The Bait Dog Kickstarter Is A-Go

Atlanta Burns.

Teenage girl with a shotgun. Standing up for the used and abused, the bullied and the beaten. A little bit Veronica Mars. A touch of Raylan Givens. Add a dash of Charles Bronson in Death Wish.

Now, she wants a ride in her first novel, and so I give you: BAIT DOG.

Well, I don’t give it to you yet, I guess —

Because now BAIT DOG has a Kickstarter drive.

I’ve got all kinds of cool rewards cooking — not just the e-book but a hardcover and trucker hats and a copy of Fireside Magazine (with another Atlanta Burns short story in it, “Shotgun Gravy”) and, if you happen to be wealthy and/or insane, a chance to come visit me in Pennsyltucky and fire off the shotguns and shoot whatever the hell we can find. (I suspect nobody’s going to bite the bullet on that one.) Be advised, too — you do not need to read SHOTGUN GRAVY first (though you can if you so choose). With a successful pledge of the Kickstarter $5.00 and up, you’ll get access to all the information you need to know. BAIT DOG is a standalone novel; no previous knowledge required.

Also, for every $3000 earned, I’ll write a brand new Atlanta Burns novel. So, theoretically, if we blow past the 100% point (though the Devil only knows if we’ll even get to 100%), there exists the chance for not one but several of Atlanta’s adventures as a teenage detective-slash-vigilante to come into the light.

Atlanta as a character means a lot to me. She’s kind of the patron saint of kicking over anthills and whupping up on bullies who might think to put someone down because they’re different in some way.

Hopefully she’ll mean something to you, too.

As a sidenote, Sweet Sid and Marty Krofft it’s tricky business putting together a Kickstarter video. I mean, on the surface, it’s fairly simple: “Point face at camera and say smart things.” It’s that latter part I had trouble with. You know how many videos ended up with me mouthing off a machine gun chatter of profanity and then trying to bite the lens in half? I’ll give a conservative estimate of… mmm, ohh, 95% of ’em. At one point I really figured I might just post a video of me throwing up and then crying into my own sick on the hopes that I’d earn a sympathy pledge.

But then somehow it came together and I managed to post a video that was not altogether horrid.

Regardless, thanks for checking out the Kickstarter drive. I do hope you’ll take a look and spread the word and, of course, pledge. I don’t know if Kickstarter is the future for creative types, but it’s certainly a very interesting component of the present and I suspect it will be an entertaining and illuminating ride. Thanks for taking it with me!