Thank you all so much for helping make the Matchbox Girls pre-order such a smashing success! In the coming days, we'll be sending out Backer Reports for you to fill out so we know where to send your rewards, and we'll keep you posted on the status of your goodies and rewards.

In the meantime, think about checking out the Matchbox Girls blog tour, chock-full of behind the scenes interviews, glimpses into the characters and the writing process, and more!

We're coming in to the home stretch, and we have a message from the author for you all! Take it away, Chrysoula:

Guess what! In 8 days, Matchbox Girls will be out!

And in 56 hours, the Kickstarter to preorder copies and supercool bonuses is closing. And there's a blog tour starting in two days. So... probably for the next week or so I'm going to be posting about Matchbox Girls more than once a week. I hope that's okay. :-) It's amazing but there's still people I know who haven't heard about Matchbox Girls, and I especially want to give them an opportunity to get in on the cool bonuses.

Working on the bonuses has been interesting. Matchbox Girls is a story floating on the top of a lot of world building and character development, and all the launch preparation has given me an opportunity to write up some of that supplemental material and present it, hopefully in an intriguing way. I'm especially excited about the poster illustrated by Karen Gadient, which gives me an opportunity to provide details on one of the forms of magic in the setting. I'm also excited (and nervous) about the in-character interviews which will be bulking out the blog tour. I love the idea of showing non-canon character interactions that (ideally) still provide hints about the story itself.

The Kickstarter itself is at 97 backers. There's a stretch goal placed at $5000 which would give everybody who gets the paperback a copy of the poster. Reaching it is the sort of dizzying dream I'm almost afraid to have. But so much of this has been like a dream: excellent reviews, phenomenal support from wonderful people, and in the end, my book, beautiful and real. So... I might as well keep dreaming. In this last 55 hours of the Kickstarter, if you can think of anyplace else to share it, anybody else who might give it a signal boost, help me out!

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Want to follow along on the blog tour? Check out the dates here. And don't forget to tell your friends, neighbours, acquaintances, and the dude at the coffee shop who always wears that plaid shirt about the pre-order - remember, if we make it to $5,000, everyone gets extra, cool, fun stuff, so you're not only getting a great book and helping that author dream big, but you're getting neat stuff for yourself, too!

We've decided to go for broke and shoot for a huge super-stretch goal in the last week of the pre-order!

So here's the deal. We're going to go for $5,000. If we make it there, everyone who backs the project for $20 or higher gets the Karen Gadient illustrated Geometric Sight poster. Everyone who backs the project for $40 or more gets a Matchbox Girls nonwoven tote bag.

And here's the big one - everyone who chips in a little bit - $5 or up - gets that mystery grab bag of stuff! You may not get the print edition of the book in the pre-order (but never fear; it'll be available wherever books are sold, including in eBook form, starting February 21), but we appreciate your support, and we'd love to send you some goodies to thank you!

So let's see if we can break the $5,000 mark in this last week of the pre-order! Tell your friends, neighbours, coworkers, random people on the street - the more people who back the project, the closer everyone gets to getting tons of cool stuff!