on Kickstarter fail, and only 2.6% of publishing projects succeed above the 20K mark. So this is a rare and wonderful experience! And YOU made it happen.

We can’t tell you how grateful we are for your support. So many of you have been more than just backers, you have been enthusiastic advocates for this project and the whole series. We have watched gratefully as you’ve given our small voice a loud amplifier, allowing us to reach many, many more readers. What a gift!

So, this was a big, ambitious goal. I know. I know. I got some emails from people early on saying, “Umm, why do you think you could possibly reach such a huge goal?!” It was frightening, for sure. But we wanted to have a challenge, to be bold, and most of all we wanted to try to reach the many thousands of readers who loved The Green Ember to let them know the series was carrying on. Usually, readership of second books in a series tend to drop off dramatically. We believe in this story and in this series, and we want to find the tens of thousands of readers who connected with the first book and let them know there’s more. We also wanted to invite more and more new readers to the series.

We have around 750 backers. That’s amazing! But it doesn’t take a Math Wiz (thankfully) to figure out that we have connected with only a fraction of those who loved the first book.

We have reached our base goal, and we are so delighted! But this campaign has two more weeks and we want to stay after it. It’s not over. You guys have been an unbelievable team! Thank you! This feels like a big home run. But, it’s a home run in the bottom of the fourth inning. It’s huge, but there’s a lot of ballgame left. (

I know there are questions about Stretch Goals. We’ll have more details about those soon. For now, do a cartwheel and let loose a gleeful yowl! We made our initial goal! Success! Thank you so much!

When we made our $10K goal and The Green Ember was funded (October 4, 2014), it was 1am and Gina and I were the only ones awake.

This time, we pulled off the road and shared the news with the whole family!

Thank you!