Patreon Update 7-25-24 (Patreon)

That wraps up AO 4!

I started to write this whole scene of Ard repairing Soulgard and preparing for the battle and then had some people read up to that point and got a big thumbs down.

It felt more like a ramp up for another big Arc that I didn’t have time to do.

So, I rewrote that last half of the chapter and I think I’m pretty happy with it and the whole book in general.

Carmilla was 110% the hardest part of this book. She’s the big bad that’s been around for 3 books now.

Ard’s got a bone to pick with her, as do many other side characters. They arguably have an even bigger issue with her.

At the same time, I thought Ard going toe to toe with her was too big of a step for him. Someone’s going to be like ‘but he just killed two elders’. I know. The duel was always supposed to be Gwen’s time to shine.

It was since I started foreshadowing it in book 2. Sometimes when I imagine something clearly enough, it's hard to imagine it any other way.

I wanted Ard to get a piece of that fight, but ultimately most of the big flashy magic battle would be Gwen vs Carmilla.

Still, you get her death, no body because no one is ever dead until you see the body. It moves forward the plot line for the Kingdom and the King steps into frame. The big difference now is that the Enclave faction has momentum and are openly against the king now. Prior to the duel they were more in a ‘preserve the enclave’ now they are going to have to fight. She’s the spark for a larger Avente conflict.

Carmilla got off easy, and Ard never really got a chance to go at her in a fair fight. Not that Ard cares much about fair.

We’ll get something down the road where we can use the several instances of seeing Carmilla fight as a measuring stick for Ard. Because ultimately, that’s what she is. He could do nothing magically or politically against her, then he could stand up to her in several forms and help his mother. The final meeting between the two and hopefully he’ll be able to take care of her himself. I say that like it’s a spoiler, but it’s also 1000% the reader expectation and I want to let you know that I’m not going to disappoint.

The Garrish War arc is coming and as we saw with Colin and the others there’s some soul magic fuckery going on. Ard might not be able to just pop heads this go-around. He might have to really learn soul magic to deal with them. Head popping was quite the crutch this book.

I have plans and plans on plans for AO 4. Then we’ll get into the mess and the characters will do what they want. So, we will see.

RD 2 is on its way. Bran is already killing lots of things. Lots and lots of things. I think this book is a little slow starting, but we’ll keep it going for now. Not really sure how to inject more action at the beginning with how I set it all up.

We are pulling a lot from Greek lore as we get into the Heros Clan. As usual, I play with a few pieces and flip them, that just makes it more fun.

I’m going to mess up numbers. Yell at me and I’ll fix them. It's a curse of writing and editing in segments. I can't sit down and 'read' my books start to finish. I can only 'read to edit' my books which is much slower. It takes me 20-30h to do a book and I require breaks. When I can devour another authors book twice the size of mine in eight hours. I hate it, but that's just how my brain works.

DD is still a ways out, but I’m excited for the next book. I had a number of narrative difficulties with 201 and 202. Things I wanted to do, but didn’t make sense.

So get ready for a big shake up in that series as I finally realized what I could do to really crank up the challenge for Ken and company to ten. Also ties into the Nekorian history that I’ve imagined, but never really found a way to bring up in the story thus far.

Other things…

Audio has a small group doing proofs for me now. Annoyed that the previous proofing seems to have fallen in quality quite a bit. So we have a hic-up in releasing to get corrections in for RD. There were quite a few caught.

Webcomic, the artist has elderly family that they care for in the hospital right now and we’ve dialed down to half speed. It’s a situation where the family member won’t be recovering and they are largely just trying to make them comfortable.

We will hit enough chapters to think about launching here in August, however, with the artist at half speed we can’t or we’ll eat our whole buffer in just a few short months that should last us a year or more.

Thankfully Voyce.me, who will be the ultimate host of the comic and foots the majority of the production bill, isn’t in a rush. They are going through a huge restructuring right now. A large % was sold to VCs who in turn have hired on Webtoons/Tapas management. That and the monetization is sort of in flux. My studio won’t release anything until monetization is back online. It’s supposed to come back here in August, but I guess waiting doesn’t hurt to make sure it sticks around. Without monetization I make nothing on the comic, which kind of stinks.

It’s a tangled web, but that’s another reason why I’ve stepped back from the production and just talk to the Creative Director at the studio for an hour a week with my commentary on the comic and let him then manage it. I’m out of the weeds and the day-to-day. My job is to just make sure it remains 'Dungeon Diving 101' and doesn't morph into something else.

Otherwise life is busy but good. I need to find more ways to help myself focus on writing.