That's the end of book 2, everyone! As always, thanks for all your feedback along the way. Please feel free to comment your thoughts about what you did or didn't like, and what you hope to see more or less of in book 3. I'm particularly curious about how you all felt about the pacing of the book, as I pretty much completely abandoned a 3-act structure and went more for something like a dozen (or more??) smaller acts instead. I'm pretty happy with the results, but let me know what you think!

  Announcements

  I signed with MoonQuill Publishing!

  Yep! Just last week I signed a deal with MoonQuill for the entire Orion's Ballad series. They were a pleasure to work with throughout the talks and negotiation phase, and I have full confidence they'll continue to be wonderful going forward. Book 1 should be coming to Amazon sometime in late 2025 or early 2026, and will remain available on Royal Road up until right before the Amazon release date. If it does well, hopefully an audio release will be in our future too!

  When is book 3 coming?

  Bare with me on this one, but it's going to be a few months. I'm aiming for sometime mid-to-late summer. This is partially because I'll need to dedicate a lot of time to preparing manuscripts for publishing, but also due to a new series that I'll be launching later this year, which you can read about in the next section.

  The new series

  Rosetta and the Dying Sun is a new LitRPG series that I have in the works, aimed for release on Royal Road early-to-mid summer of this year. Orion's Ballad is an outlet for the whimsiest parts of my imagination and serves as an escape from reality into a world much brighter and fantastic than our own, but that's not the only outlet I need or the only themes I want to write. Rosetta will be set in a grim, doomed world ruled by terrible lich king tyrants, and our protagonist will spend the final days of her world embarking a desperate, reckless quest to kill as many lich kings as she can before the sun winks out.

  If that sounds like something that interests you, or if you're just interested in seeing what other worlds my mind can cook up, you can become a free follower of my to receive updates when the release date grows near. I'll also be posting an update here on the Orion's Ballad page close to the release to remind everyone, which will also contain more concrete information about book 3 of Orion.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Patreon

  I'll be frank, there aren't many incentives to become a paid subscriber of my Patreon for the near future. As I mentioned, I'll be posting more frequent updates there than I will on RR, but these will be available to the free tier. Later this year, however, I'll be reworking the Patreon to include separate tiers for advanced chapters of both Orion and Rosetta, as well as a discounted combined tier for both. If you want to keep up with my work over the hiatus, it's definitely worth it to follow for free, and if you want to subscribe to help support me over the break, you can always do that too :)

  Credits

  Creative Contributions

  Orion's Ballad wouldn't exist in its current form without my friend Atari Astro. They invented the characters of Grell and Adan and allowed me to use them in Orion's Ballad, and continue to offer their insight into how these characters would behave in given situations. They were also instrumental in the design and characterization of the Agents of Morose, contributed to the creation of the Dreamweaver, and offered countless suggestions and personal headcanons/theories throughout the writing process to inspire me.

  Early Reviewers

  Reviews mean so much to authors and make a huge impact on a story's success. Thanks so much to the early reviewers that helped Orion's Ballad get as many readers as it has today.

  - Cynical Witch

  - Czaja

  - Bobgongo

  - your daddy laozi

  - Blahitz

  - Ghostdraconi

  - TheHornedOne

  - TeeJay3000

  - Janxius

  - HansGuckIndLuft

  Prolific Commenters

  Orion's Ballad has 1400 comments! That's wild! Thanks so much to each and every one of you, whether you leave feedback, reactions, or simply thank for me for the chapters. Here are some names that stood out to me as prolific commenters throughout book 2.

  - TheHornedOne (Usually comments on chapters within 30 seconds of release -- its seriously impressive)

  - ARR62

  - DLX

  - Patchumz

  - MLTetris

  - ChocolateMintChipmunk

  Prolific Editors

  A lot of people have left edit suggestions, but these are the few who provided a lot over the course of Book 2. Thanks so much!

  - ChocolateMintChipmunk

  - Bamboocha

  - UnDeadPuff

  - HansGuckIndLuft

  - YawonNoway

  - CarbonCopy

  - Libri Lector

  Thanks for reading Orion's Ballad! I hope to see you back for Book 3!