ShoH Update and State of the Union (January 2021)

Hello everybody, and welcome to 2021! I don't have much to update about the game itself, as I spent the last week celebrating Christmas and New Year's with my family, but I do have some other things to note, and I'd like to do a "State of the Union" post for 2021!

Small updates:

• The Shepherds of Haven Holiday Contest ended yesterday, and voting will begin here tomorrow on January 2nd!
• For the month of December, we ran a fun holiday event where Officers and up could send in holiday cards to Shery! The event is now over, but you can read the past letters here!
• The Shepherds of Haven Tumblr site (desktop) received a makeover! Tweaks are still being made to the interface to make it more aesthetic, but I like the color scheme much better than before, and I'll be adding things like a search bar and etc. once I find the time to learn how to code HTML/CSS!
• New Shepherds of Haven stickers and merchandise have been added to the Redbubble store, thanks to your support! By popular request, six stickers have been compiled into a sticker pack so you can buy several at the same time! More sticker packs (sets of 6) will be added as more stickers are completed! :)

A look back:

As crazy as the last year has been, 2020 at least marked a year of productivity for me, and for that, I am very grateful.

Shepherds of Haven:

• On December 30th, 2019, the total wordcount for Shepherds of Haven stood at 150,000 words. On December 30th, 2020, it stood at 453,000 words!
• That means I wrote 300,000 words for the game (without code) in 12 months. In other words, I wrote a GoT novel or more than the longest Harry Potter novel in just one year! 😁 And that's all thanks to your support!
• In addition to the wordcount, I added so many features to the alpha build this year... gambling, recruit training, a skeleton of the save system, and so much more!
• I also wrote so many short stories for the characters and got to flesh them out even more, thanks to you! In addition to the game, I wrote something close to 150,000 words for the 12 short stories last year alone... Enough to be their own novel on their own! 😉
• Goodies, goodies, goodies galore! We designed new ShoH merchandise, made a cookbook, commissioned dozens of pieces of gorgeous art, new character cards, secret websites, NSFW questions and Q&As, and even did a modern AU demo of the Shepherds world! What a wonderful time it's been! 😍

Other work:

• I also completed rewrites and final edits of my debut science fiction novel, We Have Always Been Here (another whopper of a manuscript--I can't write anything short)! I believe we're going to do an official cover reveal of the book soon, and when that happens, I'll post links to where you can preorder the book! :) You can see a bit more about it on my website!
• A lot of flattering attention has been paid to the novel so far, including an audiobook deal and lots of advance praise! I can't speak much more on it, but hopefully more exciting news will come in 2021!
• I learned two more game languages this year and learned very rudimentary photo-editing skills. :D It's not much, but it made me feel productive!
• There is probably a lot more but I've forgotten it at the moment, lol!

A look forward:

• My #1 goal this year is to hopefully finish Shepherds of Haven by the end of the year. Testing and submission to the publishing queue may run later, but I'm very much hoping to complete the game sometime this year!
• My novel will be released on July 6th, 2021!
• I hope to finish up other work obligations by March so I can concentrate fully on ShoH and whatever work needs to be done leading up to WHABH's publication!
• In the future, I hope to figure out how to publish some sort of artbook or compendium for the game: maybe with art, short stories, codex information, and more! But that's in the far future!
• And, of course, DLC will come sometime after the game's release!
• After the novel's publication and my work obligations are cleared up in the spring, I hope to resume work on my new fantasy novel, The Land of Salt and Bone, while I work on ShoH as my primary pursuit until it's done. I'm the type of writer who has to have at least 2 projects on my plate to distract me from the other one when I get frustrated or blocked up, so TLoSaB will be my second one!
• After ShoH is done, I have plans to immediately start on a new choice game that will be the secondary project to The Land of Salt and Bone (see how I rotate?). The new game  won't be related to Shepherds and will take place in a new universe, but I'm already in love with the characters, one of whom shares a name with a character in ShoH! (I guarantee you won't be able to guess who it is, though.)
• I do have tentative ideas percolating for potential ShoH adaptations/sequels/prequels, as well, but those likely won't manifest until the far future. :) I won't speak much on those since absolutely nothing is concrete, but I can safely say that the game won't be the last time you see the Shepherds! And, of course, I'll keep expanding on the game and its world with continuing missions and DLC when I can find the time to write them!
• After things have returned to normal, which I don't expect to happen for a long while, my partner are hoping to travel again and live in different cities for a while (the way we did with New York last year--it seems like so long ago!) and hopefully even get married! But that's a loooong ways off and will take much more time and planning than any of these projects! XD

That's all for me as we greet 2021: what are your hopes and resolutions for the year? Or are you just excited to experience more of ShoH as we finish Lavi's chapter and have all of the main characters recruited? 😉 Wherever you are in the world, I send you all of my heartfelt gratitude for the amazing things we've accomplished together this year: thank you so much, as always, from the bottom of my heart! Thank you for your incredible warmth, fun, community, and support; thank you for everything you do and everything you are. Let's keep achieving great things this year and beyond!

And a very happy New Year from me!

♥ Lena