Woohoo, Jason Hill has just finished Elusive Prey for book 7 of The World and I've approved it. Hopefully, we'll see it posted within two weeks if everything processes as normal. I listened through many of the parts and found myself laughing out loud. It's so freaking good. Also, he has a plan for getting book 8 out relatively quickly ... relative hopefully being within the next four months. That might be doing doing a half hour to an hour a night or every other night, but he believes that'll allow him to get book 8 out within a decent amount of time. That would be awesome if we could see both books out in less than five months!

I apologize once again for such a terrible cliffhanger that book 6 was left off at for so long. It just happened to fit the story well and was the only place I could really cut the story off at that made any sense. Book 7 though is well worth the wait. I can't wait to hear how everyone likes it! 

Description: Logging into The World, Startum Ironwolf and his friends barely flee Palnisdale ahead of the Northern Invaders. Their only chance to survive is to somehow stay ahead of the Orcish horde long enough to reach the ships waiting for them in Darom. An all but impossible task with the port city being nearly a two-day run away. Somehow, Startum must come up with a way to do the impossible or lose everything.

You can find the book here: 

I talked with Jason Hill a few days ago and he’s assured me that he’ll be finished with the audio for book 7 in March 2021. Not sure exactly when that’s going to happen, but even if it’s finished in March, Audible will take another fifteen to twenty days to get it uploaded and available for download. In Jason Hill’s defense, he’s had some major medical problems that needed to be dealt with before he could get back on his audiobook schedule. After having a major heart attack myself, I can appreciate how medical issues can kick your ass.

From the feedback I’ve received from all of the audiobook fans, everyone really wants me to stay with Jason Hill’s voice and are willing to wait; even if that means it takes a little bit longer for the audiobooks to be released. Not that I can disagree, Jason Hill does an excellent job. As long as everyone is cool with wait until he’s able to get around to completing the audiobooks for the series, then I won’t stress about it too much. From both of us, we appreciate everyone being so patient with our medical issues in 2020. Hopefully, we both will keep on the healthy side so this isn’t a problem again.

Book 8 is moving long nicely. Though I’m a solid six months behind schedule, I am back to writing like a fiend. So far, I’ve been hesitant to go over the Amazon’s template of 828 pages but this might change for book 8. I really want to have all three days included in the same book to finish off the Star’s gaming week and the current story arc. I’ll just have to see how long it takes me to get it all out. The feedback from everyone is that the story is kicking ass. One of the biggest things I’ve been hearing from everyone is that the characters seem more alive than ever from all of the action and shit-talking going on. So, just know that I’m working as hard as I can to get book 8 out as quickly as I can while improving the quality of the story and writing as always =D
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For those of you who’d like a Sneak Peek of my stories, you can find it here on my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=23281087&fan_landing=true

​I’m happy to announce that I’ve finally found a true translator and a good writer in their own merit to translate The World Series. Frank Dietz has done an excellent job in translating the series and the response from the German fans of Litrpg/Gamelit has been awesome. While the series has been out in English, reading a deeply complex series like The World isn’t easy in a language that’s not your mother’s tongue. It’s especially cool because that’s where I’m living. Another interesting aspect to German readers is that many prefer paperback books over eBooks. I’ve never sold so many paperback novels in my life. There’s just something about having so many of my paperback books out that’s thrilling to me.   
 
So far, book 1 & 2 has been released. Book 3 is in the process of being translated and the rest of the series will be coming out slowly as I get the funds available for each preceding book in the series. Book 4 will be as expensive as getting nearly all three first books out due to its huge size. Also, at the same time the audio books will be being released shortly after. 

