sierralee
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October 8 Update
🕑 Added 2023-10-08 17:07:43 +0000 UTCBig announcement today, but first look above. TLS has nearly 500 reviews on Steam, which is a significant threshold. If it can get five more reviews (that aren't all negative) then the overall rating will change to "Overwhelmingly Positive". This may attract more players, but it will also just look nice. ^-^ I know many of you probably already reviewed the game, or don't want to review porn on Steam, but if not please help us get over the edge!
Anyway, on to the main topic. Some of you may remember that last year I did a brief experiment with serialized fiction. This was partially to recharge my creative batteries but also to get some hard data for a future attempt to diversify my career, which happened a while back.
For those of you interested in my fiction or webserials in general, please take a look at my newest work:
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/72771/depthless-hunger
You can read the official description at the link, so let me give a more personalized introduction. When I started TLS, in addition to thinking about it as satire or straight fantasy, I also considered it a "wholesome fantasy". Obviously a male main character achieving a lot of things and building a harem is fundamentally meant to appeal to certain audiences, but... well, you guys know what I do. It's wish fulfillment with a degree of reserve, with more concern for characterization, worldbuilding, and story.
Webnovels are also often a medium of wish fulfillment, sometimes even more shameless than porn. When I write books, I generally write too close to balance and too far away from this wish fulfillment (at least for some readers).
Depthless Hunger is my attempt to do something more akin to TLS. There's a degree of wish fulfillment (there's a reason I named the protagonist Kai), but I want to get there via actual hard work instead of having powers handed to him. Instead of a power system that exists mostly to glorify the protagonist, I tried to build something interesting. And I hope that readers will eventually get invested in the massive world of the story.
(Players of TLS may also be interested in the fact that the story will eventually be MFFF, but the sexual aspect will be much more reserved than TLS. More like wholesome polyamory than the Pokemon harems of harem games... or some webnovels, to be honest.)
Like many authors, I have an impulse to see if I could start over, if I could find any success without the audience I've built. Maybe it's ego, but in an increasingly uncertain creative landscape I feel a strong need to try. That's why I didn't mention this until it hit Rising Stars and started finding algorithmic success on its own, as it seems like I could gradually build this into something.
Buuuuut... I have been spoiled by having such lovely communities of fans. I want to keep this story 100% separate from my Sarah Lin works, but I felt I owed it to everyone here to tell you about my newest work.
I mention this because I hope that people will enjoy it, of course. But if you like the story, please offer support:
- If you're already a member of Royal Road, I always need more followers/favorites/ratings/reviews/etc!
- If you're not, don't create an account just for this. But clicks on the chapters will help me rise in the algorithms!
I can't say exactly how long this will go, but thanks to my experiments last year I've figured out how to juggle serialized fiction pretty well. Sometimes I've gotten frustrated by readers who want more instant gratification, but I intend to stay the course and try to tell a story. I hope some of you will go along for the ride. ^-^
Anyway, there should be TLS 0.70.0 next weekend. Everything is going pretty well right now. The only way it won't be released, barring accident, is if something good happens and I need to reschedule what I'm finishing.
Comments
Sierra Lee
I'm afraid my knowledge of light novels is weak enough that this one doesn't even look that familiar to me. They may be drawing on similar tropes.
Sierra Lee
No need to apologize, I appreciate all support. Glad you've been enjoying the story! Sorry not to respond to any of these comments at greater length, but you started posting right around the same time I'm releasing the TLS update.
Nicholas
Also, this might just be me being dumb, but by any chance was inspiration drawn from Arifureta for Depthless Hunger? From the subtitle to large chunks of the plot it is eerily similar, albeit executed competently and without being creepy (like I found Artifureta to be).
Nicholas
I've been absolutely loving Depthless Hunger. It not only drew me to the Weirkey Chronicles, but to the Wuxia genre as a whole. Which was funny, because I had wanted to give that genre a shot since I heard about it last year, and what do you know, my favorite creator has tons of content in it. I'm forming an account with RR right now to leave a review for Depthless Hunger. I am sorry I didn't help with the early process, but trying to find good stuff on RR tends to feel like digging through a dumpster (for me), so I never see anything on there unless I'm pointed to it. I am super glad I didn't miss DH in the longer run though.
