Shard & Shield is A Go!

It’s happened! It’s out in the world. Shard & Shield is loose and in readers’ hands.

Early reviews have started to appear. Sales ranks have started to climb. And all in all, this has been a successful launch, so thank you all very much!

Preorder Bonuses

If you forwarded your proof of purchase or library request as instructed, you should have gotten your goodies within 24 hours.

Should have. However.

Here’s the thing about email — spammers abuse it. So email service providers are sensitive to anything that might possibly be spam. They collate all the ways people react to a particular message to determine how to handle the next.

All it takes is one lazy person clicking “Mark As Spam” instead of the equally-available “Unsubscribe” button, and firewalls go into overdrive on anything else from that address. (Seriously — as few as two “spam” reports per 10,000 messages can trigger the filters.)

Some software puts in it a spam folder. Some software straight up deletes it without you ever even getting a chance to decide if you want to see it or not. Yahoo! is a particular offender for auto-deleting, as I discovered while trying to deliver preorder goodies, but it’s not limited to Yahoo!.

If you sent a proof of purchase or library purchase request during the preorder period and did not receive your swag, please let me know and I’ll make sure you get it!

Meanwhile, make sure you whitelist (custom instructions) to train your software to deliver my mail properly. And please tell your friends to use the unsubscribe button instead of the “mark as spam” button if they just want to unsubscribe from something. :)

Preorder Prizes

All proofs of purchase and library purchase requests forwarded to the preorder address were entered for the drawing. Drawings were aided with the help of random.org for fairness. So let’s give a warm virtual round of applause for our winners Teddi, Kim, and Terry!

But the giveaways aren’t over! Remember that you can still enter the sharing giveaway, which is open until July 9. (Tip: way, way, way more people preordered than have entered the sharing giveaway, so this is a great place to get better odds right now.)

We Did Good! (And Well. But Also Good.)

Finally, I’m very pleased to say that together we supported International Justice Mission in donating toward fighting slavery in today’s world.

And I want to thank everyone for the very kind comments, on the blog and via social media, about my charity update post. I want to be clear that I am not currently facing any legal consequences for my enthusiasm, so thank you but please don’t worry for that. There will certainly be charity events again in the future, and I’ll have to work out how exactly that will happen, but it will happen.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to join me in donating, it’s easy to do online.

Thank you all! Happy reading!

My sincere gratitude goes to everyone who helped with this book and launch. Thank you so much!