On an interesting sidenote, Bastian Scheibe (https://www.bastianscheibe.de/) is the voice actor doing the German-version of the series. You’ll have to check out his website, he’s an actor that’s been in several movies and is looking to add to his portfolio with audiobooks due to everything that’s been going on with COVID.
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Like Jason Hill, Anja once again chose his voice. I have to agree with her that he’s pretty awesome. I’m hoping that together we’ll kickstart The World series on the German-side of Audible =D and that it will help him promote his own career like it did for Jason Hill.  ​

Book 7 is finally available for The World on Amazon. The title is called, Elusive Prey. The current link is here. https://www.amazon.com/Elusive-Prey-World-Book-7-ebook/dp/B08F9PBXQB/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1596607908&sr=1-1 The first week of getting a book uploaded is all kinds crazy. It's not properly listed under my actual author's profile, it's not linked to the rest of the series, nor is it linked to its own paperback book. It is ready for download and purchase. It is the longest book I've written yet. So long, that I had an issue with getting it out in paperback because the template Amazon uses for the physical print is only good for 828 pages. I removed the glossary and cut down some of the older names from some of the monsters and got it down to 825 pages. The Kindle version won't update with the proper page count until the paperback book is released.
Please take the time to give me your feedback and post a hopefully positive review for the new book ;) This is probably going to be how the next 100 books are generally going to look like. That's mostly due to the breadth of Star's domain and making sure you kept up to date on what's going-on in the various locations. Also, it helps fight against the inevitable IAK author attacks. They love to focus on new books coming out, so thank you in advance for everyone's feedback and support.
On a side note, I ended up having a massive heart attack on the 5th of August just after getting the book published. Probably due to my pushing the final part of the book out and thinking that I could live off of caffeine and 3 hours of sleep for two and a half weeks straight like I regularly did throughout most of my life until my late 30's. I have a stint in my heart now and strict orders to take better care of myself from my doctors, wife, and daughter, so I won't be rushing out any late deadlines again, but the series will continue to roll without fail. 

Without further adieu, here is the back of the new book:

Now that Startum Ironwolf has reached Domenic’s stronghold, there are a number of obstacles to surpass if he’s going to have any hope in helping his friend escape the massive Chaos Storm Alliances army that’s camped on his friend’s doorstep. The first and foremost being his friend’s refusal to run away and fight another day.

Book 6 is finally out on Audible. Sorry for the long wait, but Jason Hill was quite busy with the whole COVID 19 pandemic since he's a full-time nurse for his day job. Though, he promised that he already has a space open for book 7 and expects to get that out ASAP this time around. 

It's kind of funny that we are both Emergency Essential Personnel, albeit he has the much more dangerous job when it comes to dealing with the pandemic between the two of us. At the same time, who would have thought that I'd have been at a Home Improvement store so much during a pandemic. All that I can say is that The Walking Dead and the movie Contagion completely missed that simple fact of married life ;) Anyway, we both appreciate the support.

If you get a chance, please make sure you leave a positive review for the series. The IAK (Indie Author Killer) Guild never rests in their attacks and your support makes a huge difference in my fight against their bullying and which is why I always promote leaving reviews for the authors you like. It's the best way to block groups like this. 

One of the questions that sometime comes up with friends and fans about The World and the PVP battles that are described in the stories are questions in regards to the numbers of players in each guild. I’ve heard a few times that a thousand or more players seems like an awful lot of people for a guild. So, I thought it would be a good topic to bring up for discussion. In my days of playing Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft (the classic versions of both), guilds were massive. When I moved over to the open Beta of World of Warcraft, I started a small guild of nearly five hundred players.
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Yes, in terms of guild sizes, five hundred players were barely a blip on the the radar. Most decent sized guilds had something in the range of a thousand to three thousand players. Platinum sized guilds were usually in the five to eight thousand range of players. Any guilds smaller than a thousand weren’t usually taken seriously by the larger guilds on the server. These simple facts became obvious when we had a guild of less than fifty players on Anarchy Online.

