Updates 1-1-25

Happy New Year!

2024 was a pretty transformative year for us here, and hopefully it brought some positive things into your life as well. I wanted to take the opportunity to mention some stuff that'll be happening in 2025.

Volume 1 Publication

Volume 1 is getting an official launch!

We've been working with Aethon Books to get Mage Tank onto Kindle, KU, and Audible. Volume 1 will be releasing on March 4th both in digital print and audiobook. Here's the preorder link if you're interested. It'll be on Kindle Unlimited, so if you've got a sub to that you can grab a download when it comes out if you like.

The manuscript saw some solid editing, especially if you read the first version on RR. Substantively it's the same, but I carved out some of the things that didn't really go anywhere, worked on getting the System more consistent, and dropped in some better foreshadowing and such and stuff.

Because it's going to the Zon, Volume 1 will be getting removed from other platforms a week or so beforehand, meaning chapters 1 - 75 will get stubbed on RR and taken off of Patreon as well. There's no release date for Volume 2, but it's already been polished and edited, so I expect it will only be a few months behind Volume 1. I'm currently editing through Volume 3.

This wouldn't have been possible without the support of everyone here, so I am deeply thankful for everyone reading and supporting the work. I'd love to make Mage Tank my full time focus, and reaching a wider audience might make that happen. Fingers crossed.

Chapter Schedule

I added an a/n to the RR chapter that dropped on Monday discussing my posting schedule on Royal Road. RR saw three chapters a week go out without any interruptions last year, and after managing that schedule alongside my job it was a touch exhausting. For Royal Road, I'll continue posting 3 chapters a week, but on weeks where there is a major American holiday (such as this week with New Year's) I'll be skipping the Saturday chapter.

I'm setting it up this way in order to avoid lengthier interruptions. I know some authors do a couple of two-week breaks, but I thought I'd try out having the extra chapters build up over time rather than having a couple of significant pauses. If it's weird, I might swap it out for standard breaks.

What does that mean for Patreon?

Having the occasional skip day is there to create a pressure release valve when I need it. I plan to continue posting three chapters a week here, so Patreon will ideally pull further ahead of Royal Road. However, if I need a break or vacation, I'll have some cushion so that the chapter advantage on Patreon doesn't dip below a certain threshold.

I'll mention any significant pauses ahead of time, but I haven't scheduled any major off time this year so far. There will probably be one in the second half of July, but it's not completely settled yet.

TTRPG

Some of you know that we've been working on a tabletop role-playing game alongside the books, with Sir Raiu Koren taking lead on its design. If you didn't know that, now you do!

Why create a TTRPG? The answer is that it's a major part of how the books are written.

A lot of the spells, skills, evolutions, etc. that you see in the fiction are adapted from the TTRPG content that SRK creates. It's a major part of our workflow, where he creates a library of stuff and I look at it, pick a few that look cool, and toss them at the characters. I'll tool around with things and make my own when I want something specific, but the greater half of skills and evos that appear were designed by SRK. Usually without any focus on making them for a particular character, which shakes things up sometimes.

Working within a TTRPG context is part of how we focus on having diverse side-characters and antagonists with their own suites of abilities, and how we balance skills between characters. The rules and mechanics are refined and grow as we write, but it's currently in a playable state.

We're working on creating a compiled rulebook that will be released to Patrons for a round of beta testing. We don't have a firm release date for that currently, but our goal is to have a fully developed working version for Patreon before March. We're planning on starting to really put our heads down and get it polished up this month, so we'll keep you updated as we get a better idea of the workload and timeline.

TL;DR

Volume 1 is releasing on Kindle and Audible March 4.

The Patreon schedule remains the same but RR will see 1 less chapter on weeks with a major American holiday so I have a bigger backlog in case I need a vacation/break, which I will mention here beforehand.

We are polishing up a set of TTRPG rules for beta release to Patreon in the next couple of months, which is something that has been developed alongside the fic for most of the time we've been writing it.

In conclusion,

2024 was pretty incredible (and extremely busy), and I'm glad that you all have been a part of that journey with us. Looking forward to 2025, there's every chance it'll be even more significant that '24, and I am both excited and mildly ill with hope and worry.

Once again, thank you to everyone here for supporting the work. I hope you have a fucking righteous 2025.

--Cornman