Recent entries

fscada

Are there offensive paths that use traditionally non-offensive madra (Like life madra?)

Will Wight

Yes, definitely. There are a lot of paths like water or life (that do that). Although it isn't presented like this in the books, around the world blood madra is considered a non-offensive path because mostly people use it for therapy and medicine. The only ones who use it for combat are bloodthirsty crazy people. So (in cradle) you don't think typically of blood as a combat path, unless you're reading the books because then you see it all the time.

Whump

Is the sword wielding monarch that fought the sage of the endless sword still alive?

Will Wight

I believe the answer is no, but I'll have to look that up. I know who it was but I may have changed my mind somewhere along the line. The person I had doing it was someone who is now dead. But I may have changed my mind to someone who is alive, so you'll have to read and find out on that one!

Wolfy12

From the Sage of the Endless Sword's Remnant, are the rings in his form similar to the Akura armor?

Will Wight

No, they are not. The rings in his spirit are more similar to the Akura books that they use. So it's like the thing Mercy carries around.

Alexiosk

Are the Winter Sage and the Sage of the Frozen Blade the same person?

Will Wight

They are; she is.

Zane

What was the name of the Li clan's path, and what sort of madra do they use?

Will Wight

Ah.. I have the answer for that, I don't remember. I think they're a venom path because they use snakes. That sounds right. I don't remember I have to look that up, but I think so. I think it's venom.

Aru

You mentioned you're working to increase your productivity. What are some tricks you've figured out that are really helpful to that end? 

Will Wight

One of the big tricks I've learned is...its really all about long periods of focus, so there're two ways in which i have long period of focus, one is panic, when i panic its very easy to focus for long periods of time, and a second one is when i'm in an isolated environment with accountability. So i'm in an isolated environment but not exactly by myself or left completely to my own devices, because when i'm in an isolated place left completely to my own devices, honestly I still write, but I do like the fun non productive parts of writing, so I make up a lot of stuff, and its fun, but it doesn't do anything.

So cruises have been what I've been doing the last couple of months, and those have really worked out. I live near two cruise ports, and so a lot of times I can get really cheap cruises. I'll take somebody with me, a family member gets a free cruise, and I get a working vaca...i get to work. So i stay isolated, people cant get me on the phone and I just write. Its a lot easier in that environment, because nothing else comes up to to distract me and I cant distract myself, because i'm writing, and i know I need to write, and then I go "ah...alright let me check reddit real quick, i just finished that scene, oh i cant do that on this cruise ship, cos i'm gone" so then i go "oh no, cant check reddit, better keep writing!" and I don't buy the wifi, I just don't do that.

Dheginsea

When are we getting that Dross-written "smut" fanfiction that you promised us?

Will Wight

That's not going to happen. I'm not going to write it because I could never do it justice. The complex eroticism that Dross has planned for it would just be beyond me.

Questioner

Do you think a translation of Cradle would do well in China?

Will Wight

No idea.

Jamos

Regardless of if he would, could Orthos transform into a more human form like the gold dragons?

Will Wight

Yes, absolutely he could.

Questioner

Do pills contain toxins?

Will Wight

Not exactly. The more I developed refining, I understood why wuxia made pills have toxins. In Cradle they follow some of the same rules, such as elixirs and pills having less effect the more you use them. 

Felix

I wanted to inquire as to how a combination of let's say life and death madra would occur in a path.

Will Wight

Most of the people on Cradle consider death madra a variant of life madra because they share a lot of the same properties, and if you combined death madra with life madra you would basically just have death madra. So that's basically just what it would be; it would just be death madra. You've taken life and combined it with the form of death and that really is just death. That's all you'd have. However, there is at least one character that exists that I have outlined that uses both life and death madra. And they use two different paths.

Hjorth

I really wanted to ask you, how did the Sword Sage know about the Sacred valley?

Will Wight

Uhhhhh man that's a spoiler. That-that's a spoiler.

TheLostReader

What would be an effective death madra path?