Anarchy Online had land that each guild could take ownership of that offered extra bonuses of health and other stat bonuses to the entire guild. Notum Wars, the Anarchy Online add-on that introduced land ownership and PVP, put the larger guilds in complete control over the land ownership aspect of the game. The only way you could compete against such guilds were to be a large guild with an international membership. Yes, and international membership. Without having international players, there was no way for the small and regular sized guilds to protect their land around the clock from the Large and Platinum sized guilds that could launch a force against another guilds holdings at any time of the day or night.

When I moved with my friend to World of Warcraft’s open Beta, we decided to put together a guild of non-assholes. Asshats and PKers were rampant in the MMO world. This could be regulated to an extent by the use of people refusing to team up with known ninja looters or crappy playing players, but if the entire guild were a bunch of PKing fucktards, there wasn’t much you could do about their anti-social behavior. Well, you couldn’t if they were one of the Platinum sized guilds. Otherwise, players can do amazing things when they work together on a server. What my friends and I ended up doing was fighting these players when and wherever they were being assholes.

For the most part this worked, except when those assholes were a platinum sized guild. Usually this meant we were placed on a blacklist for those guilds who were doing the end game bosses and we were never invited to participate as extra damage in those raids. It also put us on the list of guilds that these guilds would purposely try to grief if we ever went after those in-game bosses.

This might sound extreme to some for simply wanting to play a game, but honestly, it was business as usual in MMOs. Hell, Anarchy Online was better than many other companies at running MMO games, because they actually had safe zones where PKers couldn’t unendingly grief newbie players. Also, while it was ugly at times, it also brought a certain realism to the world we were playing that made the MMOs even that much more addicting.

Move forward a few years to World of Warcraft and this was different but similar. Platinum sized guilds owned the end game instances. Luckily, Blizzard made these end game world dungeons instanced so that you couldn’t be griefed while trying to take on the dungeon. Now, that didn’t stop the area before the doorway to the dungeon from turning into a massive PVP brawl. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I entered into Molten Core with only half durability on my armor due to trying to get the raid through the actual door. While things like this pissed you off to no end, it also made the world so alive and exciting.

My guild, Black Rook Hold, on the Llane Server was too small to do Molten Core and the other end game instances alone with the player base we had. So, I ended up making an alliance with three other smaller guilds. Together, we had nearly fifteen hundred players as a base to build a forty person raid team. This brought us to the minimum number of players necessary to try to take on the game’s end game dungeons.

To do this and be successful took nearly an in real life year to complete. This is because while it is easy to get forty players, it is not easy to get forty good players who are willing to use tactics and strategy to take out a major boss and their guards. You’d always have some idiot trying to show how awesome they were on the DPS meter by out-damaging everyone in the raid and pulling the boss or guards off the primary and secondary tanks, which in turn would wipe the raid. It not only took forty players who were willing to work together, play smart, and farm all of the items a player needed between running the raids, it took forty people willing to die regularly for eight to twelve hours a run to learn how to take down the bosses. This usually was over a time period of three to four months once you got the hang of it.

We usually ran the end game dungeons three times a week. In-between those times, a player in the raid was expected to farm the materials needed for Greater Health, Armor, Fire/Frost resistant potions, farm the materials needed to make unique armor that had high resistances for certain types of damage, run unique dungeons to get special drops for increasing resistances in specific types of magic or poisons, and get enough money up to be able to repair your gear between each run. It was also expected of most players to have two or even three sets of armor, because, when you were learning an instance, you went through armor sets quickly due to the constant dying. Usually, after your fourth death, your armor’s durability was down to zero and you had to put on your back-up armor.

The number of hours a hardcore player put into most MMOs ran around eight to twelve hours each day during the week and eighteen plus during the weekends. Being a hardcore player means that you weren’t making money playing, but you were completing the same end game content that professional groups did. Starting out World of Warcraft was extreme for the first two month it took to reach maximum level. You had to have a max level character to be able to park in the contested PVP zones while leveling up your backup characters to be able to deal with PKing spawn campers. Most hardcore players had ten level sixty players to be able to cover the various crafting and classes necessary to do the end game content. Honestly, for my friends and I, the hardcore playing didn’t slow down until after the first two years of playing. Hell, it might even have been the first four years.  

