Future Plans

Hello Everyone!

Without committing to any hard numbers or dates, I am expecting to be finished writing Ascendant within the next three months. The God Machine is going to keep running for at least another eight months, but I am always thinking up ideas for the next story. When Ascendant does finish, God Machine will become my primary focus and I'll be working on something else in my spare time, so I wanted to pitch a few ideas and get some feedback on what people are interested in.

Here are five stories I'm considering writing. I would love to get some votes on what you guys would like to see come out late this year.

Dragon State: a Monster Evo LitRPG

Tagline: In this contest of dominance, there’s no such thing as second place

Tags: Villainous Lead, Non-Human Lead, Monster Evolution, High Fantasy, LitRPG, Magic Progression, Strong Lead

The realm known as Sanat thought that dragons were a myth. They thought wrong.

An entire clutch of over a hundred dragon eggs was cast from their dying home universe through a gateway, where they rained down through the night sky like so many falling stars. Those dragons hatched, and, hungry, they started devouring all the mana and people they could find. They even killed each other, just to devour their siblings’ essence to grow stronger.

One egg didn’t hatch. Bad luck saw that egg trapped for three long years in the clutches of its own mana-devouring monster, and it isn’t until that monster is slain that the last dragon can finally hatch. At last, he can begin his own ascension to the pinnacle of dragonhood.

Thorn breaks free of his egg after a long torpor and finds himself in a world where everything wants to kill him. Between the natives intent on saving their world from this new dragon menace and his siblings intent on killing him for a quick power up, the only way to survive at all is to lie, cheat, steal, and murder his way to the top.

Inspired by Highlander and the Breath of Fire video game series

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The Curse of Time: a Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Tagline: Everyone hates their first day at a new school, no matter how many times they have to repeat it.

Tags: Female Lead, High Fantasy, Magic, LitRPG, Loop, Progression, School Life, Secret Identity, Slice of Life, Strong Lead, Time Travel

Liriel has been accepted into the prestigious Falconwood Academy, the premier institution for learning to use magic. What should be a dream come true quickly turns into a nightmare as she’s kidnapped out of her room in the middle of the night after her first day and subjected to a ritual branding. It’s kind of weird that her kidnapper keeps apologizing over and over and saying that he can’t do it anymore, but that only makes it more terrifying, not less.

She wakes up, only to find herself once again finishing up her entrance examination and beginning her time as a student all over again. When she goes back to the room she was taken to, there’s nothing there except a mysterious book, the source of power for her new brand. Time repeats itself, over and over again, endlessly, as she tries to navigate this strange new reality and unravel the clues left behind by previous Bearers of the Brand, previous time travelers.

If Liriel wants to live the rest of her life, she’ll need to figure out what’s happening to her and become strong enough to reverse it. No one else has ever been able to break out of the loop, and if she’s understanding the clues they’ve left for her, there’s a very good reason they all started going insane, and it’s not just the repetition doing it.

Directly inspired by Mother of Learning

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City of Lost Souls: A Gamelit Progression Fantasy

Tagline: What would you do to escape a never-ending Hell?

Tags: Anti-Hero Lead, Male Lead, LitRPG, Gamelit, Progression, Magic, High Fantasy, Portal/Isekai, Reincarnation

Aaron remembers dying. Specifically, he remembers how much it hurt, but that it was over quickly. So he is quite surprised to wake up again afterwards inside a strange bedroom in a strange house. What’s even more surprising is that the house, and the whole neighborhood, is full of monsters that attack on sight. He fights for his life, and finds that upon dying, they don’t leave corpses behind. No, they leave gear and a strange essence that his new visual hallucinations call Aether.

He doesn’t always win though, and defeat means death. Every time it happens, he wakes back up in that same room again at dawn with nothing but his clothes on his back. Every time, he’s a little bit stronger, gets a little bit farther. But he’s not the only one trapped in an endless nightmare city, and in this twisted and sadistic game, the other players might just be the most dangerous part.

Inspired by the roguelike video game, Hades

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Kaiju Hunting for Fun and Profit

Tagline: It’s already too late to save this world... or is it?

Tags: Male Lead, Progression, Super Heroes, Secret Identity, AI, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Genetically Engineered, Technologically Engineered, Loop, Time Travel, Post Apocalyptic

In the year 2,300 AD, humanity is clinging to life by its fingernails. What little remains of it shelters from an endless nuclear winter inside domed cities or lives in massive orbiting space stations. A combination of technology and biology has given rise to a subset of metahumans with fantastic powers, perhaps the only reason humanity hasn’t been completely wiped out by the massive roaming engines of destruction known as kaiju.

Haru Nara awakens the power to manipulate time and soon realizes that he can go back. He makes it his goal to travel back ten years and prevent the kaiju attack that killed his parents, and then soon realizes that if he could go back far enough and take strong enough metahumans with him, they could kill the very first kaiju and prevent the nukes from ever going off. Unfortunately, no matter what he does, nothing ever seems to get better. If Haru truly wants to change the past to create a better future, he’ll need to figure out the real source of all Earth’s problems.

Inspired by the video game, Chrono Trigger and various superhero and time loop stories such as Mother of Learning, Worm, and Super Minion

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The Curious Curio: a Slice-of-Life Crafting LitRPG

Tagline: Who said you have to risk your life just to make a buck in this world?

Tags: Female Lead, High Fantasy, LitRPG, Magic, Multiple Lead Characters, Slice of Life

Dungeons, terrible and deadly, full of monsters and traps and the corpses of adventurers unlucky enough to run afoul of them. But those who survive often find wealth and power beyond imagining.

This story isn't about them.

Meet Emira and Nari, best friends and local shopkeepers in the small town of Deldaka. While others risk their lives in the nearby dungeon, Emira spends her days running the Curious Curio, working as an apprentice rune scribe, crafting magical items and examining any enchanted treasures that come into her shop. Nari, on the other hand, indulges in her passion for cooking and helps keep the shop running smoothly. Nobody likes a hangry adventurer, after all.

Between filling orders, gossiping with passing adventurers, and breaking for tea with their neighbor, life in Deldaka is never boring. And while Emira may not be interested in the glory of dungeon crawling, she is fascinated by the stories and trinkets those adventurers bring back to her. Join Emira and Nari on their journey through a world of magic, money, and everyday adventures in this heartwarming litRPG slice-of-life web serial.

Inspired by various stories from web serial authors such as RavensDagger, J.M Clarke (U Juggernaut), Quill, FortySixtyFour, InadvisablyCompelled, and Slifer274