Hey all!
Real quick announcement, Book 2, Fugitive, is now available for preorder!
You can find it here.
I've also just commissioned the cover for book 3. I'm expecting to see it mid-late July.
And finally! Fugitive's audiobook is scheduled to be recorded in August, which means we should see (uh, hear) it towards the end of that month.
Bryce
... 2023-06-06 06:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostSamira
“Alright, now check each of the lines one last time. If they’re still clear, then come back down and we can start installing the core,” I shouted up to Aurora, before taking a step back to let her down off the reactor.
“Where did you learn to do all this?” Suriel asked, and I actually had to think about it for a moment before answering.
“I think Ksen was the one who taught me. They used to handle all the shield upgr...
2023-06-02 01:17:29 +0000 UTC View PostThea
Bryce continued to chant in the background while the other six of us, plus Sanya, were gathered together in the hall outside our room.
“You sure you want to come with us?” I asked Leila, who was the one standing closest to me. “I’m pretty sure we can handle things without you guys. I mean, I fought Orrid all by myself, and Bryce is basically a god at this point.”
“Yes, I’m certain. There’s very little we can do on...
2023-05-30 21:50:12 +0000 UTC View PostContent Warning: threats of forced suicide
Bryce
“I don’t understand.” Sakeem frowned as he brought a data-pad over to me. The curly-haired human was smart, he just wasn’t quite getting it.
“Alright, look, these columns are your monthly expenses. Those are your projected average income, and that’s your actual,” I explained as I pointed to each section of the ledger. “Black means your income is above your expenses, re...
2023-05-27 03:43:58 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 19 - Waking Reunion
Ithnaa
“Hey, hottie, how’re you feeling?” A soft voice brushed away the haze of sleep, and I opened my eyes with a tired smile.
“Sora, you’re still alive. That’s good.” My throat was dry, and it was weirdly hard to think straight. To make matters worse, when I tried to move my arm, I found it was restrained to the bed. “What is this? Where am I?”
“It’s alright, you’re here with us, you’re safe. We j...
2023-05-25 00:30:33 +0000 UTC View PostAnali
“What the fuck was that?” I asked Zen after the silence got to be too much. “Why was she even here?”
“I warned you to stay away. You should have listened.”
“You told me to be scarce for a few days, not that the bitch who’s hunting me suddenly became a regular at your damn bar. And what the fuck, man? You told her about the meeting with Maymi? Why’d you sell me out like that?”
“Because I ordered him to.” ...
2023-05-20 10:40:17 +0000 UTC View PostSuriel
“Grab a seat Anali, I’ll let--” Thea stood up onto the chair she had been sitting in and grabbed the half-elf’s neck before slamming her head into the bartop in one fluid motion. Morgan just stared at the scene with her mouth half-open while the room went eerily quiet.
Bryce stood up with a heavy sigh and let go of the spell hiding her mantle before casually walking over to the other side of Anali to check her pulse. “Suriel, ...
2023-05-17 23:44:00 +0000 UTC View PostBryce
I shambled to the end of the oversized bed and fell forward, landing face first into the sheets. Thea laughed before doing the same. I pulled her into an awkward hug and let out a quiet groan.
“You okay, princess? You seem more tired than usual.”
“Thea, I haven’t slept in an actual bed since we were in Hades. That was nearly a week ago, and it’s been a long week. Hells, it’s somehow been an even longer day. I just want to lie...
2023-05-15 07:37:18 +0000 UTC View PostHey all!
I wanted to give you a quick update to let you know that chapter 16 probably won't be out until tomorrow night.
I wrote it out, but then decided that I wanted to move that part of the story to a later chapter for pacing reasons. That means I have an extra chapter sitting in my pocket, but I also need to write out the real chapter 16.
Thank you all for your understanding!
<3 <3 <3
2023-05-12 23:10:33 +0000 UTC View PostSora
“Hey, Sami, you ready to head back? We’re going to miss the deadline if we don’t leave soon.” I had to lean over at an awkward angle to look under the bulkhead where Sami was working. She managed to shove herself so far in there that I could only see her feet.
“Sorry Sora, but this wiring is way worse than I thought and if I leave now, then I’m going to have to figure it out all over again. Just have Aurora report to the captain in ...
