I soared toward the nearest tree and smashed into it with all the elegance of a deer carcass blowing off the back of a truck into a telephone pole. I didn’t know what to do, but my new body did. All eight limbs wrapped around the trunk and boughs as the tree swayed, raining debris. A confused snake hit me on the face and bounced away. To my surprise, I didn’t fall. My claws dug through the jungle hardwood like it was made of soft butter. When they felt like cooperating, the tentacles let ...
2024-02-09 02:11:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
So, yeah. I still wasn’t sure if I’d been Isekai’d or not, but I was definitely, one-hundred percent dead.
Tail lashing, I opened my menu and searched for some hint, some clue as to why I had been sent to frolic in ‘Sorvival’ of the Fittest. There were three menu tabs along the top of my character information window: Channel, Messages, and Odds. I clicked Channel first.
The Channel tab appeared above the other three screens. It was a streaming ...
2024-02-07 15:17:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
Good lord this has been a long time coming! I hope you enjoy the chapters. The first three are Free for all readers; everything after that is for paid patrons only.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One delightful sunny morning, I woke up on a beach: naked, alone, with no idea how I got there.
But you know what I DID have?
Tentacles.
Four of them. Each thicker than a be...
2024-02-06 21:13:07 +0000 UTC
View Post
There is a huge amount of worldbuilding that goes into Archemi and the other series I'm working on. For example, here's some of the worldbuilding for Voidhunter:
Key Concepts (in Federation Human terminology):
The Cycle: The Conformal Cyclic Multiverse, also simply referred to as Reality, or more poetically as the Ain Soph. Each universe generated within the Cycle is known as an Aeon, in line with Roger Penrose's mathematical concept of ...
2024-01-21 21:14:15 +0000 UTC
View Post
The flu is finally backing off. Thank goodness.
I'm 21k words into Archemi 7, and about 30k into The Black Garden. The 50% for that book is 37.5K, so nearly halfway there.
For comparison, the entire length of The Black Garden is about a third of a typical Archemi book. It'll be a compact 280 pages or so.
Brute Force 1 is complete at 145K words. It is being re-titled and rebranded to I Am Legion to prevent any Amazon mishaps from the pre-order they screwed up a coupl...
2024-01-19 21:59:36 +0000 UTC
View Post
This has been a productive month so far: the rewrite of Those Who Breathe Under the End is finished, my first complete short story in the Voidhunter: Lightbringer setting. I've packed on over 25,000 words (about 90 pages) of Brute Force 1. That book is getting a rename and a new cover, so I hope you're not too attached to the current name. We're 90.4% of the way finished on that manuscript now.
Archemi 7 is being worked on in the background and is sitting at just...
2023-12-24 05:31:48 +0000 UTC
View Post
The state of my projects. I'm very close to finishing Brute Force 1, which I'm finally getting done. I had a weird phobia of this project after some bad reviews on Royal Road, but I've finally gotten over myself and am plugging 2500 words a day on it.
There's actually quite a bit more of Archemi 7 draft than is on this spreadsheet right now, but I haven't included it because it's all rough and fragmented. I'm a messy writer; especially in the beginning of a book, I tend to write a bunch...
2023-12-11 04:39:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
First time posting Rin's character sheet, as some of her abilities had mild spoilers about Archemi's magic and artificing system (ie. the significance of ley lines) that I wanted to leave until later in the series. But you can get a rough idea how that works from her info :D
Some of her gear isn't listed here, nor her skills: there are a LOT of skills, which is where the strength of the crafter classes lie.
Rin Lu
Level 38 Mystic Weaponeer<...
2023-11-17 20:40:56 +0000 UTC
View Post
Karalti, the Black Opal Queen
Level 21 Young Adult Queen Dragon
==Stats==
Strength: 205
Dexterity: 198
Stamina: 220
Will: 103
Wisdom: 97
Intelligence: 72
HP: 6720
MP: 522
Affinity: Darkness/Life (Path of Alacrity)
2023-11-17 09:20:55 +0000 UTC
View Post
Our boy is starting to look pretty stronk.
