The other night I was up way past my bedtime, reading this essay by Chloe Caldwell and thinking about how my kickstarter would fail. I was feeling sad about it, because I felt really invested in hiking the PCT, and Chloe, who is an awesome writer, was going to live in my trailer and watch my dogs for the summer, which felt neat and serendipitous, and everything was all tidily set up except for my kickstarter, which was failing.

Then, right before I closed my computer, I got an email from a guy at this little marketing company. He’d just moved from LA, he told me, and he didn’t know anyone here, and he was meeting with independent artists and helping them with their kickstarters for free, as a way to network.

We met for coffee the next day, and he told me everything that I’d done wrong with my kickstarter, and how I could fix it. We brainstormed a bunch of awesome ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own, and I biked home newly convinced that I could make it work. Once home I cancelled the kickstarter, reworked it, and re-submitted it. It’ll take a few days for kickstarter to approve the project again, and then I’ll be re-launching it! And this time, it’s going to be win/win/win. For one thing, my goal is lower. For another, I’m selling pre-orders of my book (the e-book and the paper copy) at a price way below what their retail price will be. Deep discounts for my backers! I’m also going to do a much better job of announcing my campaign to the entire universe. Yay!

And if you pledged to the first version of the project before it was cancelled, I’d love it if you’d followed me over to the new version, once it’s launched. I know that’s a giant pain in the ass, but it’s gonna help me like crazy in the end. I can’t wait to be on the PCT!

THE PCT IS SO SOON, and everything hinges upon this campaign. This is how I feel today-