My award-winning clients Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris have always been the kind of pioneers who think outside the covers. Tee founded Podiocast.com and was the first author to podcast a novel back in 2005. Together they write a steampunk series, the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, and have worked tirelessly to promote that brand through convention appearances, podcast anthologies, self-published novella-length ebooks, self-produced video book trailers, and networking with the fantasy community. This is one of the many reasons I admire and respect them as hybrid authors, both traditionally and self-published, in a variety of milieu.
Now they’re pioneering again (bless them!), by using crowdfunding to start another project. Their Kickstarter campaign, The Ministry Initiative, hopes to raise the $20,000 necessary to fund a role playing game set in the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences world (yes, thinking outside the covers again), as well as a professionally produced MoPO anthology.
“We have done several podcast anthologies previous to this, however this time we wanted to step it up a level, and we knew we wanted to do a limited print run,” Ballantine said. “To get the quality we wanted we knew we’d have to get a professional cover not only designed but photographed. Our friend and colleague Alex White immediately came to mind, and he is doing a whole shoot with costumes and models. In addition we wanted to get the anthology professionally edited.”
You can find out more about how their Kickstarter campaign works (in case you want to do one of your own some day), and check out their fabulous prizes here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1034531507/the-ministry-initiative-steampunk-role-playing-and?ref=live
They are nearly 60% funded with 10 days to go. Hey, for a measly $5 you can receive the whole Ministry Protocol anthology in several eBook formats and see what I’m talking about. Or for $10, an electronic edition of the Ministry Initiative role-playing game that you can play with your friends. And if you’ve just won the lottery or have access to a trust fund, for $1,000 or $5,000 you can become an actual agent of the Ministry! Such fun.
Pip and Tee remain traditionally published as well with Penguin’s Ace imprint. They work hard. Pip has three books coming out this summer plus an anthology story in Clockwork Fairy Tales.
These are two wonderful authors to watch as they always seem to be ahead of the curve with their writing and promotional efforts. By day, Tee is also a social media marketing expert and he brings all that knowledge and skill to bear on their authorial brands. You can follow them on twitter at @TeeMonster and @PhilippaJane and I highly recommend you do. It’s a master lesson in marketing and fanbase-building you’ll benefit from immensely. Plus they’re very funny folks.
The new Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel, Dawn’s Early Light, will be out from Penguin in 2014. In the meantime, get introduced to the series now with the first two books, Phoenix Rising and The Janus Affair. Great summer reading.
What are you doing to “think outside the covers” with your writing? Tell the world in our comments section!
