June 4 Update (Patreon)

(It turns out there's a lot more fan content! I'm going to show everything I've been sent week to week, so those who aren't in the various communities can see it. Please feel free to send me things, as it's likely I won't see them otherwise.)

Never sure how to talk about time. Patreon, this industry, and creators in general can go in several directions. There are some who are accused of being lazy while there are also others who give wildly unrealistic impressions of working sixteen hours a day eight days a week.

I work reasonably hard because I enjoy it. That does mean there's less flex available when it comes to crunch, though. Previously this year I've been shifting some strategies for extracting more productivity on TLS:

1) More overlapping dev cycles. I'm always working on some content for future updates, especially during the period where I'm mostly doing bugfixing but have some extra time. Recently I have been doing this more aggressively. This has been a bit obnoxious and led to one fatal bug for a while, but it does reduce turnaround time between builds.

2) Pursing random inspiration (for TLS content). This leads to more total production, but it also leads to incomplete content sitting around. There's a quest that's half complete in the game and I didn't feel like finishing it, so it will stay in that state until I go back to it. Probably fine, just uneven.

3) As I described in the previous post, dropping time spent on skill development. That was already outside of "normal hours", but the normal release pace is predicated on more than that, you'll see an increase.

4) Delay writing more Weirkey Chronicles. Readers are still stuck with the book I wrote last year and there will be an unavoidable gap. This one isn't all bad... maybe the audiobooks will catch up a little and people will stop asking me about them.

5) Put off all side and alternate projects. You're all overdue for a DStP update, for example, and I have a novel written that is going to take forever to finish editing at this rate.

I don't want to overdo this or provoke any worry. Please rest assured that I have locked in hours for reading, exercise, and self-care (and sleep... to some degree). This is a shift in priorities, not some massive self-sacrifice.

That said, it's all a bit tiring. I hope everyone will enjoy the fact that the next TLS update is coming sooner than you probably expected.