Good morning {{first_name|Reader}},

Something different this week. No financial data. No watch. Just an update on the project I have been building alongside this newsletter for the past year — and a cover I have been waiting to show you.

Three sections this week. The book itself — the back cover copy, the cover art, and the two published thrillers it sits closest to. Where it stands right now — the editing, the Department of Defense review process, and what the launch timeline actually looks like. And what I need from the people reading this, which is a specific and honest ask.

I stared at it for a long time when I first saw it. A lone figure with a headlamp standing inside an Icelandic lava tube, blue light cracking through the volcanic rock ahead of him, a point of light at the end of the tunnel that could be a way out or something else entirely. That is the book. That image is exactly the book.

Here is what it is about:

Dr. Marcus Hale is one of forty people on earth who can lead a deep survey of an active Icelandic cave system. He is also the man who sent his partner a text message the night she died.

Data will keep. Get some sleep. We'll run the full analysis in the morning.

She didn't make it to morning. He has been living with that text for three years.

When Arca Systems recruits him to lead a geothermal survey of the Dyngjufjöll cave system in Iceland's remote interior — the system where Dr. Yael Brenin died — Marcus agrees for one reason. He recognized a face in the briefing room. A face he last saw at the camp where Yael died. He found something hidden in her field data. A coordinate. A message. A trail she left for him alone.

What Yael found was the largest deposit of rare earth elements ever discovered, worth over a trillion dollars, strategically significant enough that a US government division buried it forty years ago. When Yael found it again, they made sure she didn't surface.

Now Marcus is three hundred meters underground with the team that killed her, holding the evidence she left him, and listening to her voice on a recording she made the night before she died — eleven minutes and forty seconds of geology and conspiracy and, in the final thirty seconds, something that has nothing to do with either.

THE CAVE: WHAT THE EARTH KEEPS is a literary thriller about grief, rare earth geopolitics, and the cost of finishing what someone you loved started.

If you need a reference point: think State of Wonder by Ann Patchett for the literary voice and the scientist in a hostile remote environment, and The Terminal List by Jack Carr for the grief-driven protagonist and the government cover-up underneath everything. Those two books in a cave in Iceland is approximately what this is.

I have been writing consistently for six years. Two nonfiction books and this newsletter proved I could write. This book is proving something different — that I can do something I never thought I was capable of. I have been reading thrillers my entire life. At some point I stopped asking why not me. So this is the answer to that question.

I am currently editing Chapter 24 of 42. The manuscript sits at approximately 95,000 words.

Editing is a different kind of work than writing. Writing the first draft was about getting the story out. Editing is about making every sentence earn its place. Chapter by chapter, I am tightening what is there and finding what was missing. The book is getting better.

Before The Cave can publish, it has to go through a review process that most debut authors do not face. As a Department of Defense employee, I am required to submit any manuscript for review by the DoD prior to publication. This is standard protocol, not a red flag, or an indication that the book touches anything classified or sensitive. It does not. Marcus Hale is a volcanologist. The conspiracy is about rare earth minerals. Nothing in this book comes anywhere near anything I do for work.

The review process takes approximately 120 days. Once I am done editing, I will submit it for clearance.

What that means practically: I do not have a confirmed launch date yet. Once I receive clearance, I will set a date, open pre-orders, and give everyone who wants to be ready the opportunity to be ready. The plan is to self-publish — I want full control over the pricing, the launch, and the relationship with the people who buy it.

Speaking of pricing: launch week/pre-orders will be $1.99. That is a deliberate decision. The Amazon Best Seller program rewards volume on launch day and in the days immediately following. A $1.99 price point removes every reason not to buy it. What I need is readers, not margin.

Three things, in order of importance.

Buy it on launch day. One sale on launch day carries more weight toward the Amazon Best Seller list than ten sales a month later. When the date is confirmed and pre-orders open, I will tell you exactly when and exactly what to do. If you are willing to buy it, buying it on the right day is what moves the number.

Leave a review. Amazon reviews are the second most important factor in the Best Seller program after sales volume. An honest review from someone who read the book and has something real to say about it matters enormously. I will do something special for early reviewers. (Details to come when the launch is closer.)

Tell one person. If the back cover copy above made you want to read this book, tell one person who reads thrillers. That is all. One person. The compound effect of 6,300 readers each telling one person is more reach than any marketing budget I could put together.

I am not asking for anything today except to know whether you would consider pre-ordering when the time comes. The poll below takes five seconds. Your answer helps me understand what I am working with before the launch window opens.

The Cave: What the Earth Keeps is the most ambitious thing I have attempted in six years of consistent writing. It is a thriller about a man finishing something a woman he loved started, three hundred meters underground, surrounded by the people who killed her.

I have been sitting with this story for a long time. It is almost ready.

When it is, you will be the first to know.

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Time is wealth. Own it.

-Ian