kdrobertson

Kadria Backstory Pt1

“So that’s it? After all these years, you’re dropping me as a student?” Kadria asked, fists clenched beneath the café table.

“I just said it’s not like that.” Her PhD supervisor, Stanton, sighed and ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. “The budget cuts this year are immense. Half of the physics faculty just lost their jobs. I’ve been told that I’ll go back to teaching college undergrads or I’ll join them.”

Kadria grit her teeth and looked away. Frust...

January Patreon Update

It's 2022. I'm still in shock, as it doesn't really feel like a year passed, but it is what it is.

Heretic Spellblade 4 is out, if you somehow missed it. The response to it and the pre-order have shattered my expectations, although I'm expecting it to be a very spikey release. For Messengers, the commentary is up.

Otherwise, January will be a busy month for me. I'll break this post up into news and then a general update on how I feel the year will play out.

• Demon's Thr...
  2022-01-10 01:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Heretic Spellblade 4 - Detailed Commentary

Heretic Spellblade 4 is out and the response so far has been phenomenal. It’s a gratifying feeling given how much work it was, particularly over the Christmas/New Year period. This book is, for me, my greatest achievement as a writer given it tied up an arc, had appropriate climaxes, and proved to myself that I can pull off long-term planning for my books.

This post will include broad commentary on Heretic Spellblade 4, including many of the editing decisions I made (and didn’t make...

Heretic Spellblade 4 Cover (High Resolution)

As always, enjoy the high resolution cover of the new Spellblade and of Alice. It's a gorgeous image of her and does a great job of riding the line between fanservice and being a great fantasy cover.

I've also included the initial line draft of the cover, which I mentioned months ago (don't worry about the text - the heading was for reference and the DT covers were long finished by this point). It definitely had a much sharper feel to it but I loved it.

One of the things I love ab...

Heretic Spellblade 4 is Live!

Heretic Spellblade 4 appears to have gone live now and kicks off 2022 with a bang. The civil war rages, twists and turns take place, answers are given, and Nathan is tested. As you might expect, a few new fun characters appear.

Get it from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09P74YCR6

I’m sure you know the drill: please leave a review, as they’re always important and I do enjoy reading them. They�...

2021 Messenger End-of-Year Update

It’s the end of the year and I figured I’d do a special wrap-up of sorts, plus some commentary on a few writing matters. The first few sections will focus on my ongoing series, and I’ll gradually progress into more “author” topics, so you can tune out if you aren’t interested in those types of topics. I've restricted this to Messenger-level patrons because it includes some fairly detailed commentary that I'm wary of talking about at all (in general, I stopped talking about this mo...

Heretic Spellblade 4 - Ch15 Deleted Scene

[this is an alternative to Ch15, although I’m not posting the entire Chapter]

When they awoke in the morning, it was in a sticky mess. Fei’s cabin lacked a bathroom. Indoor plumbing was an extravagance that didn’t exist out here, and beastkin lacked the nudity taboo of humans.

“I’m not bathing in a creek,” Sen said.

“There’s a small bath hut in the village, but…” Fei trailed off with a frown.

“Yeah, I’m not going there either. Every time I join ...

Heretic Spellblade 4 - Map Update

Another book. another update to the map. I meant to post this earlier in the day, but got distracted and forgot to schedule it.

This update just breaks down the Anfang Empire into subfactions. From the descriptions in the chapters, I imagine it's difficult to visualize who controls what, so the map should make things clearer. You get a pretty good idea of how the archduchies break up the Empire here, as well (Milgar controls more land to the south, but it makes more sense for defensive ...

Combined December Patreon/Public Update

Given it's December, I figured to just do a combined Patreon and public update. If you want to see the bog-standard public update, you can find it on my website or FB - I guarantee that you know about them if you're here.

The big news is that Heretic Spellblade 4's release date will be the first week of January. Although the book is actually shaping up pretty well, I'm worried that there'll be plot holes, pacing issues, or some other problem due to the many complexities it's trying to h...

