2018 in Review (Patreon)

Hey, everybody! This is going to be a busy month, so I thought I'd kick things off early with my yearly review and look forward.

Reflections 

At the beginning of 2018 I said I was afraid TLS updates might fall behind given the other major things I would be doing. I actually only released one fewer update than a normal year, and some of those updates were pretty complex. TLS progress in 2018 included finishing the customized base, marrying Janine, getting involved with Ardoheim's succession crisis, waging war against Erosia, visiting Stenai, meeting a certain someone, and deciding the future of the Ivalan Church at the synod.

Looking back, I'm pretty satisfied with that progress. 2019 should see more interesting updates, including major changes throughout the entire world, a couple significant return visits to old locations, and the resolution to the war with the Fucklord. I'm not certain exactly how far we'll go beyond that, but we'll be a lot closer to the end of the game.

2018 also saw the completion of Desecration of Wings, a project that has been sitting in semi-finished form for a very long time. I also released Dusk and Dawn, which concludes the story of Crimson Gray, at least for the time being.

Of course, the biggest change of last year was beginning to publish novels. I was pleased by how well my first LitRPG book was received and I look forward to putting out several more. It will be interesting to see how the numbers change when I have more than a single title - I'm curious where I'll be one year from now. 

Major Projects for 2019 

Unlike some years, I can't lay out in exact detail what will happen in the coming year - my plan needs to be more flexible than that. Instead I thought it might be more useful to report on what all is on my plate. Most likely this year I will put more energy into finishing current side projects than into starting new ones. 

The Last Sovereign: Always on my mind.

New Game Minus: I intend to release books #2 and #3 this year, then I will evaluate how the series has gone and decide whether it should be extended. I'll also be announcing my work to blog readers this weekend.

The Unknown: There's a formless possibility that could also join these two as an ongoing project, but more on that later.

Other Projects 

Lesser projects that have a definite ending point, roughly in the order of how much they are on my mind and/or how close they are to completion.

Once Ever After: My fairy tale RPG made serious strides in 2018. I'm not sure how much it will develop this year, but you'll hear more about it soon. More info below.

Unnamed Serialized Novel: $10 backers will remember that I was workshopping ideas for a serialized novel to attract more attention to my work. Well, at a low creative point, I just went crazy and started on a new novel. XD I didn't get as much done over the holidays as I'd hoped, but I have 80k written and I want to finish while I'm inspired. The plan is to completely finish my creative work early, then release it in pieces throughout the year (patrons will get to see it early).

The Brightest Shadow: I'm in a weird place about this book, but it's a story that matters to me, one of my concepts that would be as expansive as TLS. You will hear more about it at some point this year, I'm just not sure when.

Don't Save the Princess: Basically, I'm waiting on more stuff I commissioned. You can safely assume that we'll see the demo version of the first two worlds this year, but I don't know how that will go or how much more will be done with it.

Dungeon Core Novel: I've written 20k words of a novel about the lifelong friendship between a little girl and a monstrous sentient dungeon. I still think this idea has promise, but I'm just struggling with going back to it for several different reasons. Though I'd still like to finish this at some point, right now it's been put on the backburner.

Platform Shenanigans: As I mentioned last post, I'm considering creating a secondary crowdfunding account with one of the other sites, but haven't decided. Also, with Tumblr banning adult content, I need a new place for all the TLS fanart. It will probably be Newgrounds.

The Unknown 

This year also has the potential for additional changes that are not yet certain in my mind. There are some things I've been considering, but haven't been able to pursue until recently. $10 backers, you can definitely expect a thread discussing some of these.

The Near Future 

As I said at the beginning, January will be a busy month. Lots of things going on, presented roughly in order...

New Game Minus #2 beta reading: The sequel is already written and ready for people to read soon! I'd like to not rush this one so that we have time to hopefully catch more of the typos than last time. I intend to release on Amazon near the end of the month or thereabouts.

Once Ever After: I said little about this project last year, but I've been working on it. While it isn't done, it has reached a state where I want to show everyone my work. Expect this to happen this month.

New Game Minus #1 audiobook: For those of you waiting for this, production is underway. The narrator's deadline (which he set) is January 16, but we'll see how the timing works out.

TLS 0.41.0: All those above items are doing more with finished work, not raw creative work. I've been working on TLS in bits and pieces, but I look forward to really throwing myself into the next version soon. There's a lot of content, plus retroactive changes to the synod.

Serialized Novel: This will take a break while I work on other things, but eventually you guys will get your hands on the edited version.

TLS Steam Release: This is still planned for sometime, it's just a question of when I have time and energy for it.

As you can see, there's a lot going on. Hope everyone has a good 2019!