That few days took a bit longer than expected... >.>

Before we get to the news, first, I'd like to give huge thanks to all of the past and current patrons who have made book 2 even happen! If not for you all, this story would have ended at chapter 57 of book 1:

Michael Mooney

Death2moo

Daniel B

ShadeByTheSea

Cole Nyquist

Thernn

DAVID M ROTHER

DANTE

John Mullaney

Omar Wazir

Pierpaolo

Greg S

Jo

Frightful6_7

Jake Cantrell

Elkiehirvi

Elsie Nnaji

Itbeme12321

znarken

Raymond Mouton

EverlastPhoenix

Lynd Koh

Sam Valle

Reid Palmquist

The Lost Pages

Kenneth John Doe

Umut Numanoglu

John O'Connor

Travis McIntosh

GoodOldChap

Kapelteta

Mr. Bigglesworth

DR

Fraxx

Andreas Vaage

Talek

Alexander

Yali Zak-Malkin

lol

andre

Grace

BM

Nicolai Buch-Andersen

Jymbo

Turtle

DJ

Roshanek

Mario Kaminsky

Sad Turtle

Rayaface

Kel Pough

(If anyone wants to use a different alias or have their name removed, let me know!)

I'd also like to thank all of you readers who commented and helped improve the story! You've made this story much better than it was when I first started posting!

So.... the good news:

I took some time to kick back and relax and I'm refreshed and ready to get back to writing. Chapter 1 of Book 3 is already up on Patreon!

There's a ton of fun stuff planned for book 3, from the Moon Elf gardens, to the lost levels packed with undead under Vesali Castle, to mysteries of the Deep Dwarf cities, to the competition of the Grand Games. Chapter releases on Patreon will be continuing at a pace of about 2 chapters per month, possibly faster if the writing goes well.

And um... the less good news:

With the end of book 1, I pushed out book 2 chapters right away in a misguided effort trying to reaching the then 'trending' list. This time, I'm going to take some time to rebuild my backlog before resuming posting Ria chapters here on Royal Road. The timing will probably be 3-6 months as I want to get Patreon to be 10 chapters ahead. I'll also be using this time to properly work out the story arcs for book 3 with more of focus on action and adventure as we finish out Ria's first year at the academy.

The terrible, no good news:

I've been living off patreon and cashflow from my trading acount while writing, and with the downturn in the economy the trading results have been increasingly bad, resulting in drawdowns of principle to pay bills. My cashflow went negative about a year and a half ago even with refinancing my debt to buy more time. Unfortunately, not only has that time run out, but so has almost the entirety of my savings. I've got about two months until things get ugly.

I'd like to say I was joking about the patron tiers 'paying for ramen'... but patreon donations really are the entirety of my food budget. Thankfully, my housing situation and internet service are stable for the forseeable future.

That brings me to my plans to move Ria's books 1 & 2 to Kindle Unlimited. I don't have a date for this yet, but it's looking like the only way to make this writing thing work. How successful that ends up will determine the amount of time I can spend on this story. So, I'll be needing all of your help when that happens! 😎👍

I've also been running an experiment these past few months, and while the Ria chapters take me 1-2 weeks to write no matter how much effort I put in (there's something in the process that requires the chapters to percolate for a while), writing a "just for fun" story with shorter (1200 word) chapters allows me to do up to 4 chapters a week (plus the usual Ria chapter). I'm guessing that it has something to do with a completed chapter being obtainable in a single day.

As such, I will be bringing a new story to Royal Road to make an attempt at Rising Stars and hopefully bring more readers to Ria's story and increase my number of patrons. I've got two candidate LitRPG stories almost ready to go with one already up to 19 (Patreon available) chapters backlogged (Villainess) with the other (All Tens) at 15 chapters:

Villainess Veronica: Vampires & Vines

With the help of the fateful Class received on her Classgiving day, Veronica decides to use her bullying skills to help the weak-willed grow a backbone and to make sure no good deed goes unpunished. Nothing offends her more than a self-righteous morally naïve do-gooder!

Tags: Female lead, Anti-hero lead, school life, non-human lead, Ruling class

All Tens: A Pizza Delivery Guy’s Guide to Surviving Interdimensional Summoning Accidents

Finding himself the victim of an interdimensional summoning accident, average-guy 32-year-old pizza delivery driver and gamer Allen Tensworth just wants to survive, but a gryphonriding bounty hunter, dragons, fateful encounters, and his own conscience are conspiring against his best efforts to avoid the genre's tropes!

Tags: Male lead, Portal Fantasy, Weak-to-strong, Action/Adventure, Powerful Enemy

I'm having the most fun writing the Villainess one so far, and I have AI-generated cover art ready for 5 volumes worth of content. But. The girl-power genre is getting a bit played out lately, and it's another (for at least book 1) school-life story involving nobles...

All Tens has the advantage of being a male lead story (with the mythical beta-male to alpha-male tranformation 😜) and is an adventure story, so the plot is wide open in where it can go and (hopefully) won't bog down in any one location. I can already see this one headed in the direction where the MC pretends to be a wise mage (he hasn't a clue) as he accidentally gathers apprentices along the way--similar to Arrogant Young Master Template A Variation 4.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I'd like to finish up Mystwalker Xyn and get that to Kindle Unlimited as well, but even though the rest of that story is plotted out, it has the same problem as Ria's with complex 3000+ word chapters...

Next few posts will be the long awaited Character and location list w/ a top 5 most liked/despised character poll, Ria's class schedule for book 2 & 3, and possibly some other bonus content as I get stuff sorted.

Thanks for reading this far and joining Ria on her journey!

TLDR:

* Ria chapters will continue on Patreon at ~2 chapters per month.

* Releases on RR will be paused until I rebuild my backlog to 10 chapters

* Ria books 1 & 2 will be going to KU and stubbed (timeframe is probably 1 month or so depending on editing time)

* Vote on the new daily(?) release story!