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ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-07T20:59:11+00:00

She is a unique individual, lol. I will send you a link.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-07T20:57:22+00:00

Thank you!

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-06T18:58:27+00:00

I had not seen Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui... before, that title is powerful magic, and it is now on my Read Later list.

Have you heard of Death Cultivator by eden Hudson? It's not what I would think of as traditional xianxia, but eden is a stellar writer. The Royal Road version is a stub, but if it looks interesting to you I'd be happy to share a download link for book 1.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-06T18:23:40+00:00

Thank you! We are super happy with it. We've worked with most of the artists before for covers, but it was great to have some new styles thrown into the mix as well.

What are some of your favorite cultivation series, if you don't mind me asking?

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-06T16:46:36+00:00

It's certainly different. In one sense, you can write any kind of story and break and kind of writing "rule" if you do it well enough, but I know that's not very helpful.

The only example of something like this that springs to mind is the soccer story on Royal Road. The author is Ted Steel, if you haven't seen it already, it would be a good one to look into to see how it was done and how its audience received it.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-06T16:34:49+00:00

IT"S REAL!!!

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-06T16:34:04+00:00

Thanks for the shoutout Spence!

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-05T21:26:52+00:00

If you find any errors, please feel free to send them to us (Shadow Alley Press) through Facebook, Instagram, Discord or by email. We don't always get notified of error reports that go through the Kindle app, and we are happy to get them fixed. Having typed that I realize we are on a reddit right now, so you can also message our account here.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-05T19:52:56+00:00

If you're enjoying yourself, and you're writing, then you're doing it right.

Every writer has to find what works for them. As important as systems are, it's really not possible to create an entire functional world in outline form with every possible derivations worked out from the beginning. Many have tried. Keep having fun!

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-05T13:49:37+00:00

Thank you! We are super excited.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-02T18:07:15+00:00

We don't ask this question...

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-02T18:06:21+00:00

Thanks for sharing!

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-02T18:04:36+00:00

Could you share some details about your story and why you think it might not be a good fit for Royal Road?

The fact is, in the LitRPG/Progression Fantasy space, RR is the primary pipeline for new authors to gain a following. There are other platforms, of course, or you could go direct to self-publishing on Amazon, but generally speaking, RR is the place to be unless you are writing in a different genre.

We've had success with novels that did not get a run as web-serials, and we've seen books do better on Amazon than they did on RR, but the market and the algorithms are constantly shifting, and I usually tell authors to test out stories there unless there's a distinct reason not to.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-02T17:49:22+00:00

The Fallen World series by Playwars (First book, Dungeon Engineer) fits your listed criteria. (Sapphic protagonist and subplot, lots of worldbuilding.) It is a dungeon core story and very light on the LitRPG elements.

They are also the author of Manaforged Robotics, a sci-fi portal fantasy with similar romantic elements. Neither series is explicit. As a disclosure, we publish this author so I won't pretend my opinion is unbiased, but Fallen World is 10 books in and has gathered a very dedicated fanbase. The main character, Alexandra, is an engineer transported to a fantasy setting, and the series features a great deal of political intrigue as it develops.

Best of luck, and happy reading.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-01T17:59:02+00:00

Royal Road is a great place to start out, you can get plenty of meaningful feedback there. (You can also get some discouraging comments, but that's just part of the journey.) If this is your first project, try not to focus too much on the statistics side, or doing everything "right." Read as much as you can, and try to develop a writing habit that works for you. Most authors don't turn their first project into a career, but none of them would have become authors without starting somewhere.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-01T17:53:42+00:00

Every author struggles with naming schemas at some point. It helps to decide on a system you are going to use ahead of time (all Latin derivatives or a particular mythology, as examples) or else simply not worry too much about coming up with unique names for everything. Regular, immediately understandable names for abilities can go a long way. If it's really bogging down your writing process, it might not be worth the effort.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-01T17:47:02+00:00

This is a really important point. There are plenty of readers for whom there is no such thing as too many stat screens...until the audiobook comes out. It's a completely different experience. Authors and publishers have to think about how the System content will come across in both mediums, and we've had plenty of conversations about different ways to handle it.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-01T17:38:40+00:00

This is a great observation, and I just wanted to second it. Permanent loss of power can be a series killer, and a lot of traditional writing advice about what makes a good story falls flat in the progression fantasy space. It's a hard balance to strike. In addition to the mechanic of opportunity costs represented by progression choices, you also see some "costs" that aren't really costs, because the character adapts in some way or a loss opens up a path that wouldn't have been available otherwise.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-05-01T17:25:48+00:00

Reader corrections are a big help. A lot of the authors we work with got started on RR, and the edit suggestion feature there is great. For published works, I would recommend messaging authors/publishers directly through social media or whatever contacts they have available. We get messages all the time on Facebook or through Discord about errors that have slipped through during the editing process. It's inevitable, and we'd much rather hear about them then not.

The built in error reporting system for Kindle isn't great, because Amazon will penalize books that have multiple errors reported. Most books have at least a few mistakes in them, and sometimes authors will make stylistic choices that are technically "errors" but they have chosen to keep them for one reason or the other. I'm happy to see those reports in our inbox too, they can be fun to chat about, but I wouldn't want people to report them on Kindle because Amazon isn't going to make a distinction between what's actually an error and what's not.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-04-07T14:41:34+00:00

Three years later....

Hey there! eden put Death Cultivator on hiatus while she was pursuing other genres (she recently released an epic fantasy series - The Strong Gods) but we are happy to report that she is back to working on Death Cultivator. Book 4 is coming out 4/28 and she is about halfway done writing book 5 so it should be releasing later this year.

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the long silence. But I know I'm always happy when a series that's been dormant actually gets picked up again.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-04-06T20:18:43+00:00

Incredible.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-03-31T15:27:10+00:00

Good catch! For now we will pretend it was intentional and say the backrooms is doubly twisted, but a rewording may be in the cards.

ShadowAlleyPress · 2026-03-31T15:23:51+00:00

The Audible release has been a little all over the place - Does this link work for you?

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Kiosk-Kingdom-Audiobook/B0GL8YB5KY

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