Basically, in a roundabout way, this is a thank you to everyone who's read, reviewed, liked and commented on my story so far. I appreciate the support and honestly, even something as basic as seeing the viewer count jump a little makes my heart jump a bit.

Reflection/Explanations:

But kinda getting into the main points here, I just wanted to state that this was my first attempt at writing a coherent story. I've had ideas and false starts and many burnouts for years, times where I'd start writing a story and get very unmotivated very quickly. Royal Road was a platform I'd found back around Covid time, and it kind of became an easy place to post a story.

I started posting Scion of Chaos (under another name that got hit with a copyright strike), but I made the mistake of posting chapters as I wrote them, which at first was okay, since I was very motivated and writing a lot, but that quickly sputtered out, as I burned out and went months at a time without writing anything.

I will also state that these were raw chapters written by someone who'd never written over 10k words on a single document. Ever. And honestly, they're not rewritten, so these are still the same raw chapters. This story was also done without a cover, without much promotion, without honestly any of the things that would make a story successful.

I wrote about 38 chapters of this story before I stopped about a year ago, but about a month and a half ago, I started feeling that burn to write again, and dove back into the royal road scene. This time, I followed a formula and a schedule and did the promotion work, and after 28 of the 40 chapters in Volume 1 posted, I already have almost triple the followers I had the first time I posted this story, which is just crazy for me to even think about.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

All that to say, in the end, I'm not doing this for a living, and I'm not trying to make this a living, which is the reason I post only 3 times a week instead of the more successful 5-7. This is purely a hobby, and maybe something I could make a side gig in a few years as I improve my writing, but in the end, I do still want the validation for my work, which is why the Patreon exists.

But because this isn't something I "have to" make money from, I'm a little more lenient with the time frame and goals I've set for this story. Yes, if it doesn't hit my goals by the end of 2023, I'll go back and take a look at if I want to continue this story as of then. If it doesn't succeed by my lenient standards (or if I'm just incredibly burn out by then), I'll put it on a hiatus, and throw the first Volume on KU, and start writing something else. (I've actually got about ideas for six different stories ranging from a basic LitRPG to even a couple of rebirth progression stories).

That's not even something I'm really even thinking about right now, but just putting it out there because I do have a plan and a six month timeframe I've set for myself.

Artwork

Something big I've seen on this site is an aversion to AI, and while I don't even use AI for grammar checks or anything like that, I do use it for the artwork I present, because I like some sort of visualization for some of the events I describe as it helps me keep track of some of it in my mind, but I don't want to pay a hefty amount of money for each piece of work, so hopefully that explains why the artwork so far is AI-generated.

Final Thoughts

All I really want to say in the end is thanks for reading and following. We've finished the true introduction to this story, the backstory of our main character, because the truth is, these last few chapters weren't some random ideas I had as I wrote the story, but kind of something I knew I was going to do with these characters very early on. So anyways, if you've read this far, thanks and the best is yet to come