Okay, so first up is Isekai Terry. The first book, Tropes of Doom, goes live on Amazon and Audible next Tuesday. That doesn't mean too many big changes here, except that the majority of that book's chapters go back behind the paywall.
The book will be available through Kindle Unlimited. There will, unless I'm wildly mistaken, be a paperback and probably a hardcover version, but there are no links for that yet.
If you want to pre-order the ebook version for Kindle, you can get that here.
If you want to pre-order the audiobook version, you can grab that on Audible here.
Reviews and ratings are always welcome and helpful. Thanks!
I also want to give everyone the heads up that I will probably be turning off billing for a month starting sometime in February. My goal is to wrap up Unintended Cultivator 13, then basically go on hiatus while I try to finish Isekai Terry book 3. I don't want to run into the same situation i got into on book 2 where I'm the holdup for everyone else. I also want to wrap up Unwillingly Summoned, Book 1, sometime in the next six weeks. And, if all goes well, maybe even finish up the scifi-cultivator novella. Turning off billing post-UC 13 is mostly in deference to the people who are signed up for the cultivator-only tiers. I don't feel right charging them/you for weeks when I know they/you won't get a single piece of content from me.
Beyond that, I'm not sure. We'll just have to see how close my productivity is to actually letting me reach my ambitions. If it turns out that I'm super productive, and reach all my goals ahead of schedule, I might chip away at something else or take a week off. If I'm only averagely productive and meet my goals, well, yay, I met my goals.
My hope is that clearing some things off my plate will make it easier to focus on the last few UC books and bring them to a satisfying conclusion later this year.
Now, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering what's going to happen when I finish up Unintended Cultivator. This is where we get into the land of speculation. Do I have ideas for a follow-up series? Yes. Yes, I do. Would it be as long as UC. Probably not. If I go down that road, I'm expecting it to probably run about 10 books. (Yeah, I can almost hear the gods laughing at me, but that's the plan.) However, publishing is, first and foremost, a business. I'm not going to race to start a follow up series until I see how the sales do for the next several books.
That, as much as anything, will determine if my publisher even wants a follow-up series. It's not in their best interest to buy into a follow-up series if it won't actually make them some money after all the production costs (editing, proofreading, cover art, and audiobooks.) And, because my publisher hires living, breathing human beings do all of that work, those costs are meaningful. Narration alone can run $5-$10K depending on the narrator and the length of the book. And, because I'm so far ahead in the writing, none of us know if the later books will maintain momentum on Amazon and Audible.
So, there will probably be a gap, maybe as much as six to nine months, between me finishing UC and starting the follow up series. Assuming there even is a follow-up series. So, what will I be doing with my time during those months? There are several possibilities. Ideally, Isekai Terry will be huge, or at least successful enough that Audible will want 3 more books. If that happens, I'll probably be spending a lot of time on those. I've got a couple alternative ideas for where to go with Terry. In one version of the plan, there are 6 books total. In another version of the plan, there are 9 books total. The difference? There's a story arc in the middle where Terry goes off to REDACTED with REDACTED to REDACTED. Super fun, right?!
Now, if Audible doesn't want more Terry books, my publisher still might, and I'd have to discuss the plan with them. It really boils down to how popular it is.
Option two is that I move full speed ahead on one of the other series I've got started. I'm spoiled for choice there. Again, that would just depend on my publisher and what they think has the best chance of success.
Option three is that I start on a new series that's been gestating in my brain for about a year. It's an isekai story where the laziest character in the world gets sucked into another world that's an analogue for Imperial Rome. In other words, for this character, a hellscape of discipline, effort, and mandatory trying. The humor almost writes itself. I'm actually super excited about this idea, and I even know a great narrator who is already interested. So, it might jump the queue and go to the front of the line. But, like I said, that's all down the road, and it's all highly speculative.
So, now that I've given you all a peek behind the curtain into the world of publishing (and my brain), I'm going to check out and get back to writing. Or possibly making jambalaya. Honestly, it could go either way.