Patreon Update 11-6-26 (Patreon)

Hey everyone, and welcome back.

A few updates on what’s coming next: I’m still aiming to get Escaping Gravity 3 out in November. Today, Escaping Gravity 1 will move off my website and over to Audible, and Returners Defiance 6 will go up on my website.

Thank you all for your extraordinary patience with the audio situation.

I also want to take a moment to explain what’s going on with Audible, K+, and the rights shuffle as clearly as I can.

Ard’s Oath 1-3 used to be with Royal Guard Publishing. In that arrangement, Royal Guard was making more per sale than I could as an indie. So there was an agreement that they'd handle distribution and paying me better than a standard indie setup. With the massive audio shuffle happening at the end of the year, they’ve now returned those titles to me, and I know a number of other authors are going through similar changes.

Royal Guard was doing a lot to help indies in Haremlit.

The main issue is that when older versions come down, some metadata seems to get lost. That can make the previously purchased version hard to search for or filter. So if you go into your app and search for something like Magic's Mantle, it may still show a buy option because the app doesn’t realize it’s already in your library.

The workaround, for now, is to go to the top of your library, sort alphabetically, and scroll down to the title you’re looking for. If you do that, Magic's Mantle should still be there. My understanding is that, unless you contact customer support, things do not actually get deleted from your library. If you try to look for it under any filters or searches, it won't appear.

I’ve been pushing Audible’s reps on this, but I haven’t gotten a very satisfying answer on a cleaner fix. They’ve agreed that this is the best workaround for now.

I also want to be clear that this is not some kind of cash grab. The rights shifted back to me, which created a new instance of the books, and that’s what caused the confusion. I know other authors are dealing with the same thing. Audible is aware of it, but they don’t seem to have a better solution yet. I’ve also been told that reviews from the older versions should eventually carry over to the new ones, so fingers crossed on that.

A separate part of the audio situation: Audible is lowering royalties while also rolling out its all-you-can-listen library. I haven’t put any of my books into that catalog yet, though I may do it later this year. If I do, I’ll let you know.

At the same time, Kindle surprised a lot of authors by introducing K+. I actually love Kindle from a author support standpoint, and when my rep brought K+ to me in early October, I jumped in. So all of my eligible titles are now in K+, which means the audio version is available through Kindle+ (Previously Kindle Unlimited) depending on how they’re presenting it.

I don’t know what the payout will look like yet, but Kindle Unlimited has always treated me well on the business side, so I’m optimistic.

There’s one weird catch: you can’t put audio into K+ unless the audio and ebook rights are owned by the same entity. That’s a strange rule, but it’s how the system is set up right now. They’ll probably loosen it or make exceptions in the future, but for now that’s another reason you’re seeing a lot of rights moving around as authors are trying to get K+ fully functional.

So that’s the audio side of things. It’s all moving forward, even if it’s messy.

On the writing side, I was very excited with Escaping Gravity 3. I thought it was a fun book, and I was able to build some good suspense and maybe a slightly deeper plot line than in some of my other series. I’ve already got about two pages of notes for Book 4, and while I’m teasing a lot of the Sanguafae, it would be a stretch to add a sixth member of the harem. But we’ll keep going.

I’m also really interested in pushing through the Kikai Saga. I don’t know if I’ll finish it with the next book, but it should at least be done by Book 5. After that, I’m thinking we’ll move into the Empire Saga as I've named it in my notes.

That’s part of how I like to build things now: break the bigger story into more manageable chunks. It makes it much easier to sustain a larger plot.

Webcomics are moving along too. We were really hoping to get everything submitted to Webtoons by the end of October, but that didn’t quite happen, so we’re still grinding forward. Webcomics are a big test of patience for me because the whole process moves so slowly.

The lead artist for Dungeon Diving also had a personal loss in the family, so they’re taking two weeks off to deal with that. I’m very sorry for them, and of course we’re working around it. The webcomic teams are small, so when one person has something major come up, it slows the whole process down.

Even so, we’re almost up to 30 colored chapters on Dungeon Diving. Weirdly, by the time Webtoons finishes its review process, we may already have the full season ready to go, and then we can start releasing it weekly while we work on season two.

Returners Defiance is a little behind Dungeon Diving right now in finished colors, mostly because we’ve been putting more focus on Dungeon Diving. For Ard’s Oath, the good news is that the team is fully assembled. Our storyboard artist is a Japanese manga artist, and negotiating Japanese contracts has been more involved than anything else I’ve done, so we’re still working through the final pieces of that. Once that’s done, I can hit the big go button and get the Ard’s Oath team fully rolling.

I’m also switching over to Returners Defiance 8. Before I moved back to Dungeon Diving 304, I had already written about 20,000 words, so I’ve got a good head start and what I’d call a very detailed outline. For those who actually outline, it’s probably more like margin scribbles, but for my process it’s a pretty solid amount of thought about where the book is going. I’m editing that now and pushing forward.

At the same time, I’ve been a little distracted by another project, my monoromance Bodyguard and the Billionaire. I got excited about it, took a couple of days between Escaping Gravity and Returners Defiance 8, and ended up getting almost half a book written in a week. Still not sure what I'm going to do with that.

Editing is often harder for me than drafting. Sometimes it’s fun and exciting, but other times it feels like slowly sanding something that probably should have been cut a little cleaner in the first place.

My overall goal is still to work through the rest of my existing series and then start something new after that. What that next series will be, I’m still figuring out. I’ve gone back and forth on it enough that I’m worried I’m giving you all whiplash.

If I’m being honest, I could probably use something that’s a little more core to market for the next launch. Dungeon Diving has been doing incredibly well, even through 304, though it does seem like some people aren’t as fond of Misha. Some readers find her strange, which is fair. I was mostly just having fun with it.

Dungeon Diving is still going strong. Returners Defiance is probably on its last legs. And Escaping Gravity is the series I’m having the most fun with right now. Sci-fi just doesn’t tend to perform as well for me as fantasy, and every other harem author I’ve talked to has said the same thing. I can feel that a bit, but I’m enjoying Escaping Gravity, so I’m going to keep it going. I don’t know exactly how many books it will be yet, but I do have loose plans, and I’m excited to keep revealing the little lore bits I’ve been setting up.

Because I’m not putting much pressure on myself with Escaping Gravity, it’s honestly become my favorite series at the moment, even if it isn’t my strongest performer. I like the others, but I do put a lot of pressure on myself for DD as it's kind of the tentpole series for me at present.

As always, I’d love to hear your feedback. I’ll try to get into the comments over the next day or two and answer any follow-up questions. I’ll also keep doing AMAs and firesides, but I do feel like some of the general questions are starting to repeat, so I may shift toward more topic-focused videos instead. If there’s a topic you’d like to hear my perspective on, let me know and I’ll put something together.

And finally, a quick art update, I’m having some trouble with artists at the moment. Kurogami is doing a couple pieces for Escaping Gravity right now. Yanni has had a significant drop-off in output this year, so he’s being kept focused on cover art and the art I need for the Kickstarter. I’m hoping the Kurogami pieces come out well.

I’ve also been thinking about reaching out to Katarina, who does William Arrand’s covers. Since he hasn’t been producing that much, I realized she may have some availability, and she could help me get a little less down to the wire on cover art.

If any of the other artists I’ve used before really stood out to you, let me know. My sense so far is that some of the backup artists I’ve tried haven’t generated much excitement, so I’m not sure whether I should keep using them.

Thank you everyone and we'll get RD 8 going here soon!