It's like I'm determined to never have downtime ever.
We're nearly 4 weeks removed from the launch day of The Rise of the Raidin, and whoo buddy it's been a roller coaster! The week of launch was a ton of excitement bottled into a few days. I've seen major dropoff of sales since the first two weeks, but my ads have also ended, and I'm hoping for a few more reviews before I launch the next set of ads to, Lord willing, garner more interest and sales for the book.
About a week after launch day, I did my typical "drive all night long to get to Florida" thing and spent some time celebrating with friends and family that live in the sunshine state, and enjoying a stress-free vacation in the Disney World area. It was a ton of fun walking around Disney, meeting random people and talking a little about Rise while waiting in line for things.
Then on my way home, I swung by lower Virginia to pick up a friend before continuing home. We spent a few days working from my house so as to not make the Pinkerton explode from my lack of presence. Then we packed up and went north so I could get her back home. And the past few days here in NY have been a bundle of laughter, work, and planning.
I've been neck deep in the future of the world of Tilion, thanks to a six-hour long conversation with one of my story editors about where I see the story ending, where characters will be, how they'll all play parts in the end of the world's story, and just general plotting for character arcs. And let me tell you something friends, nothing makes me more hyped than thinking about the future of this world and sharing all of my plans with you.
I have so much I want to do. So much I want to write. So much I want to get out of my head and get worked out onto the page. There's so much of Tilion that's growing, morphing, changing, evolving. So much to explore.
The coming weeks and months show no sign of stopping, and we've got work to do. I've mapped out a lot of plans for when I'll reveal book 2's title, the art, and the characters of the story. There's a roadmap for publication for the series, side-stories, backstories, and the last stage of the story as a whole. There's more art, merch, and concept pieces I cannot wait to share. There's additional stories from Rise that'll be shared here to give further context to the story and/or provide more of a vision of what happened that day and some of the things that just didn't fit into the narrative of the book itself.
This is only the beginning.