How I’m Doing on Survival of the Fittest — Cover Reveal!

5 tribes. 1 leader. A treacherous journey across 3 continents in search of a new home.

Written in the spirit of Jean Auel, Survival of the Fittest joins Xhosa and her tribe in a world where ‘survival of the fittest’ is not a slogan. It’s a destiny. 

My current writing endeavor is the saga of man’s survival, endurance, and tenacity in the face of unconquerable odds. It is a group of trilogies called Man vs. Nature that address seminal times in man’s evolution–when we first arrived (Dawn of Humanity), when we dominated Nature (Crossroads), and when we became really smart (not yet started).

Occurring a million years after Born in a Treacherous Time, the first book in the Crossroads trilogy, Survival of the Fittest covers a time in prehistory when man populated most of Eurasia. He was a violent species, fully capable of addressing the many hardships that threatened his survival except for one: future man, a smarter version of himself, one destined to obliterate those who came before.

With a planned publication of March 2019 (Book 2, Summer 2019), here’s how I’m doing.

• I finished editing! Yay!
• And, I finished the read-aloud. This, I do by converting the doc to a PDF and having Adobe read it to me. It’s the best read-aloud I’ve found (even paying) though not perfect.
• Damonza did a wonderful job on the cover. That’s Xhosa and Spirit, traveling through dangerous climes. I had to pull the designer back from making Xhosa look too ‘pretty’. I wanted tough.
• I uploaded Survival of the Fittest to Draft2Digital so I could offer a free ARC to select prehistoric fiction authors–like Kathleen O’Neal Gear, Harper Swan, and Sue Harrison (top writers in the prehistoric fiction genre). Most are willing to read the book. Time will tell if they like it!
• I contacted agents to see if there’s any interest. Crickets…
• I tried out a Twitter Pitch through IWSG (the Insecure Writers Support Group). Another failed marketing effort! Sigh.
• I’m including a chapter preview of Book 2 of the Crossroads trilogy so have asked my critique group to fine-tune it for me.
• I have a name for Book 2–The Quest for Home. I also have a name for the final book, Book 3: In the Footsteps of Giants.
• I’m working on the blog hop details which I’ll share next month. I have a few tweaks from my last one I hope you-all will like. I always so appreciate your help in getting the word out about my new books. If you want to sign up early, the form is available here.
• Here’s an updated map of the (Hero’s) journey in the Crossroads trilogy. The characters come together from disparate parts of the globe and end up finally in what will be Gran Dolina, Spain.

BTW, subscribers to my Writer’s Tips newsletter (click here) have already seen Survival of the Fittest‘s new cover. I am excited to share it with you here:

I know–I buried the lead. This cover is the most exciting part of the update!

Click to be notified when Crossroads is available.

More on Survival of the Fittest

How I’m Doing on Survival of the Fittest–4

How I’m Doing on Survival of the Fittest — 3

How I’m Doing on Survival of the Fittest — 2

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and Born in a Treacherous Time, first in the Man vs. Nature saga. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for TeachHUB and NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Survival of the Fittest, March 2019, first in the Crossroads Trilogy. You can find her tech ed books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning

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