ericdontigney

No new Vol 13 chapters today or tomorrow

Sorry everybody. There won't be any chapters today or tomorrow.

On a completely related note... For anyone who thinks that the best way to encourage more and better work from a writer, one who just told you they'll be burning the candle at both ends for a while, is to tell them that the thing they just spent months of their life on is pointless shit... You are wrong.

What that is super good at accomplishing is making an overtired person angry. You know, almost like there's a human...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 3 – Appropriate Bearing

“I always feel like a fool when we do this,” said Sen under his breath.

“It’s necessary. It projects the appropriate bearing,” said Master Feng.

Row upon row of soldiers marched ahead of him. He could see more rows of soldiers marching behind him in his spiritual sense. Sen himself stood on a qi platform, hands clasped behind him, moving at the glacial pace set by the soldiers. At least a dozen cultivators in the core formation stage flew in a tight ring around him. To h...

Update: Patreon Reducing Quality of Life Again

Just an FYI, Patreon is monkeying around with things under the hood and changing things to work less efficiently. So, expect problems like their help center not working, messages not posting, comments not posting, and probably payment issues. I literally have no control over this. I only discovered it because they nerfed a section of my dashboard to make it utterly useless. Just wanted everyone to be aware that these problems might happen.

Also, Patreon is pushing hard for all the creat...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 2 – Soon Enough

Something Sen had learned was that battling spirit beasts and battling other human beings was both fundamentally different and oddly similar. It just depending on which part of the battle one focused on. The differences were particularly stark at the beginning. The number of sapient spirit beasts was, apparently, trivial compared with the total number of spirit beasts. That very limitation made complex strategies difficult to carry out. Sapient spirit beasts could exert some level of control ...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 13: Chapter 1 – Sunset

The cultivator came running up to Sen with qinggong technique speeds. This was one of the handful of cultivators he’d personally, well, trained was too strong a word for it. He’d nudged them toward his better qinggong method with a vague idea to use them as couriers. Then, when they’d shown poor aptitude for the new technique, he’d promptly forgotten about them. It was only later that Lo Meifeng reminded him that people didn’t stop following a king’s orders just because h...

Baron Assassin: Chapter 16 (plus interlude)

While Varal was often direct, it wasn’t common for him to be quite so blunt. Most nobles would take immediate offense, and the commoners in his service would often infer that he was angry with them. Neither was a productive outcome. Yet, everything he’d seen from the knight and his wife suggested that bluntness was the way to go in this specific situation. Sir Vareks was clearly not a subtle man. Lady Vareks did seem more subtle, but also apt to overlook subtleties that didn’t suit her....

Update: Just a couple things

So, as seemingly always happens on my "week off" between volumes, nothing went quite as a planned. All of that productivity I was hoping for got swept away on a wave of migraines. I think i had four of them across seven days. Honestly, it's sort of blurry. I swear, it's like my brain waits for those between volumes weeks to really lay on the migraine pain. It's also possible that there's some allergen that was coming into season. However, that feels more like a reasonable explanatio...

Unintended Cultivator Volume 11: Bloopers

And here it is, the lost bloopers chapter! Enjoy! ~Eric

***

Boulder’s Shadow continued, “One cultivator wiped out the entirety of our forces at the city. One. Man.”

“You lie,” said the Beast King. “How could one man do such a thing?”

“He is the student of Fate’s Razor.”

The Beast King hissed and took a step back. All of the spirit beasts had heard the story of the disastrous trap and Feng Ming’s answ...

Apologies from Kat

Salutations! Kat here, I JUST NOW realized the previewed double sentence isn't actually preview and it's publishing direct to ya'll. I'm so sorry. I didn't take full account of ALL the updates that had been released, (nor had I been paying too close attention to my work- sheesh) I will be correcting that today and being much more mindful moving forward.

Just wanted to say I'm so sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. I don't always see the comments on posts, so if you see...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Bloopers

After a moment or two, Sen recalled something that he’d been meaning to ask about for a while.

“Did Laughing River ever ascend? I mean, I went through a lot of trouble to get that rock for him.”

“You mean that impossibly valuable spatial treasure?”

“Yeah, his special rock. Did he use it to ascend like he said he was going to?”

Her expression didn’t change. She just lifted her cup and took a sip of wine. Sen still felt something shift in the fox-w...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 71 – Like A Mountain

In contrast to the chaos and violence he’d experienced when arriving at Emperor’s Bay, leaving the city seemed strangely quiet to Sen. It was almost as if the entire city was holding its breath. Not that he was complaining about that. If fear was keeping people from doing foolish things that would require him to kill them, he was all for it. Of course, quiet wasn’t quite the same thing as calm. An army setting out from a city wasn’t a calm thing. Efficient, perhaps, but never calm. Th...

