Monthly Update: 13

Hey everyone! June has officially arrived… somehow. I was still processing the fact that it was May and bam, June. I don’t know if it’s just a getting older thing, or if it’s just due to how busy I’ve been. Either way, I don’t like it. Anyone know a guy with a hyperbolic time chamber I could borrow for a bit? I’ll definitely only use it to be productive, not at all to goof off and play the new games coming out that I haven’t had time to play.

I’m gonna try and sandwich this as best I can.

First off, news for Beneath the Gilding: I’ve decided to try my hand at self-publishing. This shit is scary and expensive. Especially thanks to my socially anxious ass that has had to cold send so many damn emails. But it is what it is, and I gotta get used to it one way or another.

Onto the not fun part of this sandwich. The jury’s in and Crimson Hydra 3 will be the last book in the series. There’s always the chance that I return to it someday, but when or even how that would look? No way to know. I wish I had better news for y’all there.

At the end of the day, I’m just so thankful for the opportunity to get a story of mine out there, and I’m thankful for everything that I learned while working with Portal. Benny’s story has been a blast to tell. He and a certain flesh golem got my foot in the door. I’ll always be indebted to him for that.

What that means is that I’ll be sending Benny off with a bang. From the moment that I decided to start writing Crimson, I had a plan for points to cut off the story if I had to, so you can be damn sure that the end will be worth the journey.

For the bottom of this increasingly weird sandwich, we’re making progress on the cover for Crimson 3. Joel Chaim Holtzman is an absolutely fantastic artist and I know that by the end, the cover’s gonna be great.

I’ve started working with a great editor on Gilding, I have a cover artist in mind, and I’m just now debating my options for narrators. Not decided yet, especially due to the whole, money is a thing that is required to pay for goods and/or services, but yeah. The admin work of self-pubbing is rough, to say the least. I may be eyeing an August release for the e-book, but nothing’s set in stone yet.

Thanks again for coming along for the ride folks. If you have any questions you want to launch my way, feel free to email or join the discord. I do my best to respond, but don’t get caught off-guard by my cryptid-adjacent tendencies. I have a bad habit of disappearing into the woods (my office) for long stretches of time (weeks to months), only to suddenly appear in photos taken by hikers in said woods (a text message/email).

I appreciate the hell out of y’all,

–Josh