This is my personal gaming experience. This is also the gaming experience from my online group of friends that I am bringing into The World series. Many of the PKing fights I discuss are actual situations that we ran into inside the games ourselves. Yes, some have been taken to the next level to make an interesting story and dramatized the events, but, nonetheless, they are mostly based on our game play experiences to one level or another. So, when I’m talking about the number of players in a guild, alliance, or the hours put into gaming, this is from personal experience. In truth, I can’t imagine how much more addicting this would've been if the games were using FIVR technology.

The next part I’d like to bring up is book 6’s story that goes over a twenty-four hour time period. When I was writing the story, it just happened that the day ended up encompassing a twenty-four hour time period that went out to six hundred and ninety-four pages of straight story. From the feedback I’ve been getting, the fans of the series are loving the story even if there happened to be a slight cliffhanger at the end. The funniest part of the responses I’ve been receiving so far is from the other authors within the genre. They’re shocked and confused at how a book can be published that only covers a twenty-four hour time period, which just makes me laugh. Have they completely forgotten about the TV Series 24? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_(TV_series)) Anyway, once I remembered how awesome the 24 series was, I didn’t hesitate releasing book 6’s story.

The TV series 24 was truly inspiring. It's a show that you simply couldn’t stop watching once you start on episode one. I literally watched the series straight through until I was forced to go to work the morning with burning eyes and feeling like a living zombie. Maybe the series has motivated me to write in a similar style, because I’ve been told plenty of times that once people start reading The World series they simply can’t put the books down due to the constant action within the story. If I can even come a little bit close to the genius of that series, I’ll be super happy as a writer.

I don’t plan to do twenty-four hours as the norm for my books and would rather the stories to cover a minimum of two days if not an entire week. At the same time, if the story is there due to the intense interpersonal relationships, action, and the depth of the on-going adventures, I will not hesitate to do a twenty-four hour story. That’s one of the great things about being able to self-publish my own books. I can do the story how I like and cover the details I think need to properly told without someone looking over my shoulder and telling me no. Well, as long as the fans are enjoying the story. That’s the only measure I’m using to judge my work.

Anyway, thank you for reading my ramblings and for allowing me the flexibility to tell the story the way I want … even if it’s crazy like book four was ;)

 Book 6 of The World Series was just released on Amazon. It is still currently being moved under my author's name and all of that fun, but it is available for downloading. The paperback book, for those that are interested, is also available, but not showing up under the ebook link until Amazon gets everything connected together. That's always takes a few days. 

Eric and Steven did a great job on getting the story cleaned up and helped me with several of the consistency checks to keep the story clean. Steven's character is Zeven, while Eric's is the mysterious warrior-knight helping the people of The World in Darom. Domenic shows up in this book and actually assisted in our back and forth for the story. There's some powerful emotions flying towards the end of the book and I think you'll enjoy the intensity that he brought to his character in the story. 

Also, check out the Post Credit scene. Like book five, it is in the very back of the book. For audible readers, it is after the book credits ... just like in a Marvel movie ;) Why did I do it that way? I don't know, it sounded fun and gives me an additional point of view, usually from the Chaos Storm Alliance PKers, to give another angle to the story. They're short, but carry a lot of information. 

On an exciting side-note, Book 6 has already been sent to Jason Hill to start his work on the audible version. I hope that means he'll get something out in the next few months, so everyone doesn't have to wait so long this time. 

Once again, thank you for all of the support for the series and leaving the reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and Audible. It all helps with the on going fight aginst the IAK guild and their constant trolling of bad reviews on literally every version of the books that are out. They're more or less synonymous with the Chaos Storm Alliance, but a group of PKers that try to take down new Indie Writers to the GameLit/LitRPG genre. Without your support, they would have driven me out of the genre. So thank you for your constant support. Without it, The World wouldn't be proceeding as a series. Also, please make sure you leave reviews for all the authors you like. I am not the only Indie Writer that gets attacked. Basically, every new Indie Writer to the genre has to go through the same bashing to get new books into your hands. 

