Messenger Anniversary Update 2024

Alright, so time for the big, talky Messenger update where I go into more detail on a bunch of things. I asked on Discord for questions and got a bunch, so they’ll take up a fair chunk of the post.

I’m going to cover a variety of topics, including some that I considered (and sometimes half-wrote) making a separate post for over the year.

Sustainability

This year ended up being very uneventful in a business sense. I focused almost entirely on writing, didn’t start any new series, took a couple of breaks, and had large gaps between releases. Everything played out largely according to how it’s been for the previous three years.

And it all worked out.

That’s a very good thing, as it suggests I don’t need to fear a death spiral like I did last year following Neural Wraith 3. I’m still wary of becoming complacent, but things are okay.

But when you follow business-as-usual, everything comes out in the wash. I have a much better idea of the strengths and weaknesses of my books and current approach.

The good news is that—so long as I don’t get on Amazon’s bad side—my sales hold up for several months even without a new release. For reference, my daily sales as of writing this are still higher than they were around a month after NW3 came out. I haven’t released a book for nearly four months.

This time last year, I expected ebook sales to become a smaller part of my income share. They used to absolutely dominate. In 2022, they were around 80% of my income. Last year, they dropped to around 60%-65%, and I expected the trend to continue, anticipating only half my income to be ebooks this year.

Instead, ebooks bounced back this year, even though I only released three books.

Patreon was another interesting case. It oscillated a lot more than I anticipated, and was a clear sign that a lot of my growth came from people purely interested in Mob Sorcery (something abundantly clear once I started posting new chapters again). Patreon spent the first half of the year bleeding support, falling around 20%, and now it’s around 15% above my earlier peak. Even after taking two months off, I made more from Patreon this year than I did from audiobooks.

If there’s any area I want to change my approach to, it’s Patreon. Approaching Mob like a serial works well for everyone, as it’s a series I enjoy writing, it can be much longer than most of what I write, and it provides me with stability. Until now, a lot of my support came from people willing to fund me even through breaks between books, as it would allow me to focus on quality.  While I don’t plan to start writing a book a month, a more consistent publishing pace on Patreon might be of benefit to everyone. But we’ll see if I can stick to it.

I mentioned audiobooks above, and those have been the main disappointment of the year. Last year gave me hope they might become a decent income source, as my entire catalog was finally on Audible and I saw some good numbers.

Those hopes were dashed this year and I’m more or less moving audiobooks to maintenance mode. They’ll be produced in the same manner as usual, but I’ll be paying even less attention than before (probably just release posts). The gap between what my Amazon readership wants and the Audible listeners want is too huge, and I’m not willing to write the slop I think Audible wants. Litrpg and Progfantasy don’t have the same severe gaps between the top authors on Amazon and Audible, which suggests there’s some strange audience differences at work.

Going forward, we’ll see how things compare to this year now Heretic Spellblade is finished. I’m proud of the series, but I have no intention to return to it other than some short stories.

The Death of Commentary

All year I’ve promised a return to commentary posts, and all year I’ve largely failed. I could give you a lot of excuses, but I think it’s just a combination of various factors. I often start one, end up writing something negative and put the document away. Or, like right now, I end up massively behind in my writing schedule and struggle to find time for the commentary.

I’ve ditched a fair few topics this year. These include some “grinding my gears” topics around common gripes by readers and even talking about book lengths and writing speeds. Both were ditched because they swiftly became too negative. Another big one was talking about AI LLMs (e.g. more than just ChatGPT) and the unspoken fact they’re in widespread use in selfpub. This wasn’t just ditched because it was negative, but because I don’t even think people would be interested. Plus, talking about AI just makes people irrationally mad because it’s a topic that makes people lose their marbles (talking about AI in most spaces is like talking about crypto).

I do want to write commentary for Spellblade, but it’s likely I’ll merge the Spellblade 7/8 commentary with the whole series retrospective. There’s a lot I want to talk about, so it will likely become a multi-part piece. Hopefully it doesn’t become so long that it becomes its own book.

