Patreon Update 10-13-24

Hey Everyone

Thank you, everyone, for joining me on Ken's latest adventure. I believe it was a good book. As Ken continues to dive the dungeon, we're trying to retain the school aspect. It's a common flaw in all Academy-type books; the character often fights against the Academy trope because their growth constantly tries to escape the Academy's level.

Take Harry Potter, for example. It's the ultimate example of Academy events. School is a smaller and smaller part of the story, until you get to the end and it's almost completely abandoned except for setting.

We're in book seven, and we're having trouble keeping Ken within the frame of diving the Dungeon for school. So, I'm going to reset a little, use Star City as another place to return to an Academy vibe. It's all an effort to stay in the same archetype that the story started out as.

I also wanted to give Ken a visual upgrade. Most of my characters are first-person and written to be fairly easy self-inserts, as much as that is sometimes criticized.

However, I've been having trouble, once we started working on the webcomic, with the question of what Ken looks like.

Honestly, he was generic Japanese anime main character 101. The studio I worked with suggested making him a little more interesting.

So, as we get into the webcomic, Ken will probably take on some of his current white hair demonic appearance a little earlier. He will start that transformation with Dez's ritual that takes place in Book 1.

I wanted to do a bit of the same in this book and give Ken an update. This update will still eventually occur in the webcomic, but it will be less of a total change to more of a suddenly far more handsome Ken, and probably the eye change will be delayed for a little bit.

I am going to admit to slightly pulling back a little on Ken's liminal speed in the beginning of the book. I had started the book with the raid being a WoW Raid nostalgia rather than Ken Explodes All the Bosses on his first try. And it seems there was a little bit of the expectation wasn't quite there for the readers, so I'm probably going to go back and try and make sure I can set expectations.

Chris, who is my assistant, reads through the Patreon comments and correlates them. If a handful of you are all sort of talking about the same thing, he reports that to me. If you're reporting individual errors, he collects those, and on Monday mornings, he corrects them in the manuscript before they go off to their first round of editing.

It seems you guys really liked Ken's transformation. So maybe I need to make some of these self-insert main characters a little more visually recognizable.

Now we are switching, into Ard's Oath. I am working on chapter one right now, trying to get back into Ard's mental space.

We'll go into the war, which is always, kind of a tricky thing to write in fantasy. In fantasy, a war is something that's very difficult to get right and simultaneously make interesting, because the reality of war is that much of war is not action.

Much of war is sitting around and logistics. So I'll try and make it real while also trying to push forward and make the story fun. I have a very simple outline ready, and I'm excited to get started.

Audiobooks are all rolling forward. I received Ard's Oath on Friday, so I'll probably put it through my beta readers this coming week and then get it out on Audible for next month, hopefully. They are working on Returner's Defiance next week. So, we should have monthly audio for the next couple of months.

It'll be a little tricky after that because dungeon diving isn't quite caught up yet. We may have a slight delay with that. However, Chris and Jessica have told me they could do some extra books at the end of the year. So, I might stuff some things in there and get them caught up in time for the grand switcheroo.

If your upset about the narrators changing, as I'm sure someone will comment. It's sorta too little too late now! 

As for the webcomic, I am massively disappointed with its current status. I am legally unable to post it anywhere right now. We have a huge volume of line art done. We were touch and go on a couple of colorist, but we finally settled on one. They've started on this backlog of line art.

I'm working on it. I'm trying to get myself out of my contract so I can post it somewhere else. It's really boring and terrible for me to keep saying that to you guys. If you've been looking forward to it, I am still on hold.

My contract is up for renegotiation in December. At present, that renegotiation is going to look something like me ripping it up and throwing it back at them. I'm not sure how quickly I can get it to a new spot once I get out of the contract. Though I have been talking to Webtoons. Until that contract is out, I can't really start putting ink down on another contract somewhere else. But I'm really pushing. I want to get this out.

Everything is mine when I get out of this contract, that's at least the best part. I self funded the comic and retained control of production, just signed a contract of exclusivity for better royalties.

Regarding Kickstarters, we are currently expecting to receive the shipment of the books sometime early to mid-November. I have a lovely storage unit rented out for them to be delivered to. Chris and I are prepping. We will essentially be working as a fulfillment center in that storage unit for probably about two weeks. But we will get them shipped out, I'm hoping, by the end of November. We are also working to get all of the digital rewards packaged up and sent to you guys at the end of October.

I am sorry for how long the Kickstarter took. Ninety percent of that delay was me having trouble finding time in my schedule to write about five normal chapter lengths of work for Dragon's Justice bonus chapters. Honestly, Chris finished most of the work for the Kickstarter in like a month and then I was bad. Sorry. But things will keep rolling forward. No more new projects for me for a while.

Everything is looking great on my end. Ard's Oath and Dungeon Diving are both very strong series. I'm probably going to finish Ard's Oath with six books.I have a War arc in my head and then I have a Zenovia arc in my head. And those two arcs, I'm hoping, will bring a nice amount of conclusion to the story.

I have a bunch of new series brewing in the back of my head. We'll see what's ready when the times comes. I have given into Sauce and have about 1/4 of a space book dictated, but not edited.