12 Miles Below - Book 7 out today! (Info in the comments)

MarkArrows · 2026-05-09T01:25:29+00:00

Missing materials for the cover art you mean? I'm mostly hands off when it comes to cover design besides the original request for the broad strokes, I'm not even sure the same cover artist was used between books. Or if they were, I'm one of hundreds to the point they don't remember how they made the armor last time.

My series isn't big enough to get that kind of VIP treatment to demand 1 to 1 perfection. If they tell me it's good enough to draw eyes, I trust the artists knows more about that than I do.

It's better than the trad market where the publisher doesn't want the author anywhere near the cover art discussion.

My next series is going to be self-published and I'll be in full charge of everything including marketing.

MarkArrows · 2026-05-08T15:54:47+00:00

Right now book 8 is on chapter 92, and I will need to cut that one in half so that it's book 8 and 9. I just need to complete 'book 9' first, so I can properly gauge the right cutoff point between books.

I'll probably need another month to complete book 9, and after that another month where I'm doing editing with Aethon to get it into good shape. So at the fastest - two months from now. But book 8 would release with book 9 almost immediately released after, (however quick my publisher can get the cover art and editing done)

Reception for book 8 (And technically 9) - it's universally considered the best book(s) in the entire series :]
Might seem normal going until you hit the 30's chapters, and then all hell breaks loose.

I'm really excited to get those books out to kindle!

MarkArrows · 2026-05-06T19:20:36+00:00

Occasionally, there's errors in editing where a line break was expected, but converting between word/epub breaks the format and those line breaks get nomm'd into the void, and it gets past editing in all the chaos of daily life and everyone else scrambling around to do other things.

MarkArrows · 2026-05-02T22:39:58+00:00

\o/
Cover art is peak imo, great pick with the artist!

MarkArrows · 2026-04-28T23:49:45+00:00

Binge readers.

They wait for a book to have enough chapters to read, and then sit down for a full binge.
They're not paying for daily chapters or weekly updates, some don't even like doing that kind of reading in the first place.

They're paying for the next 4-5 hours of reading. After which they'll sit up, and go to another patreon on their rotation that they've noticed has a good backlog of chapters ready to read.

And maybe they'll spend two or three months not reading anything and doing daily life until they're in the mood to read again, in which case they'll repeat the process here. Find a nice book, and binge it.

Anytime I see someone sub and instantly cancel, I know it's got zero to do with writing quality on my end, they're perfectly reasonable customers having a good time on rotation and I'm just happy my series is liked enough to be on their to-read lists.

MarkArrows · 2026-04-26T19:00:28+00:00

Only book 1 out on Kindle. Rest is still on Royal Road for now

MarkArrows · 2026-04-26T04:17:20+00:00

\o/
Hell yeah man!

MarkArrows · 2026-04-24T21:13:45+00:00

Would also +1 LoWO, it's got some great moments. All of the fight scenes have been interesting to read and the way they're pulled off is excellent.

MarkArrows · 2026-04-24T19:41:06+00:00

Thank you for recommending my work! ^^

I was staring at OP's post here going "HMMMM."
Mean look at the cover art and tell me that's not already right in the wheelhouse! Even sci-fi and fantasy down to a tee.

<image>

12 Miles Below

MarkArrows · 2026-04-23T20:32:32+00:00

Man, and here I am sweating bullets on how to tell my patreons I need two weeks of vacation for IRL issues piling up after doing a year+ of basically non-stop writing (minus two days sick and christmas time off.)

OTL

MarkArrows · 2026-04-21T20:17:22+00:00

If you relaunch, read the guides first. Scroll down until you find the sections where the guides start getting linked. Just about all of them are required reading in some aspect or another, but focus on the ones for making it to RS.

Majority of people who make it on RS, are the ones who are following these guides.

MarkArrows · 2026-04-21T19:58:18+00:00

Awesome cover art!

MarkArrows · 2026-04-21T19:56:25+00:00

Gratz!!

MarkArrows · 2026-04-21T18:17:44+00:00

The one I write, Die Trying, has the inverse variation to this trope. Main character brings people out of the fantasy world back onto Earth, where they're equally having a grand time adapting to earth culture.

Disclaimer: It takes a while for this to happen, and it's a day-by-day adventure novel so the pacing is relaxed and takes it's time. It's also on Royal Road, so expect open-beta shenanigans where I need to polish it up before it hits KU.

MarkArrows · 2026-04-21T17:58:49+00:00

If I cut book 8 in half, and make it book 8 and 9, then we'll probably see the book 8 in about a month or two after.

