I'm Not Keeping Your Money.

You heard me. I'm not keeping the money. At all. If I make my goal tomorrow morning, I am not suddenly $10,000 wealthier. The money goes back into the community, the wonderful creative hive of Portland, where the weirdest thing isn't Portlandia but the dude who rides a unicycle with a Darth Vader helmet and plays the Imperial March on the bagpipes. Often.

It would be ridiculous/narcissistic/arrogant for me to use Kickstarter to pay myself for a book I've already written. I have a day job, I work incredibly hard every day to provide for my family, and to quote a very good group of friends from a recent successful Kickstarter, I steal time to make my art. In the dark corners of the day, late at night, early in the morning. Making cool books is a happy, sometimes parenthetical aside.

Writing and producing a book like this is a non-profit business, and I will plow every last cent of my $10,000 into making a better book.

So where does the money go?

It goes to other creatives, small and local businesses, including:

• Owl Soup Design did the cover, and an unbelievable kickass responsive website that looks great even on my mobile phone, and will coax the manuscript into various digital forms.
• Another designer I just met in Seattle, via Kickstarter, who offered some pro bono design. No thank you sir: I don't believe artists should work for free. If we work together he's going to be paid.
• A friend took a photo one day that is so terrifying and gorgeous it needs to be in the book.
• Portland's own Indigo Editing, which will be doing the proofreading of the final cut.
• To print my small run of books for donors I'd like to use the Espresso Book Machine, available at Powell's Books.

If there's anything left over I'm donating it to groups who promote the literary arts and literacy: Oregon Writers Colony, The Library Foundation, and 826 National.

There is one thing: I'll probably buy myself a pint of good, local Portland beer. Cheers.

*****

Welcome to my nightmare.  Casting around for ideas last year for National Novel Writing Month, I started a short story about the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre from 1929. But I made it modern, and instead of Al Capone's guys whacking Bugs Moran's crew, I chose a Long Island tough battling with the undead.

Growing up in Long Island in the 70s and 80s you couldn’t help notice the presence of the mob. The dad of a friend in my Cub Scout pack had his phone tapped. He was an accountant whose family came from Sicily, and the Feds were sure he was connected to the mob. And the John Gotti trials were huge local news in high school.

Sure, I changed some names to protect the guilty. And that ancient Indian burial ground underneath Nassakeag Elementary School? I don’t believe that exists.

As I wrote the story I knew I couldn't start in the middle of things with this mobster/monster smackdown, and questions arose. Where did the monsters come from? Why did they want to control the local mall? Clearly, since the average mall allows no natural light, it’s the perfect place for a vampire.

Before long the short story became a novel. I'm editing the third draft, and it's going weigh in at 300 pages.

Why Kickstarter

I wanted to wade into disruptive technology. In my day job as an open source programmer I'm a big fan of disruptive tech. Think of it this way: the wheel + fire + electric guitar = Iron Man.

This novel is a cultural experiment, and in writing a mashup that features true crime, comedy and the undead, I hope to do something new, and Kickstarter feels like the best way to express that. When my novel Captain Freedom came out, some guy in Washington DC modded it into a one-man show. Using the Kickstarter network I can only wonder where this book might go. What I'm doing is using Kickstarter as if it were an advance: if it doesn't get funded, that tells me there's no interest in the book and it doesn't need to be published.

Reaching this goal pays for things like editing, proofing, layout and cover design, original artwork, and a website with enriched content, and shows me there is a bloodthirsty, cruel and possibly insane audience that wants to see vampires fight gangsters.

Deadfellas: Monsters vs. the Mob is meant to be an ebook that I’ll release in a bunch of different formats: PDF, Kindle, Nook, iPad, or a text file you can read in vim.

But for those donors giving $25 or more, you’ll get the real book, in paper, signed by me. This will be a limited print run, with original artwork that will not be available anywhere else.

Thanks for joining my crew. Either they bury one of ours or we re-bury one of theirs.

Grazie mille,

g. xavier robillard
greg at alldaycoffee.net

Promoting Literary Arts

If we make my $10,000 goal, I will donate up to $2000 to the Oregon Writers Colony, an organization that provides support to writers in all stages of their careers, including workshops, classes and access to their retreat facility on the Oregon coast.