Hey everyone,

Sorry if I scared anyone with my April Fools announcement too much. =D

I am, in fact, still continuing to write my books. In fact, last month was pretty productive.

Some project specific updates:

I got through some major content for Defying Destiny. It’s still not done, but I’d put it at around the 75% mark.

The second Weapons and Wielders book is well into being written. This is largely because Six Sacred Swords was originally going to include a lot more content, but I split it into multiple books. As such, I already had a clear outline of what was going to go into this one, and I’ve gotten underway on it. I’d say it’s about 25% written, but I may stop working on it to focus on Arcane Ascension 3 next.

I wrote a bit of Arcane Ascension 3 – it’s at about 5% progress.

I’ve been itching to do some new stuff, so I’ve have a couple small projects in progress.

The first is a LitRPG novella. It’s basically a Zelda and Dragon Quest parody, similar to something like Yuusha Yoshihiko, Legend of Neil, Endro!, or Maoyu. This is a short project that I don’t expect to take up much time. I’ve wanted to write something that’s more of a “traditional” LitRPG for a while, and this is something of a test case for that.

I’ve got a bit of writing done on a more martial arts focused story (something more like Naruto or a xianxia epic). I’m enjoying getting this started, but it’s still probably a long way off.

I spent some more time working on a tabletop rules set for Arcane Ascension, but I’m a little conflicted about it. This would be a stand alone rules set, but I’m debating switching over to making it a Pathfinder compatible game instead. I’m not sure what would appeal to my fans more – I’ll be curious what people think.

To give a little more context behind some of my side projects, I’m going to give a little bit of explanation about the genesis of my main book setting as a whole.

So, the earliest seeds of my book universe came from online chat role-playing on AOL. For those of you were around in those days, maybe you saw me and friends playing prototypes for some of this setting’s characters in the Red Dragon Inn or that sort of thing.

The real meat of it started coming in when I wanted to write games for the IFGS (International Fantasy Gaming Society), a major live action role-playing organization. One of the player characters I created at that time was none other than Jonan Kestrian. While he’s changed significantly in his book incarnation, his affiliation and basic personality characteristics came from playing him in a LARP.

I didn’t actually end up running many events with the IFGS, but it got me working on the bits and pieces of setting information that would serve as a foundation for the next stage, which was much more important.

In college, I started running a tabletop game. This was where many of the elements that are recognizable today started – the tabletop versions of Salaris, Wrynn Jaden, Velthryn, House Theas, and the earliest seeds of Rendalir.

Years later, I started running my own LARP campaign based in the same world.

That LARP campaign started out on Mythralis – the continent used in Forging Divinity – but involved visiting other parts of the world, as well as travelers from other locations.

This is where things get super relevant for future books. Each of the other continents has a different “flavor” to it – Tyrenia is heavy on alchemy, Vylin Tor is war-torn and filled with beasts, and Artinia is heavily focused on martial arts and spiritual powers.

Some of my earlier, unpublished books, go into these areas. Marks of Iron is an entire novel written in Tyrenia (well, the intro is in Vashendamir, but almost all of it). Dreams of Jade was one of my very first attempts at writing a book, and it’s on Artinia. As you may be able to discern from the name, Wrynn Jaden was the protagonist.

When you see me talking about side projects, many – but not all – of them are going to be ways to explore these other continents that existed in the tabletop game/LARP. In some cases, I may just revise my existing books, but in many cases I’ll just be writing new ones.

I love fleshing out entire worlds like this, and I’m hoping that my readers will enjoy seeing the distinct cultures, religions, and magic systems for each continent. You can also expect to see crossover elements showing up more and more over time.

(As an important note, none of these books actually cover the events of my LARPs, tabletops, etc. They’re set in a different time period. I may do some of that someday, but things like Forging Divinity aren’t actually based directly on gameplay. That’s a valid style, but it’s not what I’m doing – I’m just writing in a RPG universe.)

Thanks for reading, and I hope my April Fools joke didn’t scare anyone too much!