End of Break update: CE Vol 2 on KU, plans for Vol 3, other news (Patreon)

Hello, dear patrons,

It's been a while! Though I'm currently still in Japan until the 22nd and updates won't truly return to normal until then, I'll slowly start publishing again this week; first some short Gunsoul/DW chapters depending on their advancement, then Blood & Fur on the 25th. The trip has been a blast so far and let me meet other fantastic authors like Actus, Jiwa/Mechanimus and Xkarnation. It's also been very inspiring for some future book parts like Soraseo's home in Commerce Emperor and Gunsoul.

The break has been a good opportunity to take a step back and think things through. For now, I would like to share with you some decisions I've reached on my current stories.

• Plans for Commerce Emperor (stubbing volume 2 by end of May, start of Volume 3 soon, keeping it as anthology)

Commerce Emperor has been on my mind a lot these past few days, especially on how to properly advance with volume 3 after the lackluster reception of its predecessors. The break was partly meant to help me stave off my burn out on it and taking some distance let me better figure out where I want to go with it.

While CE did alright on Amazon, it's well below that of past releases and the number of people following it on this very Patreon is dwarfed by those who follow Blood & Fur. I blame the narrower subject matter and fatigue in volume 2.

What doesn't help either is that my publisher set the volume 2 release date for June 13th, which means I'll have to take down the second volume's chapters by the end of May. I think I've once again been a bit too overambitious by introducing too many moving parts in that setting early without anticipating how long it would take to conclude certain story arcs.

So after much consideration, I've decided to keep the Pangeal universe as an anthology following multiple heroes; volume 3 will conclude the Robin's/Devil of Greed (alongside others like Soraseo's and Marika's) story arcs, but not the wider conflict with the Demon Ancestors. This will allow me to revisit the universe later with different leads and plotlines, such as the Ranger, the Bard or the Mage, while giving this particular part of the story a satisfactory ending.

Chapters will be posted irregularly since I'm also working on Gunsoul and DW now, but I hope to have the first chapter of volume 3 released in early June. My new commerce-focused outline indicates that this book should be around the same length as the first (20 or so chapters) so I hope to conclude the trilogy by the year's end. Once that trilogy is concluded, I'm likely to revisit the setting with other heroes as main protagonists in the future.

• Plans for other series 

For now, I'm leaning towards a flexible schedule for non-Blood & Fur stories; while B&F will remain the series with frequent and regular long updates, I intend to go back to writing CE, Gunsoul and DW the rest of the week depending on where inspiration takes me. I'm likely to give some preference to CE first since that one was already published on RR/Amazon and I would rather build a backlog for Gunsoul/DW on Patreon before publishing either of them. As warned, those who will be designed to be standalone stories (though with the potential to be extended later should the mood strikes me).

I've had a habit of burning out on long stories later, so I feel I'm likely to stick to shorter, more intimate stories (like Stars of Sirius) in the near-future.

• Perfect Run Game advancement 

As you can see from the video above, the Perfect Run game demo is advancing well, with Ryan's animations more or less done ;) I've good hopes to send a playthrough video of the demo in June once we've completed it.

Working on the game will likely take a lot of time this year for me, so you can expect some updates on it now and then.

And for now, that's all! Thank you all for your patience during the break, and I hope you'll be happy to see new chapters coming ;)

Best regards,

Maxime.