Lore was another topic people wanted me to cover, but I’ve found it’s harder to write than I expected. I still want to try, though, and gave a taste with Mob recently. The big problem is that I’ve forced myself not to write lots of worldbuilding. Like a lot of hobby writers, I used to spend a lot of time worldbuilding instead of writing. It’s a form of procrastination. If I don’t sit and write it down, I force myself to write, and that applies even to Patreon posts.

Burnout

This is a dark topic. If you don’t want to deal with a big lump of negativity, I recommend skipping to the next heading.

I’m also going to add a caveat that I’m expressing a lot of thoughts based on how I felt in the moment, not necessarily how I rationally think now. As humans, we often think unfair things. Part of being an adult and emotionally stable is then correcting those thoughts, instead of doubling down like a toddler. The world would be a lot better in general if that were the case.

Last year was rough, but it was rough for reasons outside of my control. I suspect there was an algorithmic change that didn’t favor me, Neural Wraith bombed really hard (and I’m almost certain that was due to the algorithm, as it sold well but Amazon just hid the series), Amazon was on fire due to AI spam, Patreon was increasingly unstable, Et cetera, Et cetera. There also might have been the smutpocalypse, but that might have been the year before. It all blended together.

Most of those problems have resolved in some way or another. Kindle Unlimited bounced back from its lows (and has been doing fine since), Mob Sorcery rekindled the algorithm’s love for me, and while Patreon is still unstable, it hasn’t exploded.

I also chose to start ignoring a lot of this nonsense. Most of it was beyond my power to control and merely added stress. For much the same reason, I chose to pull back from the harem fantasy reddit (eventually entirely) and my New Year’s Resolution will be to pay much less attention to anything political. Ignorance is bliss, especially in an era of ragebait-focused social media algorithms.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I can’t make life difficult for myself.

I’ve said that writing Heretic Spellblades 7 & 8 were exhausting, but I suspect that gets downplayed by many people. Other authors pump out books monthly, so I should be fine. Shit like that.

For one thing, not everyone is the same.

More importantly, Spellblade 7 was a fucking disaster to write. I think it’s a decent book, but I don’t think I’ll be able to reread it and judge it properly until next year. It had two false starts, and I effectively spun my wheels for months on it. While my trip in April to Europe was good, it also didn’t help with destressing as it was an incredibly busy trip that went on for too long and left me in an extremely bad and exhausted mood when I returned. I needed a week or two to recover from my vacation.

Between May and July, I did little more than write, plan, and worry about the two books I wanted to get done. They ended up being the longest books I’ve ever written, and due to how badly things played out, I basically wrote and edited them during that three months (because I rewrote or reedited everything I wrote before then). I compressed around 6-8 months of my usual writing time into 3 months.

I’m no stranger to a long crunch, but that’s also why I recognized the signs of burnout. I’ve been there before, including a really nasty period in the mid-2010s that led to me changing careers.

Self-publishing means you rely a lot on your own motivation. I’m decent at that, but far from perfect. Patreon helps me a lot, but it’s a double-edged sword. Right now, Mob gets a lot of engagement. But during much of Heretic Spellblade, it was the opposite.

There was a difficult period in May, when I’d returned from Europe and started fixing things and adding more to the book. Chapters started getting posted, but they got very little interaction. At the same time, people waiting for Mob started leaving (plus some others). While people got hyped around the middle of the book, there were a couple of weeks where I’d login to schedule a chapter and find more people had unpledged than commented on the last chapter.

This same engagement black hole is also what affected the end of Spellblade 7. After the big battle in the book, I had to rapidly post the final chapters. This probably affected how much people commented (or even if they could read the chapters), but it felt a lot like disinterest in the book.

Spellblade 8 ended up being the hardest book, simply because I set myself a difficult deadline. That deadline existed because I knew without it, I’d find a way to put the book off like I had every time I’d tried a double feature in the past. The book got done, had a well-received ending, a start that I’m not very happy with, and I finished the series. Then I basically collapsed for a month.

