Jake the Dog is the wisest sage of the 21st Century, thus far. He’s followed closely by Greg Universe. Some day, I will be as cool as Greg Universe. I cannot hope to attain coolness on a level with the fictional cartoon stretchy-dog.
The first volume of Blue Mage Masterchef is starting to wrap up on Patreon. I’m pretty much in the Climax at this point and have a few chapters of dénouement to throw down before it’s wrapped. That’ll still be another few weeks of Royal Road chapters, though.
I had plans on going back to Devourer of Ten Thousand Realms, but at this point that isn’t seeming likely.
I started self-publishing on Royal Road as an attempt to build a following for my writing, but the platform isn’t really well-suited to that anymore. Once upon a time, when there were fewer people who were willing to write books for Royal Road, it was pretty good at that. But the fact that so many people did find a following attracted more writers, and we’re at a point now where there is too much content and not enough readers. That isn’t speculation on my part - the folks that run the site have said as much, and they’re trying to figure out how to attract more readers who aren’t also angling to snatch a bag.
The major methods for gaining a following appear to be through dedicating yourself to doing shout out swaps (which have a wildly varying return rate) or buying advertisements. Which is fine if you’re just looking to put eyeballs on your story (and I know people for whom that’s the goal), but if you’re trying to save up as many dollars as possible to move to Japan in ten years, the ROI’s gotta be incredible, and by all reports, it ain’t.
So as much as I’ve loved writing these books, I started working on them as a step towards a writing career of some sort, and it’s looking like that might be a bust. Unless you decide you want to throw money at me on Patreon for blog posts. Which I absolutely encourage you to do because then I get the money you threw at me.
Writing those books helped me learn to write on a deadline though, and I think I’m a stronger writer overall for having written them, so it wasn’t a total bust. And I got to do some silly romance scenes. Alone in my house. At night.
This month I’ve managed to tuck away about $500 towards the Become a Baka Gaijin fund, which brings my total to… About $500 right now. And this first leg of savings is probably going to be going to an initial trip to the country late next year if I can swing it.
This is definitely a thermometer and not a dick. Or a bong. Looking at it now, it’s a really bong-shaped thermometer.
I still haven’t solved the problem of finding an infinite money glitch. That would solve a lot of other problems in this process.
I did shell out some money for an actual JPL N5 online course instead of just relying on Duo to up to my Lingo. It’s the Attain Online Japanese Language school course from Udemy, which I only found out afterwards has all of its exercises behind a subscription paywall. So that’s fun, I guess, but at least it was on sale. The whole course is in Japanese, only occasionally dipping into English to tell you the meaning of a word or phrase, but otherwise expecting you to study your vocab independently. I’m only a few lessons in at the time of this writing, but it seems like it’s at least fairly comprehensive, and it does specifically try to ready you for the N5 exam.
So prepared.
I’m still not very good. My Japanese is pretty awful, and I think the most I’ve said to a Japanese speaker is “Thank You.” Everyone who’s ever listened to Styx knows that one. I have a lot of learning and practice ahead of me. But like Jake the Dog says, “Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.” And Greg Universe would remind us that “If every porkchop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs.”