ericdontigney

Unintended Cultivator V8: Chapter 4 – Challenge

Much as Sen hoped it wouldn’t turn out that way, the pace of their travel slowed considerably over the next week. The three that he had let go had not been shy about discussing their experience with, as near as Sen could tell, every single cultivator they ran across. With their location narrowed down, battles turned into a daily affair, when it wasn’t happening multiple times a day. Sen was keenly aware of how bad that was for his general sense of well-being and calm. His tendency to look...

Unintended Cultivator V8: Chapter 3 – Glimmer, in the Dark

Long Jia Wei just kept staring, and it made Sen decidedly uncomfortable. It might not have been so bad if the man had spoken but that didn’t happen. He just sat there, silent, and stared. To make matters worse, Shen Mingxia kept staring at him like he’d lost his mind. When it got to be too off-putting, Sen finally made a plate of food and shoved it at the, well, Sen supposed he was an ex-sect cultivator now. The man seemed startled by the food but took it. Once he was focused on the food,...

Unintended Cultivator V8: Chapter 2 – Cataclysmic Stupidity

Sen waited with growing impatience as the half-dozen cultivators who had been slowly creeping up on them froze in place. They all blazed like torches in his spiritual sense, which made him wonder why they had bothered trying to sneak in the first place. After a rapid exchange of murmured conversation, the group converged on what he assumed was their valiant leader. The group slowly moved forward until they stepped into the light cast by the fire. Sen eyed them all for a moment before focusing...

Unintended Cultivator V8: Chapter 1 – Back into the Jianghu

Shen Mingxia had learned a few things over the last week or so. One of the things she’d learned was about herself. Specifically, she’d learned about her terrifying ignorance of what it meant to travel through the kingdom. Having spent years traveling with Wu Meng Yao, she thought she understood the dangers and how to deal with them. That had been utterly false. She had little more than a functional understanding of the dangers one found when traveling strictly on the roads. That was somet...

General Update

Okay. So a few updates on various and sundry items of interest and non-interest.

First up, Volume 2 did well during it's first two weeks up on Amazon. Like exceedingly well. Which is just awesome! It's currently sitting pretty at about 572 overall in the Kindle store and is still #1 in Asian Myths & Legends, as well as Asian Myths & Legends Ebooks... Yeah, I don't know why that's two separate categories, either, but I'm good with it. The 'Zon does as the 'Zon wills. 2024-03-26 16:30:28 +0000 UTC View Post

Unintended Cultivator V7: Bloopers

“Falling Leaf, this is Laughing River and Misty Peak,” said Sen, gesturing at the foxes.

Falling Leaf inclined her head to Laughing River in a gesture of muted respect. She eyed Misty Peak askance for a moment before issuing a little sigh and nodding to the other woman.

“Hello,” said the ghost panther.

“Laughing River, Misty Peak, this is Falling Leaf. My friend,” said Sen, before he added something he thought was necessary. “I will note that, should I discover...

Normal Boring Adulting

Ever wonder what exciting, jet-setting things I, a mildly internet-famous author, do on my rare days off? Today, I’m sitting in a Firestone. Why? I’m getting the brakes done on my car, and probably a few other things. Shockingly, unlike in a movie, there are no models around for me to flirt with. Who knew that movies lied about what everyday errands were like?! I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you! (Shakes angry fist at Hollywood).

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 64 – Do It Again

For all that he had does his best to prepare her for it, and that he had made similar trips in the past, Ai seemed no more settled with the idea of him leaving than any of the other times he’d gone. She refused to let him out of her sight, or her grip, for any longer than absolutely necessary. She kept giving him sad eyes and a quivering lower lip without ever actually bursting into tears. She finally gave him a serious look.

“I want to come,” she declared.

For all that Sen ...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 63 – Oh, By the Thousand Hells

“And then the blue bird ate the bug!” exclaimed Ai as she mimicked a beak snapping shut with her hand.

Sen smiled as he listened and made sure to gasp loudly at her pantomime.

“Oh no!” he shouted. “The poor bug!”

Ai’s face scrunched up in thoughtful concentration for a moment before she shook her head.

“It was a yucky bug,” she announced.

“Oh, well, if it was a yucky bug, then it’s a good thing that bird ate it. We can’t have yucky bugs ar...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 62 – Observation

Sen stood motionless inside the shadow he’d wrapped around himself and watched as Wu Meng Yao conducted a class. Part of him hated to admit it, but he was pretty sure she was a better teacher. It wasn’t a matter of knowledge. He was, by all meaningful measures, the better swordsman. He understood the weapon better. He knew more about using it. But it was becoming clear that he wasn’t necessarily better at showing someone else how to use it. For direct instruction, she simply had a quali...