Baron Assassin: Chapter 15

It was a relief to both Varal and Aima’s parents when Jarem came in to announce that dinner was ready to be served. It gave all of them something to do other than reflect on what had just transpired between the father and daughter. By the time everyone was seated, had a drink, and the food was brought out, the moment had largely passed. The only hiccup was that Aima didn’t seem sure what to do with the gold coin. She kept taking it out and fidgeting with it. Fortunately, the food...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 70 – You Were Wise

Despite the fact that the orphanage and school only existed because of his word, Sen had spent almost no time there. There were reasons for that. Some of it was simply time. There were many demands on his time, and the hours when he might have visited were also hours when children should be sleeping. He supposed he could have gone and looked in on them anyway, but he found the idea vaguely distressing. Maybe it was just that he wouldn’t want a stranger looking at him while he slept, but he�...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 69 – Mechanisms

What remained of the local nobility and politicians stood before Sen. With one exception, they were pale-faced, sweaty, and wouldn’t meet his gaze. The magistrate stood alone among them in that he met Sen’s gaze without hesitation, as well he should. He’d proven where he stood and paid for it in pain. There were obvious marks of that pain in the man if one knew what they were looking for. Sen did. He’d treated enough sick and injured people to recognize what pain did to a person. The ...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 68 – Or In A Grave

Sen found himself both relieved and sad as he watched Uncle Kho fly off on a qi platform with Shui. The girl had not been enthusiastic, at all, about the prospect of being separated from him.

“It isn’t safe where I’m going,” he told her. “There will be a lot of those mean spirit beasts.”

I also don’t want you to see it if I’m forced to cull half the nobility of another city, he thought. A prospect that he’d foolishly let himself believe wouldn’t be nec...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 67 – Chaos

Sen wasn’t sure where to direct his attention. His first instinct was to look at Shui.

“Again!” she shouted with the kind of enthusiasm only a small child can muster.

Master Feng, who the girl had immediately decided was a nice old man and promptly adopted as her own, had been flying Shui around on what Sen was pretty sure was a cloud of air qi. It was actually a great idea, and probably safer than let her ride around on a qi platform the way Sen had been doing. Of course, t...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 66 – The Great and Mighty Imperial Lu Clan

There was something truly odd about watching an army prepare to leave in Sen’s opinion. There had been at least semi-orderly rows of tents, makeshift paddocks for the officer’s horses, and a frankly staggering amount of wood smoke. Now, it looked as though someone had disturbed an especially large anthill. Bodies were moving in what, at first glance, appeared to be random directions and cross purposes. Yet, bit by bit, the tents were coming down. Gear was being stowed in packs, and...

Baron Assassin: Chapter 14

It only took Varal one look at the condition of the Jareks’s estate to recognize the true desperation of their current plight. Pains had been taken by someone to keep the gate and exterior of the walls clear, but the interior told another story. The grounds were largely overgrown, no doubt because the knight could no longer afford the servants required to tend them. There was a lone guard at the gate, and he looked to be well past his prime. Although, depending on whether the man had magic,...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 65 – The Strength To Do What Must Be Done

Sen hesitated at the door for a long moment. He knew the visit was necessary and unavoidable, but that didn’t make him eager for it. Like most unpleasant, necessary things, he also realized that putting it off wasn’t going to make it more enjoyable. Lifting his hand, he knocked on the door. Someone could have been sent ahead to announce him. It was probably the right way to handle things given his position now, but he didn’t want to cause havoc in the household. A woman opened the door ...

Unintended Cultivator Vol 12: Chapter 64 – You Can’t Fix It

“They’re already calling it The Night of Widows and Orphans,” said a pale-faced general.

Sen had noticed that all of his mortal generals had suddenly found much more patriotic and dutiful versions of themselves in the last two days. He didn’t know if it was the sheer brutality of what he’d done or the thoroughness with which he’d done it. It hadn’t been meant as an object lesson for the military’s leadership. It had been intended as a message to the remaining no...

Baron Assassin: Chapter 13

Yup, the writing brain is back in gear. Once I got going, it really got going. I wrote this and my brain wants me to write another chapter because of course it does, but it's 3am here. So, i'm gonna call it a day. But, more for you to enjoy! ~Eric

***

“Is there a reason we’ve stopped?” asked the baron. “We can’t possibly be there, yet.”

Daran glanced out the window. There wasn’t much see in the winter darkness, but he knew the...

Final Con-Plague Post

Okay, the con-plague seems to have worked its way out of my system after several days of not doing much but sleeping. My attempts to write yesterday were...less than stellar. Here's a representative sample of what it was like:

The big bloody mess was messy. It made Sen scowl...scowlingly. The people fluttering around him like fluttery birds also made him scowl...scowlingly. Sen put on his extra-mean mean face and scowled around, which made the flutter-people stop fluttering.

I'll ...

Baron Assassin: Chapter 12

It literally took me until today to finish this one chapter. That tells you how well trying to write yesterday went. But, I think I've kicked my brain back into writing gear now. in the meantime, enjoy! ~Eric

***

Varal turned his attention to Daran and asked, “What did you learn?”

“Well, it’s definitely not a normal turn of the economy. The knight is being targeted, and he’s being targeted by people who are far too suspicious fo...

Con-Plague Update and UC1 German translation

As promised, here is the con-plague update. I am feeling better...ish. However, I also spent most of the last 24 hours sleeping, dozing, or napping...and I'm still feeling tired. I'm not coughing constantly anymore, but my entire torso aches because of all the coughing I was doing. So, the current level of coughing actually hurts more, even though its happening less. Which just seems super-unfair to me.

I also realized that aside from doing a load of laundry and forci...

Home alive

Hey everyone. I made it back from Dragon Con alive and with only a small duffel bag’s worth of new books and stuff. That’s more of an accomplishment than it sounds like when you got floor after floor of vendors selling some really cool geek stuff.

Sadly, I also returned with con-plague. I’ll probably be fine or fine-ish enough to write tomorrow, but today I feel pretty crappy. Lots of coughing and general misery. I’m expecting to eat some soup, take some vitamin C, and probably ...