Dragozin Hector - Dauntan (Tuun)
Level 43 Paragon of the Nine
==Stats==
Strength: 109 (+12)
Dexterity: 128 (+5)
Stamina: 62
Will: 147 (+25)
Wisdom: 73 (+10)
Intelligence: 68
HP: 3893 (+800)
EXP: 132,640 (8819 to next level)
Adrenaline: 1045 (+100)
==Gear==
The Spear of Creation
Soul-bound Light/Dark/Fire/Earth Elemental Weapon
2023-11-16 05:17:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
2023-11-05 04:55:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Sorry for the long time between updates. I'm working my tushie off on Archemi #7 and The Black Garden, as well as getting ready for the 20Books Vegas conference coming up soon. Now that my life has settled and my house is finally furnished, my creativity has come flooding back in. I'm hopeful I'll be able to start posting more soon for both those projects, as well as (finally) finish Brute Force #1.
Among the many large and small projects I have cooking is something I've been wanting t...
2023-11-02 00:20:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
I'm currently in the process of refining the blurb for Dragon Seed, and I'm curious: what do you all think about the rewrite compared to the current blurb?
New Blurb:
Would you risk it all to soar with dragons?
Hector Park, a combat-hardened veteran conscripted into the turmoil of the Third World War, now fights a war more personal and insidious — the battle against an unforgiving virus threatening to obliterate humankind. He has thre...
2023-08-29 02:40:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
The plan to retake Lovi wasn’t rocket science, though like all strategies, luck was a factor. Me and my crew had met up with the Vlachian 2nd Fleet at the border of Revala, bringing with us the dragons and two Destroyers carrying some of my own crack troops from Myszno: a hundred Knights of the Black Star, a heavy melee combat unit, fifty veteran Nightstalkers Assassins, and fifty of Taethawn’s parachute-trained commandos. They were my own personal backup in case shit went south. In the l...
2023-07-13 17:12:15 +0000 UTC
View Post
Five thousand feet below my position, the city of Lovi burned.
Pillars of flame boiled unchecked into the sky from the once-white towers of the Revalan royal palace. Muzzle flash from artillery lit up the streets in waves of twinkling lights, the rolling boom of mortars reduced to pops and bangs by distance. The simmering carcass of Ilia's defeated flagship, the Sol Invictus, still smoldered where it had fallen. Its magitech engines belched clouds of toxic smoke into the haze that hung ...
2023-07-11 18:25:24 +0000 UTC
View Post
After much blood, sweat and tears, the audiobook for Crowned in Black (Archemi Online #6) is now live on Audible!
Ignas Corvinus, ruler of Vlachia, has been ...
2023-07-01 06:06:20 +0000 UTC
View Post
I touched the Wardbreaker to my lips, holstered it, and drew my second gun: a Ruger 22/45. There was no magic on this short-barreled, small-caliber suppressed pistol. It was a tool for killing. I stepped in over the mess into a white marble hallway. Gilt mirrors, bad art, more marble tables. A cat bolted from one room to another; a door slammed further back in the house. I followed the banging and swearing, hugging the wall and swinging into the bathroom door for concealment when Semyon's pan...
2023-06-26 04:19:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
I breathed in deeply, scanning the greasy walls, and focused my will into a sharp point of intent. The faint dizziness from the climb helped me dissociate my vision, splitting it between the Material and the Metaphysical. On one level, I saw nothing but stained concrete and peeling metal railings. On the other, my vision swam with fine blue glowing lines that danced and glimmered like gossamer in sunlight. The threads formed a web over the landing and pulled back toward the door, bound to a s...
2023-06-24 04:23:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
In my dream, I smell the ocean.
I'm on a balcony, looking over a different sea. Not the Atlantic. Not Brighton Beach. It's a flashing, brilliant blue, the color of a kingfisher's wings. Behind me, a clinic. Leather and paper. Jung, Freud and Adler line the shelves. A place of peace and healing.
Then I hear him. Elegant knuckles rapping sharply on my desk. Tattoos and scars long faded, an old map of the life we've left behind. Pastries in a brown paper bag, because he knows I alway...
2023-06-18 19:51:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
Interrogation rooms were almost always interchangeable across all versions of Earth. White walls, white lights, one mirrored wall with dimly seen biosignatures on the other side. Only the locality, language and the sophistication of the technology varied: on this iteration of Earth, it was circa 2032 and the tech was about twenty years ahead of my own Earth at around the same point in its history. The doors were made of thick, translucent plas-steel instead of metal and glass, each hexagonal ...
