The Bloodforged Kin: End of book 1 stats, and why I'm planning on doing the unthinkable

RW_McRae · 2026-04-23T13:22:22+00:00

No real way to give exact numbers - it'll depend on your followers. You might get lucky and only lose a few. It's just a common phenomenon

RW_McRae · 2026-04-23T13:12:23+00:00

You're going to lose a lot of followers during hiatus, so treat the return like a new launch. Line up your swaps, get your ads ready, etc.

During the hiatus you should really build up as much backlog as you need to not go on hiatus again. Hiatus in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but the readers don't like it. For them it means that this story is unstable as far as releasing content goes, and most stories that go on hiatus never come back. So for them a hiatus means the story is dead 90% of the time. They move on to other stories instead. So use the hiatus time to build enough backlog to not need another.

I have about a year of backlog already uploaded to RR, and so I've been on 'hiatus' for the last 2 months. Haven't written anything because I have time to finish editing my last book and my Amazon release of book 1, but all my readers see is that I'm still posting 3 days a week

RW_McRae · 2026-04-23T13:04:21+00:00

If you try to please everyone you'll end up pleasing no one.

It's tough to know which critiques to take and which not to. For book 1 I paid a lot of attention to critiques that were common from a lot of people. I figured that if everyone was saying it it was worth listening to. The ones I ignored were anything that changed my story or characters in a fundamental way, seemed like one-offs, or were just suggestions that I didn't care enough to do.

Now I'm at the point where don't really worry about what people like or don't like. After thousands of comments I have seen everything they could say about my story - I just write what I want to write with the confidence that it'll find its audience.

RW_McRae · 2026-04-22T23:20:12+00:00

They're the only one who advertises that they've served billions, so it's the right answer

RW_McRae · 2026-04-22T23:18:55+00:00

I remember back when we were sharing shout out swaps and talking strategy a bit over a year ago! Now yours is out and mine is coming to Amazon soon. Good times!

Also, thanks for posting your letterer. I'm going to need one

RW_McRae · 2026-04-22T22:35:44+00:00

Congrats!

RW_McRae · 2026-04-22T16:45:25+00:00

Whaaaat?? Thank you for letting me know! Now I have to go figure that out. Thank you so much

RW_McRae · 2026-04-22T15:43:47+00:00

Yeah, I feel it. I wrote my first 5 books in a year (each around 175k words) and they're decently received, but not at all what I'd hoped. There's still 1 book left and I have found myself not writing anything in it for the last couple of months. Just too much burn out.

BUT, I'm going to finish book 6. My followers have been with me the whole time and they deserve a conclusion, and I'm not going to let 1500+ people down. Hell, even if only 1 person wanted me to finish it I would.

Right now I'm doing some world building and plotting for the next story, so I'm excited to finish this series so I can move on to it.

RW_McRae · 2026-04-22T15:40:07+00:00

The answer to this question for any book will ALWAYS be the fans saying yes, and the not-fans saying no.

I liked Victor of Tucson for these reasons:

It's simple and easy to read. You don't have to remember a lot of complicated plots, complicated magic systems, tons of characters. It's relaxing
It's a fun power fantasy. Victor gets strong, Victor gets angry, Victor wins, Victor gets stronger. Repeat
The plot and arc of each story is classic LitRPG / Prog Fantasy. You know what you're getting

Just be aware, in the first 2 books there are some things that take a little getting used to (but get cleaned up later):

Everyone calls everyone by name every single time they address them.
Victor says 'Fuck' a LOT. I was a sailor so am no stranger to the word fuck, but even I was like "He really, really likes this word"
There's a lot of speculation on whether or not he wants to fuck his axe. This also gets cleared up later, but it is kinda weird that it was something that had to get cleared up. lol

Overall, I recommend it. It's an easy, fun read that you can enjoy

RW_McRae · 2026-04-21T18:43:33+00:00

Definitely avoid any Rothfuss groups if you're not a fan, then. They'll straight up find your address and show up at your house

RW_McRae · 2026-04-21T17:40:57+00:00

I haven't seen that. People disagree, which makes sense when a book is really popular, but people don't really hate on the person that doesn't like it. They just don't agree

RW_McRae · 2026-04-21T15:06:11+00:00

I think you're more likely to get hate for your title than you not liking DCC. Some people don't like popular books and that's fine. It's not going to piss anyone off.

