October 18 Update (Patreon)

There's enough stuff going on, I'm going to divide this post into appeals and thoughts about the upcoming period.

Support Me (if you want)

That animated cover up there? It's for the upcoming audiobook for The Brightest Shadow. I'll say more about it in the future, but for now, Podium wants me to spread it around. If you're interested in pre-ordering it, you can do so on Audible.com or a specific country link.

Meanwhile, I'm eligible for the r/fantasy Self-Published Novels contest. Anyone with a Reddit account can vote, though do note the rules:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/jabxs3/the_rfantasy_top_self_published_novels_voting/ 

I'm not going to win, but I have some votes already. Because the sub has over a million members, even getting lower on the list could bring new readers to my work.

There's other stuff that will be happening over the coming weeks/months, but those two are the only ones that are time-sensitive. On to general thoughts.

Taking a Break

As I've implied at various times, I think I need a break. My effort in 2020 to finally knock some long-standing projects off my plate had mixed success, in some cases recoiling on me by adding new continual draws on my time (mostly communicating with new artists). DStP is actually delayed primarily because of me for the first time since the project began, but I kept it on the backburner because I recognized I was near the limits of my bandwidth.

Unfortunately, a true break is impossible because I've just put too much in my schedule. I have three different book launches coming up soon, some of them determined by publishers instead of me. Handling that isn't hard, just draining, but dealing with all of it while trying to complete significant creative work is another thing.

What I think I need is a period of time where I can follow my creativity more freely, while dealing with all the communication and promotion that's been scheduled. I'm going to try to give myself significant freedom to follow my muse, but I'm not going to begin anything new. That is, I'll work on TLS/OEA/DStP at random as I feel like it, but not start anything new that will require work from Future Sierra.

The one exception might be trying to write some short stories, as they're generally done in a short period of time with no future obligations. I have some semi-experimental ideas I've wanted to explore, and maybe getting into them might be refreshing.

Following my creativity will likely involve working on TLS 0.55.0 some too. Launching into the whole update, especially updating so many NPCs, doesn't sound like fun right now, but some other stuff? There are investment returns, new harem scenes, and numerous little consequences. ^-^ It's nearly certain that there will be times when I feel like working on those, so I'll take pieces out of the open world update until I eventually just finish it up.

So there you have it, that's my plan. You can look forward to hearing from me in the regular weekly updates, but maybe some of them will just be a new piece of art or something, instead of an essay.