30 Side Stories Announcement (Patreon)

It's hard to believe I've written thirty of these things! Thank you all for your support. I wouldn't have been able to take time out of my schedule to make all these without it. Doing these short stories every month has helped me improve as a writer and Samurai of Hyuga improve as a story in more ways than I can count. Though once I get around to it, I'll make a blogpost about it on my website!

To put it simply, I went from starting and finishing about 3 stories to 33, refining my outlining process and really getting a chance to delve deeper into characters in a way I've never done before. Connecting secondary and tertiary characters together, thinking about the timeline and locations in relation to pre-established story events...worldbuilding! These things don't come natural to me, but these stories have forced me to improve.

And I like to think I have (lol)!

I expect most readers enjoy the main series a bit more than these short stories, which is completely understandable. But for me personally, I am more proud and more pleased of this collection of short stories than I am of the big books. I don't re-read my previous books for pleasure (just reference) but I can definitely see myself going through these side stories again. It's hard to explain, but that's how special they are to me!

The 30th side story is the last. There may be room for a bonus one down the line for Kohaku for example, to wrap up her/his story arc, but for the most part, I want to focus 100% on writing Book 5 going forward. In more practical terms, it means that the $5 patron tier incentive is, well, less incentivizing!

While I have some future ideas for incentives, I recommend everyone at that tier move down to $1 for the time being. The $10 tier will remain early access until Book 5's release (late 2021 is my expectation).

Thanks again for the support—and thank you always for reading!