City of Refuge--The Kickstarter Campaign Begins!

“Bird dreamed of a fortress. Impregnable, formed of cold blocks of gray stone, it towered above him. A bugle blew. The gates opened, and legions of soldiers poured out. Masked and helmeted, armed and shielded, they marched in lockstep, left, right, left, an invincible force.

            ““But how do we fight this?” Bird asked. “How do we bring it down?”

            “He wasn’t sure who or what he was asking, but he heard a voice, low and toneless.

          “The fortress falls when the ground beneath it shifts.”

That’s an excerpt from my newest book, City of Refuge, the sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing.   And today is the big day, when we begin the Kickstarter campaign to publish it!

In The Fifth Sacred Thing, the people of an ecotopian northern California resist a brutal invasion using nonviolence and magic. It centers around the question, how do we resist violence without becoming what we’re fighting against?

In the sequel, Healer Madrone has a dream. “Build a city of refuge in the heartland of the enemy.” She.and musician-turned-guerilla Bird go down to the Southlands to liberate them. But how can you build a new world when people are so deeply damaged by the old?

I’ve been working on this book for almost four years now, and I’m eager for you all to read it. So many people have told me that The Fifth Sacred Thing has been important to them!

But Bantam, who originally published Fifth, doesn’t believe there’s an audience for a sequel. I think they’re wrong! And I hope you’ll help me prove it!

If you want to read the book, please help support the campaign! There are many ways you can do that…

• Pledge a contribution. The rewards are…a special limited first edition of the book, in various forms! In essence, you’re pre-ordering it, and you’ll get to read it weeks before it is released to the general public!
• Help spread the word! Share our link on your social media and send it to your friends.
• Talk about it! With all the technology at our disposal, word of mouth is still the very best way to spread news!

            I’m excited, nervous, hopeful, and really, really grateful to be getting support from some amazing people who are working with me on this project. There’s Alli Gallixsee, who has helped me set the campaign up, and Jessica Perlstein, who did the beautiful color illustration. Philip Wood made the video, and in it you’ll see more of Jessica’s art. Diane Rigoli created the cover design. It takes a village to produce a book! And that’s not even talking about the editing, the proofreading, the layout and so much more.

I’m so thankful all of you are part of our village!

“A rumble…the earth shivered and trembled under his feet. He stepped closer to the fortress walls. A shaft of light came down out of the lowering clouds, and played over the surface of the stones. It formed a rippling pattern, like the broken webs of light playing through water. But the light, he realized suddenly, was shining through the stones. The walls that looked so solid were riddled with cracks. They were brittle, and ready to fall.

            “And now, up through the cracks, vines snaked, and out of the stones herbs and grasses sprouted. The walls began to crumble, but the roots and the twining stems held the structure together as mortar turned to dust. Trees took root in the rubble and arched overhead, their branches heavy with fruit.

            “Where the fortress had stood now was a leafy hall, open, with room for the multitudes.”           

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1548894274/city-of-refuge-the-sequel-to-the-fifth-sacred-thin?ref=email