Kickstarter Fiction: 4/20/12

Okay, so even though I posted a flash fiction story yesterday to meet a deadline, I still want to have a Friday post. It just feels right. Luckily, there is plenty to discuss in the realm of Kickstarter Fiction, aka The Place Where My Money Goes.

The first thing I should mention is that science-fiction author John Scalzi has opened up a forum on his website where people can post pitches for their crowd-funding projects. He reports that he has up to 50,000 daily visitors, so this could be quite a marketing tool to match up projects with those looking to spend their disposable income.

Next, I would like to say “Congrats!” to the Tales of the Emerald Serpent team for their successful project. As I mentioned before, this is a fantasy shared world anthology, which is pretty much all they needed to tell me to get me to pledge.

Speaking of shared worlds, check out Have Blaster, Will Travel: A Bulldogs! Story Anthology. Like Tales of the Emerald Serpent, these stories are based on an RPG, but this one is billed as “sci-fi that kicks ass.” From the project page: “Have Blaster, Will Travel is an anthology of space opera adventure that follows the Bulldogs, people who signed on with the TransGalaxy interstellar shipping company to run away from the law, the criminals they offended, or a past that haunts them. Inspired by Firefly, Star Wars, and lots of other b-movie sci-fi, Bulldogs tells the stories of those who are desperate enough to take a job hauling volatile and hazardous cargo to the most dangerous places in the galaxy.” Sounds like fun, and very tempting…

I hardly need mention this next project since I have seen it talked about all over the place already, but since I overlooked it in the previous Kickstarter Fiction post, let me redress that wrong here. Tim Byrd has a series of young adult pulp adventure novels starring Doc Wilde and family. It has already surpassed its goal, but with over a week to go, you still have time to get in on the pulp goodness. You can find a sample of the first book here. Doc Wilde is over the top, more perfect than perfect, but this is the exactly the sort of adventure I enjoyed reading as a kid, and since I haven’t really grown up, it is another tempting possibility.

And speaking of pulp goodness, Spirit of the Century Presents: The Dinocalypse Trilogy is now even more of an amazing deal. As of this writing, you can get 7 ebooks and 2 RPG PDFs for $10. Remember, there are psychic dinosaurs, kung fu detectives, and an ape on Mars. Words fail me. If you have not pledged, do so now; the project ends on Sunday.

Sigh. I was going to make a disclaimer at the top of this post about how I am not necessarily backing each project just because I mention it, but writing about the projects made me excited and so I added Have Blaster and Doc Wilde to my list of backed projects. (I already had Dinocalypse, of course!) Don’t tell my wife, okay?