This space won’t be updated much, because when I tried to link to it in my TikTok profile, it came back saying it’s an unsecured site, basically warning people not to visit. Can’t do much about that, I don’t make enough profit from my books to bother getting a real website, so don’t be surprised if these posts aren’t updated very often at all.
That said, here are a few updates from the last little while:
A Queen’s Edict is now available on Audible! The narrator was great to work with, and I’m happy to have the first book of the second series out in the wild. Sales have been off to a slow start, but I’ll keep trying to find readers for it. It is, in my humble opinion, my best book to date. So if you liked the original Empire’s Foundation trilogy, I can almost guarantee that you’ll like this one, too!
I wrote a short story, Making Time, for an anthology. It should be coming out in the next month or so. Super happy with that one… the editors said it’s a gem and trippy. Couldn’t ask for higher praise!
I quit work on another short story. Through the editing process I realized I a) wasn’t the one to write the story, and b) didn’t even like the story anymore. It dealt with Matthew Strongblade, who canonically comes from a society where he was a slave to minotaurs (I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that people might be triggered by this, thinking of real life slavery), and his beginnings. Basically, he killed a citizen in defense of his Master and was sent to the arena to fight for his life. The themes of racial slavery were too much for some people in the group, and others kept trying to modernize it, applying our standards today to an ancient fantasy setting where the protagonist thought of members of other races (e.g., a goblin or orc) as “it” and the group wanted it changed to “they/them.” While I see the value in such changes in every day use, and try very hard to remember not to assume gender identity and use proper pronouns in real life, the story just felt like it wasn’t even going to fit with the rest of my world anymore. That, plus the sheer amount of work involved in being a part of that anthology, and the whole project grew less and less appealing. When I resigned from it, one of my friends said, “If you can’t write about minotaur slavers, what CAN you write about?”
D&D continues to be great fun! Both parties came together recently, and the shenanigans that they’ve been getting up to have been amazing! I won’t spoil it, though… if you want to hear what they’ve been up to, you can check out all the videos from the very beginning on YouTube.
Ryan Toxopeus Writing 