2023-05-10 08:50:07 +0000 UTC View PostThea
“You banished four of my guards. Explain yourself,” Captain Aoyama demanded, and Zen visibly tensed despite trying his best to keep his cool.
Apparently, he had only just realized what us standing there actually meant for the people guarding the door. Or maybe he just somehow forgot that the vampire was still sitting next to him. Either way, it was pretty clear which of the two was in charge. Even in the poor guy’s bar.
“I ca...
2023-05-05 01:08:10 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 13 - Zen
Bryce
I spent the next half-hour or so checking Thea’s meridians for damage, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't any. In fact, they looked far healthier than they had just a week before when I finished rebuilding them. That was obviously a good sign, but I wasn’t exactly sure what contributed to the growth.
It was possible that her body just took to the new meridians, and she was healing despite the excess mana from our pact, or tha...
2023-05-02 04:50:37 +0000 UTC View PostThea
“Why does being told to do what we were already planning on doing make me not want to do it anymore?” I asked Bryce as we left Penn’s Pretty Prick.
“Because you have a problem with authority,” she pointed out as we came to a stop a few meters from the entrance, and I scoffed.
“Bullshit. I only have a problem with authority when it tries to tell me what to do.”
“That’s what authority does, Thea. It tells people what to...
2023-04-28 01:37:10 +0000 UTC View PostBryce
I quickly adjusted the contract with Suriel to provide him with twenty percent of my mana. It was a lot, especially considering that I hadn’t adjusted the amount that Leila was receiving. Which meant, with Thea’s pact taking thirty-five percent, I had less than a quarter of my maximum left.
But I wasn’t overly concerned. What I had left was far more than what I’d likely need, and I didn’t just send Leila with Sora so that ...
2023-04-24 23:44:09 +0000 UTC View PostI don't want to catch anybody off guard, so! Here's a quick reminder that payments are scheduled to unpause tomorrow.
In other news, RoyalRoad chapters will begin posting again tomorrow morning along with chapter 11 being released on here later tonight.
It feels good to be caught up again! I'm going to try to get a bit of a lead on Patreon chapters, and if I manage that, then I'm going to start releasing chapters for my next series on here.
So, wish me luck!
2023-04-24 18:31:47 +0000 UTC View PostSanya
“Sora, what do you want me to do?” I asked them again as Bryce, or uh, Captain Bryce, finished giving out orders and people started to stand up. Normally, calling a ship’s captain ‘captain’ wasn’t the thing to do on Paradise unless you were on their crew, or you were doing a bit of sexy role-play. The only real exception was if they were a captain on the council, then you always called them captain. Well, at least, while they were in t...
2023-04-21 19:07:30 +0000 UTC View PostSora
“But you have to admit, she has good bones.” The dwarf smiled up at me as he swelled with what had to be false pride. “Get a half decent mechanic working on her, and she’ll last you the rest of your life.”
“Yeah, because you’ll die the first time you try to shift, and it doesn’t matter how good her ‘bones’ are when half of them are exposed. You already started scavenging the damn hull plating.” I glared down at the pudg...
2023-04-19 06:29:24 +0000 UTC View PostSamira
“Sami!” Thea shot up out of the booth to give me a crushing hug, which I returned as best as I could. She somehow felt even stronger than before, and even though she obviously wasn’t trying to hurt me, I was still finding it difficult to breathe.
“Thea, be careful, you’re strangling the poor girl,” the blonde with long hair chastised, which caused Thea to let go of me.
“So, these are the friends you were waiting f...
2023-04-13 18:59:24 +0000 UTC View PostThea
“Shit,” I cursed under my breath as I split my attention between the trio of pirates and the twins. Aurora was gritting her teeth and obviously pissed, but Leila was the one I was really worried about. She was just standing there in silence, trying to control her breathing.
“It’s Grun, right?” Bryce asked as she took a step towards the armed pirate. “The four standing behind me are extremely powerful devils, not dem...
2023-04-09 03:38:23 +0000 UTC View PostBryce
“That’s not what I asked, Captain Virra. I need to know who knows you, not who you are. You can’t land here unless someone vouches for you.”
We were sitting just outside of Paradise, trying to negotiate a place to land. The station, if it could even be called a station, was actually tens of thousands of individual ships welded together to create a chaotic mishmash with no apparent rhyme or reason to the design. The end result was a multi...