I put Patreon on hold in large part because it helped deal with my emotional state, as I could largely ignore it and anyone unpledging didn’t matter (they weren’t paying anyway, and if they were unpledging at that time probably paid zero attention).

August was rough. I was moody and didn’t get much done. It’s also the first time since becoming an author that I’ve felt that feeling of “maybe I should do something different.” To me, there’s a distinct feeling and pattern of behavior I exhibit when I’m unhappy with a job but sticking it out in hopes of something better. Something usually happens to push me to finally jump.

In this case, I don’t think jumping is the right idea. I’m not in an office job, trying to climb the career ladder and dealing with obnoxious and incompetent bosses. My burnout was self-inflicted. A significant part of my disappointment came from the fact I wanted the final two Spellblades to outperform what I knew they would sell, simply because I’d put in so much effort (as it was, they sold remarkably well given the gap between book releases, although the audiobook sales are dismal right now).

People say and do a lot of shit, both on the internet and IRL, and I believe that people have become a lot less empathetic over the past several years particularly. In the end, I’m the only one who can look out for me, and my own mental health. I decide what I do and how I do what I love.

Some people go through life without ever doubting themselves. Part of me wants to say I’m envious of them, but I don’t think I want to be capable of such a lack of introspection or self-reflection.

I’ll end this with an anecdote that sums up why I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere, so long as I have readers.

When I was in management consulting, one of the firm’s partners offered me a choice between two roles. One was a bog-standard 9-to-5 working for a client to help deliver a long-term project – most of the firm’s income came from this, as there’s good money doing an easy job for too much pay (that sums up management consulting in a nutshell). The other was a difficult position that would always move between clients, never had a fixed desk or length of time, and would sometimes fail, but meant interesting problems every day.

The partner said it was my choice, but made it clear that he was certain I’d be bored out of my skull if I chose the easy job. He was right and I knew it. I still know it. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted an easy, boring job in my life, even if it guarantees success, and sometimes that means things will be rougher than usual, but at least I’ll enjoy it and the results.

2025 Plans

This isn’t much different to the regular post.

Basically, I want to keep Mob Sorcery chapters going as consistently as possible. That will be the hard part.

The next hardest part is resuming both Demon’s Throne and Neural Wraith. Maybe even finishing Neural Wraith.

Both series have been on hiatus for years at this point, and they’ll get far less readership as a result. They’ll face additional problems.

I expect neither series will get that much Patreon support, which is a big reason I want to keep the Mob chapters going. Demon’s Throne in particular is in a weird boat where I don’t even know what its audience is—the audiobook sales proved my suspicion that it attracted a more generic harem audience who then bailed in Book 2 (probably because the book was too… “me” for them).

In retrospect, most of Demon’s Thrones issues came from my own frustrations with the series. I wrote DT2 and DT3 at a time when I was only beginning to get a good grasp of writing long series and wrangling with the flow of novels. While finishing Heretic Spellblade and even working on Mob, I realized how much I’ve improved. I legitimately couldn’t have completed Spellblade 8 in 2022 (or at least, not the way I did). Even Mob 3 would have been too much with the way its played out. So I need to pick DT’s story back up and do some plot doctoring.

Neural Wraith, on the other hand, has been outlined and waiting for me to find time since earlier this year. The series finale has been set in stone since Book 1, and I came up with the idea for Book 4 when I watched a documentary whose subject I won’t name (as it will spoil things).

Ideally, Neural Wraith would be longer, but I think the moment for that long passed. For one, Amazon fucking hates the series. Which is weird and unfortunate.

Neural Wraith 1 remains the single best selling Book 1 I’ve ever released. Even after being out for over a year, Mob 1 has sold fewer copies than NW1 did in six months. The problem was that Amazon destroyed the sequels in the algorithm and that NW did poorly in audiobooks (a fact that cemented my opinion of the harem audiobook audience).

