I'm happy to announce that yesterday, April 30th, Kevin Pratt of Black Tusk Books, a bookseller/collector out of Vancouver, came in as a major pledge backer to make sure the custom Xenowealth map art would be unlocked.

Since April 30th was the last day of the month, and I said I'd take pre-orders until April 31st, which doesn't actually doesn't exist, I found out, I'll be taking pre-orders via the online store until midnight tonight, then shutting it down.

The Apocalypse Ocean currently stands at 50,000 words long, for those of you interested in the progress. The estimated word count is roughly 66,000 words. I'm expecting to finish the book in the middle of this month, and then will be doing edits and copyedits, as well as testing out physical copies. So June is still the date the novel will be finished and shipping to backers in both physical and eBook form. My bet is that early June everyone will get the eBook (because you'll all want to read it ASAP), and then the print ones will follow more on the June 30th date.

So thank you all backers, and thanks to Kevin for getting us up to the point where we can have that great custom map made.

Now begins the march toward the end!

There is a general direct sales page for The Apocalypse Ocean here.

Some people have asked about upgrading their existing reward levels. I've figured out how set up a page that allows you to do that here as well that's separate from the direct sales page.

I think that covers all the bases. I'll send another update on February 29th summarizing where the book is to everyone.

Hello Apocalypse Ocean backers. Those of you who follow me on twitter (@tobiasbuckell) will note I've been posting about writing the novel since the official Jan 1st start date. The novel is currently 12,286 words long (including bits of the existing novel and newly written bits), and I spent chunks of November and December outlining the first 1/3 in detail in my preferred manner. We have lift off!

I will update you all once a month to let you know where things stand on the book.

For those of you who choose rewards that let you read the book as I write it, an email will be following soon about how to read along.

If you have backed the book at a certain level, but want to participate in the read along, or are still hoping to unlock rewards like having Pablo Defendini design a custom map for the novel, I set up a direct sales page at my website and am tracking the total money still being raised over there. Those rewards can still be unlocked:

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/store/the-apocalypse-ocean/

Also, people who didn't know this was happening and wanted to pre-order/support the book can do so there.

I would again like to thank you all for supporting The Apocalypse Ocean. As a a result of this, plus some other great luck, I realized in December that I am able to reduce the amount of freelance work I was doing to focus far more on writing than I've been able to since 2008 (half Apocalypse Ocean, half other projects) and that will only lead to more Tobias fiction on down the road. You guys made that possible. Details:

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2012/01/01/pivot-moving-in-new-directions-for-the-new-year/

So my warmest wishes to you all for a fantastic year. You've certainly helped turn mine in a new direction. I'm thrilled to see another Xenowealth book coming into being.

What an amazing week it has been, and I truly feel like a lucky guy. The Apocalypse Ocean is fully funded, and with a little extra (that covers the 5% Kickstarter fee and 5% Amazon payment services fee, so thank you again).

I will be sending out individual thank you emails over the next week! Each of you carried this to the end, and I have to say, it's going to be really neat to be writing in the Xenowealth universe again.

I do want to ping the group mind about a couple of things.

1) A few readers who were not able to get funds in time for the Kickstarter project would like to purchase the book, how does everyone feel about that? Is the exclusivity/fundraising period something I shouldn't break? I'm inclined to take preorders of the book (eBook: $25, hardcover $50, signed $100) through December 31st, but stop on January 1st.

2) Since part of the reason many of you joined this project were to get an early read of the book, when is a good release date for the book after you all get your limited editions in June 2012? I have no set ideas on this, but people are asking when I'll release the ebook into the wild, so to speak. I want to give people who participated an exclusive reading period, so I'm interested in ideas there.

I cannot wait for January 1st to come. I've already been fiddling with the Apocalypse Ocean Scrivener file to organize the research and sections that I've already written, getting familiar with the ideas and characters again.

This is going to be fun...