Just a quick heads up for those of you that are Patreon Supporters, but the February Patreon Supporter Reward is up! Continuing with the theme started in December, it’s an early look at Shadow of an Empire, chapters six and seven. Yes, which means Patreon Supporters now have access to the first seven alpha chapters of Shadow. That’s about a sixth or seventh of the book; not a bad primer for the upcoming release!

If you’re not a Patreon Supporter, but the prospect interests you, then you can click your way over to my Patreon page and take a look at what’s there!

On to other news, what about Shadow of an Empire? Well, at this point, several of the Alpha Readers have finished running through it and are already going back over the Alpha 2 for a second run. From what I’m hearing, there won’t be an Alpha 3, but instead, Shadow will be moving into Beta 1! Hoorah! Granted, we’re not quite all the way through, so something could still crop up. But it hasn’t yet!

Which means that I can start pinning down a rough release window at long last. April, maybe? It’d be pretty sweet to release this one on my birthday, which is during that month. There’s a lot of work yet to go, but it’s not an unreachable goal!

Good things on the horizon folks! But that’s not all. We’re coming to the end, at last, of Being a Better Writer‘s Topic List Ten! There are only a few topics left on it, which means … it’s time for reader requests!

No, I’m not asking for them right this minute. I’ll do a separate post for that. What I am doing is alerting all you wonderful readers so that you can start thinking about it. Have it in your heads for the next few days. What topics would you like to see Being a Better Writer tackle? What areas would you like visited, revisited, or brought up? Write it down and get it ready, because I’ll be asking for them soon!

Okay, one last bit of news. The Live Discord Q&A chat.

I suggested this a month ago, and you guys reacted pretty positively. So now, I want to probe a little further. I’m already assuming evening for a time, probably on a weekend, but what are you guys thinking this would be like? I have my own ideas, but if I ask, I can meld them to your input to hopefully create a pretty fun live Q&A. What do you guys want to talk about. Writing skills? Dusk Guard answers? Secret background info? Advice?

Let me know!

That’s it for now, I’ve got work to do!