About this project
Landfall is an occult grimdark fantasy shared world serial anthology created, written, and managed by some of the premier talents in dark fantasy and horror.
Landfall will be led by creative talents Jesse Bullington, Michael R. Fletcher, Anna Smith-Spark, Luke Scull, Max Booth III, Richard Lee Byers, and Angela Meadon, and backed by the Dirge Magazine and Grimdark Magazine teams alongside staff writers and shared world management experts.
Landfall will be a character-driven serial anthology with each author taking on a point of view to show you a dark new world of bitterness, horror, and betrayal.
The Landfall serial anthology will consist of approximately 16 episodes of 7,000 words set in an occult grimdark fantasy world created by our team.
The story will be tightly written around a small group of primary characters, with each author taking on a single point of view to tell the story.
Under the direction of Warhammer 40,000 alumni Matthew Ward, our massive world has already been created and thoroughly fleshed out. We have our story, our characters, and the right team in place to deliver a darkly imaginative and engaging serial.
Find out more about the project when the Grim Tiding s Podcast interviews the team: click here to listen in.
We've assembled a crack team of authors to take you to Landfall.
- Luke Scull (The Grim Company)
- Jesse Bullington (Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, The Crimson Empire)
- Michael R. Fletcher (Beyond Redemption)
- Anna Smith-Spark (The Court of Broken Knives)
- Richard Lee Byers (Forgotten Realms, Wizards of the Coast)
- Max Booth III (The Nightly Disease)
- Angela Meadon (Strong Medicine)
Each author brings with them years of experience in delivering the kind of fiction we love to read.
We want you to experience Landfall visually as well as reading about it. Our artist team will add even further life to Landfall.
- Jason Deem (Evil is a Matter of Perspective interior art, Grimdark Magazine)
- Shawn King (Ragnarok Publications, Vault Books, Evil is a Matter of Perspective cover design and layout)
- Alexandra Moehagen (Harper Voyager cartographer artist)
- Tommy Arnold (Evil is a Matter of Perspective cover artist)
- Pen Astridge (Evil is a Matter of Perspective animator)
There are a whole bunch of support staff that'll help bring this together:
- Creative Director: Jinx Strange (Dirge Magazine)
- Creative Director: Adrian Collins (Grimdark Magazine)
- Fiction Editor: Mike Myers (Grimdark Magazine)
- Lore / World Manager: Matthew Ward (Warhammer 40,000)
- Community management and marketing: Tom Smith (Grimdark Magazine)
- Community management and marketing: Rob Matheny (The Grim Tidings Podcast, Grimdark Fiction Readers & Writers)
This is important.
We recognise that projects such as Evil is a Matter of Perspective and Blackguards funded entire juicy anthologies with just $20,000USD funding. We need much more. There’s a good reason it's costing us nearly double to create Landfall.
With a standard print anthology, a publisher purchases the right to publish / sell / profit from the author’s intellectual property for an exclusive and non-exclusive period of time in return for a fee or royalty. The world, the characters, the story--it all belongs to the author forevermore. A publisher is just leasing the content.
For the production of Landfall, we asked our team to build a world, characters, and stories, as work-for-hire writers selling everything they create to us. Omnicide Publishing will own the intellectual property, which will enable us to continue to provide more and more seasons, stories, novellas, and hopefully novels to you, the fans. Even if a writer team member decides to move on to another project we’ll be able to add new writers, do parallel spin off seasons by adding new writer teams--there are huge possibilities, but only if we own the content from start to finish.
So, when you have some of fantasy and horror's most interesting world builders create a world--land, religions, peoples, magic, monsters, scenery, flora, fauna, everything you see in a world-class novel--you need to pay them accordingly (especially as we want them along on the ride for as long as possible). We’ve done our best to provide an achievable financial target with what we consider fair pay to the team responsible for creating the world. We then need to pay them for the stories / episodes they write. This is costly, and why it's going to take $35,000USD to bring Landfall to life.
Below is a quick taste of what that $35,000USD has bought us, and you.
Three hundred of us landed in Atonement with a few bags of mouldering seeds and a book on farming and hunting. The priest got drunk on the first night and left it out in the rain. Everyone wanted to string him up. I wanted the booze.
When our rusted muskets worked, they failed to drop even the slowest prey. Most times the powder was damp. Our traps remained empty, our children wasted away and we buried our dead in the mud. I won't talk about what grew on their graves.
The wolf, three hundred pounds of muscle, found me staggering through the forest with my useless musket. In its monstrous mouth, hung a fat rabbit.
I dropped the rifle, preparing to run and by god if the beast didn’t raise an eyebrow as if to say, “No you don’t.”
I froze.
The wolf swung its head, tossing the rabbit at my feet. Eyes fixed on mine, it gently scooped up my musket in its jaws and left.
Atonement celebrated me as a hero though I’d lost one of our precious few working guns. But even the biggest rabbit won’t feed three hundred souls. My son was skin-wrapped bone.
Days later, the wolf found me again. It carried a good-sized piglet. The beast glanced at my boots. I removed them and I threw the rotten things to it. Dropping the piglet, the wolf collected my boots and left.
Again I was a hero. The master hunter.
Over the next month I brought it clothes, tools, and even a bag of mouldy seeds. And it brought meat. But one man can’t feed an entire town. We buried friends and family and avoided their graves.
