September 16 Update (Patreon)

I feel like every single update this month could end up sounding like "There's too much going on at once, but I'm finishing a lot of things" - it's true, but it'd make for bland updates. This week I'll focus on just one thing that turned the corner in terms of being finished.

(First, a quick TLS update: I made some more progress, but not as much as I'd hoped because of some things that came up.)

You know how I've been talking about stress-writing a novel? Well, the core of the work is done. To be clear, this is a traditional epic fantasy novel, not NSFW or something connected with my other work. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but it's satisfying to have finished (and if you're not interested, you can rest assured that my time investment in it is mostly done).

The book I've written is about 288,000 words. For reference, the "average" novel length is 100k words. To give some other points of reference: the first Harry Potter is 77k, The Fellowship of the Ring is 187k, Gardens of the Moon is 209k, A Game of Thrones is 284k, The Eye of the World is 305k, and The Way of Kings is 387k. So you can see my book is firmly in "big fantasy novel" territory. A physical copy would probably be about 720 pages.

Not sure what to say about it right now, since I hate synopses. The WIP title is "The Brightest Shadow." It has some thematic similarities to TLS, enough that I worry a bit about it. When I began planning TLS, in choosing the story's themes, I had to walk away from others. This story picks up some of the ideas I abandoned and tries to flesh them out in a completely different direction.

Let me try to describe it in a casual way for you guys instead of book cover PR language:

 - Where TLS uses the idea of a "chosen hero" as comedy, the novel approaches it as cosmic horror.

 - It's a story about a conflict between "humans" and "Deathspawn." Naturally the Deathspawn are pure evil and there are no shades of gray whatsoever, nosiree.

 - It's heavy on action with a wuxia-inspired magic system. It's fully secondary world, not historical fantasy, but with a clear eastern influence.

Maybe that gives you a feel for it? I tried, anyway.

I want to give patrons a chance to read the novel and give feedback on it, but I'm not sure how I want to do that. I worry that dropping so much text on people would be unwelcome. The book is divided into five parts, so I considered releasing those one at a time. Partially because that might be more digestible, partially because I like seeing people's feedback throughout a work instead of just at the end. The main disadvantage is that it would delay the release and polishing of the book for a long time. I'm not at all sure how to do this, so opinions are welcome.

How many people here would be interested in reading? I am looking for people who:

1) Have the time/interest to read that much text and provide feedback.

2) Ideally enjoy the epic fantasy genre.

Please do sound off if you're interested! If you're not, that's fine. I don't know whether this will end up being a one-off experiment, but I think writing it was very healthy for me. Thanks again to everyone for their support.

Other stuff is still in the works, of course. Crimson Gray 1.5 seems to be in good shape, it's just a question of when I want to invest the time for a proper launch. Right now I'm thinking early October, ideally after a TLS release. Other stuff is coming along as well and might get a focused post in the future.