Afterword and Next Stories (Patreon)

Afterword

Paranoid Mage has been a wild ride from start to finish. The huge success, the attention – good and bad – that it attracted. I’m glad so many people liked it and found it a fun read. It’s definitely not perfect though, and I think one of the biggest problems is with mismatched expectations.

I knew when I started that Callum would have to remove the mage governmental structure, and to do that in a moral way would mean he couldn’t just murder his way through it. But the first book didn’t really hint at any of that so the entire vibe of Book 1 and even Book 2 was entirely different.

Then there was letting Callum become a drone operator. While it made perfect sense within the ruleset I put forth for magic, Callum’s mini-portal chaining that let him do everything remotely really stymied a lot of the fun action from 1 and 2. It wasn’t obvious at the time how badly that’d affect things, and of course given Callum’s personality he wouldn’t dare approach things any other way.

There was also a somewhat smaller niggle that was still definitely an issue, and that was how my attempt to keep everything condensed and on point meant that the pacing was very pedestrian over the books. It all felt the same, more or less. Coupled with my struggles to move the story into the final act at the beginning of Book 4 it made things slog a bit.

Still and all, it turned out well. It was definitely a fresh take in a lot of ways, and did some really fun things — like Ray and Felicia being the background “normal urban fantasy protagonist” characters. I don’t know that I’ll be returning to the world of Paranoid Mage any time soon — if anything, setting some far future sci-fantasy there would make more sense, since I had to do quite a bit of dancing around to keep it from being pinned to any specific date or include any specific political developments.

For now, I’ll be moving onto a completely different story – and I hope you all will join me.

Next Stories and Going Forward

The next story is called Chasing Sunlight, and it is an airship adventure inspired by Sunless Sea and HP Lovecraft, along with some bits and pieces of mythological fiction. It’s likely only going to be a single, somewhat long book, rather than an extremely long multi-volume series, which I know is going to make it less interesting to some people, but I hope you’ll give it a try anyway.

Here's the blurb for it:

Jonathan Heights saw sunlight once. He must see it again.

At least, that’s what he claims when charters an expedition east beyond the bounds of civilization. The Illuminated King has an abiding interest in such legends, while the Reflected Council is more interested in the treasures that they are convinced he has found, out there in the dark. The truth is shrouded and motives uncertain as Jonathan and the agents of both Crown and underworld take the airship Endeavor east, beyond the bounds of human civilization.

Wonders and horrors both lie between the human lands and his ultimate goal: things long-forgotten and long-dead, that which could not be recorded on any map. They are temptation and terror to the wise and foolish alike, but not to Jonathan. He only has one goal in mind, and will not brook anything that stands between him and sunlight.

So a nice straightforward adventure, which I think ought to be a breath of fresh air. I already have a number of chapters done (of course) and it might be considered slow starting out, depending on your tastes, but by Chapter 5 you should be able to tell if you like it.  After that I’m not entirely certain, but I’m thinking I’ll be doing a longer progression fantasy, with a discrete magic system that I’ve come up with to emphasize intelligent tool use rather than greater power.  However, I can’t quite commit to that just yet – I have some ideas centered around scifi principles as well. Probably a series of novellas there, which might well lend itself to web far better than print novels anyway.

However, I will not be releasing extra Monday chapters for the next few months, either here or on Royal Road. It’s unfortunate, but I came to Chasing Sunlight after many false starts on other stories, and combined with some minor health problems near the end of Paranoid Mage I’m farther behind on my buffer than I’d like. I’m not even certain what I’ll do for the Royal Road release – I feel that it’s a good idea to release the first five chapters in five days like I did with Paranoid Mage, but I don’t have those extra five chapters in my pocket, so I may have to delay the Royal Road release for a month and wait until patrons hit Chapter 15. We shall see.

Next week, Chasing Sunlight Chapter 1 will come out for 10-ahead Patrons. I hope you will enjoy.