Patreon Update 5-7-26 (Patreon)

Hey everyone, thanks for sticking around for another dungeon diving. You guys asked what Crimson's class was, and I caved. Admittedly, she was in my notes an agility-based executioner, and I resolved it into 'Slaughterer' as I revealed her class during this book.

Otherwise, things went pretty well. I worked very hard for my one exposure of Ken's stats, and he's still slightly ahead of the curve, but not overly so. His real strength comes from Sovereign Mandate and True Demon Form being able to significantly boost his stats, as well as Liminal Speed's infinite scaling.

On the note of Liminal Speed, I have seen multiple people comment about Ken going and getting all of the trial abilities. I believe I mentioned it several books ago when we talked about trial abilities, but it is not my intention for anyone to be able to have multiple trial abilities. It is solely one trial ability per person. I am so deeply sorry if you had other plans.

Otherwise, things are pretty much continuing as I was expecting for these books. The goal here was to evolve the Threadspawn threat and give them some meaning or purpose behind why they are evil. I think I accomplished that nicely, as well as re-exploring the drow and making sure to highlight them as a wonderful villain for some upcoming parts of the series.

A lot of people have put the expectation out there that I'm going to write 16 books, and admittedly at this point I am trying to fulfill that. I will do one more Year Three. I know time-lapse wise I didn't specify a whole lot during this book. That's actually one of those things that's hard to keep track of rotating in and out of the different series.

During the end of the semester, there's probably going to be a lot of people getting trial abilities — Harley probably begging Ken to help her find the dove that gives Fount of Life, and I'm certain some other shenanigans. Des is going to go for her demon upgrade, which is going to be an exciting adventure. Charlotte goes for her own Boundless Mana. There's going to be a big focus on growth for Ken and company next book. We'll probably revisit the Nekorians, and they will likely begin to assist in some of the drow attacks. I didn't really put it on the page, but the Nekorians obviously had Threadspawn in them and are being dealt with separately.

I also need to have the president of the UG officially step down and give him a little more character in that moment, only for him to probably disappear for the rest of the series, if we're being completely honest, and for Director Amato to officially take her role as the new president of the UG.

But otherwise, that is all rolling forward. We are going to go back to Escaping Gravity, and you guys here on Patreon will get that. However, the ebook release will be delayed. I am going to be taking two weeks completely off of work, and at some point during these two months we're doing some traveling as a family. I am committing to not working for a good chunk of that. Traveling with two small children will be a lot. And thought I might want to, I really shouldn't bury my head in a book and try to work while leaving my wife with two children.

I will put out a little preface here without getting too much into it: I will likely be leaving Audible, or at least heavily deprioritizing it, in the next year. The long and short of it is that Audible is pushing a new royalty system. On the surface they're claiming 50% royalties, but as normal Audible likes very hard to understand royalty calculations. When you get to the actual math and examples, it's giving creators a real royalty rate of about 10–12%. Currently the real royalty rate is around 40%, so this new system is almost a quarter of what it previously was, which is frankly brutal. I'm heavily concerned for the industry, and for a niche like LitRPG, where authors may not be able to continue supporting narrators.

I'll likely release there after releasing on my own website using bookfunnel. We'll work on other non-audible options like spotify or kobo too. But I wanted to let so many of you who are avid audiobook fans know that this is happening, so you aren't surprised when I eventually start delaying audiobook released on audible.

On other fronts, webcomics still have no real big updates. Sorry about that — we're just going to leave it at a sorry and not stress it too much. I am very much working on trying to get that resolved.

Anyway, I'm going to push the business stuff aside, because that part of my life is not really what I enjoy. My wife still refuses to come be my business manager and handle the business side while I just write in a corner, which is a shame. One day, life goals.

I'm really excited about Escaping Gravity. I feel like I've set up a solid slow-burn mechanic with Lily, I've got the new style character arcs for this book mapped out and we're also going to answer a couple of the questions you guys have been asking.

I find myself increasingly sneaking into the Patreon Discord or reading comments and thinking, "Okay, if they really want to know and it's not something I'm trying to withhold, let's go ahead and do it."

I just love this community. I love how positive you all are, especially with some of the social media being so negative. I want to reiterate — I love you all. You are the best fans an author could ask for, and I'm going to do my best to give you the best stories I can.