To those of you who believed in our project strongly enough to pledge money, we thank you.

When those first pledges arrived, we were thrilled and delighted that people we did not know (yet) liked our new universe and wanted to help bring it to fruition.

Despite blogging, tweeting, and talking it up, we failed to reach our goals and we're disappointed.

Aaron, Steve and Bob humbly thank you. We also still believe in ReDeus and are currently trying to determine which path is the right one. We definitely have options and your support has kept us encouraged.

Please keep in touch through our websites or the ReDeus.com website where we hope to be announcing our new plan in the coming days.

We’re down to the final few days before we see if our concept is attractive enough to get fully funded. A last push began last night thanks to our mutual pal Steve Saffel and it seems to be generating a little activity.

Since we last reported in, the three of us have been actively polishing our concepts and talking amongst ourselves as to what happens on July 1.

Obviously we have a few options:

Hit our goal and celebrate then get to work.

Miss our goal and decided to self-fund the web development and hope we generate subscriptions to make this viable.

Turn this into a book proposal and see if a mainstream publisher shares our enthusiasm for the universe we created.

Relist on Kickstarter at a lower goal (which would at least cover the initial chapters for each story).

What has yet to change is our unswerving affection for the characters we’ve created to explore an Earth we think is a truly imaginative and unique one. We’re eager to tell their stories and see where things go. Heck, we’ve already got ideas for how the three serials will dovetail and turn the story on its ear.

We thank each and every one of you for your support and interest. We won’t let you down.

Okay, I’m assuming you’re reading this because you’re a reader and are familiar with Bob, Aaron or myself. This probably means you’ve read one of us. So why should ReDeus be of interest to you? Obviously, the first point is that for a very small promise you’ll get to read a novel week by week from an author you enjoy, the second is that when it’s all done for that investment you’ll get a special edition of the finished book for your collection, with your name inside it, proving that you’re part of this experiment. That, I reckon is pretty cool.

But why this model? Why not set out with a subscriber database and simply hope to earn enough week-by-week to keep this going?

Well, primarily, we want to do this right, and that means looking at the possibilities. Not so many years ago writers and artists worked under a system of patronage - benefactors sponsored their creations. What we’re doing is something similar, but rather than ask one wealthy gent to fund the trilogy, we’re hoping that our readers will pledge support to the value of one, two or three books, and in return we pledge to give something in the region of half a million words worth of entertainment, pre-formatted for various eBook readers or as simple plain text delivered direct by email weekly...but more than that, to take advantage of the technology we’re hoping you’ll directly become involved and steer supplementary stories in the directions you’d like to see them go... imagine our hero, in my case Jon Falls, witnesses a murder, I throw in a dozen details, each a possible clue and YOU get to decide which clue Jon follows up that week, or he meets various ancillary characters and you take a fancy to one of them and want to know THEIR story... you can drive the story their way. You can find out everything you want to know about the ReDeus world in ways that most novels really can’t facilitate. That makes the whole project so much more special to me as a writer. It’s a genuine chance to connect with the readership.

Now, obviously, I look at the pledges and see we’ve only got 9 folks leaping in... I’m not sure why this is given in any given year the 3 of us probably sell a few hundred thousand books worldwide... so is it that you want to see something before you take the risk? Is it that you’re worried you won’t receive the finished book? Are you holding back because others are holding back and you’re worried the project won’t happen? Is it simply economic, after all, you don’t need to tell me times are tough, I’m right there with you on the front line.

What I can tell you is that over the last month I’ve basically created Jon Falls, and built the story around him. I know who he is, I know his curse, I know what drives him and the worst things he could imagine ever coming to pass, I know where he is and where he is going - but I’m hoping YOU are going to steer me along the path of how he gets there...

And that’s the beauty of patronage - you have a very definite say in every aspect of the story once word one goes down... it becomes your story in a way that a normal novel never could...

So...

What are you waiting for?

Press the contribute button.

You know you want to.

ComicMix posted an interview with us and I thought you'd like to learn a little more about the background creation:

ComicMix: Where’d the idea for ReDeus come from?

Steven Savile: I was actually invited to the party after Aaron and Bob had already come up with the core concept of the gods and monsters returning, so it's best I let them field this particular question.

Aaron Rosenberg: Me, it was all me! :)

No, seriously, it was Bob, our friend Paul, and I. We’d been talking about the economy, and writing projects, and the changing face of publishing, and we agreed that we needed to find new ways to get stories out to our audience. I had an idea about putting things up on the Internet, and Bob and Paul both liked the notion, so we ran with it. Then we started talking about the kind of world we’d want to build, something cool and unique and interesting with enough room for all of us to tell stories and then some. We all agreed that near-future was the way to go, and then the question was “how is it different from today? What changed?” I don’t remember which of us came up with “the gods were all real—and they’ve returned!” but the minute it was stated all three of us said “YES!!!” And we took it from there. Paul had to bow out, unfortunately, but Bob and I both already knew Steve and were already working with him on some other projects, so we approached him and he was happy to step in.
Bob Greenberger: Basically we had to forgo one Jew with a beard for a Swede with a beard. We think it’s an upgrade.

