Beginning Monday, March 24, I will be going on a two-week notification hiatus. Chapters will continue to be posted. A new chapter will still become available for each tier, Mon-Fri, as usual. There will simply be no emails or announcements about them. At the end of that hiatus period, there will be a poll. Members will be able to decide if they wish to continue with no notifications/announcement or want the notifications/announcements to resume. The poll will be decided on a majority basis of...
2025-03-21 20:10:59 +0000 UTC
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Sen allowed himself to bask the flood of words that came at him from both Ai and Zhi as their voices filled the galehouse. It almost felt like the girls were competing to see who could tell him the most stories. It started out innocently enough, with Ai recounting battles her never-ending war with the yucky bugs. Zhi talked about her mother and the things she was learning about sewing. Sen suspected that the sewing knowledge the girl was gleaning was basic in the extreme, but he supposed that...
2025-03-21 19:46:46 +0000 UTC
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When the last of the idiots who had attacked the city were finally marched by, Sen heaved a sigh of relief. The mind-numbingly boring, irritating task was complete. There was nothing left to keep him from his home. Before he could gather his qi to fly away, Auntie Caihong placed a hand on his arm while giving him a searching look.
“I am happy to see you, Sen, and Ai will be overjoyed, but why have you come? And why without letting us know?”
“I’d meant to come back quietly ...
2025-03-20 23:25:55 +0000 UTC
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James watched a fascinating, albeit alarming transformation in Sig the farther they got from Alvarence’s dilapidated-looking shop and the closer they got to the alchemist shop that the dwarf had recommended. Never exactly a fountain of words, the man appeared to lose the capacity for speech altogether while his expression grew increasingly belligerent. The part that James couldn’t figure out was what had caused this abrupt shift in the man’s behavior. While often taciturn, the mage had ...
2025-03-20 01:40:52 +0000 UTC
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Sen’s first impulse was to leave the bandit herding to other people. Auntie Caihong put a stop to that idea, although she did look regretful about it. She knew very well what he wanted to be doing at that moment.
“You have to stay,” she told him.
“Why?” he demanded, already suspecting the answer.
“It’s so they’ll all see you.”
He hated this additional delay but grit his teeth and nodded. She was right, of course. Not everyone who had been assaulting t...
2025-03-19 18:48:53 +0000 UTC
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Some part of Terry expected Kelima to come out of her tent in the immediate aftermath of his emotional breakdown. That would have been the most awkward possible thing that could happen at that moment. A real shit cherry to go on top of the shit cupcake that he’d just eaten. Well, on balance, he’d been eating those cupcakes since he arrived. He just hadn’t been quite so keenly aware of eating them as he was now. Yet, despite the perverse joy the universe seemed to take in heaping embarra...
2025-03-19 00:31:53 +0000 UTC
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Lao Da repressed an urge to slam his fist down on the makeshift table. When they’d set out from the north to escape the damnable spirit beasts, abandoning their small but comfortable sect compound, he’d assumed that taking this town would be easy. He’d dismissed the claims that it was a small city as the exaggerations of peasants who didn’t know better and merchants who wanted to drive up the prices of their goods. He’d been shocked when he found that it was indeed a small city.
...
2025-03-18 21:05:33 +0000 UTC
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This comes up every so often, so I figured it was worth taking a minute to address it directly.
So, just why is it that I don't sell copies of my books/ebooks directly from this page (or from some other website) aside from signed copies of physical editions? There are a couple of reasons.
The first reason is that most of the things that people would want to buy are also under contract with my publisher. In other words, I gave up my right to sell the books directly in exchange for ...
2025-03-18 18:10:43 +0000 UTC
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Okay, so, Patreon has succumbed to the will of Apple and instituted a bunch of changes regarding subscribing to a page through the Apple version of the Patreon app. Frankly, the changes are all bad for both subscribers and creators. First thing first, they're going to slap a 30% fee onto your subscription for every damn payment. None of that extra money reaches me or even Patreon. It's pure profiteering on Apple's part. What do you get for that extra money? Well, you get a bigger monthly fee ...
2025-03-17 20:28:34 +0000 UTC
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The rest of the trip back to sect passed in relative peace. Sen noticed a few stray spirit beasts, but most were deep in the wilds, alone, and didn’t seem particularly powerful to his spiritual sense. He contemplated pursuing them anyway. Just because they felt weaker, it didn’t mean that they were weaker. After all, he could make himself seem less powerful than he actually was. It only stood to reason that some spirit beasts might be able to the same. He also couldn’t be sure they were...
