Ch. 85 - The End of Days (part 1)
It was a tense, still twilight, but when dawn first colored the horizon, nothing happened. Not right away. It wasn’t until the upper limb of the sun made its way above the horizon and slowly colored the muddy waters of the Oroza with dawn’s morning light that an errant sunbeam made its way to the temple and searched for the missing piece of itself.
The light would have expected Siddrim’s champion to be standing outside tri...
2023-09-18 14:02:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 63 - A Little Mistake
The answer proved to be zero, as it turned out. Without magic, he might have lost all of his digits, of course, but with a few applications of lesser healing, Simon was able to turn all his toes and even his blue and black nose back to a healthy pink color. That was great, of course, because he was fairly certain he would have hit the reset button and started this run-over if he had to cut his own nose off. That was too disgusting for words.
The home he...
2023-09-18 13:59:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 84 - The Circle
Despite the titanic conflict that was taking place between two inhuman powers, it might have been any other day as far as the world was concerned. Barges passed through the canal, craftsmen plied their trade, and though people still loitered around the temple of course, wives still served dinner, and men washed off the grime of the day. The only things that were amiss in the last few hours before sunset were the black water fountaining from the top...
2023-09-11 14:02:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 62 - The Right Tool for the Job
It took another three months before Simon felt like he understood what he was doing before he finally completed the enchantment on his sword. Unlike the armor and the scabbard, which had done nothing to confirm that he’d actually done what he set out to do, the flames of his weapon sprang immediately to life.
Simon instantly shoved it into the scabbard, and only once that seemed to extinguish it did he finally breathe a sigh...
2023-09-11 13:58:59 +0000 UTC
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So, as I enter the home stretch on Re-Entry editing, I've decided to start working on covers. So far, I can't say I really love either approach, but hey - you've got to start somewhere. As most of you know, this will be my first self-published novel, and I hope to release it within the next month or so. First, the blurb:
Re-Entry is a hard sci-fi novel with a focus on realistic technology and fast paced action sequences, featuring Sergeant Emanuel Guthrie, a sold...
2023-09-10 17:18:55 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 83 - Devoured Whole
It had taken the Lich more than a decade of planning before the first stone for this complicated building had been laid. Hundreds of souls had labored on the subject until they ceased to be, though. Dozens of bright men and women had set themselves to the impossible task of building this singular work of art, and all of them had perished after moving it only a few steps forward because of the dozens of contradictory goals it had to accomplish.<...
2023-09-04 14:01:59 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 61 - Threads of Magic
It was only when Simon began to sew the runes of cold protection into the rabbit fur-lined gloves that he had made that he even understood that he’d need to sew the runes of fire protection as well. Until that moment, his plan had been to make a set of cold-resistant armor and a fiery weapon, but then, as he imagined how he would use them both, he recalled the frost sword that the skeleton knight had wielded against him so many times and pi...
2023-09-04 13:58:00 +0000 UTC
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I will probably save the more retrospective post for new years, but I just wanted to put it out there that I have now been posting my stories online for a year. Letter of the Law technically started at the end of July, and Tenebroum and Death After Death started in Early September but last August is really when I started writing hard every day behind the scenes.
Back then writing hard meant 1000-1500 words in a day, and now it's more like 3,000, but hey - you ...
2023-08-30 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
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2023-08-28 14:03:00 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 3 uses up all my words for the month, so no more audio chapters until after they refresh on September 19th.
2023-08-28 14:02:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 82 - Divine Fury
The altar glided to a stop, fixing in its original place as the hunched figure began to laugh. It was a rasping, dry sound that sounded utterly forced. That only made it more bizarre, though. Then the thing began to point at Siddrim’s avatar, though it did not hesitate.
Instantly, the room filled with light as a blazing pillar of holy light descended from the oculus in the roof and consumed the dark creature in a cascade of divine retribut...
