August Patreon Update + Discord Poll

It's been a little while since I've done a proper Patreon update. Audiobook stuff and writing has been taking up much of my time.

I'll leave most of the audiobook stuff to the public update later this month, as I'm still waiting to confirm some stuff before I announce it.

Spellblade 5 is behind, as most of you have guessed. A lot of my plans have kind of splattered on the ground, so I'm mostly just pressing on and trying to fix things as I realize I've missed something. End of August is still the most likely date, but I might make Spellblade 6 early October to compensate (so 6 weeks between releases).

Schedule-wise, I'm forcing myself to finish Emperor this year. But I expect to return to Neural Wraith before year's end. Rushing Spellblade and ignoring my other series seems like a bad idea in retrospect, especially given my writing speed.

The lore stuff I mentioned awhile ago for the site might get pushed back, but I will be including a character list and plot summary in future books. There seems to be less pushback against these nowadays, and my understanding is that they don't freak out the algorithm anymore.

In terms of Patreon content, you can expect a lot of Spellblade 5 chapters this month. The Neural Wraith short story (which is about a murder in a bank and introduces the court mainframes) is 75% done, but probably won't be posted until Spellblade 5 is in a better position.

Finally, there's one big topic I wanted to discuss and hold a poll for. Discord.

I've been considering whether to start a discord for my books for a while. The main thing stopping me is that I don't think it'd be that active - small discords tend to compete with the many other discords people are in, and there are a bunch of harem ones.

On the flipside, I know there are people who might like some sort of community to chat specifically about my books and speculate, as well as to reach me. I suspect I come across as distant to a lot of people because I avoid a lot of social spaces in general.

But before I invest any real time worrying about one, I would like to know if people would be interested or participate in one - that's what the poll below is for. If you are especially interested, comment or message me.