Hello everyone and welcome to your June progress update for A.R. Dragonfly and From Ashe.
Progress
This past month has consisted of a LOT of reading. As of the time of this writing, author copies for Volume 9 are being printed by Amazon with a June 10-11 arrival date which means I will have them in hand by the June 15 release date!
As of the May update, Volumes 10-12 needed editing love and, well… they received it! Volume 10 is now completed and publish-ready! All of the final edits have been made, the bonus chapter has been written and edited and all of the artwork is complete.
Volume 11 is almost in the same spot! Alex is still working on the artwork. As of this post, he has 3 pieces left to finish. The main seven chapters of Volume 11 are publish-ready. I just need to write the bonus chapter which is the second half to volume 10’s. Once I do that, I will have another book in the bank and ready to go.
That just leaves the grand finale. I did not read through it yet for a final time; however, I did run it through spell check and Grammarly so it is in Final Draft. I am still playing with the art commissions as there is so much art I want to do for this volume, it’s crazy. I’m also trying to work out a way where it’s not going to kill my budget, either. The final five characters debut in this volume and there is just scene after scene after scene I would love to depict. It’s very hard to choose but I will get it done!
I have not touched A.R. Dragonfly Origins since the last update. I’m still at Episode Amber and Episode Kaito fleshed out with Episodes Sebastian, Lynn, and Takumi still needing their bullet points. Most of my time was focused on editing and I want to at least get Volume 12 into Completion status before tackling Origins.
From Ashe
In the case of From Ashe, when I wasn’t reading, I was thinking about this series. I began to plot out Ashe’s storyline. I wanted to see where her story would take her, what kind of arcs she would have, etc.
To clarify, I didn’t go into detail like I would chapter by chapter. I just wanted to do 1 theme per volume to see how her story would flesh out. Well, I got up to 20 volumes of just Ashe’s story. This doesn’t count Renji or any other character. Once I start thinking about every other character, every “faction” that will be here, how they all interact and what kind of stories I can tell, I can see this going beyond 20 volumes.
Then a question comes in. Do I really want to give this story that kind of length? The answer to that is, as long as it is interesting and warrants it, then yes… yes I do! Just thinking of where Ashe will go and what she will do was a great mental exercise for me and the more I think about this story, the more I begin to realize just how much content and creativity I can pour into this… either in the form of Ashe’s story or the actual stories she will write. The fact that I can test out so many different ideas is crazy to think about.
This truly is going to be a sandbox series!
Oh, I should mention another reason why I debated the length is that I already decided on my next series after From Ashe. I know… I know… that’s some massive forward-thinking but I have just the general idea in mind and when I thought of it… everything just clicked… just like it did for From Ashe.
I’ll give you a hint: Devs.
That’s all you get for now!
An Answer
In my last progress update, I asked about the possibility of creating a Patreon. I am thankful to everyone who contributed their feedback. There were more opinions against doing one than there were for doing one so I decided to nix the idea as I agreed with the reasons against it.
Part of the reason why is because I really like what I’m doing now and I like that connection and interaction I have with my readers. Showing off artwork on my social media accounts, sharing updates, and all of that is something I love to do and I can’t see myself putting that behind a paywall.
Part of the reason as to why I wanted to set one up is I kind of wanted to try and fast track a way to make a living off my books. I stated multiple times that I wrote for myself and I wrote for fun. I stated that I was more interested in people enjoying the stories that I write than making money off of them.
All of that still holds true but there have been some elements of my life that I am just not happy with. I spend most of my time at work thinking and daydreaming about my stories and when I know that I can’t be home working on them I get depressed. Writing is something I truly love to do and each day when I think about having to be at work versus being home and doing something I love, it’s soul-crushing.
I don’t truly enjoy my job. I am highly frustrated with several aspects of it but it is the only thing keeping my writing “career” alive. It’s as Youji Itami said in GATE… I mainly work to support my hobbies (and pay off my student loan debt… another soul-crushing reason why I can’t just abandon my job).
When you say that you want to go home and you haven’t even left home yet, you know there’s a problem. I’m just not in a position to do anything about it. That was one of the main motivating factors behind testing the waters and seeing if a Patreon would be feasible but since it’s not, it’s back to the drawing board.
Until I come up with something, I’ll still keep writing and publishing, I’ll still keep putting out press releases, I’ll still keep going onto podcasts to talk about my books, and I’ll still keep posting on social media and hope that one day, I’ll catch a lucky break but until I can sell hundreds of books every month, the dream of living off of my writing is just going to sit there out in the distance.
As A Guest
Speaking of being on podcasts, I was recently on the Web Light Novel & Manga Review podcast with Zeke Changuris where I got to talk about Final Hope, A.R. Dragonfly, and the OELN Database over at The Outerhaven!
If you have about a half hour, I’d appreciate it if you go ahead and check it out!
Also, if you have a podcast and are interested in talking to me about the world of OELNs, or hell, if you just want to shoot the breeze on anime and manga, let me know! Go ahead and contact me through the Contact Page on the site and we can set something up!
Site Updates
Long-time visitors of the site will notice a new link at the top called Buy Books. I asked for feedback on the site and many people thought it was very clean, very easy-to-use; however, one complaint was that it lacked a central section to buy all of my books. While the ability to buy books was always under each series’ tab on the main menu, I learned that it wasn’t intuitive. That’s why I created the Buy Books tab which lists everything from every series with a link to its Amazon page.
All you have to do is click the book cover and it will take you to where you need to go to purchase it.
In addition, I have updated both A.R. Dragonfly and From Ashe’s character pages! A.R. Dragonfly has non-spoiler biography cards for characters through Volume 11 while From Ashe has biography cards on its two main characters Ashe and Renji! Feel free to check those out!
It’s not done yet but I am going to remove individual links to the Cell Phone Wallpapers. It’s a bigger hassle then you think to update those so I am going to host them all in a Google Drive folder and let you guys download them through there. That way you can download them individually or save the folder (which Google will zip for you) and get them all in one go! It’ll also be easier to update that way.
I would say look for that by the July update!
Until Next Time
That’s going to do it for me this month! Of course, I’ll be back in about a week to announce the arrival of Volume 9! I hope you’re looking forward to it and if you have been a reader of my series, I hope you’ve been enjoying what you’ve been reading so far!
I also know that over the last month, I’ve gained a few readers so if you are one of them, welcome and I hope you are finding A.R. Dragonfly to your liking!
Of course, if you read my books and either liked or hated them, feel free to leave a review on Amazon. Anything, be it positive or negative, helps. I can’t improve if I don’t know what’s wrong and sometimes the answers aren’t always apparent to me. So let me know what you guys think. Just be constructive about it!
Until then,
Ja ne!