June Patreon Update

It's been a while since I've posted a dedicated Patreon update. I'll talk a bit about that, but the main reason is just that I've been focused on writing Spellblade and there hasn't been much to talk about without a book in hand.

It's been a solid year since my big scare when I came very close to leaving the genre and I've ended up taking two length publishing breaks since then for two very different reasons. I figure it's worthwhile reflecting a bit on that on top of providing a general update on what I intend to do for the second half of the year.

The News Bit

So, let's get the actual update part of the update out of the way.

My schedule has been largely unchanged, apart from pushing stuff back a little. In order, it'll be:

• Mob Sorcery 3 next, because it's half-written thanks to the Christmas Special, it's not too complicated, and I need a break from epic fantasy

• Demon's Throne 4, because it's been over 2 years

• Neural Wraith 4

They'll release when they're done. How fast I get Mob 3 done depends how tired I am after finishing Spellblade 8. Neural Wraith 4 could probably be written any time, as I've had the plot in my head for ages, but NW books always take a solid couple of months to write due to the mystery element needing time to gestate in my mind as I hit roadblocks.

I don't plan to start any new series until I finish another one, as going over 3 ongoing series has been too much. When every update post receives almost exclusively comments asking when I'm releasing the next book in X series and the past six months has just been me bleeding long-term patrons, it's left me questioning the decision to focus on finishing Spellblade.

This means it'll be next year before I talk about any big plans. I simply don't have the time to work on extra things.

A Year on from the Abyss

Probably an overly dark heading. I've said before that I came within literal hours of quitting harem outright in the aftermath of NW3's disastrous launch on a very moody night. Reflecting back on the last year now that I've taken two breaks has been interesting.

I've talked about it a billion times, so I won't repeat it in detail. What I feared is that I had entered a death spiral. Authors fall off in popularity all the time, and there are plenty of harem authors that once sold plenty that now do terribly. Given the nature of my stories, the fact I don't tap into trends, and the pushback I get from segments of the harem community, I've always felt my time in the genre would be temporary until I'd effectively get pushed out. My popularity and sales peaked in early 2022, and I didn't even beat the launch figures for Heretic Spellblade 4 until Mob Sorcery 2 came out nearly 2 years later.

At the time, over 80% of my income came from Amazon. My poor decision to put Demon's Throne on Audiobook Guild held my audiobooks back and Patreon takes a while if you're not able to put up chapters consistently (hence why I've been bleeding patrons the past six months, as it's simply how the game works).

NW3 tanked so hard it sent my income back 2 years, to when I was just another harem author trying to break out and build rep. Even now, NW3 is my lowest earning book if you exclude the Emperor series, even though it's been out twice as long as Heretic Spellblade 6, and its audio also underperformed (Neural Wraith audio in general did worse than my other series).

Fortunately, I've received a fair bit of support here, have released the rest of my books on audio on Audible (meaning I now have a decent catalog there), and Mob Sorcery did well after an initially godawful launch. My income is now much more evenly spread out and more stable. I'm less "feast and famine" with my launches.

After NW3, I took a break because I wasn't sure if I could write more harem with how I felt. Mob Sorcery emerged because I needed to write something. I'd started writing it on a whim only a few days before I hit my lowest point over the NW3 issues, and if I hadn't sent it out to an alpha reader and promised patrons I'd post it here, this Patreon probably wouldn't be active anymore.

This time, my publishing break is because I've been banging my head against the Spellblade wall and trying to craft an ending to the series I'm happy with. I've been able to risk not publishing anything for this long because of Patreon and decent enough audiobook income.

A significant part of this is also down to income expectations. Everyone has their own, and while I wouldn't say mine are small, they're certainly not as high as some authors. I make enough to not worry about making ends meet, even if I'm not buying mansions or blowing $100k on random shit that will never pay off. There are authors who would see my income and quit writing, or who have turned to AI or ghostwriting (hell, I know one I won't name that's bragged about making over $50k last month from his books, so don't trust anyone who tells you AI isn't used in writing).

My ultimate goal is to write what I enjoy and make enough from it that I can keep doing it. I've likely tested the limits of how long I can take breaks recently if i wanted to keep making enough from writing. In the long-term, my greater concern is that I need to continue enjoying what I write.

The Spellblade Wall

The past six months have been rough and there's still a month to go.