Demon's Throne Cover Updates

When I posted the Spellblade 4 cover, I mentioned that I wanted to do better typography for my future series. Well, I kind of lied, because I decided to update the typo for Demon's Throne, an existing series. (For reference, typography refers to the words on covers, among other things).

The Demon's Throne typography has bothered me for a few reasons that I won't get into. Updating it to reflect the quality of the art on the covers makes me very happy. The title actually stands out from ...

Dystopian Billions - WIP Ch1-4

These are the first few chapters of a story I'v

Heretic Spellblade 3 Audio is Out

The latest audiobook for Heretic Spellblade just released on Audible. It’s another 17 hours of Stephanie’s great narration, so be sure to check it out if audio is your thing. As always, reviews are appreciated and I hope you like it enough to share it with others.

Book 3: https://www.audible.com/pd/Heretic-Spellblade-3-Audiobook/B09JHGX9VY

I’ve also provided links to ...

Heretic Spellblade 4 - Ch1 - 3

And we're off. This batch is posted together be

Heretic Spellblade 4 - Cover

Like with Demon's Throne, there's been a change in artist. In this case, the shift in style is more substantial but the previous covers had an incredibly strong style as it was, so trying to match that was foolish. I like the new cover, and it should enable some different designs with future covers as well. In an ideal world, artists would never change, but such is life.

The cover character is Alice. Ciana was originally planned, but Alice proved surprisingly popular on a poll done earl...

November Patreon Update

Demon's Throne 2 is out and it's close to the one-year anniversary of the release of Heretic Spellblade. As mentioned in the DT2 release post, a huge thanks to everyone who's read my books, and especially to everyone supporting me here. The Patreon has been a little rocky and I'm making some changes to make it more sustainable going forward. I expect this to be the last time I'll talk about the Patreon itself for the foreseeable future.

If you only care about the news update, you can sk...

Demon's Throne 2 - Detailed Commentary

Demon’s Throne 2 is out and I hope people are enjoying it or have enjoyed it.

This post will include broad commentary on Demon’s Throne 2. As such, it is loaded with massive spoilers. If you haven’t read the entire book, come back later. This post will be waiting for you.

Before I jump into things, I’ll briefly mention a couple of things. First, I’ll be minimizing discussion of the writing process of the book �...

Demon's Throne 2 Cover (High-Resolution)

Now that the book is out, enjoy a high resolution version of the cover (and Mina). This is the same resolution that I upload to Amazon. I've also included a zoomed-out version (which still has text on it) so you can see the fluffy tails a little better.

As mentioned in another post, the artist behind the new Demon's Throne covers is CGlas, although I believe he worked with another artist on this particular piece.

Demon's Throne 2 is Live

Rys is finally back in Demon’s Throne 2. There are more foxes, more demons, and a healthy expansion of Rys’s empire.

Get it from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KY24WXK

As always, please leave a review if you enjoy the book. I appreciate them and they make a huge difference to the success of a book (and I do read them).

This book clocks in at just slightly longer than Heretic Spellblad...

DT2 - Final Edits

We're pretty much at the end of the Patreon chapters, and I'm making one last round of edits to try to fix some pacing issues. This book has ended up spiraling away from the "quick and easy" book I wanted to pump out, but let's not go into that.

I won't detail a lot of the minor changes here, such as Graem being more antagonistic toward Rys in Mave's PoV chapter, Maria showing up a little more, or some adjusted lines from Mina and Fara. This is about the broader strokes.

General ...

2021-10-25 02:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Public October Update

I’ll try to keep this short and sweet, so let’s jump right into the news.

• Demon’s Throne 2 will be out right at the end of the month. I’m targeting the last weekend, so sometime between the 29th Oct to the 1st Nov. If you're a patron, you've already seen the cover.
• The audio for Heretic Spellblade 3 is out for pre-order on Audible! Release date is 23rd November. You can see th...
  2021-10-16 12:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Demon's Throne Pacing

I figure I'll try to make a Messenger post each weekend, while posting early chapters on weekdays.

This one is about the general pacing problems I've bumped into with Demon's Throne 2. I don't know if I'll do a full editing notes dump for this book, for various reasons, but I figure to go through this as a bit of a general talk.

