Kickstarter

I love writing the Overhill Chronicles. The narrator for these stories, Lyn Burgess, is sassy, salty, and unafraid of black humor. Kinda like me—on the black humor thing, not so much on the sass or salt in my language.

Lyn's also surprisingly easy to write.

I mean easy. I-saw-a-submissions-call-and-wrote-a-500-word-piece-to-fit-that-same-day easy.

So easy, in fact, that I find myself coming up with stories more quickly than I can, yanno, afford to release them. Which is a shame, because my friends say she's a ton of fun. (And my friends will crumple up a story and toss it at my head if they don't like it, so we're not talking the usual praise-everything-the-writer-friend-does type of people.)

I believe that these short stories—some of them short enough to be flash fiction, some of them technically novelettes—have a ton of potential. I want them in audio, I want them in Spanish, and I want them all out for you to enjoy.

My primary goal for this Kickstarter is to get my first story compilation, "PRIMpriety" (plus bonus stories) into audio. I'll need $400 to do that.

Yes, just $400.

See, that first compilation is about… 2.5 hours of narration, probably a bit less. (In comparison, most novels are closer to 8–12 hours, depending on the genre.) For this first compilation, I've already paid for editing, I've already gotten it out in e-book and print. So it's ready to go straight into audio production, once I have the funds.

I have enough other stories—still featuring Lyn—to do…another one and a half compilations. And that's just what's written—it's not including the stories started, the ones I'll doubtless finish in the next few months when I need a break from other writing projects.

So by the time this Kickstarter project is funded, I should have enough stories for another two whole compilations. Ideally, I'd like to have enough funds to at least get one of those published and narrated.

From there, though, my goals kinda depend on how much help y'all give me. I mean, considering what I've read of Spanish literature, I think these would be a really good fit in the Spanish market, but…

Translation's kinda expensive. Like… $1800 to translate 21k words, expensive.

Gulp, right?

So, if we hit the $400 needed for the audio production of this compilation, my next target will depend on how much, precisely, is raised. I'll focus on either the publication and audio production of compilation number three OR the translation of compilation one into Spanish.

In short:

• Goal #1: $400 – compilation 1 narration

• Goal 2: + $1,800 (totaling $2,200 raised) – compilation 1 translation into Spanish

• Goal #2: + $400 (totaling $800 raised) – compilation 2 edits, copyright registration, cover, e-book release, and POD book release.
• Goal #3: + $400 (totaling $1,200 raised) – compilation 2 narration
• Goal 4: + $400 (totaling $1,600 raised) – compilation 3 edits, copyright registration, cover, e-book release, and POD book release.
• Goal 5: + $400 (totaling $2,000 raised) – compilation 3 narration

Make sense? Good.

Now, if you help me raise that $400, where is that money going?

• $40 goes to Kickstarter. (Well, technically, $20 goes to Kickstarter, and $20 gets eaten in credit card fees.)
• $60 is to make sure I can cover those donor rewards.
• $275 is for the narration itself.
• $25 is for creating the audio version's cover (which might involve redoing the cover altogether…because it frankly needs work).

Plans are for compilations two and three to be no shorter than the first compilation. In fact, it's looking as though they'll be longer. ^_^