2023-04-29 17:21:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
I closed the comms link with a thought, and turned back to the agitated, desperate people with my heart in my mouth. But Digger was on the ball, as usual. Before I even had a chance to call on them to evac, sonic compliance grenades were thrown in ahead of black-clad men bursting in through every entry and exit door. The north entry teams were humans, standard fireteams of four. The ones from the larger southern doors were comprised of three human soldiers and one robot. UMA Panteras. They su...
2023-04-04 18:14:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Voidhunter Mythos is a fantasy/sci-fi setting I've been working on steadily for the last several years. There will eventually be multiple books written from the perspective of this character, Sung Min-Joon, aka Angkor/Maru/Zealot/Oxpecker - a demon hunter and interdimensional assassin of Big Bad Evil things. Faith Healer is one of the short stories set in the VH Mythos.
Why do I seem to write Korean male leads? Hector Park from Archemi was in fact based on this ch...
2023-04-01 21:40:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
Five thousand feet below my position, the city of Lovi burned.
Pillars of flame boiled unchecked into the sky from the once-white towers of the palace. Muzzle flash from artillery lit up the streets in waves of twinkling lights, the rolling boom of mortars reduced to pops and bangs by the distance. The simmering carcass of Ilia's defeated flagship, the Sol Invictus, was still alight after weeks of neglect. Its magitech engines belched clouds of toxic smoke into the haze that hung over t...
2023-03-23 17:29:06 +0000 UTC
View Post
POG stands for 'people other than grunts', if you were wondering. The usually-humorous derisive term infantrymen use for everyone else. Treadheads are tank operators - or in Baldr's case, powered armor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The deadfall trap went off at around 0600 hours. The sound of the log smashing inside of the hut shook me awake: I had my weapon in my hand and was moving before I was even fully conscious.
...
2023-03-04 04:08:57 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hector finally reveals a brief history of his world, and the wars that formed a major backdrop to his life, and the development of Archemi itself...
-----------------------------------------------
It started raining in the early evening. The water was warm, at first, beating down like a luke-warm shower. But the sky was so heavily overcast that the water was frigid by ten pm, sheeting down over the land and slowing our pace to a crawl.
Even so, we couldn't stop - not until ...
2023-03-03 03:18:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
The quest had been listed as a 'normal' difficulty, but I was starting to think that was exaggerated as I watched the group of bandits from overhead. Perched in a mangrove-like tree, Karalti peering over my shoulder, I noted that at least five of the twelve guys down there were passed out drunk. That, and they were all Level 2.
"Man... I don't even know if we'll get any EXP from killing these guys." I groaned inwardly, careful not to make noise aloud. "They're fucking garba...
2023-03-01 00:30:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
By morning, I had a rough plan sketched out. That plan was to head east into Ilia and disappear into the wilderness for a month. We could wait and level up until Karalti was big enough to fly, and then the three of us would cross into the nation of Revala. Ilia’s neighbor was ruled by a queen who apparently hated Warden Scandiva's guts, and the country had successfully repelled the Order of St Grigori a few times over the course of centuries. The main issue was the distance. Archemi was BIG...
2023-02-26 04:06:37 +0000 UTC
View Post
Ever wondered where the Tidbit nickname came from?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ilian Barking Deer might have experienced any number of hazards while living in this war-torn, monster-riddled wilderness. However, a spear-wielding, mostly-naked Korean man hurtling out of the sky, wearing a baby dragon like a backpack, was probably not one of them.
A dozen cervine heads reared up in alarm, a fraction of a second too late as I landed with...
2023-02-23 19:08:04 +0000 UTC
View Post
And now, we go back in time to the end of Dragon Seed. What DID happen when Hector and Karalti first fled Fort Palewing?
A Patreon exclusive! Part 1 of 6.
------------------------------------------
The forests around Fort Palewing burned.
The flames created a false dawn, shrouding the woods in sick crimson light. Hot winds pushed us like a giant hand down a zig-zag trail beneath towering black trees, the firs and spruce that hadn't yet been consumed b...
2023-02-22 21:11:19 +0000 UTC
View Post
This contains character spoilers for Crowned in Black, so don't read it if you haven't read that book yet. One of several forthcoming parts of Those We Love, which shows some of the private moments between the main characters of Archemi.
-----------------------------------------------------
Mercurions didn't sleep. Not as such. Ebisa needed a scant two hours of rest, where she slipped into meditation and thought the words of power that shut her body down into tor...
2023-01-10 18:35:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