2023-08-28 14:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 60 - One Step at a Time
Once Simon was well enough that the village’s matriarch began to find an excuse to ask him when he was going to be leaving almost every day, he rented a cottage outside of town where he wouldn’t have to see her as often. He still needed to visit Rivenwood two or three times a week, though. Not only did he rely on the townspeople for food as always, but no matter how careful he tried to be with his targets, he was always going back to th...
2023-08-28 13:58:01 +0000 UTC
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My next story, Broken System starts out pretty dark, though perhaps not quite as dark as Tenebroum, where someone is stabbed to death in the opening sentence. As a result, I've been giving the concept of what makes a story too dark a lot of thought. Lots of relatively light movies have terrible things happen in them, but the audience doesn't bat an eye.
Shield Hero certainly falls into this category. [Spoilers] In the second epi...
2023-08-23 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
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This chapter was extra-long, at almost 12 minutes. I had to do a couple attempts for some of the lines, but I'm very happy with how it turned out. Let me know what you think of the dialog.
2023-08-21 14:02:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 81 - Incarnated
Even as he ran up the stairs, Todd was sure that something would grab him and drag him back down into the darkness. It was inevitable. This had all just been a game, somehow. Monsters like this would never let him free. They would just torment him, and all he could think about was the mocking creature with the tentacles he’d seen earlier and how easily it could grab him and rip him to pieces just like it had done to everyone else.
That’s ...
2023-08-21 14:01:03 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 59 - Not Dead Yet
The next week was a blur for Simon, but it wasn’t any fun. He tried to remind himself that the previous week he’d spent mostly unconscious, though, and this was a step up, but it didn’t help. He’d finally tried his hand at healing the skin and the bone of his wound, so he didn’t have to wear the bulky bandage anymore, but it had only elevated the pain and earned him a scornful look from the village healer when she’d inspected his woun...
2023-08-21 13:58:00 +0000 UTC
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So, this is the first chapter of Tenebroum's audiobook. It's AI, and it's not perfect, but for what it is I'm kind of blow of away at how it turned out. Currently I have the $5/mo subscription with Eleven Labs. So, that's enough word to create about a chapter a week, which is a good initial goal.
If this is something that people really enjoy though, and I get a few more subs, I will try to justify the next level up, which is $22/mo. That would let me do 10ish chapters a m...
2023-08-16 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 80 - Kingdom of the Dead
The next few minutes of Todd’s life were stark terror, and he remembered nothing of them beyond his surprise that he didn’t hear that massive legion of the dead mobilizing to follow him. Instead, the silence was almost deafening as he raced back to the chapel and from there to the surface.
At least, that was the plan. The chapel wasn’t there, though. Even though he was sure he’d walked here in a straight line, the way back wa...
2023-08-14 14:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 58 - A Broken Man
Simon woke up slowly, and feeling the lumpy bed beneath him, he sighed. Despite all that, he’d been returned to his cabin, which meant that he was dead again. Only, if that was true, why was he still in so much pain?
His eyelids shot open at the thought, and he stared up at the ceiling. It was not his ceiling, though. This one was thatched instead of shingled. It took him a moment to notice that he was only seeing it through one eye, thou...
2023-08-14 13:58:00 +0000 UTC
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So as anyone on the discord knows, last week I wasn't around because of a personal emergency. Things are resolved, but if you ask me, the real tragedy is that I wrote less than 8k words last week. Soooo - that's why we make buffers right? To use them?
So, I'm halfway caught up on comments, and I'm back to the grindstone when it comes to writing.
Despite the fact that Tenebroum is the most popular of my stories, I continue to marvel at Death After Death late...
2023-08-09 13:59:59 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 79 -Cautious Decent
The hallway that left the well they’d descended quickly split again and again, branching in all directions. There was no danger of getting lost just yet, though. This wasn’t just because of the river of darkness he followed as his heart pounded in Todd’s chest. It was also because all of the side passaged quickly developed an unfinished and irregular look to them. Only this main passage had been carefully fitted with red tiles and gold tr...