2025-03-17 20:05:00 +0000 UTC
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So, this is one of those ideas that just lodged itself in my brain and refused to go away. So, you guessed it. Random Chapter Time! Enjoy! ~Eric
***
“Absolute stealth,” Maxwell Periclides mentally commanded.
He felt a dull rush of power wash over his entire body as the blinding light faded away to reveal…
Oh, what a goddamn surprise, thought Maxwell. A throne room. He remained perfectly still ...
2025-03-16 21:36:45 +0000 UTC
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Hiya! This is Kat, signing in for trouble... or work. :) Like all good assistants, I'm basically running Eric now. Of course, like all writers, he has no sense of time or respect for authority...so, pray for me.
Anywho- please be patient while I'm getting up to speed. With any luck, I won't make too many rookie/newbie mistakes! If I do make a mistake, please feel free to send direct messages to Eric.
As a summer baby, and a true crab- I nest, and really do want to be helpful when...
2025-03-16 19:55:13 +0000 UTC
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Sen stood near the frozen-over pond where he’d once had a very tense conversation with a princess about why he wouldn’t help her. Sen tried to recall her name. He felt like he should remember the names of anyone he’d threatened quite that intensely. Hsiao Jiayi, he thought. That was it. As far as he knew, she’d returned to her nation over the Mountains of Sorrow. He wondered what she found there. Had she fallen in line behind the father she meant to kill? Had she use...
2025-03-16 00:32:42 +0000 UTC
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After gently kicking Kelima’s foot once or twice or seventeen times, Terry was forced to concede that the girl just wasn’t done sleeping off the aftereffects of the healing potion. It wasn’t really a surprise, but there had been the vain hope that youth would let her bounce back a little faster. Even so, it further soured a mood that had already been tanked by finding Dusk sound asleep on top of the unconscious noble. Terry assured himself that he wasn’t feeling possessive over hi...
2025-03-14 02:08:53 +0000 UTC
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By the time Lai Dongmei landed next to him a minute or two later, Sen was holding his nearly-severed leg in place as the bone, muscle, and connective tissues slowly grew back together. He hazarded a glance up at her. She didn’t look at him immediately. Instead, she surveyed the damage for a long moment. Sen glanced around and tried to evaluate it from the perspective of someone who had just arrived. It didn’t look great. That last exchange of attacks had left several small craters where s...
2025-03-13 07:10:10 +0000 UTC
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Sen had largely committed to not using fire in the fight. Of course, that decision had been based on the high probability that the odd spirit beast would likely be able to dodge or disrupt said fire. That would, in turn, endanger the sanctuary. An impression that still seemed reasonable, save for the fact that the creature was clearly disoriented. A fact that Sen was happy to take advantage of while it lasted. He swiftly plunged one of his jian into the ground and lifted his hand, palm facing...
2025-03-11 17:22:04 +0000 UTC
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I had my eye exam this morning. Great news! They let me keep my eyes! I was very relieved.
I discovered that my prescription was out of date in more ways than one. Sadly, it appears that I have reached that juncture in life when one pair of glasses just won't get the job done. I need one pair for everyday use and another for computer work and reading. Lucky me. I'm pretty sure this means that I am officially old.
2025-03-07 16:03:09 +0000 UTC
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Closing like that with an enemy he couldn’t see yet through the very lightning he’d conjured almost cost Sen his life. It had seemed like a sound enough strategy. He’d seized the initiative, or so he’d thought, and wanted to capitalize on it with some good, old-fashioned, relentless aggression. It was an effective means to keep the initiative in most cases. He’d also assumed that the lightning would serve as both a pain-based distraction and a visual shield for his app...
2025-03-07 08:34:20 +0000 UTC
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Good news. I found a place that can get me in for an eye exam first thing tomorrow morning. Hurray! Less great news for me is that my vision insurance, which is not part of my very expensive health insurance (self-employment sucks sometimes), had lapsed. I'm not sure when. I don't remember getting frantic emails from them the way you expect to when most subscriptions are about to lapse. Either way, it did lapse. So, I got to shell out to get it back and make it retroactively val...
