June Patreon Update

This was supposed to be a quick update on what's going on but it ended up much longer. It brings together a lot of my announcements from various posts in more detail.

The big news is that Neural Wraith is out. You probably already know that, though.

I wanted to give a huge thanks to everyone who shared the book, reviewed, and showed support. It’s been easy to see, and I appreciate it immensely. While Neural Wraith is a departure from my usual stuff (as pointed out by many), it's still being positively received and that's genuinely humbling. Reading people's thoughts, reviews, and having a couple of conversations about elements of the book has been great fun for me.

The launch itself beat my expectations considerably. A lot of that is thanks to your support. I kept my expectations fairly low, so even though this isn't a knock-out success like my fantasy books, it's still a success so far. I don't know what the overall launch sales will be, as it's been too long since I launched a new series to have a vaguely accurate guess. It will come down to the Amazon algorithm and the broader community reception.

It's much too early to talk about extending the series. If it does well, it will allow me to think more about stuff like Billions (the WIP that many of you have seen), though. Anyway, thanks again.

Onto the actual news:

• The first chapters of Spellblade 5 will be up on Sunday or Monday. I'm a little behind as always. I need to make sure that I don't overwork the outline, as part of why Spellblade 4 worked out so well was that it had a great outline. Right now I'm potentially trying to cram too much in, at the expense of existing characters and plot threads.
• Neural Wraith commentary will be up (for Messengers) some time next week. It will be very big, even by my standards. I have like 30 headings in my document and still feel that I missed a few.
• Podium have the Neural Wraith manuscript and will begin production shortly. I will hopefully have a narrator update to share next month. My preference is to stick with a solo female narrator like Steph.
• I am also working on a lore section for my website and it should be live before Spellblade 5 releases. I might test post drafts of it here, in case people have any thoughts or feedback. A lot of people want a character list (and Google tells me that people are searching for them) but I'm wary of maintaining a wiki with few or no contributors.
• Short stories have been on the backburner. I kind of suck at these. While I come up with ideas, writing them is much harder compared to novels. My schedule is also kind of intense, so I tend to put them off.

Speaking of my schedule, it's kind of a mess. I don't want to miss my Spellblade release dates (August, September, and January). But that only leaves a few months for everything else, and I have a plan for a specific book for my Spellblade anniversary (namely because that's when I became an author, imo). So I'll need to juggle and monitor what else I can publish in that time.

It's kind of funny that I'm already trying to plan ahead to 2023, when we're not even halfway through 2022. Also, I suck at meeting my release dates.

Anyway, that's all for now. For anybody who hasn't read Neural Wraith yet, I hope you give it a try and enjoy it.