I've mentioned before that I write my novels in a three act structure, and that hasn't changed. The trick is that the three acts are supposed to flow toge...

Demon's Throne - Very Early Cover Previews

I have a bit of a surprise today, and that's early cover previews for the entire Demon's Throne series. I'll repost these separately as I come to each book over the next year or so (and high-res versions too), but you can see them all now if you're interested. I've also included a single picture with all the covers combined, including the first book done by Caterina.

I worked with the artist CGlas for these covers - you can find him on basically every artist and social media platform. I...

Demon's Throne Stats and Char Sheets

An oddity about Demon’s Throne is that it has a number of stats and character sheets to track behind the scenes, despite otherwise being a narrative-driven series. These relate to the source material, and I chose to preserve this particular facet when rewriting it.

I have a gap between the sort of content that I read and what I write. I like to read litrpgs and isekais, but I don’t like writing them. For isekais, it’s because I find the trope to be pretty tired (there’s a reason...

September Patreon Update

I imagine most of you saw the other post, but I'll reiterate it anyway. Given my inactivity, next month is free of charge for existing patrons. More on this later.

The update itself is fairly brief.

• Demon's Throne 2 is finally entering the home stretch. It's longer than I intended. It'll be out in October, but final date will depend on when I send it out for beta reading.
• Demon's Throne 3 will be the next book, and basically continues on after DT2. I'll worry about ...
  2021-09-27 04:54:48 +0000 UTC View Post

Quality

This is a bit of a rambly post, but I feel it covers some thoughts about how I approach writing and the books, as well as the current state of things.

One of the constant pressures in self-publishing is the contest between quality and quantity. A lot of advice is given, from many corners, to publish as often as possible. This is, technically, good advice. The downside is that it's difficult to maintain quality when you're pumping out books at a rapid pace. I stopped reading online seria...

Heretic Spellblade Cover Art Poll

So, this update comes with good and bad news.

The poll at the bottom lets you vote for which characters you want to see on the next two books of Heretic Spellblade. I originally wanted to put Ciana on Book 4 and Vala on Book 5, but have the chance to revisit this choice.

The reason is that I'm changing artist for Heretic Spellblade. The cause is personal to the artist, and I'll respectfully not disclose it. Let's leave it at that. As fantastic as her covers have been, life goes on...

ACR - Ch9

The discussion dragged on for another hour and made little progress on the true details. Lyle focused on gathering data on the birdgirl “not-flock” now that he had their trust, or at least enough for them to speak openly.

“I think I have enough to start working on a design,” Lyle said as he stood. It was well past noon now, and he wanted to be back before the sun began to set. “One of you should visit my homestead shortly so we can talk specifics and go through some of the bas...

ACR - Ch7 Uncut

This is the original version of version of Chapter 7, with the explicit egg-laying stuff left in. It's otherwise the same as the normal one. I'd argue it's fairly tame, but I don't think I should be the one saying that.

Yes, you read that right. If that's your thing, or you want to experience the story without edits made to weird people out less (this is a genre where people have implied that basic catgirls might be bestiality, after all), then you don't need to read the Bastion version...

ACR - Ch8

“I want you to tell me what that was all about,” Felife said. “Then we can talk about the flock.”

“Felife,” Itria mumbled, poking the smaller birdgirl in the side.

The two had a rather obvious knight and princess relationship—Felife was the knight, and Itria the princess. Lyle wondered if there was something behind that.

The Vierfach dozed on the floor by Lyle’s feet, occasionally letting out murmurs or poking their tired faces up to see if talking had finish...

ACR - Ch7

A birdgirl stood inside the house. She was dressed far more elegantly than almost any monstergirl that Lyle had ever met or seen. He was unfamiliar with how to describe the sort of outfits worn by nobility, but this certainly came close. She wore a sheer one-piece dress and a decorative jacket. The material of the dress looked like some form of thin silk and hugged the birdgirl’s figure tightly. At the same time, it left a lot of that figure out in the open.

This birdgirl must be Itri...