2025-03-07 03:40:37 +0000 UTC
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So, like most people, I occasionally forget things. As I tried and failed to write through another migraine tonight, I realized this all felt familiar. I was chalking up these more frequent migraines to the weather, which really is a trigger for me. But, so is eye strain. And here we come to the crux of the matter. I realized that I haven’t had an eye exam or glasses prescription update in at least two years. Maybe longer. The last time I was having this many migraines, I needed new glasses...
2025-03-06 07:25:02 +0000 UTC
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When Sen had decided to leave an area of the wilds untouched for the spirit oxen, he hadn’t done it negligently. He had very intentionally made sure that there were no other spirit beasts remaining the area. Still, the fact that some other spirit beasts had successfully fled there was not entirely a surprise or shouldn’t have been. It had likely been inevitable. It was a vast tract of land. More than enough to support the spirit oxen until new growth took firm root in the spring. At least...
2025-03-05 09:33:48 +0000 UTC
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Hey, everybody! The Ask Me Anything on Reddit is live. If you want to participate, you can find it here.
Should run for about another hour or so.
2025-03-04 21:17:21 +0000 UTC
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Terry nudged Kelima with his toe for at least the tenth time, but the girl remained steadfastly, obstinately unconscious. He’d expected as much. Those healing potions were no joke. Still, it didn’t make her limp body any less of a problem for him. Sighing to himself, Terry tried to decide which annoying task to deal with first. There was, naturally, the problem of the unconscious girl. He could just leave her where she was for now. Then again, there were probably insects and invisible bea...
2025-03-04 06:11:02 +0000 UTC
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Sen only allowed a little of the wind to pass through the curved shield of air he’d put up. He liked to feel the wind on his face. Left to his own devices, he would have let it strike him without obstruction. He doubted anything short of crashing through a mountain or fighting another nascent soul cultivator would be enough to hurt him at this point. Unfortunately, at least one of the other two people on the qi platform didn’t enjoy that kind of durability. It was possible neither did, bu...
2025-03-04 06:07:46 +0000 UTC
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Well, it seems that the 'Zon's algorithm has decided all on its own that the physical editions of Unintended Cultivator Volume Five will go live early. So, if anyone was eagerly waiting to grab physical editions, you can get those here.
Incidentally, for anyone who just wants to leave a review for the book (which is always helpful and appreciated), you can leave one f...
2025-03-03 20:40:57 +0000 UTC
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He heard the door open, but Sen remained standing at the window. He’d watched the sky darken over several hours. The clouds from earlier in the day had persisted. So, there wasn’t a star to be seen. It gave the sky an ominous look, like the heavens had been swallowed by some all-consuming void and only, by chance, had left this one world behind. Sen knew that this melancholy wasn’t just about the executions earlier. Those had just been the last thing in a long line of things that had le...
2025-03-01 03:15:24 +0000 UTC
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With Volume 5 about to go live over on a week early, I need to get this out to the upper tier subscribers. I also need to put in some filler here so that the download link won't show up in the preview panel for this post. Okay, so, if you can access this post, it means that you're in a tier that gets the free ebook version when I publish something. You can grab it over on Bookfunnel at this link.
Since the boo...
2025-02-28 07:42:53 +0000 UTC
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Okay, first things first. The publication date of Volume 5 has been moved up from March 11th to March 4th. Hurray! That goes for the ebook and the audiobook versions, and probably the print versions as well if things happen as they usually do. So, if you pre-ordered them on Kindle or Audible, they'll show up next Tuesday. I promise that there's nothing sinister at play. Just a timing issue. My book could move and another book couldn't.
That does mean I have to move up my planned timing...
2025-02-28 07:34:28 +0000 UTC
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Sen took to the air on a qi platform to return to the palace. He could have truly flown and been there in a fraction of the time, but he wasn’t anywhere close to that eager for what came next. His only consolation was that this was the last time he would have to oversee such a thing in the capital for a long time. After this, it would fall to Jing to enact such justice if it could even be called that. He’d had several long talks with Jing, Lai Dongmei, General Mo, and even M...
2025-02-28 07:06:40 +0000 UTC
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The morning was overcast and the wind particularly bitter on the day that Kang was driven from the city. Sen didn’t allow him to slip away quietly, either. The former general had been dressed in peasant clothes. They were appropriate for the season but lacked all of the sophistication and refinement of his old clothes. The man had been given a pack with a tent, a few pieces of basic gear, and enough food to last for two weeks. From the way the man was bent, Sen couldn’t tell if the pack w...
2025-02-28 03:41:24 +0000 UTC
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