Updates DEC 19 '25

Yo, happy holidays.

I made a post on RR the other day talking a bit about stuff and things. I'll touch on what I said there and add some extra stuff here.

First, I've been taking some time to reconsider certain events happening in the latter third of book 5. Sometimes I get the sense that something isn't quite working and it stops me in my tracks for a bit. That's more or less what happened here, and after taking some time to let everything marinate I feel that we've got a better way to get to where we're going.

Second, I've been kind of freaking out because book 1 is going bananas on Audible. There's a sale that's definitely helping, but book 1 was rank 139 today. It's somehow number 10 in Sci-fi, and rank like 48 in all of sci-fi and fantasy together. That's an insanely good rank for a book that came out nine months ago.

For context, book 1 was rank 1100 or so at the end of November, so that's a 900+ rank climb while already floating around the top 1k. Big, big jump. We're hanging out on the charts beside Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings and Rebecca Yarros' Fourth Wing dramatized version (massive romantasy title if you didn't know). I keep scrolling through like "oh hey we passed Game of Thrones today" and it's taking up a lot of my processing power, ha. Book 2 and 3 are of course seeing ripple effects as well, both having jumped like a thousand ranks this month into the 500-800 range.

It's also been going up all month and it keeps going up. We're seeing more and more folks talking about the series on Reddit and elsewhere. It's just been kind of weird. We've had this solid slow and steady growth with each book release and all of a sudden it feels like things went into high gear. We haven't even had a launch or anything in months!

It's great, but it's really unexpected.

Anyway, we're getting our marketing budget refreshed :) We'll be catching up on all the outstanding art commissions for both RR and Patreon starting at the beginning of January. Patreon actually has one more vote for that going all the way back to... the book 1 launch?!

Everything got weird back around that time when my asshole landlord basically kicked me out to try and sell the place I was renting last year. She never even gave me my deposit back and I'm having to take her to small claims. What a jerk.

I spent the money I had earmarked for commissions on moving instead, then the wife and I had a baby, and I am just now really able to shell out for those again (not to mention dedicate the extra braincells to managing random artists).

But, good news, it shouldn't be a problem moving forward.

In other happenings, we've been thinking about how to get some other nifty things going for Patreon and we've got some ideas for stuff I hope you all think is neat. I'm wary about doing any of it right now since the holidays might have an impact. So, look for some polls coming in the new year. Might have a special extra for the Cob tier folks as well.

Let's see, what else? Book 4 was originally slated on Amazon for Jan 14 but got pushed back to Jan 28. Don't ask me why; they shuffle stuff around sometimes as the publishing schedule fills out. Probably has to do with the audiobook if I had to guess.

I got one more chapter coming this week and will be taking a break for the rest of December. I make no promises that I won't post another one or two during the break. I plan on writing still. We'll see. I'm thinking we'll focus on coming out swinging first thing in 2026.

I think that's it? Thanks to everyone for your continued support. We wouldn't be here without you all.

Hope your inevitable march forward in time yields a superior experience throughout this upcoming fortnight.