September Announcements! Art Contests and Extra Chapters! (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

Time for the monthly announcements!

First! The week of the 26th is my admin week... but it's unlikely to be a regular admin week!

Second! I've been writing some insane chapters to the climax of book 8, and they're frankly a little on the "WTF" size. I just finished an 8k long chapter, for example! Narratively, it needs to be that long, but it's unfortunately long in some respects. Like, anyone trying to read it needs to read it all in one sitting, and 8k words is pushing it.

As you all know, I've also recently upped my patreon prices. What I'm going to do is split up the slightly larger chapters, then post them all at once anyways. From a narrative flow perspective, nothing's interrupted. From a readability perspective, things have improved. And lastly, Patreon's Elaine+ tier is going from +20 chapters to +25 chapters. It's going to be unfortunate for Royal Road and other free readers when they get to that segment, but... they've had 350+ chapters of free content at this point, they can have a slow segment while patreon zooms ahead.

I anticipate this jump will occur during my admin week, but it might occur at a different time instead. It should happen this month, but I'm not 100% committed to that right this second.

I can say it'll happen before the end of book 8.

TL;DR: Patreon is going from +20 to +25 chapters

Third! AI ART CONTEST!

Yes, it's time for BTDEM's second ever art contest! Now, the issue with art contests is some creators can work their ass off, and get absolutely nothing for their hard work. As a result, for this art contest, I'd like to encourage people to use one of the many, many AI art generators out there. That way there's no massive loss of time and work if an art piece isn't selected, or doesn't win. That's just a feel bad moment. It also levels the playing field somewhat - everyone can participate in this contest, not just highly skilled artists!

With that being said, I'm totally fine if an artist wants to submit their "own" piece, and I'm also OK with artists "touching up" AI-generated pieces. 

Submission: Discord is preferred. I'll also take submissions by DM on Royal Road and Patreon.

Prizes:
1st: $500

2nd: $150

3rd: $100

4th-10th: $50

Total pool: $1100

There might or might not be a round of voting to determine the winners. I do know I'll be personally pruning down the submissions to a shortlist to vote on if we go that route, but it's not going to be an "every submissions is voted on" like last time. The community is simply too large.

Submissions should be safe for work for this contest. If you somehow generate a high quality submission, but it happens to be less safe for work, PM me and we can discuss. 

There is no restriction on which AI generators to use. Here's a few to get you started:

Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com/home/

nightcafe: https://creator.nightcafe.studio/

wombo art: https://app.wombo.art/

artbreeder: https://www.artbreeder.com/browse

artflow: https://artflow.ai/user

Cheers all! I hope to see some stunning artwork from all of you!

May the person who puts in the most effort win!