VMantis

An End

This page has changed to a pay-per-creation type.

I am more than a year behind on my novels, which is a terrifying thing for me. I was supposed to write three last year and two this year, based on a very generous schedule. I have written zero.

The schedule was based on hard math from previous works. I know how long old projects have taken and how many words long they are. With that, I can estimate how long new projects will be, and with that estimate how long they should take to create.

To be clear: I am not burned out. I've been writing chapters for old fan-fiction off and on when I can. It's my environment. Without a place to live where I'm at peace, I can't create. I had a hectic job while writing Beyond Pain, but I had a calm place to live. Mentally calm, I mean, by the way. I have one roommate right now, and he's a perfectly nice guy. There are just things about where we live, this apartment, that constantly draw my eye and make me extremely uncomfortable. It's so consistent that it's messed with my ability to write while I'm here, because I could be doing things to rectify the situation instead... So I end up doing neither.

It doesn't help that my depression has continued to get worse. Every time I think it couldn't possibly, it finds a way to quantum tunnel to a new low. If it weren't for other promises made, years ago - actually 692 days ago exactly - I don't know where I'd be right now. I'm living on dumb pride and determination.

It is with this that I effectively cancel this page, as courtesy to those supporting me, because what they joined to support is no longer making progress, and hasn't for a long time. I worked on the three novels for last year, and I got about halfway through two of them, but it was forced progress, and I would either need to restart those projects or rewrite large sections of them. It's junk, at this point.

Thank you for the support for the past while, and know that this is AN end, not THE end.

Ready or not...

Everyone has their style, and I guess this is mine. Here's a bit of insight on the developments since the start of the year, though a bit out of order:

Thanks to a friend of mine, one Mr. Paez, I've got a publishing program so I can stop bothering anOTHER friend of mine to do the formatting. I can also freely edit things to eliminate the errors as I see fit without having to trust an editor.

In March, Azure flew down and we attended the Slover Library author fair. I'll upload a picture of the table and whatnot another time. We sat around, got pitied by a few people, and had to listen to a "rich guy" talk to us about how successful his books were. Books that were less than 50,000 words, with stock photos on the cover. The only copies of my first book I've sold have been because my mother pressured coworkers or because random bystanders pitied me.

I started my second novel, a stand-alone called Better Half, in February. I've previously practiced with it, and those early chapters are still on my dA account.

It isn't going well.

See, the idea is all I ever start with. Some come with timelines, cultures, worlds even, and a few key characters. A good 90%, no exaggeration, of Beyond Pain is off-the-cuff, in-the-moment writing. That's how I do things.

Unfortunately, the idea isn't the only factor. My mental health is the other key component, and it's been on the decline for a decade or so now. As my skill in writing has skyrocketed, my drive has plummeted.

I'm capable of, and have several times, writing over 10,000 words in a single day, in less than six hours. In an ideal environment, that translates to about 12 novels per year on the low end, or up to 48 on the high end, depending on the word-count of each. That's not accounting for formatting or editing, but that's because the ideal scenario is having people to help me with those parts.

I wrote one last year. I was supposed to write three this year. Clearly, my skill is up to it. My mind is not. My environment has continued to degrade, and my mind has followed.

My mind, unfortunately, isn't the only issue I'm running into with this book. It is intended to be character driven, somewhat slow paced, and start off depressing with an upswing. That's the concept. Sadly, I can't justify to myself writing this story.

I began preparing to write a wholly realistic story, but that just doesn't fit my creative style. I thought about taking the characters and adapting the story to a different time period, but that felt like too much of a departure, with too much time spent away from the characters. Then I decided that a fusion of the two would be best.

The current state of the book is about half-finished. Halfway through, and I don't feel like I've successfully done anything with it like I wanted to. None of it fits the way I wanted. As it stands, I think my old practice version, bastardized as it was, is better! I thought I had a way to salvage the work, but now I can't bring myself to write at all.

I recently tried skipping ahead to the next book, but that didn't help either. I love that next idea, and I want to write it, and I have fun if I do, but I have no vitality left for creativity. It's not the idea, I've realized, it's me.