There are a few core problems NW has a story right now. One is that I suspect many people aren’t interested in the detective story per book format. Two, the AI/automation theme will cause a lot of people to refuse to touch it thanks to the current topical nature and people being weird about AI. Three, I’m not sure how many people will appreciate the philosophical or confrontational nature that the final two books will take.

To be blunt, after the reaction Book 2 got (a very annoying section of the haremlit community got angry at me over politics, even though the book never expresses anything of the nature), I don’t see any reason not to go all out. The final two books will go back to the nature of Neural Wraith being a passion project, no matter the sales. I’ll just need to find a way to release them without Amazon trying to destroy me.

Changing Genre

So I wrote a cryptic series of posts in Discord that got basically no response a while ago. It covered some of my research into progression fantasy, and was done as part of my market research into books.

With my current stability and desire to finish my existing series, changing genres isn’t as high priority. However, I still wanted to investigate how good of an idea it would be or if I’d missed the boat.

The answer I got was mixed.

There are some very successful authors in litrpg and progfantasy, and some harem authors are able to write stuff there that does well. I’m going to avoid commenting on some of that, because I suspect people will get mad if I do and it’s kind of pointless.

With that said, the progfantasy genre is much bigger than harem. There’s basically one author in harem who sells at the scale of the decently big litrpg series (Bruce), and there are a lot of litrpg and progfantasy authors at that level. On top of that, progfantasy has a much longer tail than harem (if you’re successful). Rapid release is less necessary (but still profitable), and Patreon support is more common.

Or at least, that was what I thought. I figured “bigger pool of readers, the top books sell fucktons more, and Audible and Amazon sales are in the same ballpark for popularity” and this should extend to the mid-list authors who get recommended a lot, right?

Well, no.

In fact, I’ve noticed a few authors who have had middling success but huge community support and recommendations in progfantasy either leave the genre or do far worse than expected. They write interesting and different books, with high quality prose, and a couple of these series were some of the most enjoyable selfpub reads of the year for me (I’m wary of naming them, because I’m kind of saying they didn’t do well).

In a community that is much larger than harem, seeing the same series frequently get upvoted in recommendations for a month-plus straight made me think it was a huge success. Instead, I strongly suspect it sold worse than even Neural Wraith and the author’s Patreon wasn’t anything to write home about. I doubt he earned enough to go full-time.

This gave me strong vibes of the harem fantasy, only with more superstar authors instead of a couple of bookfarms at the top.

But I’m not here to talk about which genre is better. No, it’s more about “is it worth jumping genre and taking the risk?”

If I changed genre, I doubt I’d get the huge support I’ve seen some harem authors get when they add litrpg books to their stable. It’s great they get it, but I suspect it comes from a very particular part of the community and also because they publish so fast nobody expects them to slow down their regular releases.

Instead, I’d more likely be the author pushing out a different and “interesting” progfantasy series that doesn’t capture the interest of the general audience. That puts me in the same boat as those authors that didn’t do so well (although some of them might be happy, in much the same way I was happy with my original release numbers).

There’s never a guarantee that jumping genre is a success, and I don’t have a business model behind me to make it easier or reduce that risk. Unless I have some amazing idea or a crush financial need to bail on harem, I don’t really see the appeal. For now, I’ll stick to doing what I do. Especially as the violent opposition to romance and harem has lessened in progfantasy communities (although it’s still there, just not at the same level).

Mostly, I just want to write what I enjoy. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to make this decision and take the risks, and get to enjoy writing what I want, so I’ll stay the course. Patreon has been a huge aspect of why I can do that, particularly as it’s grown so much this year. It would be nice to sell more and make more money, but there’s no guarantees in life and I’m pretty happy with how things are for now (and just need to keep it up for at least a while).

Questions

The rest of the post will focus on a series of questions asked by patrons on Discord. You can ask your own in the comments if you want, and I’ll answer them.

