ItsDirector's Roadmap: May 15, 2025

It is time, once again, to update you on the road ahead!

Personal Stuff:

My fiancée and I are getting married on May 25th (ten days from now)! We've been wanting to get married for quite some time now, but things kept coming up that forced us to put it off. Thanks in part to all of you things have finally stabilized enough for us to take this next step in our life together :)

Videos/Livestreams:

Videos are still on the back burner. I've hopped on other people's livestreams on TikTok, but it's pretty random. Still want to do a series where I narrate my works and provide some behind the scenes (ItsDirector's Cut), but I'm struggling to find the time. Unfortunately, that's extremely unlikely to change lol

Art:

Nothing has really changed in this regard, so here's a copy-paste of last time's (and the time before last) Roadmap:

I've had some people show an interest in making fan-art, but I don't really have a place for you to post it yet. I've looked into creating a sub, but finding good moderators seems to be the biggest hurdle in that regard. The only places to post fan-art thus far are my discord and my refrigerator (but only if you do a good job lol).

I intend to hire an artist to help bring my vision of the characters in my stories to life, and create a sort of picture-book detailing each character. As I will have to pay the artist for the ownership of their copyright for their work, this will take some time due to my current financial obligations. In an ideal world, I'll be ready to start interviewing artists in early 2025. In a more realistic world, mid-2026. Worst-case scenario, early 2027.

If you want to throw money at me to speed things up, you can do so using Ko-Fi's donation feature, but I definitely don't mind working for my bread. Both Patreon and Ko-Fi have subscription features that actually give you benefits and will ensure steady progress to my end-goal. I also don't have the means to accurately predict how much donations will speed things up.

tl;dr Donations are appreciated, but not strictly necessary :)

Future Work:

I'm happy to announce that once I finish The New Era, I will be working on a fantasy series titles "The Ascuam Chronicles"[WIP Title lol]. This series will focus on at least three characters who end up becoming Dukes serving a Demon King. This is similar to cliches that you see in Japanese media (specifically RPGs and Anime), but with some western twists. Which is funny, because this cliche borrows heavily from western culture. [Insert Circle of Life song from the Lion King]

These novels will not appear on Reddit, RoyalRoad, or Ko-Fi because they will be my attempt at entering the traditional publishing sphere. Traditional publishers don't typically accept novels that are available for free. Even when they do, though, that usually comes with a demand that the novels be removed from wherever they're posted. If I post them publicly and manage to get a publisher, that would result in a rug-pull.

I might post them on Patreon (as a little bonus to those subscribers that remain after The New Era finishes its run), but there's a good chance that any publisher that wants to take the novels will ask that they be removed. It's a lot easier to remove things from Patreon than it is from Ko-Fi, which is why I'll be excluding Ko-Fi.

The reason that I'm trying to become traditionally published is mostly due to the financial stability that it comes with. You all have been great to me, and I plan to continue to post public-facing work (like The Human From a Dungeon and something I'm about to mention), but I am planning to expand my family soon and can't rely on the uncertainty of subscriber-based income. It would also be nice to be able to pause billing for a month and take a breather (I've been posting weekly for 2 years and six months, and twice a week for nearly 2 years). Taking a break is something I can't afford to do at the moment.

On a lighter note, I'm still planning to storyboard a prequel to The New Universe trilogy once The New Era is fully published. I originally envisioned two books (Alpha and Omega), but I am unsure that I'll have enough word-count for Alpha. So I might combine the two books into one. These will take a backseat to The Ascuam Chronicles, though.

Live Appearances:

No changes, here's the copypasta:

Hosting a book signing and meeting you would be great, but I don't even know where to start, to be honest. I've kept a pin in it for a while now, but I'll do a bit more research on the subject once The New Era is done.

Progress and Goals:

According to the  W4ffle bot, it has been 2 years, 6 months and 11 days since I posted the first chapter of The New Species. I have posted 540,472 words since then, with an average of 2,380.93 words per chapter.

On Reddit, each chapter receives an average of 45.85 comments, my reddit profile has 3,147 followers, and I've got 29,886 post karma and 21,208 comment karma according to my profile.

On Royal Road, I have 1,767 unique followers and my highest ranking so far is #529 (I am starting to think that's good? lol). Average rating is 4.68.

On Patreon I have 468 followers, 195 of which are paid.

On Ko-Fi I have 60 followers, 56 of which are supporters.

My new goal for 2025 is to hit 600k word count by the end of the year (a lot harder without posting two chapters per week lol). I also hope to finish the rough draft of the first novel in The Ascuam Chronicles and find a Literary Agent :D

Thank you so much! You all have been wonderful, and I hope you stick around to see what comes next :)