Not that a whole lot of people will read something like this, and I'm not a well-known or important author, but I'm the kind of guy who tells everyone my business. Privacy is for those with something to hide, for their own reasons I'm sure, and I have none of that. I have no money for anyone to steal, nor valuable possessions, nor potentially-viral and money-making ideas. And any of those ideas I might have could only shine in my hands because of their incomplete nature - as I said, I write off the top of my head.

Around the end of September, I intend on basically going dark. I won't be playing video games or doing anything else with my spare time but blasting music and writing. The work will suffer, but it needs to be done by the deadline, and it'll get done. I'm no longer interested in publishing - Beyond Pain was shoved out the door so I could attend that author fair, thinking it would be a great opportunity - so I just need to get the ideas written down first. I can comb over them later, format them later, and publish them later.

For anyone who wanted new work from me anytime soon, if any such people exist besides Azure - who remains the only person to have finished Beyond Pain - I'm afraid you'll be waiting a long time unless you want to read it on Google Drive, where I'm working on it.

Until then.

Physical Copies Available!

The physical copies are approved and on Amazon's store! We still aren't done, though, as the third edition will be to eliminate publication issues like orphaned words hanging out on a line all alone.

As it happens, the one patron eligible for a signed copy will be attending the author fair on March 2nd, so he can receive his Patreon reward in person!

Pictures will be forthcoming next month!!

First Publication!

As of today, the first book by V. Mantis is available for pre-order.

Beyond Pain will release November 11th, 2018.

"Going beyond mortal limits didn’t always carry a cost, yet no one knows what really changed. Magic exists all around, moving in strange ways. In this tale of two races - two sides of a magical spectrum - the world finally learns the truth.

A sheltered monk, and an orphan, is given the task of visiting temples across the world as his test for the rank of master.

A demon-kin given the power to heal even fatal wounds, must do the same with an ancient sword as her own rite of passage.

Something beyond their comprehension forces their paths to cross, but their individual need keeps them together. As they travel the world, braving their tests and facing a harsh reality, they begin to discover that there is more at work than they realized, and that their tasks may be related..."

Update #2

Beyond Pain will publish on Amazon on November 11th. Until then, final editing and formatting is underway. I'm far behind schedule with this, I personally think. Still, even though it's not physical copies, I'll be working on printing a few for my supporters to sign and send out.

Now I'll need a signature...

Update #1

Beyond Pain is in the editing phase before publication!
Work was from March 11th, 2018, to June 4th, 2018. The total word count is currently 213,304 before editing.

All the cover art is done (except for the pen name)! DeviantKirigishi, over on dA, has done incredible work on my behalf, and I can't wait to publish this first book and start throwing, realistically, anything I can at her for it.

Work has begun on the second novel, Better Half, but this one's a much more rocky beginning. I'm going from high fantasy to non-fiction, and I've got a few projects (stuff not funded by this page - fanfiction) I'm also working on as well.

Thanks for reading, and thanks again to the great friends supporting me when no one else will. I couldn't do this without you, and I don't know where I'd be without your help.

Everything You Could Want To Know

This is going to be a long post. I will explain, to the best of my ability, why I'm here and what I intend to do with my art.

The story of my writing goes back about twelve years. I met one of my closest friends that year and at some point, we repeated a conversation I'd had with my older brother.

"If you had the power to control anything, what would it be?" had been my older brother's question. As my friend and I gave our answers and we discussed the topic, as middle schoolers, he said to me that I should write a story based on the conversation.

I was an avid reader by then, and had been since I was able to read at all, but I couldn't think of anything I'd ever read with the tone we'd spoken of. We all wanted control over things like lightning, or fire, but we took the fantasy closer to science. If one controlled lightning, weren't they influencing molecular charges? This kind of talk is what spurred me to write my first ever original creation.

It was awful. "Characters began to talk." "But then someone else spoke." "Wait, which person is talking now?" "There's only three of us here!"

