March Messenger Update

February was a fairly rough month, so I wanted to provide an extra update to Messengers before I make a general update.

There are a few topics to cover this month, so I'll give them subheads. Namely, I'm making a slight update to Patreon rewards, talking about the Demon's Throne issues, talking about future books, and Spellblade plotting.

Demon's Throne 3

Anyway, as you've likely noticed, Demon's Throne 3 has been slower to update than usual. As might be expected from a plot that I'm cutting down, it's kind of full of holes. Or at least, it doesn't flow well. This means the updates will be thick and fast as the month progresses, though, as the book will be coming out by the 31st. I may have to axe the pre-order so that I can include beta reader commentary (I skipped it for DT2 due to issues, but really shouldn't this time), as it will be tight.

It's funny that I thought Demon's Throne would be the easy series. I think the fact that it's retreading old work of mine makes it harder to write, because I want to change things from the past while keeping up a higher standard. It's also a story better suited for serial fiction than a novel - my three-act structure almost feels like it's suffocating the story even though I'm deviating a little from it.

Patreon Reward Changes

There were no Messenger rewards last month, unfortunately. Lots of stuff chewed up my mind and time. The past week hasn't been an improvement, as I've been trying to distract myself from IRL stuff (and no, it's not all about the stuff you read in the news).

As such, I do want something to ensure you have a reward even when I'm not posting extra stuff.

The main updates are planned to be:

• Streamline some of the reward wording around extra content for Messengers. No changes to actual rewards will happen, however.
• Exclusive art will be added to the $5 Bastion tier (all patrons contribute to the commission funding, so I want this to available to them).
• Messengers will get the final 30% of the book shortly before release. There still may be differences from the final book (due to last minute chapter additions etc).

A significant part of the reason I was initially wary of posting the full book is that so much of a book's success comes from initial sales. I started the Patreon at a time when I felt like my position was much rockier, coming off two launches that had received some pushback (Demon's Throne remains my worst launch week ever, even though only Spellblade 4 has beaten its launch month figures).

I don't think that's a valid concern anymore. It will go in the Messenger-tier because it's an extra reward to essentially "preview" the chapters days before release and the length of the books mean that I still post a fairly substantial amount of each book (the HS4 early chapters were nearly 120k words). Due to Kindle Unlimited exclusivity rules, they'll still be removed shortly after the book goes live.

This is the news item I would appreciate more feedback on, so let me know your thoughts before I change anything.

Future Books

I've settled on the Cipher series as my next series and have secured an artist for the covers. All the Spellblade covers are now done, which means I have cover art for all of Demon's Throne and Spellblade (which is a good feeling). Again, the first book for this series is still months away at minimum.

Otherwise, I have been hammering away at several ideas for a fantasy series for when Spellblade is nearly done. If I did an urban fantasy, it would be substantially different from the masquerade-style that is popular right now and definitely not shifter stuff. Many of my ideas end up being "litrpg without the stats," in the same way that Spellblade has strong tower defense and MOBA influences.

The flipside is that I'm also distracted by slice-of-life ideas again, but lighter and fluffier ones given IRL right now. These rarely go anywhere because... well, they're slice-of-life.

Anyway, you can expect to see some samples of fantasy ideas in a few months, I'd guess. The series will likely be published before Spellblade 7 if things go to plan (ha!).

Heretic Spellblade Plotting

The good news about the Demon's Throne issues is that I've spent a lot of time plotting out the last three Spellblade books. I've had a good idea of what needs to happen in these books, but not the how or why.

Books 5 and 6 are two halves of the same story. I know what the end state of Book 6 should be, as well as what new characters will be introduced (I'm heavily restricting new characters, although there does need to be a couple of potential harem members as the series expands into Trafaumh and Falmir).

What's difficult is Book 7. I've always know how the series ends and what the finale is, but in the original plans, Book 7 was more like an climactic final act of the last book. Now it's an extra book. The problem is that the end of Book 6 is fairly final - I could end the series there just by deleting some plot points, at the expense of a overarching plot thread of the entire series. Book 7 is the "keikaku doori" book, so to speak.

This has the unfortunate effect of turning Book 7 into an epilogue book. On top of the final plot arc, it also needs to pick up the pieces of the Book 6 finale (in much the same way Book 5 needs to do the same for Book 4). I don't think there's enough content to turn this into two books, because there's just not enough plot, but I'm also worried that it will be a muddy book or rushed. It's unlikely I'll know until Book 6 is underway.

Finally, there's a good chance I'll publish Books 5 and 6 back-to-back. I plan to plot and write these as a single thing, in order to ensure a tighter story. No clue on when, however.

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Anyway, let me know if you have any thoughts on the topics. After Feb had nothing, I wanted to provide some more details on what's going on in my mind and work.

There'll be a greatly cut down version of this update posted for all patrons in a day or so. Much of the detailed commentary on the future and series planning will be excluded or trimmed. You can safely give it a miss when it goes up.