A year of Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Hello everyone!

It's been almost exactly a year (give or take a few days) since I got laid off from my job, and decided to write my own book. I figured I'd do some rambling on the matter

There were a million factors that went into it. Reading a ton of webnovels myself, and running out of novels I liked. Always having the idea "I should write a book". Figuring that I'd have a ton of free time every day after doing my daily job hunting. 

I didn't do nearly enough research before I began. I had no idea that a large initial dump wasn't a thing, nor that most authors didn't have extra backlogs on top of their normal stuff. In those respects, I did well.

In others, not so well. Last second major changes? Baaaad idea. Patreon? I didn't do nearly enough research.

However, I stumbled along. I knew I wanted to write a fantasy litRPG, and I studied dozens of different Systems, seeing what I liked and what I didn't like. I wrote down every single stat I'd ever seen from the systems, and compared and contrasted them. I wrote down what magic and elements I liked. 

My big brainwave was tying elements to stats. Sure, I had 8 elements and 6 stats, but that was fixable. It balanced the whole thing.

Then I went on to make the map.

THEN I started writing. 

A few months of writing and work later (At the start, I could barely manage 200 words in a day - writing is like a "muscle"), and I had 40 chapters ready to go! I made sure everything was set up ahead of time - a patreon, a discord, etc., because one of the things I'd seen was too many authors stumble and fail trying to make the "leap" to patreon. (CoughCoughCadenceLeeCough).

I got some advice from RR to not dump all the chapters at once, to spread them out instead. And that's what I tried.

And then, on the FIRST DAY I was posting, I got my first patron. Months of effort validated by that - I literally cried happy tears.

(Heck, writing this and reflecting on it all I'm crying happy tears)

Of course, that meant I also needed to get everything posted in Patreon, and I had to scramble for that!

I got some attention, and help, from other authors, which I'm super grateful for. I got shout-outs and advice.

Then the ball slowly got rolling, and I *still* couldn't find a job, and I had a baby coming soon. Made it easy to keep going with the writing thing, and, well, after months of hard work and effort, here we are!

I can't tell you how grateful I am to all of you, from the $1 patron who joined this morning, to the people who signed up with me the first day I was here. It's been a wonderful, amazing, magical journey, and I hope to make many more of these annual posts thanking you all.

I'd also like to extend a special thanks to my Beta Readers. They're in the background, tirelessly fixing my typos, hitting me over the head when I flip words, and being totally willing to let me know when a plotline is bad, or something I'm trying to introduce doesn't make sense, or if people are just plain unlikeable or poorly written. Seriously, this story would be so much worse without their feedback and help. 

Once again - Thank you, and here's to the second year of Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, and Elaine's epic adventure in Pallos!