NOVEL NEXT NOT A CHAPTER: What's Next?
Hello faithful readers. It's been two weeks since I posted the last chapter of Book 3. I didn't burn out or anything like that. I've been writing all morning and I wanted to give y'all a quick update. It'll be the last one on this platform for a while.
After 11 months and 150 chapters I've learned that my audience doesn't really congregate on Royal Road. That's ok. It's a place for other kinds of authors to engage other kinds of readers, and I'm happy for them. But sword and sorcery is an old genre, and its most fervent readers are of the analog variety. I'm taking my stories in that direction and I've had some early success: my embargoed chapters from Book Three were just shortlisted for publication in an upcoming magazine. More on that development, soon.
Beside my need to bring my work to my audience, I've also got a quibble with this website. The growth and tolerance of AI everything--book covers, stories, reviews, ads--on Royal Road is antiethical to my beliefs and values. Worse, Royal Road profits from them. I'm not interested in being a part of that ecosystem. I write all of my shit without LLMs. I've contracted a flesh and blood painter to illustrate my book covers. AI harms the environment, labor, and freethinking society. It steals from the poor and gives to the rich, thereby accelerating the concentration of wealth and power. Fuck. All. That.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
That means once books One, Two, and Three are ready for publication they won't be posted here. My advanced drafts of books Four and Five won't be here, either. Not unless something drastic changes with RR's AI policy.
What will be posted here is a link to my website. Once it's ready. For now you can sub to my free Patreon tier for updates on what's coming next.
You've been with me for a long time. I value you. I hope you'll come with me to my new venues. 💘⚔