Announcement - The Future of Path of the Last Champion

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a great weekend!

There have been some developments, and I would like to let you all know about them, and apologies if this ends up being too long...

But, here's the TLDR: 

- Path of the Last Champion is coming to KU and Audible!!

- There will be a two-week break from the 7th of April - chapters resume on the 21st

- There's some stuff about the Patreon itself below that you can skip too as well

So, the long version is, I signed on with a LitRPG publisher some time ago, and that publisher has in turn just recently managed to get us a deal for the audio production of the books! I don't have many details available about release dates yet, as it's all still very fresh, but I will keep you all posted as I know more.

Getting the audio deal has been huge, and it has basically green lit the whole process of editing and production, and all of a sudden, there are deadlines flying right, left, and center! But here's the plan going forward...

The first 3 Arcs of Path of the Last Champion will be coming out as 6 books. My original vision was to have each arc be a book by itself, but apparently, the industry has made some big moves away from large volumes for new authors, so each arc will instead be split into 2 books. 

Does that mean two very small books? That is not my intention at all!

Over the last four weeks, I have done a major edit and overhaul of Arc 1, and the Books 1 and 2 that I handed over for editing are actually bigger than the original Arc 1 by almost 80k words. This means that all of your amazing feedback (here and in RR) has gone into the books, the worldbuilding has been expanded, many parts of the story that I felt lacking have also been expanded and deepened, and I've applied everything that I've learned on this journey to hopefully make the story better (not just in terms of plot, characters, but hopefully, writing style and readability as well). So, it should still be a familiar story, of course, but many improvements have gone into it!

At the moment, I'm working through Arc 2, to hopefully hand over Books 3 and 4 to the editors by the end of March (and there are 5 phases of editing, so hopefully, the final versions will be really well polished!).

These deadlines have however meant that I had to pause on writing Arc 3. Now, Arc 3 is about 2 thirds of the way there to my original plan, but given that I now have some more leeway (a 400k word book is no good? But 2 books at 230k plus words is okay? Don't mind if I do, then!!), I want to also further enhance and expand on Arc 3. There is a LOT in Arc 3, and I'm all too happy to be able to deliver more on it, and better!

This does mean however, that I need to add in a little break in between Arc 2 and 3 so that I can deliver Books 1-4 to my publisher on time, and then review the first part of Arc 3 to start releasing it for you all.

So, there will be a two-week break from the 7th of April, and chapter releases will resume on the 21st! I apologize for this, as I really was not expecting things to suddenly ramp up as fast as they did!

While I had managed a publishing contract, the audio side of things was proving difficult initially, but thanks to all of your support, both here and in RR, it has shown to audio companies that there were people who liked the story, and convinced them to give it a shot. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so, so much!

Not only has your feedback, comments, messages and even reviews helped me grow as a writer, helped point out the flaws in the story and all the parts that needed improvements, it has also opened the doors to publishing the story. So, you all have my eternal gratitude!

As for the story itself, we've now reached the last part of Arc 2, their first delve into a dungeon, and I'm really excited for you all to read it! I'm also super excited to get Arc 3 ready for you all, as a lot of stuff happens there!! And as always, everything that happens is like a little stream, or even a drip-drip of water that will grow into something truly massive and epic further down the line!

Patreon

Just a little bit on the Patreon itself. There is now a pinned post at the top that, when finished, will serve as the center of the Patreon, it includes:

• a place for announcements;

• a place for links:

  • There will be a link to the map of the dungeon here later on (It's not a great map, but I drew it on paper to help me write the story, and I thought that maybe it would help you all as well, so I made it up on Inkarnate. And there will be more maps for Arc 3!)

  • I will also start a google docs/sheets here to start building up a little "wiki" for the story. This will cover the characters, stats, all the attributes we currently know about, people we've met, and all sorts of other things. As of Arc 3, there's about 300k words of supporting stuff, from classes, to characters, to worldbuilding and so on, and I would like to clean it up of spoilers and post it up for anyone interested, or to serve as a sort of database that you can consult whenever you want to remember something.

• and the Table of Contents to help navigation. I will do my best to keep it up to date, as well as the links to Next Chapter (which reminds me, I need to go and update those next).
  
  And that's it! Please, let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see in the Patreon, and if it's within my power, I'll do my best to get it done! And if you have any questions, just let me know below!
  
  So, yeah! A pretty busy period ahead, but it's my intention that through it all, the story will keep on growing and getting better, and that you all continue to enjoy reading it!
  
  All the best,
  Everhart