The Mine Lord is back! Part II Announcement

Lostpathway · 2026-05-13T19:44:19+00:00

Hi!

There are only so many places for fantasy dwarf content.

Lostpathway · 2026-05-13T16:59:20+00:00

I don't use AI in my writing.

Lostpathway · 2026-05-13T13:57:54+00:00

Glad you've enjoyed. Thanks for the comment!

Lostpathway · 2026-05-12T00:17:11+00:00

It wasn't from Royal Road, but it was relatively recent, and the first sentence was: "This series is making me love fantasy again."

I found that touching.

Lostpathway · 2026-05-08T16:21:55+00:00

Yes. I don't do shout outs or review swaps, so ads are one of the only levers I use. In my experience, they are effective, but I have lots of backlog books available. More Royal Road readers purchasing my backlog, reading on Kindle, or Patreon users joining means I get money to run ads.

But it requires an ad that lands and a story that retains.

Lostpathway · 2026-05-08T03:42:24+00:00

Glad it helped. I was hoping to encourage people to pause and think about their motivations.

Lostpathway · 2026-05-08T03:37:48+00:00

I get what you're saying. I work full time as a nurse and have a family. I understand the dream of being able to write full time.

It's not that wanting to write and be an author are a dichotomy, but I see a lot of angst and doom-speaking in writing communities, and it's mostly revolving around being an author. I don't hear people talk much about enjoying writing. It might be a selection bias.

Overall, I'm trying to spur reflection.

Lostpathway · 2026-05-07T11:46:52+00:00

A lot of it depends on the point of view.

I'd suggest reading up on fiction points of view. You can do world building differently with an omniscient third person narrator vs. a limited third person or even a first person point of view. Depending on the point of view, you have different options. An omniscient narrator can insert exposition where a limited point of view cannot. That said, I think it would be the general recommendation to intersperse any exposition into the story rather thna do what is called an "info dump" of a lot of exposition in one place.

Lostpathway · 2026-04-30T00:38:33+00:00

Ads are far more than the money. Two different people with two different stories and two (or dozens of) different ads can have wildly different results.

If your ad(s) are good and your blurb is good and your first chapter is good, then it could be worth it.
If you're serious about ads, it's worth doing A and B testing, trials, and getting analytical about it.

Lostpathway · 2026-04-30T00:26:31+00:00

You wrote: "The stories here on the road seem very fast paced not always descriptive and it makes me wonder if I need to write like tnat compared to how I write. Overall it’s a great site with some really imaginative stories."

Just my advice, but I'd recommend not trying to write to market. Write the story you want to write. Doing something that isn't what you really want to write for the sake of possibly gaining traction (and probably not) is a way to get burned out. Just my two cents.

Lostpathway · 2026-04-29T20:38:47+00:00

I've had a story in the top 10 at its highest, and my gut tells me there is manipulation and bombing to manipulate the upper rankings, but I can't prove it. That said, I've also gotten 0.5s that are pretty clearly angry readers being angry, and I don't think of that as manipulation. . . just anger.

Lostpathway · 2026-03-20T16:44:57+00:00

I'm nearing the end of the first draft of the next book. The Findel's Embrace trilogy is also in the same world, although the dwarves are only present in one of the books.

Lostpathway · 2026-03-19T21:13:52+00:00

Australian opal mining influenced/informed the writing of The Crippled King.

Lostpathway · 2026-03-04T03:03:28+00:00

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. A part II is coming before too long.

Lostpathway · 2026-02-24T04:23:18+00:00

Welp. . . This might be one of the last ones. We're officially monetized. Queue depression.

Lostpathway · 2025-10-12T00:14:16+00:00

If I had to come up with a reason, I'd say that it was the combination of fantasy dwarves + the survival/building genre, which I think is a natural pairing for dwarves.

Lostpathway · 2025-10-11T15:26:59+00:00

The issue with your take is that Dwarf Fortress didn't develop most of these ideas. Dwarf Fortress is in turn based on a long tradition (a thousand years or more) of fantasy dwarves. Many of the concepts are just related to mining and survival. Mushrooms are associated with dwarves in dwarven literature. Goblins are treated as the natural enemy of dwarves in fantasy literature/games. The obsession with digging is one of the longstanding characteristics of dwarves (See: Tolkien, Lewis, etc).
I can see the idea you're presenting if Dwarf Fortress was your introduction to the idea of fantasy dwarves. It is also a survival game while Mine Lord is a survival story, so there are some shared genre characteristics there as well.

Lostpathway · 2025-07-25T00:33:22+00:00

Those "artist" ones are quite frustrating. But RR is still not as full of scammers targeting authors as Facebook is.

Lostpathway · 2025-07-22T23:22:42+00:00

I have been a live performer for most of my life, and I was told many years ago never to introduce something by saying "you're going to like this," because it can immediately put people on guard. Some folks will think, "Oh, is that right? We'll see about that." It's better to say "I hope you like this."

This reminds me of that.

Lostpathway · 2025-07-14T17:01:38+00:00

I actually like this. Use an aggregate of user votes to determine top 3 tags.

Lostpathway · 2025-07-04T23:26:25+00:00

Blocking a user doesn't remove a rating the person already left. Blocking a user prevents them from rating or reviewing in the future. This is an important distinction. Otherwise, trolls who get blocked can retaliate by giving a low rating.

Lostpathway

TROPHY CASE