How to Lose Patrons and Alienate People (non-fiction)

Update 3/23/2024: It wasn't my intention to set off a flame war or turn the comments section into a referendum on the author in question. I normally take a hands-off approach with the comments section, but with the caveat that people refrain from getting abusively hostile with each other. Since it looked like that was exactly where the comments section on this post was headed, I've turned the comments off. ~Eric

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So, like most people, I have a few series that I like well enough...

Quick Update

Okay. So there's a decent chance that I'm going to be wrapping up Volume 7 either today or tomorrow. That means that, as per usual, once I finish, I'll be taking a few days off. New subscribers, that explosion of laughter you just heard came from all the long-term subscribers who know that my declaration that I'll be taking a few days off is about as legit as a $3 bill from the great nation of Funkotopia. In other words, while I don't think I quite meet the clinical definition of a workaholic...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 61 – Elsewhere

Li Yi Nuo had always thought of her sect as being rural. That was until she’d gone off to meet Sen’s nigh-mythological spear teacher. It had been a long journey. Longer than it needed to be. She found herself almost shaking with rage at the sheer number of times she’d been dragged into some problem that had absolutely nothing to do with her. It was like the cultivators in this part of the kingdom simply had no respect whatsoever for cultivators from other sects, even core cultivators. A...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 60 – Training Plans

The trees rushed by beneath him as Sen kept his qi platform moving at a steady pace. He didn’t try to go at full speed because he was relatively certain Sua Xing Xing couldn’t have kept up. Of course, based on the growing look of concern she wore the deeper Sen took them into the wilds, keeping up was not her main concern at the moment. She was watching the trees below and around them like she expected something to rise up and attack them at any moment. Sen supposed it was possible, but h...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 59 – Pressure

Based on the look that Wu Meng Yao was giving him, she clearly felt less confident about the plan than he did. He gave her a lopsided smile.

“What? I sense doubt. Do you question the wisdom of your glorious leader?”

“Yes. I do question the wisdom of leaving me in charge here while you’re gone for some indefinite amount of time,” said Wu Meng Ya before a hint of a smile crossed her lips. “If you could arrange an introduction to this glorious leader, though, I w...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 58 – Spear Talk

Uncle Kho wore a decidedly grumpy expression when he came out to the courtyard where Sen was waiting for him.

“Uncle Kho,” said Sen cautiously, nodding at the elder cultivator.

“You interrupted story time,” complained Uncle Kho.

“Story time?”

“Yes. Story time! I tell her stories about the adventures I’ve had, complete with tiny lighting people to act it all out.”

Uncle Kho held out a hand, palm up, where a tiny version of him made entirely of li...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 57 – Your Word Is Law

“It’s a protection amulet,” said Auntie Caihong, eying the small object critically. “It’s actually quite a good one. This would probably stop an attack from someone in the early nascent soul stages. Just one attack, mind you, but that can be enough to let you escape. Where did you get it?”

“I took it off that sect idiot I killed,” said Sen. “Which sort of begs the question of why it didn’t stop me from killing him.”

Auntie Caihong handed the amulet back to hi...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 56 – Stars

“They looked at me like a stranger,” said Sen, trying to keep the hurt out of his voice.

Falling Leaf turned her head to peer at him for a moment before she went back to looking at the sky. They were sitting on top of the mortal training hall, which had long since gone dark and silent for the day as everyone went home. The stone remained warm beneath them, despite the unusual chill of the night. Sen had retreated to the galehouse after telling the townspeople what had happened with ...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 55 – Just a Visitor

Almost the second they were out of sight, Sen dismissed the two cultivator he’d let go. They might become a problem down the road, but the dead thing on the ground in front of him was much more likely to become a problem. It had been a situation without a way to win. If he simply let them all go, it would signal weakness. He’d find himself hounded by entitled cultivators who would think they could come to the academy and do whatever they wanted. The other path was no more palatable, it ju...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 54 – The Truth

Lim Haitao bent every last bit of his self-control on maintaining a calm expression, yet, the question rang in his ears like a death knell. And just what was your task? The man called Judgment’s Gale had asked the question in a neutral tone. Too neutral. It was the pause before the hammer of disaster fell to crush the unworthy beneath its uncaring might. From where he stood, Lim Haitao felt decidedly unworthy, and the Judgment’s Gale felt far too much like a hammer poised in the ...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 53 – Thunderous Sky