General Discussion About Mob’s Races

“In the alternate world you have written for Aulfair, are the orcs and goblins and such? I know we have beastkin, dragons, demons and elves. are there also dwarves and gnomes as well?”

Mob Sorcery draws more from mythology than fantasy. Initially, I had intended to mix the two, as that was how the world originally was, but as I fleshed out the world, the idea of drawing almost exclusively off myth for the alternate history became more appealing.

So, no, orcs aren’t present. Goblins, dwarves, and gnomes have mythological roots, so they might exist, but I don’t have existing plans to work with them. They’re all German/Norse, and are less likely to have crossed the ocean.

With that said, the demihumans aren’t exactly myth-friendly, so I am just using races that I think will make for nice characters and potential harem members. My main interests are animal ears and tails, which you can probably tell if you’ve read my books.

To some extent, I justify my interests in reverse. I wanted mafia wolfgirls because I was inspired by Arknights, so came up with a world and history based around that. A lot of the fun involved in worldbuilding comes from doing that imo.

State of the Discord

“Does it bother you that most of your interaction and discussion is in [the Messenger-exclusive channel]?”

So, the Discord ended up both better and worse than I hoped.

Better, because there are people who talk in it regularly enough to keep me there and prevent it from being a ghosttown. I also don’t need to moderate it, save for like one or two incidents.

Worse, because the structure makes the place feel very dead to anyone who isn’t a Messenger. I worried a lot about having lots of dead channels, which meant I kept the number small. The downside is that meant a lot of spoilery conversations.

Redoing it won’t help, because I suspect a lot of people more or less took a look and gave up. There’s a core group of users and that’s about it.

But if I did, I’d probably have a specific patreon news channel (which is where I’d post stuff myself), one for discussing chapters, and another for Messengers. Right now, the $5 patrons are basically excluded from chapter discussions if they ever check out the Discord. They probably don’t even know it happens.

Otherwise, I probably needed to split out discussion of the latest book release or enforce spoilers, simply because the delay in audiobooks drove a number of folks away due to unmarked spoilers.

Otherwise, it is what it is, and having the Discord is better than nothing. Although I should probably create a rants channel so I don’t shit up the messenger lounge when I want to talk about something. There’s a lot of stuff that only gets discussed there because Discord is a much more conversational place compared to trying to make dedicated posts.

“How does writing a more serial type of story with Mob effect your writing processes?”

A lot, as Mob 3 has proven. Mostly because it forces me to deviate a lot from my existing outlining/planning process, but also because I’m forcing myself to limit changes to past chapters compared to normal.

When I write, I have a good idea of the overall story arc, including major beats I want the book to hit, and some big scenes. These change as I write the book, and sometimes I push out or remove bits. A common theme in the Spellblade books was that I kept pushing plot and character elements back a book when I ran out of time or words, and the inability to do that is what made the final two books so damn long.

Mob still has that story arc, but it doesn’t adhere to it very well. Pretty much the entirety of Book 3 has been made up whole cloth, with all my planned events being pushed back to Book 4.

A major culprit of this isn’t just that Mob is a serial, but that I’m following Vince very closely. Actions are described day-to-day and timeskips are covered in a high level of detail. This means there’s a lot of character moments and the world feels lived in, rather than set dressing, but the plot often has to wait for the characters to get to it.

Pacing-wise, this can throw things off. The result is that I’ll throw in action scenes or try to spice up stuff I didn’t plan to. Book 3 is basically a series of “the book needs something to happen, because I know the Christmas Special is here or there are other slow chapters here” so I need to squeeze in an action scene. This is also why a simple mystery became a bit of a nightmare, although I’ve largely embraced that after my brief meltdown.

Ironically, I used to be very good at writing like this and it’s probably a good thing to be pushing myself again. I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t go back and reread the book, so even if I correct stuff in the book compared to Patreon, it causes issues. Also, it’s fun.