CMix: Why three writers rather than one of you?

Savile: Personally, I love the collective aspect of it. Writing is by necessity a lonely business but there is something very gratifying about the act of collaboration, the idea that what comes out of all three of us together is greater than what might emerge from my mind alone, or Bob's or Aaron's, plus it is an absolute delight to learn from these guys. They're not only great people, they're great friends, and how often in this life do we get to work with real friends? Not often enough would be my answer.

Rosenberg: Two reasons, really. First, the world is just so much richer for the three of us. I can come up with a world on my own—I’ve done it enough times—but that means it’s all from my perspective, my style, my tone. With three of us, one of us will come up with something and one of the others will say “Hm, that’s cool, but what if we do this to it?” and it’s something the first person never thought of but it makes everything that much better. We really build off each other’s creativity, crafting a setting that’s more complicated, more engaging, more exciting than any of us would have had alone.

The other reason is the scope of the project. Putting up a new piece of content every single day—if any one of us were to do this, he’d run himself ragged. With three of us, we can split that up. Each of us writes one storyline. Each of us handles one type of additional content. It becomes more manageable. And you get materials from three different viewpoints.
Greenberger: I love collaboration and brainstorming so have a blank slate and starting to fill it in is very exciting. This is a huge concept worthy of deeper exploration, which three can do better than one. Who knows, maybe it will grow from there and more will be invited to come explore with us?

Hi kids, Aaron here—the third member of the ReDeus Trinity. My turn for an update. :)

We’ve been doing a bit more planning, working out more details, fine-tuning characters and storylines, things like that. We’re mapping our stories out so this first “season” or story arc will run between six and eight months, and wait until you see what we’ve got planned for the season closers! It’s going to be a doozy!

We’ve also been working on the website, getting all our ducks in a row there as well. Our webmaster’s built us a spiffy front page, and that should be up very soon. Other elements are being assembled behind that, so once we actually launch you’ll be able to access those as well.

And we’ve been figuring out things like our pricing, which led to an interesting discovery. If you pledge $50, you get not only our thanks and copies of the first three books but also a full year’s subscription. Which, it turns out, is over half off the regular subscription price! Talk about a deal!

Anyway, things are moving along at a goodly pace, so keep watching this space for more details, tell your friends, and keep an eye on that countdown!

Hey guys, Savile of the Unholy Trinity here, Just figured I'd chime in with a few bits in update number 2. Very soon our web guru will be putting up the splash page for ReDeus, giving you more of a clue as to what to expect, but before that happens I thought I'd just clarify a few issues that maybe aren't 100% clear on the Kickstarter site itself, the first being if the funding threshold of 15k isn't reached no one gets charged anything and the entire idea collapses before it starts, the second being that for the princely sum of 15 bucks you get a special edition of one of the three novels of your choice, be that Bob's, Aaron's or mine. These books won't be for general release. You won't be able to walk into your average bookstore and pick them up whilst browsing the aisles. They're going to be unique to the ReDeus Project. 25 bucks gets you two of the three and 35 gets you all three. As it stands our plan is to produce what they call PPC editions ourselves, or Printed Paper Case, which means very nice dustjacketless hardcovers to a uniform design, like the Doctor Who, Torchwood and Primeval novels you can see in the bookstores now. We're talking about a quality product, not some crudely slapped together thing that will fall apart in a few weeks. We don't expect everyone to pledge vast quantities of cash, but to make it financially viable we're hoping that a lot of READERS will pledge just enough for one, two or three of the physical novels. The more readers do, the higher the quality we can invest in.

So why do this? I mean we're all fairly well established novelists in our own right, so what do we gain from this kind of crowd-funding? Why not simply write the series and try and sell it in a traditional manner? Well, for me, the truth is I am excited about the notion of finding new ways to communicate with my readers and I love the idea of YOU being able to mail in to the site and say hey, we'd like to see avenue x explored. There's a collective energy to the creative process like this that I've never experienced before, and I'm really looking forward to where YOU take the story...

Don't be shy. Remember, you don't get charged anything now, and won't be charged anything at all if the funding limit isn't reached in 84 days time. It's all or nothing. And if you are curious, check back to the main website in a few days to see a little more. Over the next couple of months we'll be adding lots of stuff behind the scenes in preparation for the launch of ReDeus. Hope you come along for the ride.

We couldn't be more excited to be up and available for funding. After months of discussion, seeing the page live is very exciting.

But now the dream has to become a reality.

To that end, this week the three of us are getting further into the nitty gritty of the world and our characters, actually outlining our serials, seeing where we can crossover and dovetail our storylines.

We're also getting started on building the website and will begin to tease some of our conclusions.

Meantime, our lawyer is getting the business stuff sorted out and we continue to spread the word, encouraging one and all to come here and invest.

With luck, there should be good things to report before the week is out.

But first, a major thank you to those who have invested to date. We're gratified and hope to wow you with our efforts.