And the like. You get the idea. The formatting was awful, there were huge narrative slogs and terrible pacing. You know, like you'd expect from baby's first fanfiction, except it was an original idea.

Fast forward a few years and I still had the document I'd written. It's gone now, and because I overwrote the original post on DeviantArt, no one can see it anymore, but I did in fact post it to DeviantArt about nine years ago. Once I posted that chapter, I decided to make the next chapter or so some kind of "tribute" to another artist on the site who actually had a following. Again, I was a delusional middle school student (or freshmen in high school, I can't remember), and I was a nerd.

The story quickly evolved, but my ability to write it did not. More and more things got jumbled into the story until it was a complete mess of influences with no real direction. I started on a second idea, and posted for that for a while too, but I never got any real feedback beyond one or two people who genuinely seemed to care about seeing me improve.

Well, in the background of all this work, life had continued, and I met new people. One of them, again a very close friend now, suggested I write fanfiction as a way to get more feedback. "People are starved for skilled writing," he said, "Just make something up you think would be cool and post it."

Well, I tried that, and it didn't really work so well at first. What I thought was cool was Rengoku, a game by Neverland and Hudson, that almost no one knows exists. Needless to say, that story consisted of me shouting into the void some more and never went any further. Then I tried Sword Art Online. After all, a lot of people were following it, and I disagreed with the direction the story had taken. That one did a little better, but still ended as a flop.

Off on the side, I wrote something for Halo, mostly to practice writing characters based on real people I knew. That was never finished, and didn't get much attention.

And then... We get to Dark Souls. "Twin Humanities" is my single longest work to date. The original was very nearly 100,000 words (96,466 if I remember right), and the rewrite is still going. The original draft of the story was riddled with horrible errors. Narrative asides, no trust in the reader, wooden and hamfisted dialogue, missed opportunities, forced romance, and so on.

Most people loved it anyway. Some people didn't. I won't say who, but a group of bloggers picked it up and ripped it apart chapter by chapter. Their hateful criticism was indeed constructive, but it took me a long time to see the message they wanted to get across to me through the vitriol.

It was the best criticism I've ever received, and it caused an evolution unlike anything in my writing before. With their message clear, I decided I would write for Destiny next.

Kell of Light was a triumph, even more beloved by the fanbase than Twin Humanities had been. Sadly, because of what happened to the Destiny series of games, my story for it declined in quality as well as I began to write more out of a sense of obligation than anything.

Around that time, I also decided I would rewrite Twin Humanities. I'd wanted to write a sequel for it for a long time, but the style and state of the original made that feel impossible. I rewrote it from start to finish and beyond, into the sequel I'd always wanted, and I'm still going.

My beginning years were spent hollering my stories into oblivion on DeviantArt, with hardly any views and no comments to speak of. I had no fanbase, no followers who weren't friends, and made almost no improvements.

My more recent years have been completely the opposite. I've instead turned to telling my what-if stories to other fans. My views number in the hundreds each day, even if the comments are still more sparse than I'd like. My followers now are strangers who want to see the next chapter, and my friends have mostly left my work alone. I've improved until you can hardly tell I'm the same author anymore...

Which brings us here. To this page. I'm beginning the next chapter in my writing career. I want to publish books. And I mean physical copies not just puking a manuscript onto Amazon's digital store and calling it a day.

To do that, I need your help. I'll make it happen with or without the help, don't get me wrong. Do or die, come hell or high water, I'll publish these books someday. But with your help "someday" can come a lot sooner. Decades sooner, probably.

The next page is being written, and I intend to make it the best one yet. And the page after that will be even better.

Links To Practice Works

Between my DeviantArt, where I post random poetry and short stories, and my FFN, where I post, well, fanfiction, maybe you'll find something you enjoy.

Those two accounts are where I've posted my practice works for many years now. If you want proof that I am indeed an author and I intend to write books, look no further than my novel-length Destiny and Dark Souls stories. Kell of Light, for Destiny, is the shorter work, while Twin Humanities, for Dark Souls, is not only much longer but has also been rewritten and is still in progress.