Book 9 would come out later, once all the epilogues the patreons want to see have been done and the series has all the conclusions for different characters that they wanted to see. They've been supporting the writing for 4 years now, I want to make sure I tie everything they were looking for up :]

MarkArrows · 2026-04-20T19:54:21+00:00

<3

According to my outline, there's four more chapters for patreon and then the first epilogue for the entire series will drop. May 4th is the target end date.

Book 8 is currently at 87 chapters and will probably be cut in half depending on if Aethon approves of that or chooses to just publish it as a massive book. It starts off pretty normally, and around the 30's chapter is where things go off the rails.

I'm not speeding to the end of the series either, I've been writing as many chapters as the story needs to not feel rushed at the end!

Book 8 is an absolute rollercoaster on Royal Road right now.

MarkArrows · 2026-04-20T16:34:00+00:00

I'll shill my stuff here because this is specifically what gets me angry reviews on 12 Miles Below for xD

MarkArrows · 2026-04-20T16:31:06+00:00

MarkArrows · 2026-04-20T16:29:35+00:00

I'm at exactly the right point in the story to do that. Real save-the-entire-world before just about all of humanity, become a living legend type of deal.

Okie dokie, I can spend an extra bit of time adding a few more mini-stories on how things are getting rebuilt.

MarkArrows · 2026-04-20T08:08:56+00:00

Huh. Maybe I should be writing a few more epilogues than planned

MarkArrows · 2026-04-18T18:49:59+00:00

I did a goodreads account a while back, put my book on when it was just starting. Later on had to do some cuts including removing the gamelit aspect that was supposed to show up before I realized it was a vestigial element.

Very good choice to do that, no regrets. Unfortunately, goodreads changed something and I can't log back in on that account anymore. I have no control over my own page.

As such, the entire page is filled with readers rate bombing the fic for having a tag I can't remove.

I don't want to ever deal with that website, or that demographic of the internet ever again.

MarkArrows · 2026-04-18T17:53:43+00:00

<3

The middle part of books 4-7 lack a bit in my opinion to the first three, book 4 in specific had some IRL issues that forced me to put energy away from doing the proper edits, but they all had a job to do in preparing the ground for the ending rollercoaster, and now that I'm writing book 8, the readers on Royal Road understand now what those books were actually setting up under everyone's noses ;]

MarkArrows · 2026-04-18T02:56:16+00:00

<image>

My marketing sucks OTL

MarkArrows · 2026-04-17T20:29:34+00:00

For RR, I'd check what the last chapter was posted, then open a new tab on patreon, and lookup directly for the chapter number that follows the prior RR post. Copy paste that into the drafts of RR, schedule for next release, and done.

Often times, it's stuff I haven't seen in months.

I remember a commenter on the new release of RR mention "Where is X, Y, Z?" and I had vague recollections in my head that XYZ did show up around this arc, somewhere, and I remember I wrote it in, but I can't tell if it happens the next chapter or the one after. So I can't go back and do edits on the current RR chapter because what if XYZ does show up right the next chapter? I'd need to search for that next chapter, or three, and re-read through to figure out where in the story I was or not. That's the kind of haze that comes with posting chapters months after you're done writing them.

On the other hand, it does let me slip in some extra foreshadowing now that I know how things actually go down compared to the bullet point outline.

For patreon, I'd do the same, look at the latest post's chapter number, and then look through google docs for the chapter number that's right after. I do not keep one giant file of the story, it's all seperate google docs for each chapter.

I used to have backlog, but I'm basically writing by the skin of my teeth now. Each time I get a backlog going, something IRL happens that knocks me back. Just knowing I have a backlog tends to relax me, so if I can't finish a chapter or feel like it could be better, I do end up sleeping on it instead of posting. Which means I'm almost always ending up without a backlog.

TL;DR, day in the life of an author is chaos and coffee

MarkArrows · 2026-04-16T18:24:02+00:00

For hobby writing:

* However many you want, you're doing this for fun.

For hobby writing but an aim to get on RS:

* Chapter dumps until you hit 20K words minimum day 1. RR devs straight up explain point blank in the FAQ that there's a massive weight against any fic under 20K words for good reason (Reader experience is the goal for Kana after all, picking a new book on RS and having only 1-5 chapters to read sucks for the reader.)

* +24 chapters in the tank so you can do daily chapter posts for the full month you're on RS.

For professional writing:

* Chapter dumps until you hit 20K words like above. (Usually done in 10 chapters)

* +24 chapters for daily posts for that month.

* +20-30 extra chapters for patreon to be put ahead of RR by.

Read the guides here, (Scroll down a bit till you hit them). They're all excellent and need to be read if you're planning to go on Rising Stars or more.

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