2023-04-04 06:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostThea
“No, Thea, you cheat. I’m not playing with you anymore,” Leila complained as she continued to stare at the data-pad Bryce had lent her, and I just rolled my eyes. We’d been stuck on the tiny shuttle for the last three days, and still had two more days until we reached Paradise. Thankfully, the shuttle had a bathroom, and we still had plenty of food, but the whole thing was just so damn boring.
“Aurora is still playing, but we need one mo...
2023-03-31 09:12:19 +0000 UTC View PostI've updated chapter 2 to save Thea's heels.
In actuality, I didn't like removing the contents of Thea's ring so soon after revealing how much money was inside it. It felt like a bit of a reverse deus ex machina--a diabolus ex machina, if you will--despite it not originally being intended that way.
I also wanted to preserve the chapter release order, so I just edited the post directly instead of re-uploading it.
You can find the updated chapter 2023-03-29 05:36:36 +0000 UTC
View Post
Okay, so I just finished editing Fugitive and I'm planning to start on new Operative chapters tomorrow.
I've been doing some plot farming, and I think I'm going to rewrite Chapter 02 - Stranded. Having the contents of Thea's ring be destroyed isn't sitting well with me for a number of reason, so I think I'm going to revisit that happening.
IF I do end up rewriting chapter 2, then I mi...
Hey all!
I'm sure you've noticed that A Guide to Becoming a Pirate Queen is currently 3 chapters behind, and that's been something of an unfortunate trend with my writing on Patreon.
I've been doing something of a mental retrospective after finishing the last book and I'm honestly feeling somewhat overwhelmed with writing story at the moment. It feels like I'm losing perspective with events that I still want to happen, and I need to spend some time plotting.
I h...
2023-02-16 00:16:03 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 04 - Escape, Part 2
Sora
I left the vault as I adjusted the leather satchel on my shoulder. It was a bit dated, and definitely not my usual style, but I made it work. Besides, it wasn’t like I was bringing it along for the fashion. I just needed some way to safely carry my core, along with a few other trinkets I found while searching for it.
I would’ve liked to stay longer and empty the entire vault, but it had been nearly five full minutes since...
2023-02-10 06:52:49 +0000 UTC View PostSamira
“Okay, are you ready?” Sora asked, and I nodded hesitantly. So they uncapped a small vial of smelling salts under Krom’s nose. The orc struggled against the overly tight restraints as he cursed and tried to move his head away from the vial.
We hadn’t had any way to bind him other than the restraints that were used on me, which meant that even at their widest setting, they were still too tight for a burly orc. It couldn’t have be...
2023-02-08 05:28:26 +0000 UTC View PostBryce, three days prior
I stepped through the portal and took in the dimly lit room around me, or rather, what was left of it. Whoever took Sora and Samira had ransacked the place. The sheets were torn off the bed, and the only thing left of the art was the bust of Teolix that Thea had vandalized when we first moved in. To make matters worse, the doors to our closet had been torn off their hinges, and our clothing had been thrown about the place. Thankfully...
2023-02-02 03:33:46 +0000 UTC View PostOkay! So, I did a little bit of editing for the last 2 chapters, as recommended by a few amazing readers.
Chapter - 62 - I dropped the scene on the ship, instead ending the book with the crew entering the portal. I did it this way because it felt like a more natural ending, and didn't have that strange relief of tension right there at the end.
2023-01-28 18:15:29 +0000 UTC
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A few of my Amazon-centric readers have reminded me that while Patron and RoyalRoad won't have to wait all that long for book 3, they're probably going to have to wait months... SO, I've decided the revisit the end of the last chapter to make it less... evil?
Which is taking me a bit to revise. I'm going to get it rewritten then push up the first couple of chapters of book 3, which I'm tentatively calling 'Outlaw'.
I'm not sure how happy I am with that name, but we'll see.
Epilogue - An Offer You Can’t Refuse
Sora
“There we go. They should be coming around now.” A feminine voice spoke, and I felt the familiar cooling sensation of an IV forcing something into my arm. “In fact, they can probably already hear you.”
The feeling in the rest of my body slowly returned, spreading alongside with the cold from the IV. Whatever they were giving me was probably pretty good stuff, because I was already feeling a haze wash over m...
2023-01-23 21:32:50 +0000 UTC View Post