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the story. Also, sorry for the cliffhanger. It just happened to work out that way. Once I realized book 6 was already nearly 700 pages, I cut it off at the end of the day. Nonetheless, I think you're going to love it.

The link for Amazon.com is here: 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084DRTDM3/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=that+wasn%27t+the+plan&qid=1580588182&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

Synopsis:

​Hunted at every turn while the Chaos Storm Guild Leader's plans near fruition, Startum Ironwolf and his friends must fight their way through the vanguard of the northern hordes and mass of PKers to reach their friend. On their way, they meet up with new friends and old enemies as the noose slowly closes around them.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go the way you plan.

I'm not exactly big on the holidays. It's due to coming from a very abusive family, which I try to brush upon in my stories. Most of the personal thoughts, friends, and family stuff that I write are all meaningful to me. Even Julie, who was my in real life abusive ex-girlfriend (albeit her name has been changed). She doesn't just make a great villain, but it shows a different side to the group and Star. 

My wife tries to make the holidays special for me and I take it to heart as a time to give and be with family. Presents are not a thing for me. Just sharing times with those you love is what the holidays mean to me. Before I met my wife, I hosted holidays for my LAN and guildmates who didn't have family, since I didn't have much of any family I wanted to be around besides my aunt who was busy. It was a good way to give to my friends and be around the people who truly were special to me. 

I wish everyone a healthy and safe holiday with those you love. Also, I'm doing my best to get the next book out. The detailed storyline is taking a lot more work than I'd ever imagined, but the story is getting there. Eric was right to give me a hard time about getting book 6 out by December. I wasn't even close and forgot how much the holidays takes away your time to write.

The good news is the storyline is coming along nicely. Mike and Domenic are met up with, along with a bunch of other players like the Aussie's Dangas guild leader and the Russian guild leader Dmitry. It's a complex story with the comradery of friends, which I think has been the hardest part of the writing. Bringing the different characters to life in the story has been hard as hell. I've put more time in those discussion than I have in many fights to get the feeling right. I think the wait will be worth it for everyone :)

There was also my fight with High Blood Pressure, a bunch of doctor visits to make sure I didn't have anything else going on, and of course getting sick with some nasty flue from the Xmas Markets and the freezing weather. Between that and the normal holiday craziness, it has been difficult to do my normal 5k writing a day. I think it's been more like 2.5k to 3k. Partly that is due to the complexity of the story and the personalities, so there is that. I just remind myself that the speed of writing isn't important, it's the quality of the writing that is what is most important.

On a side note, book 5's audiobook is taking even longer than expected to get out. I was informed by audible below:

There was some strangeness I had when I was trying to upload Book 5's cover. Things that had always worked were being denied and I finally came up with an image that worked, but it was blurry. This time around, my normal re-sized image was accepted without issue. I also made sure the title was correct, there was some confusion with that. Jason Hill is also changing the encoding. What is odd is the encoding was never an issue before. Anyway, once he has this corrected, I'll re-apply book 5 for audible's review. Sorry about the wait. 

I just wanted to let you know that your support makes The World series possible. The positive reviews you leave on all the books stops the IAK guild from pushing me out of the genre. You'd think that by now these limp-dicks would have focused on their own writing and given up on griefing the competition, but they don't ever get up. Even now, I still get the same nasty games being played as they try to slip in nasty reviews of hate. Even so, they can't contend with the reviews being left by real fans. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I promise to keep the books coming.

Lastly, for those of you who are interested, I've added some of my family's holiday pictures. My wife likes to do a traditional Polish dinner on Christmas eve and day. The day after that, I have been asked to do a traditional American dinner with my special turkey recipe, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. It'll be a day of cooking for friends and family.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pics. 

