Patreon Update 6-30-26 (Patreon)

Hey everyone, thanks for finishing another novel with me! Escaping Gravity 2 was, like the first one, very fun to write. I do feel like I didn't give Ray quite enough time to let his intelligence shine in this one, but I did try to keep him more upbeat, which is the most critical part of his character for me. We can show his intelligence off in other ways.

I'm also very excited to have the egg hatch and Pip officially join the crew and of course, I'm sure some of you are very excited to have Minnie join in as well.

Now, there are some critical questions I'm about to get slammed with in my inbox, so I want to tackle those first.

Where is my audiobook for Escaping Gravity One?

I have a small story to tell. Jessica and Chris Boucher are parting ways, and sort of like a child with their parents breaking up both were asking to do my next series. So I promised the next one to Jessica, and the one after that to Chris. They're still working on Dungeon Diving and Returner's Defiance for me, though we have seen some delays, specifically with Ard's Oath 8. I'm hopeful those don't continue.

In the meantime, I gave Jessica Escaping Gravity and she found a male narrator to work with her, his name was Corvin King. Unfortunately, while I was away at a conference, a bunch of romance authors were talking about a narrator who was causing trouble. They were being polite about names, even though there was apparently some general drama available on social media that I don't and won't participate in. But when they said Corvin King's name, it stung.

Apparently, it came out in the last couple of weeks that a number of people have paid him some sort of booking fee, and he's simply not producing their audiobooks after taking their money, which is horrible. I came back from my trip, poked Jessica, and unfortunately, he had yet to deliver. Given what I'd just learned, we pushed, and he had nothing despite being almost a month late. So he's been kicked to the curb and we're finding someone new.

Right now we're looking at Jeremy Frazier I believe that's his LitRPG name; he had another name he did some early harem lit under, and I expect it'll likely end up released under that name unless his policy has changed. I'm sure I'll get a chance to badger him at a LitRPG con.

All in all, very unfortunate and that's going to create a significant delay for Escaping Gravity. While I'm sure there are some frustrations, there's just nothing I can do about it. As we've experienced in the past, trying to shift to a new team of narrators is a rather rocky proposal, and we're in the midst of that in multiple ways.

For who will take over for the series after Escaping Gravity, I'm probably going to do a new team under the Actors Everywhere umbrella. I don't know who yet, and honestly, it's not a question I need to answer right now.

This is a good time to mention again that my plan is to wind down my rotation. I've been writing books across three series in rotation for almost eight years. It'll take some time, but I want to wind it down and then try writing a series straight through. Particularly with longer series like Dungeon Diving, it feels like every time I return to a series there's a lot of work on my end to reread and re-get myself back into the story and characters of a 12+ book series, and it's just… hard.

So if I want to write a long series, I'd like to try doing it straight through again. You probably won't see that happen until the end of 2027, but it will generate questions when Returner's Defiance ends and I don't immediately replace it with a new series.

We just got to a point where we can announce the Kickstarter for Dragon's Justice 7-9. We still have the third piece of art in the works, but hopefully it should be done by the 9th and we can make everything look nice and pretty and give you a good preview of what you're going to get.

On the back of that Kickstarter, I'll also be at LitRPG Con. I've got a number of panels, and I was quite pleasantly surprised at how harem-friendly LitRPG Con seems to be shaping up to be. I'll be in the vendor hall a good chunk of the time. If you're trying to find me, I'm at table 14. I'll be selling some special edition Dungeon Diving 101 books with lovely foil fronts. When the Harem Book Club asked me for something special, the minimum print order was 25, so I gave three away and I've got 22 to haul with me. I'll also have some discreet cover paperbacks of Ard’s Oath, and of course I'm happy to sign anything you bring or buy, and to answer questions in person or on panels.

It's all going to be a glorious celebration of LitRPG which I pretty firmly consider Haremlit to be the child of, even if we sometimes seem like the bastard child.

I'm hoping to do a good run before needing another break, but I'll admit I got less work done on vacation than expected, which is probably a good thing personally, but schedule-wise I'm slightly behind going into Returner's Defiance. My hope is to give you some good chunks of multiple chapters, because Patreon does tend to set the pace for my writing and I work well under pressure. (Please don't ask me for a bunch of extra chapter days though!)

Returner's Defiance is a series I'm looking to land nicely. I'm expecting there will be eight books in total. Bran’s is a different character than I usually write; he's a little more mature, a little less coming-of-age compared to Dungeon Diving or Ard's Oath. I'm getting the feeling from the community that the older characters aren't quite as well-liked, and we are seeing some significant drop-off in read-through on the last two books. That doesn't mean we're abandoning it. I really don't like to put things on hiatus or cut them off unfinished, but we will bring it in for a landing at book eight.

Onto the rest of the audio updates. Ard's Oath 8 should be on pre-order and coming out on the 9th. Returner's Defiance 6 and Dungeon Diving 303 have been handed off to the narrators; I don't have good dates on those yet. Ard's Oath was about three weeks late from Jessica and Chris, and I'll be honest, the audio portions of my meetings haven't been delivering a lot of good news lately on timing. But we'll push through and do our absolute best to keep things flowing. Apologies for the ongoing delays.

During my last fireside, a number of people expressed interest in webcomics. We're still producing everything as we have been. Dungeon Diving is up to chapter 18 in storyboard; Returner's Defiance is two chapters behind. We probably won't get conversations about start dates going for another month or two. They've been increasing requirements since we started, which is why it keeps feeling like we're getting pushed back but we're doing everything we can to keep those moving.

This year I was supposed to have fewer things in the air, and I do, but there are also things that have been in the works for a while and workflows that never stop. The more series I have, and honestly the more success I have, the more time I end up spending in meetings and on things that aren't writing.

I hate it.

That said, compared to so many authors I meet at conferences, I am spending far more time writing and far less time on marketing, signings, and other things. For that, I have to thank all of you. Being digitally connected makes everything so much easier and I'm very happy I can be at home and around while the kids are young, rather than traveling for two months at a time hitting dozens of locations to promo books.

That also means I get to write more books. And since you like reading books a lot — and I like writing them — my promise to you all is to just keep writing until you get tired of me. I'm about 50-something books deep and I'm amazed it's still going so well.

So once again, thank you all so very much. I'm excited to keep writing, excited to get Escaping Gravity 2 out to the Kindle masses, and then pivot to Returner's Defiance 6.

If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.