LitRPG book underway

Now that DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER is out, it’s time to start my next set of projects!

I’ve started on CLOAK OF DRAGONFIRE and SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND. If all goes well, those will come out later in 2023.

My main project right now is the LitRPG book I’ve mentioned before – I’m 26,000 words into it as of this post. I am hoping to have it out towards the end of February.

Writing in this new genre has been an interesting experience. I’ve written before that I wanted FROSTBORN to feel like a massive tabletop RPG campaign, one where the characters start out finding the local farmer’s missing pig and end up deciding the fate of kingdoms and empires by the end of the series. I think I achieved that with FROSTBORN.

However, FROSTBORN was epic fantasy, not LitRPG. (I don’t think LitRPG even properly existed as a genre back in 2013 when I started on FROSTBORN.) So I deliberately suppressed any “game” type language in favor of making it more realistic. I didn’t want any of the characters to sound like they were playing a game.  Like, last year I read DRAGONS OF AUTUMN TWILIGHT, and while it’s a classic of the genre, it was very clearly written to follow a Dungeons & Dragons module, which was what I wanted to avoid in FROSTBORN. And I definitely couldn’t have any sentences like “Ridmark rolled a 19 on his Blunt Weapons attack roll, and his staff impacted the Mhorite orc’s head for 2d8+2 points of Bludgeoning Damage.”

But after ten years of suppressing the tendency towards game language, I can indulge it for this book! 🙂

I’m hoping to have the rough draft done in early February. Once that happens, I’ll share the title, cover, and book description, which will give a better idea of what the book’s about. I’ll also post the first chapter once it’s edited, to give a little preview.

I do have a specific sales figure in mind for the book’s first 30 days. If it hits that target, I’ll write sequels. If not, I’ll just chalk it up to a learning experience.

Thanks for reading, everyone! If all goes well, before the end of February we’ll be able to see if I can write LitRPG or not. 🙂

-JM