Heretic Spellblade has always been exhausting to write in a way no other series is. The books are long, the plot is complicated, there are a ton of characters, the magic is complex, tons of research is required, and the probability of accidentally retconning or forgetting something from a previous book is absurdly high as there are so many minor details, events, and characters that I've left out of my notes or that aren't well detailed. Especially as there are readers who know the books better than I do (you terrify me).

I reread the series twice over the past six months, including an entire reread while I was in Europe to help me refocus when I returned as I was worried about the direction of the book before I left. The plot underwent multiple rewrites, including one after I decided to merge the release of Spellblade 7 and 8. I had to redo the starting chapters twice and rework a major battle after it deviated from the plan massively.

To be blunt, I don't think I could have written or finished the series like this if I hadn't improved as a writer over the past few years. Spellblade has a fundamentally different style to my newer series, which I know turns off many people who find me from Neural Wraith or Mob, but I've learned a lot about structure, plotting, and characterization in the past 3.5 years.

The fact I'm finishing such a massive part of my life hasn't quite sunk in. While I've worked on massive projects before, my career always involved moving on before they finished. Massive IT projects have a tendency to implode, so I sometimes jumped ship, or my skillset meant I got moved on or poached when the highest priority work was finished in order to put out some other fire. I imagine the feeling when I publish Spellblade 8 and know it's truly done will be an interesting one, akin to when I walked out the door of my first "real" job I'd worked at for a number of years.

Until then, it's difficult. Especially with the uncertainty. A major reason I've limited updates is that whenever I post them, there's more interest in other series than Spellblade. It's tiring to be devoting all my effort to one series and have everybody only care about others. Patreon is similar, as while there are a number of you reading the chapters, I know many aren't for whatever reason. The frequently soft reception to chapters means the motivation to complete such a huge work has to be almost entirely intrinsic (i.e. I need to drive myself to get shit done). As I'm not freaking out about the money situation as much or hold myself to some "you must publish a book every month or two or you're a bad writer" standard like some folks do, I'm also missing that motivation.

In the end, the books are getting done and with a smaller delay than usual (I said earlier this year they'd release May-July, and I've stuck to that). I'll just see how I feel afterward and what the reception is.

Hardcovers

This is just a minor note, but I've had a few people ask me about whether I'll ever do a hardcover run of Heretic Spellblade (a decent one, not the shitty Amazon printed ones). I suspect this is because Bruce did his for Dragon's Justice, as the first questions about it weren't much before his Kickstarter for it.

The short version is that I'd love to do high quality hardcovers for Heretic Spellblade, but there are a bunch of issues:

• I'm a way smaller author than Bruce or many big harem authors. He probably sells 5x-10x more books than me.

• Some of the books are laughably huge and would be very difficult to turn into hardcovers, even in large trim sizes.

• There's a lot of work involved. Proper hardback covers (potentially new art, too, or at least full jacket versions of the existing art); Kickstarter incentives; finding and working with a printer; proofing etc. My preference is to minimize the work I spend on anything that isn't writing, and this is the opposite of that. Especially as I'd need to run the Kickstarter myself (and I'm terrible at the social media/marketing side).

• I'm in Australia, and the printer would almost certainly need to be in the US to minimize costs. This makes things more annoying, especially for signed copies.

• The risk vs expense ratio of doing a partial run of the series vs the whole thing. Many people won't or can't afford to grab hardcovers of eight books at once. But others might not be interested if they won't get the whole series.

So, yeah, I don't see if it could ever happen unless I found a company able to help me make it happen at a small scale. There is a company in the space that is making special edition physical copies for selfpub better (and making a lot of money off merch in general), but the company owners despise harem so lmao.

- - - - -

Anyway, that's my rambling update after not saying anything specifically to patrons for a while. Also, I'm still struggling with Messenger-specific commentary posts as I think it's just smartest if I avoid commenting on author-related stuff. AI continues to be a pit of drama and sometimes the drama is more "how dare a fellow author snitch on an author (deceiving his readers with purely AI-genned stuff he pretended he wrote)!" And lore posts have been a very low priority while I was behind on the books, as they can lead me down a procrastination hole.

There will be detailed commentary posts for Spellblade 7/8, plus a whole series retrospective. I will probably combine the Book 7/8 commentary, however.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy Spellblade 7 when it comes out or if you're already ready it (maybe both).