What more could I bring the beast? One morning, after my watch, I saw Saran’s girl, Karla, alone on the porch, skeletal, eyes dead. Three months on the ship had broken her mind.
Oh god I hate myself.
I brought her into the forest, to the wolf. A doe lay at its paws. The beast took Karla’s arm in gentle jaws and led her away.
What have I done?
The town hailed me Hero of Atonement. My boy got the choicest cut of meat. My wife told me how proud she was.
Saran cried great tearing sobs. Guilt ate me.
For a week I brought the wolf weapons, clothes, seeds and tools. Each time it glared, and gave me nothing. I knew what it wanted.
I promised to help Saran find her girl. I led her into the woods. The wolf waited, two deer lying dead. Saran turned white and fainted. The beast dragged her away.
The priest, that drunken bastard, eyed me with suspicion, questions: “Why does god bless you? Why do you always hunt alone?” I promised to bring him on my next hunt.
The wolf was there as always. Karla rode its back. She wore my rotting boots, huge on her small feet, and one of my old shirts. Her eyes were feral, uncomprehending.
The priest panicked and ran. A score of wolves gave chase in eerie silence. Had they always been there?
The wolf left me six deer, a score of fat rabbits, and three pigs. Willis’s boy helped me cart the kills.
But how could I explain my success? The missing priest?
Who would I bring into the forest next?
- Michael R. Fletcher
Keep an eye on this space. We'll be announcing plenty of goodies achieved from the Stretch Goal list.
We've team has come up with short series of stretch goals to make every dollar count in content for you. If we manage to hit these lofty heights, we'll add more stretch goals as we go to make sure what what we collect is being channelled back to you through product.
$37,000USD / 48,200AUD - INTERIOR ART
Jason Deem will create a 1/3rd page black and white artwork for the title page of each episode in the print version of Landfall.
$42,000USD / $56,000AUD - ADDITIONAL NOVELLA
Michael R. Fletcher will write a 15,000 word prequel novelette to be included in both the print and e-book serial anthology editions. Jason Deem will provide an additional piece of interior art to go with it.
$48,100 USD / $64,000AUD - AUTHOR PAY BUMP
We value our authors and we want to contribute as best we can to helping them make a living doing what they do best. All contributing authors will receive a $0.02 per word pay bump.
There are a range of additional extras you can pick from when the project funds and you move into your Backerkit account to allocate your pledge to the products you want. To add the below items to your order, simply increase your bid by the below amounts, and then select the products you want when you get into your Backerkit account after the funding period is completed.
You can also add these items after the initial funding period directly into your backerkit.
$10USD Adopt a Penitent
Bring Landfall to life and adopt one of the sodden souls of Atonement. The character you adopt will become a real part of the world, and will go into a bank of characters for writers to use as they see fit.
Will your hunter participate in a daring rescue? Will your baker go insane from spore-infused flour and end up starting a cannibal sex cult? They could become a tertiary or secondary character or even a protagonist or villain, as characters take on a life of their own. Who knows?
But you will get special acknowledgement in the season if we use your character!
*Note that this level does not guarantee you a cameo in the story. Each author will pick and choose the characters they need from the "Red Shirt pool" as they see fit. It does guarantee you a backstory and the potential to be used in any season of Landfall ongoing. For a guaranteed experience, backstory and portrait, see our limited Tuckerisation pledge level.
$20USD Printed Map
See that gorgeous map up there? We'll print one on cloth for you and add it to your posted book (unframed). This one is for backers of physical book copies only.
$5USD Bookmark
Tommy Arnold's artwork from the cover of Landfall Season 1 will be turned into a bookmark to be delivered to you with your physical copy book. This one is for backers of physical book copies only.
$10USD Poster
Tommy Arnold's artwork from the cover of Landfall Season 1 will be turned into a poster to be delivered to you with your physical copy book. This one is for backers of physical book copies only.
$3USD Magnet
The Landfall logo will be turned into a 3x3 die cut magnet to be delivered to you with your physical copy book. This one is for backers of physical book copies only.
$25USD Extra Paperback
Want to protect your display piece by reading the paperback, or want to buy one for a mate? Then this is what you want. We'll add an extra paperback to your postage box to be delivered to you with your other physical book purchase (paperback, hardcover, limited edition). Additional postage costs are included. Limit of one per backer. This one is for backers of physical book copies only.
$30USD Collateral Pack - Physical Copy Backers
Grab yourself the full swag of add-ons with the collateral pack. This includes:
- 1x printed map
- 2x bookmarks
- 1x poster
- 2x die-cut magnets
$40USD Collateral Pack - e-Copy Backers
If you grabbed the ebook only, but you love the swag, grab yourself the full swag of add-ons with the e-book backer collateral pack. This includes:
- 1x printed map
- 2x bookmarks
- 1x poster
- 2x die-cut magnets
- Postage within the USA
If you're outside of the USA, we're going to need to charge you a bit more for postage. Add another $10USD.
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Risks and challenges
Having recently learned from managing the Evil is a Matter of Perspective funding, production, and distribution run, this project's major risks are mostly understood and prepared for.
Backers of both Evil is a Matter of Perspective and Dirge Swag will be accustomed to a high level of transparency, service, and a firm commitment to deliver from Adrian and Jinx.
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Funding period
- (30 days)