2023-08-07 14:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 69 - The Eternal Flame
Even as the first waves of dwarves charged at him, the Lich began to flex and move in the unfamiliar body. It had only been the last few months that it had begun using drudges to practice walking and moving for the day when it finally had a body again. Not that it saw a need for such things normally. It was more efficient for it to sit there on its throne as the nerve center for the vast web of activity than to focus all its attention on a single place like ...
2023-08-07 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 57 - Can’t Turn Away
When Simon arrived at the next level, he could still hear the golem thundering and crashing impotently beneath him. The thing was bigger than the portal, so he doubted it could even make it across to follow him even if it could get up here, but out of curiosity, he shut the door, and the rumbling instantly ceased. When he reopened the door, though, the stairs he’d come up were replaced by a different set that looked much less precarious.
2023-08-07 13:58:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 78 - The Fourth Horseman
Passing through the shadows back to the Lich’s lair was a miserable experience for Krulm’venor. During that brief trip into the dark, he felt like every bone in his metal body had its marrow replaced with ice, and even though the process was almost instant, he felt deeply disoriented by the lingering feeling that he’d been lost in the darkness between Mournden and summoning circle the Lich had built on the fourth floor of its ever-expanding lair for ...
2023-07-31 14:02:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 68 - Mournden
Though he did not know whether the Lich left him for a week or a year, his screams echoed through the dead city for a long time as Krulm’venor suffered in the same way he’d made his own victims suffer. He’d always enjoyed the brief screams that his victims would make until their lungs were too charred to breathe anymore, but the fire god was given no such relief. Instead, he screamed for an eternity in the dark, and the goblins trapped in his body with him feas...
2023-07-31 14:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 56 - Secrets
The first time he’d been in this cave, he’d stumbled through the darkness toward the same sounds of chanting as he was now, but he’d been cocky. He hadn’t thought the mage, warlock, or whatever the old man was hadn’t looked like much, and that had almost cost him a death with the giant stone golem rumbling out of the darkness.
This time, he was more circumspect, and no matter how much his anger made him want to go deeper into the pit a...
2023-07-31 13:59:00 +0000 UTC
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So, this week several interesting things happened.
- After 13 months of writing, I finished Letter of the Law. Feels good. Patrons will see that Monday, and the general public will see it in ten weeks, but it's officially done. So, feedback on this is welcome. I will let it rest and then start editing in a couple months for an eventual release as a completed novel sometime next year. It wil be a pretty heavy edit. I expect to remove at least 20k words.
- I finishe...
2023-07-28 13:33:30 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 77 - Well of Darkness
What had just happened was impossible. Even stranger than the fact that the altar had suddenly vanished to some secret basement beneath the temple or that Brother Verdenin had vanished with it was that everyone seemed to listen to the priest’s words. For the better part of the last hour, they’d all stood there raptly, hanging on every word of the ceremony.
No sooner had Brother Verdenin spoken, though, than everyone started to crowd forward, eager t...
2023-07-24 14:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 67 - The Shadow of Dishonor
It was on the night of winter’s first full moon while he was bathing deep in the pits of warm mud in the place of honor he’d earned that Tsson’vek saw what the darkness had done to the drake he’d killed years before. Its once-mottled scales of emerald and olive green had been transformed into a shimmering coat of inky blackness, and its wings had multiplied, but he was still sure of what he saw.
The fearsome hunter that had been a living e...
2023-07-24 14:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 55 - Get The Behind Me
“You’re not going to invite your friend to join us?” the demon asked as soon as Simon turned around. “I don’t generally prefer my meals well done, but I could make an exception.”
He was dressed the same as he was all the times before, but he’d gotten a table from somewhere and was enjoying a nice meal of roasted pheasant on fine china. Simon noted that the silverware was made of gold and wondered if that was the demon being...
2023-07-24 13:58:01 +0000 UTC
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