“Aside from finishing DT and NW, and continuing Mob, do you have any other stories you’d like to explore/write in the next couple of years?”

I never have a shortage of story ideas, but that doesn’t mean I can write them all, or even want to.

I’ve found three aspects that are important when it comes to story ideas.

One is longevity: does the idea excite me enough that I remain interested in it months (or even a year-plus) later? Mob Sorcery is based on an urban fantasy world that’s been poked at for something like a decade, and I held off on writing proper stories in as it was a guilty pleasure of mine. Neural Wraith hung around in my head for a year. If I come up with a story idea but it doesn’t return to me on sleepless nights, then it’s probably a shit idea. Most ideas are shit.

Second is commercial appeal. This is a weird one and increasingly harder to judge, especially now I’m so heavily divorced from harem trends and the genre as a whole. But if I want to dedicate a huge amount of time and risk my income on a story, it needs to be able to attract readers and keep them. I’m not sure of a good approach other than relying on my gut, although the Patreon is big enough I might be able to actually write some teaser chapters and get everyone to vote on what they’d prefer.

Third is if the story does anything new. I get bored if a book is the same thing I’ve already written, which is why you’ll notice most of what I write tends to do something different. The Spellblade books turned into epic fantasy, and the various books captured different plot structures (Book 4 was a war, Book 5 was a build-up book with intrigue, Book 6 was a relentless slog against endless invasions and horrendous odds etc). Neural Wraith covers different mysteries. Even Mob, which was intended as a lighter series, is written in a style different to how I usually write and by indulging in lots of fun tropes and derivative genre stuff I get to do something new (also, it’s full of alt history and integrating various myth and cultures, including the crime syndicate stuff).

The downside of trying to do something new is that it limits my ideas, and harem is a genre where a huge amount of the audience wants the exact same thing over and over. I don’t think I’m being cynical when I say a lot of readers essentially want an infinite variety of flavored gruels, but I don’t cater to them as why the fuck would I waste my time making gruel?

In terms of ideas that have stuck with me, there are a few. They tend to fall afoul of the other rules or it’s possible I haven’t found a good way to write it.

I’ve had an idea for a time loop story for ages, but have never sat down to properly workshop it. The problem is that my specific idea for the time loop might not appeal. It is adjacent to a much older story idea of mine, which is closer to one of those “generational hero/villain” stories, where a character has effectively played the same role throughout history but now wants to do something different.

I have several “trashy” ideas that are highly derivative. One of those “retired hero” stories where they build something and retire, but my struggle there is keeping it interesting (slice of life stories without conflict or a plot to drive things forward bore me). Or a powerful hero/villain is pulled from retirement by his comrades’ children and needs to fix their shit (this one interests me a lot more).

I also have sci-fi ideas, but they’re extremely unlikely after Neural Wraith’s problems. These also wouldn’t fall into a lot of typical sci-fi, which I feel has become extremely rote.

The two ideas that have stuck in my head as the series I’d like to work on next are a strange Warhammer 40K and Lobotomy Corp mash-up (I specifically say LobCorp, because I’m more interested in the setting and feeling than the SCPs). The problem there is I’m not drawing on the really popular parts of 40K’s setting (i.e. the space marines and spiky shit everywhere) and more on the darker worldbuilding and crapsack world elements.

The other is a more traditional fantasy series that would follow a mage rising from child to adult while everything goes to hell. This would probably tickle the spirit of those who want something like Heretic Spellblade, particularly as it would be summoner focused, but it also means tackling another massively complicated series in a huge world. Also, I’d need to avoid magic schools because fuck magic school arcs, jfc.

Of course, with no new series starting for another year, there’s good odds another idea occurs to me and I just smash it out with little warning. Or one of my older ideas comes to me and I rework it.

“How much of the stories do you plan / outline before writing? Do you have specific endings in mind for each story or see where they take you? And speaking of planning, did any story have any significant changes from your original outline?”

Mob Sorcery is the first series I’ve started where I didn’t have the ending in mind when I started it, which probably answers much of this.