Sen was in the middle of jian training with Sua Xing Xing when he felt the approach of several cultivators. Cultivators that he didn’t recognize by feel. Cultivators that even he might feel inclined to at acknowledge if his initial impression of their strength as accurate. That was always a little dodgy at a distance. While cultivators arriving at the academy wasn’t anything new, he had a premonition that this was going to be different. Different good or different bad, he wasn’t sure, b...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 52 – Shadow Walking, Part 2

Sen realized that there was absolutely nothing he could say to make things better. All he could do was make things worse. So, he said nothing. Better by far to just let her get whatever it was out of her system. Especially since he was pretty sure her instability came from not getting things out of her system a thousand years ago, or whenever the bad things happened, and keeping them locked inside her for centuries. With nothing but time to fester and a decided lack of people in her life to t...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 51 – Shadow Walking

Sen pushed, and pushed, and pushed to suffuse his body with shadow qi. After months of effort, he finally felt like he was teetering on the very edge of success, like all he needed was one last infinitesimal iota of strength, one last smidgen of insight, and he would finally achieve victory. However, it seemed the strength was not in him. That insight was elusive. He felt suspended there, as if he were a rope bridge pulled taut between opposing sides of a deep canyon. He could touch both side...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 50 – Shield

The messenger was ushered into the room, and the immediately look of fear on the man’s face told Sen that Shen Mingxia was right. The room was too stark and foreboding to be somewhere that good things happened. Those realizations simply furthered his intention to let her think that this whole thing was her fault. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that wasn’t the case. In fact, he’d been expecting something like this for a while. Not that he planned to tell her any that. Why waste a golde...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 49 – Consultation

Sen led Shen Mingxia over to the building where he kept most of the people who dealt with problems he didn’t want cluttering up his day. It seemed like there were more of them in there every day, some of them he had no memory of hiring, which made putting names to faces more than a challenge. As they walked through the space, Sen noticed that almost everyone was wearing a shade of blue similar to the robes he wore. It looked uncomfortably like a uniform to him. Everyone bowed and greeted hi...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 48 – Academy, Part 6

I guess it’s for real now, thought Sen. All along, he’d thought of the academy as something of a safer middle ground and a half-baked idea that he could abandon at a moment’s notice if it seemed like too much trouble. Once he’d decided to accept students, though, the hypothetical nature of the academy became a fixed reality. Not that everything had gone smoothly. Word had slowly spread to nearby towns and villages that there was a place to learn how to fight, which had meant ...

Unintended Cultivator Volume 2 Is Live

Okay, at least on Amazon US, Unintended Cultivator is live. If you've been waiting to grab a copy on Kindle Unlimited to see what, if anything, changed, you can find it here. 

Update 1: Check out this awesomeness...

Update 2: Holy crap! Top 50 on the Kindle store

2024-03-12 04:35:11 +0000 UTC View Post

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 47 – Academy, Part 5

Soon Zi Rui’s heart still thundered in his chest as he fled from the training hall. Never before in his life had he been so casually suppressed by another person. It had been an astonishing display of raw, unknowable power that would have been even more impressive if it hadn’t been directed at him. He didn’t even have a name for what Judgment’s Gale had done to him, let alone an inkling of how the man had done it. That pressure had been all-consuming, like a mountain...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 46 – Academy, Part 4

Sen had been making excuses to avoid this task. He knew he’d been making excuses to avoid it. Of course, it helped that his excuses were, by and large, to do things like go train with Fu Ruolan, train the townspeople, evaluate Wu Meng Yao’s true skill level and shore up some of her weaknesses. Most importantly to his way of thinking was spending time with Ai. In other words, he wasn’t inventing mindless goals or wasting time. It was just that he could have, at any point, taken a break f...

Unintended Cultivator V7: Chapter 45 – Academy, Part 3

Sen shook his head as he silently observed Wu Meng Yao trying to observe the galehouse. He’d been standing about three feet behind her for five minutes. He’d also been hiding. He realized it wasn’t a fair test, but she had been lurking a lot the last few days. Maybe it was because spring was just about there. He wasn’t sure if she wanted to ask him about the task he’d set her or if she was just curious, but the amusement value in the whole situation had long since faded. 2024-03-11 09:43:18 +0000 UTC View Post