Hey!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed New Australia.

I’ve finished the big story: Jerome’s growth into a responsible adult (and his quest to free the humans). There’s plenty of world left for Jerome to conquer, but he’s at a nice place right now, so I think I’ll leave him there for a while.

You guys who stuck with me the whole story are awesome, and I loved hearing your feedback. It's what kept me writing.

What went right

My initial goal was to learn how to write extended action scenes, and I think I succeeded there. I had a hard time writing more than 1,000 words in an action scene before, and in here there were satisfying battle sequences of more than 6,000 words (over multiple chapters).

I also really loved Jerome's arc during the first trip to town and right afterwards. His moment of realization of how the world works, and what he had to do to succeed... that was immensely satisfying to write, and based on the feedback you guys liked it as well.

Finally, I really do like this world. The Ockdine have a lot of cool stuff that I haven't shown you guys, and there's even a mystery species that I haven't even introduced. If I don't create more volumes in this (likely, because of all the things that went wrong) I'll definitely recycle that species into another story.

What went wrong

I wrote this book without an outline.

The best part (the first trip to town) had a mini-outlines, and there was some worldbuilding ahead of time, but overall the thing was written as things came to me, and you can tell. Not everything fits the standard story structure nicely, a couple plot threads are forgotten, etc...

But the biggest issue it created was genre-hopping. The story starts off as an action comedy with a lucky-idiot protagonist (prologue-chapter 10, trying to channel my inner Aleron Kong), then turns into a dark and personal coming-of-age story (chapter 13-32, what I truly love writing), and then finally turns into a grinding war story (where my lack of an outline led me). What’s the likelihood that someone who came for the action comedy is going to love both war stories and coming-of-age stories? Or that someone who really loves war stories will make it through the admittedly silly beginning?

Oh well, lessons learned.

What's next?

Currently I’m working on a mecha/steampunk litrpg set in a fantasy version of 1937 Russia. It’ll be super dark in tone (the whole way!), with a highly intelligent MC and an RPG system reminiscent of the Elder Scrolls. When it’s done and I’m ready to either serialize it here or sell it I’ll create a new chapter on this story to let you guys know.

In the meantime, happy reading!