There’s an eternal debate between plotting vs pantsing (e.g. “writing by the seat of your pants”) in the author world, which almost always dumbs down writing to a false dichotomy. I rarely see it covered in a way I agree with, and sometimes authors (including me) feel the need to dunk on authors with different approaches.

Personally, I’ve learned from experience that a story without a proper outline or plan will fall apart and feel messy (or just stuffed full of filler), and reading a lot of the bigger litrpg and progfantasy series has only cemented my opinion. On the flipside, I’ve tried plotting out stories chapter-by-chapter and it was fucking awful.

My approach is very top-down and about the broad strokes of the story. It goes something like this:

• I have a hook, with a rough idea of where the MC and story will be at the end. It’s then a matter of getting from point A to B.

• Create the opening arc, including hooks for future arcs and worldbuilding that doesn’t show up immediately (e.g. Heretic Spellblade’s opening sequence talking about Falmir and heroines who don’t show up for a while). The opening arc is intended to cover 1-2 books (except Mob’s has now blown out to 4 lmao).

• I create additional arcs as I go. Thanks to Demon’s Throne, I learned to kickstart a new arc while the previous one ends – this can be seen in Heretic Spellblade 4, where the third arc starts as the civil war winds down. Each arc is created with an ending in mind, if not necessarily an idea of what arc comes after it.

• Drill down into each book and come up with a general idea of where it should start and end. If it’s the first book, I go by feel. Later, I start with a list of unresolved plot threads plus major plot points and character arcs I expect to touch upon in the book. Then I add any major scenes, battles, reveals etc I have in mind (some of them I’ve imagined multiple books ago, like the ending of Heretic Spellblade 7, which dates back to when I wrote Spellblade 2).

• I don’t create chapter outlines or anything more detailed. Instead I go by feel, as this allows me to feel like I’m still creating the story as I go and explore new stuff. This changes the further I get into the book, and in the home stretch I often have a list of chapters and events I am trying to cram into the book, including those that get cut. Spellblade was really bad for this, as so much was always happening I always felt that every chapter needed to do a lot, and I sped up near the end of each book as I locked in and nailed down what each chapter would look like.

• The next book starts to come together during the current book, although the gap between them means they often don’t resemble what I originally thought. This is a good thing as I’ve rarely felt I’ve made a book worse by revisiting my old plans. Often I’ve left myself in a much worse place than I thought and need to fix a lot of shit, and this has not changed (Mob 2 left so much shit hanging at the very end I want to beat my past self up).

Because I’ve written so few series, this approach is non-prescriptive. In fact, every series deviates from it, except Heretic Spellblade.

• In Demon’s Throne, I already had all three arcs decided in advance. I’m revisiting this plan now, but with an eye toward the criticism about how formulaic Book 3 felt (e.g. one place of power per book). I don’t have as much room to fix it thanks to the fact the series will probably do quite poorly when it returns due to the huge gap in release.

• Neural Wraith doesn’t have arcs as it was imagined as a 3-book series that then became standalone books tied together with a rough plot (kind of like a TV series).

• Mob Sorcery doesn’t have an ending in mind, although I think the planned ending of the next arc could act as a good open-ended finish if necessary.

Going back to the question, I often start writing the first book in a series without doing any huge outlining. Demon’s Throne was an exception as it’s based on an old work of mine.

But I didn’t even have the showdown of Neural Wraith decided when I wrote the opening chapters. In Heretic Spellblade, almost everything was created on the go (although that was to force myself to get shit done and it was the least plotted book I’ve ever written).

Pretty much every story has underwent huge changes from my outlines, which is a good thing. I often write something and get stuck on it. There have been times when I hit a major point of a story and dislike it, resulting in “thinking time” where I waste hours to days trying to rework it. Sometimes this doesn’t work (there’s a particularly frustrating case in Demon’s Throne 2 where I lost days to some Kinadain scenes and just had to write my original plan), but other times I toss out my original plans for something more dynamic or throw in a twist. I’m very critical of my own stuff while writing it, so it can be hard to work out when something is genuinely bad or I’m just frustrated.