Earlier this year, I received a message from a fan asking when book 4 would be out on audible. His name was Krishna and he’d made a comment that the worst thing about being blind was having to listen to the crappy computer voice for his audible books when he didn’t feel like waiting for a new audible book to be released. I’m paraphrasing this a bit, since I can’t find his comment in my email. When I read this, I was just in awe about how he could joke about this vision impairment.

Now, me being who I am, couldn’t just let that sit. I have a huge respect for anyone who’s gone through a horrible time and come through the other side stronger. Whether it’s with being bullied, abusive childhood/marriage, a horrible disability, PTSD or whatever. I’ve been through a number of rough times in my life and I try to bring them out in my writing. So, I ended up contacting Krishna and we talked about his trials of being vision impaired.
Yes, when our conversation started out, I used the term blind. It was a common term when I was growing up and I didn’t know that the use of the word had changed. Krishna kindly made fun of me and asked what rock I’d been living under, before explaining that the correct term was visually impaired. Now don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t nasty about it, but joked back with me like any of my friends naturally would. We spent a few hours or almost five talking about the book series, talking about how it was to grow up blind (cough … cough … visually impaired), and different things about the visually impaired community.

It was quite the eye opener. During our talk though, I could help but forming a guild of visually impaired players and imagining how that would be like for them in a game with good and asshat players alike. What would their Nightmare start entail? How would players act towards them? What would PKers do to them? How would that react to being ganked? Those thoughts all came together to form the story in book 5 & 6. Well, at least the introduction to the Uten Syn Guild. I plan to have them be a continuing part of the story, albeit not like my friends Sarka and Yun.

There were be a bunch of interesting aspects of the Uten Syn Guild and players’ reactions to the visually impaired players inside and outside the game. While Krishna gave me some great insight into the culture, he unfortunately was in-between jobs and didn’t have time to spend going over a few of the points I didn’t immediately catch. One was what the visually impaired community calls individuals who discriminate against other people due to how they’re told by their non-visually impaired friends how they look. You know, the whole issue where a visually impaired person is told by their friend that their date is homely and not hot, so the visually impaired person breaks up with them because they’re not visually attractive to other people. Yes, this is truly a thing in the community.

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the term when he told me and he didn’t get back to me when I asked. So, I was at a loss for what the slang term for these people were. I did a bunch of google searches trying to catch the slang term, but to no avail. The only thing I could do was make up a term that fit the type of person which, in book 5, was “seers.” Yep, I made that term up. If someone wants to offer the term their group of friends use for these types of people, I would be grateful, but until then, I’ll be sticking with “seers” as the series slang for these individuals.

I also wanted to thank the visually impaired fans who have so far left reviews about the Uten Syn Guild. I hope to do your community proud and look forward to any tips you’re willing to offer to make the in-game players more real. So far, it seems like I’m mostly doing a good job.

In my school, there was a lot of support for the physically handicapped students. You didn’t mess with those students, or the whole student class would have risen up to beat their ass if you messed with any of them. Well, mostly. There was a young guy named John who was not so nice to people and he sometimes ran into issues, but other then that, everyone was real supportive.
 
I bring that up because of a review that was left by a visually impaired Australian fan who didn’t have the same support from students when he was in school. He actually had to fight a bunch of asshats who thought it would be funny to pick on the blink kid. The ass whoopings he learned to give the loud mouths were very educational. I might have to add someone like that into the current list of visually impaired players inside the game.

Anyway, I plan to bring other handicapped players into The World as well. The feedback I’ve been getting from the various fans have been super motivating and fits with idea I’ve been using for Star’s group of friends. You know, the whole “island of misfit toys” theme. That theme does actually fit my life and those people I call friends. Well, all of us except for Mike. Mike was always the cool kid who could jump between various types of groups of friends in school and be accepted by everyone.
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On a final note, I wanted to thank everyone for the support for The World series and hope you enjoyed finding out how the Uten Syn guild came to be.