Thread by @TheBrometheus

Today I'm working on my Savage Hunters series. It has suffered a long and troubled road.

I'll thread about it here for anyone interested in the process a writer follows in learning and designing an ongoing series.

I started writing this series in 2018 for my niece. I wanted to write fantasy pulp novels, and I was inspired by games like Monster Hunter to make stories about primitive tribes battling gigantic beasts. I also wanted to write for my young niece who loves games.

Writing specifically for female readers was on my heart because my niece was growing up in a world with a lack of morality tales. She loved to read, but what could I buy for her? Everything YA seemed to be about sex and drugs and more sex, plus sex on top of that.

So I designed a fantasy series around one of her favorite games, Monster Hunter, and built the story to focus on relationships first and action second. I also wanted to include custom illustrations inside the book to copy the Japanese light novel style.

Thus came Savage Hunters.

I wrote the first book in 2018. It was actually the second book I'd ever written. As such, it is TERRIBLE by my current standards. I've got training and coaching from @BrianNiemeier and @JoshuaLisec over the last several years and have learned so much that when I look back... 🤮

I wrote the first book in 2018, then wrote the second right away. I had two books ready to go! I wanted to do six in a row prior to release so I could bombard my genre niche and build sales.

But halfway through writing the third, my brother in law killed himself.

The shock hit my family like a nuclear train. We were down for a while. And because this book series was lighthearted, I couldn't get back into it no matter how hard I tried. Even 4 months later, I couldn't go to that sunny place I needed to write a fantasy tale for my niece.

So I poured my frustration and dark feelings into the Deus Vult Wastelanders series. That's where I go to relieve my chainsaw cravings. I worked through the grief by writing those stories.

Eventually, I was able to circle back around to the third book... a whole year later.

I ran a Kickstarter for the first book over a year ago. It did great! Fans loved the concept and poured in money to bring the series to life. I also rebranded it as a LitRPG instead of just fantasy to embrace the video game elements more fully.

Backers loved the book.

But after I published it on Amazon, it wasn't right. I looked back and saw glaring mistakes that couldn't be handwaved. If I was going to build a long-running series on this first book, it needed to shine.

This feeling got worse as I learned from @BrianNiemeier and @JoshuaLisec

I finally unpublished the book. It's no longer available on Amazon. Kickstarter backers have their copies, and they love it. I get emails all the time asking me to bring out the sequels I've already got written. Female readers especially love the series. That warms my heart.

But I haven't known fully how to make the first book come out right until I wrote my new series with @JoshuaLisec. Watching him work behind the scenes has been eye-opening. I feel like I took three masterclasses at once just reading his comments in the margins.

I see it now.

So today I've started revamping the first book. I've got major structural overhauls to do and big changes to the story flow, but I can see the finished product in my mind. I can finally do this story justice.

Huge thanks to @BrianNiemeier and @JoshuaLisec for the education.

The moral of this story is that you never finish mastering your craft. There's always more to learn. And even after you've released a product, you can go back and fix it with what you learn after. Never be afraid to release your best that you're capable of at that time.

I've got the first 3 books in the series already written. I'll be running through them and making them into the story I always imagined. They'll be good for my niece, my wife, and my daughter, and all the female gamers and tomboys and action fans I'm writing for.