“Which books have been your favorites to write?”

None of them. Almost every book is the worst while I write it, and only becomes acceptable in retrospect.

If this question was “which books are my favorites” it would be easy, but “my favorites to write” is a very different question. I often hate the book I’m publishing at the time it goes out, particularly the longer ones as I’ve been working away at them for far longer and stewed over them.

Pretty much Heretic Spellblade has felt like I’m steering a derailed or runaway train, only to somehow bring it into the station. There’s a reason they burn me out.

Demon’s Throne has also been a frustrating experience, but for more personal reasons. Because I have a personal attachment to the series its based on, I’m extremely critical of it and often judge it far too harshly.

Neural Wraith 3 involved me sitting in my packed-up apartment at like 4AM, wondering what the fuck had gone wrong in my life. It, uh, doesn’t count for obvious reasons. Shit went very wrong, even before it bombed.

However, I’d say that the other Neural Wraiths were enjoyable to write. There was a reason I wanted to focus on the series, as while it was never as easy to write as I imagined, I did enjoy it and it never left me as exhausted as the Spellblade series (Book 3’s problems were more IRL-related).

Mob Sorcery was also fun to write, in large part that I was writing something purely for fun to escape my unhappy feelings about the genre and my sales. I remember being surprisingly comfortable with the book when I put it up for pre-order, which is what made its awful launch performance so painful.

However, I’d say Neural Wraith 1 takes the crown. It has a special place in my heart. I remember where I wrote it and it meant I got to write a dream cyberpunk series. There are aspects to launching NW that were frustrating (namely, being told by a lot of people that it would fail and I was wasting my time etc). But I loved the book and writing it. My writing style and approach changed as a result of this book and I wouldn’t be the author I am without it. Mob only exists in the style it has because of Neural Wraith.

“When concepting and outlining a story do you start with characters, plot or setting? Or is it different every time?”

This is similar to the above question about outlining, so I’ll avoid retreading anything I’ve already covered.

I’d say it starts with either the setting or a plot hook. It depends on what my interest is in the series, but I never start with characters.

Heretic Spellblade started with “commander goes back to change history, but in a different nation” and I created the characters on the fly. The setting wasn’t fully fleshed out until Books 2 and 3.

Demon’s Throne is complicated because it was a plot hook, but in a setting I’d already created.

Neural Wraith was setting first. I faffed around for over a year with a cyberpunk setting featuring the Archangels, and the plot changed multiple times while the setting solidified around it.

Mob Sorcery is also complicated. The book itself is definitely setting-first, because it picked up and solidified an old setting idea, but that setting actually comes from some older urban fantasy ideas of mine. I created the setting using some old characters that I don’t use anymore, but it’s outlived them and now exists on its own.

However, Mob was also an excuse to create some mafia wolfgirls, and Alessia and Pola are transparent expies of Texas and Lappland from Arknights, so maybe the series is a mixture of character and setting focused. Ironically, the series was never plot focused and I even imagined it as a meandering slice-of-life-ish series with a plot that keeps it guided.

So the answer is that it’s different every time, and I have potentially started with characters.

- - - - -

That’s all for the anniversary commentary. It’s shorter than last year, in large part that I had less to rant about, although most of what I talked about is more negative.

It’s been a rough year. I said last year that I was optimistic about 2024 and it ended up being a year I burned myself out. So I’m not really sure what 2025 holds. Especially as I didn’t get to a lot of what I wanted (i.e. Demon’s Throne and Neural Wraith).

If anything, this post captures why I’ve cut back on commentary. I came close to cutting this update as well, but forced myself to just leave it as is and post it.

Let me know if you have any questions you want me to answer, like the ones included in the Q&A above. I’m not sure if this was the most enjoyable update, but hopefully it was insightful.