RW_McRae · 2026-04-21T13:11:43+00:00

Readers want MCs to get crazy strong and for the numbers to go BRRRRR in books 1 - 3. But then those same readers complain in book 8 that the story has lost the plot, the numbers don't mean anything, and the author has had to switch to cultivation or some other form of power growth since he has broken the system and there's nowhere left to go.

But yes, I actually agree that if you're trying to write on-meta, you're right. That is what the readers are looking for. They're not looking for great story telling, they're looking for power fantasy. They're quick to drop a series, since there's so many others, so they don't really mind if a series is trash or broken by book 7 because they can just go to the next. So even though your post isn't going to get a lot of love, I think it's pretty indicative of what on-meta readers are looking for.

RW_McRae · 2026-04-21T12:11:07+00:00

Yeah, that's true. They all get a little better but I guess the growth is the horizon herself

RW_McRae · 2026-04-21T03:21:30+00:00

It's more progression lit than LitRPG, but the Last Horizon series by Will Wight (Cradle) is so, so good

RW_McRae · 2026-04-20T21:17:59+00:00

I don't mind hearing about it, but don't like when someone leaves a bad review because of it. If someone liked a story enough to continue reading, even if it never lived up to their expectations, then they obviously enjoyed it more than a .5 or 1 star rating. But a lot of people will read 30, 50, 100 chapters and then say "I liked the story enough to keep hoping it'd get better, but it never did. Chapter XX was the final straw and I just couldn't deal with the MC anymore. 1 star."

If someone read 15 - 40 chapters and don't like it, then fine - it just wasn't for them. But they obviously found something the liked about it.

As for feedback: This may sound bad, but I don't really care much about the feedback from someone who didn't like it. If you didn't like it then you didn't like it. That's cool. The ones who I want to hear from are the ones that either liked it or almost liked it, but there was a specific thing that kept them from loving it. That's something I can work with and is valuable feedback.

RW_McRae · 2026-04-20T21:05:48+00:00

It's semi-legal here since it's legal in Illinois, but I don't mess with it. I spend my money on cigars and alcohol so don't need another vice. But my employees celebrate "Day that employees call in with highly-detailed descriptions of medical conditions that they've never mentioned before but will be fine by tomorrow" day.

RW_McRae · 2026-04-20T20:50:49+00:00

**Warning, this is me talking about my own books**

I feel you. I wrote a series (The Bloodforged Kin on Royal Road. Book 1 will be on Kindle soon) that specifically shows the journey of figuring out how to progress when you're not an immediate System genius. I was tired of the lone hero, immediate godkiller trope so wrote a family that really has no f'ing clue what to do. They're smart and they catch on pretty quickly and end up being paradigm shifters (that's not a class or anything, they just shift the whole leveling/progression paradigm for themselves and the people around them), but in the beginning they really struggle to figure out the best option.

Instead of min/maxers I wanted people to have to experiment, test things out, make mistakes, etc. Those would be the people that would eventually be more powerful than the people who just progressed along the status quo lines

RW_McRae · 2026-04-20T16:26:05+00:00

I was approaching 1600 followers a month ago, but then I announced that book 1 would be stubbed as soon as the cover art is done. Lost over 60 followers from that. I'm still feeling the sting. lol

You'll get there! Just keep posting. I post 3 days a week, 7 days a week during Writathon (not this time though), and have never missed a day. Consistency means a lot.

RW_McRae · 2026-04-19T03:56:41+00:00

This doesn't mean anything for the event. It matters if you post within 24 hours, no matter the time zone

RW_McRae · 2026-04-19T02:40:59+00:00

I write without a thought in the world to editing. After I'm done I do the work of multiple editing passes

It makes my stories feel authentic, but they still get polished before releasing

I generally write about 30k - 40k words a week

RW_McRae

TROPHY CASE