Will Wight

The weirdest thing about death madra is that it's kind of like blackflame madra in that it's not really healthy to interact with. Like pure destruction madra, which everybody of course thinks is gonna be the best cause it sounds awesome, it doesn't do well on it's own, so it usually needs like a physical medium. So therefore you would see a lot of destruction fire, destruction wind, death wind, death fire something. Something that has a physical form. Cause otherwise it's kind of like you're projecting radiation at your enemy, and they're just like waiting until they die. So an example of an effective death madra path would be off the top of my head like a death sword path so that you could really focus it and it would be very focused and then you could like, try and cut off somebodies life with a slice. Now, would that be necessarily any more effective than actually just straight up sword madra? Not necessarily, because one of the things that we're gonna get into, I mentioned this mechanic a little bit earlier, but everybody's got life madra in them, everybody's got life force in them, they all generate cause you're alive. So you generate life force, so you've got kind of a life line, so you've got a life line. So therefore death madra has to sever or erode away that life line in order to kill someone. So it's not as completely overpowered as it seems.

Lee

Can madra manipulate time?

Will Wight

Madra cannot. Nor can madra manipulate space. Aha, you see, that sounds like contradiction because it happened in book one. But did it? Did it?

Scholar Warrior

Could you explain some about how the business is working and adapted over time? I think you mentioned you now have a full-time team?

Will Wight

Yes, I can, and I would like to do that. So, the team now consists of quite a few people. I'm gonna miss somebody--and they're on here listening, too--so I'm gonna miss somebody and then they're gonna be mad. 

Lil' Blue

All caps TEAM.

Will Wight

Yeah, the TEAM!

So, I started off with House of Blades. It was me; my family helped a lot; my friends helped a lot; and we had a family contact with a guy who was a graphic designer who had done some work with my dad fifteen years before. And so I had a contact with him and he helped me develop the covers, and so he thought, like I did, that House of Blades wasn't going to make any money. So he helped me work out a deal with some student graphic designers of his, and I would pay them half of a fair value of a cover upfront and then they would have the first ten percent of profits until they got paid the other half. And we all kind of knew--we were going into this eye's wide open--we all kinda knew that I probably would never make that much money. So, you know, joke's on us. That was great for me; it was a cool experience for them, and then, again, they got paid so it was a real job. And so that was it. That was the team.

Over time we have evolved that. We've just continued to bring people on board--especially this last year. One of the big reasons we were able to hire Travis and that we were able to do the audiobooks at all is because I hired an assistant. I hired a few more people part time to do things like manage my social media, Facebook page, and a woman to optimize our meeting time and kind of administrate the team. There was a woman we brought on, not long ago, that does our bookkeeping and interfaces with our accountant. We have my business manager--the one who's always kind of whipping me to write, and he's the one who always wants the books to cost more and for us to make more money so that we can, therefore, serve the readers better--that's his whole thing. He's like, "The more money we have, the more we can do for people and produce more books," and I'm always like, "But I want the books to be cheaper; and I want to spend longer on them; and all I care about is the story and the art." So he's like the devil to the angel that I am. That's how I think of it in my head. He probably has the exact opposite picture.

Look, this developed over time. This is year six. Only this year has our team really been this organized. So we have major quarterly meetings in which we plan out kind of the schedule for the year. We take a look at where we are, where we can go. But that's the only reason we were organized enough to make these audiobooks happen. We had people on it. And so that's why we were able to get the audiobooks out. Now, the audiobooks have provided such steady income that now--ebooks are very spikey, you get one big spike and then it drips down--we've been in just a much steadier financial position and that's helped--we have a lot more overhead now because, again, I hired a lot of people. But we also have much steadier income as a direct result of bringing them on. So it's actually pretty cool to see the baseline of the business go up as we spend more money and hire more people. So it's actually been really cool.

Booker

Do you think you will ever add romance to your stories?

Will Wight

Yes, I do.

Ira

How did they make it to the island on the ship without crashing.

Will Wight

When they were making it to the island on the ship-I assume you're referring to the chapter one of Underlord-they made it to the island on the ship. They had enough fuel and cloud aura and cloud madra to make it there no problem. And then they were making it back and none of them had any cloud aura, which Renfei did. So they didn't have a reserve of cloud scales or anything, she just powered it herself. So therefore, they're flying black without Renfei, they only have pure madra, blackflame madra, sword madra, and shadow madra on board. And none of that powers [the ship? buckshit?]. There you go.

Cash4Golda

Was the icy location where Northstrider killed the huge dragon at the end of GW on the Iceflower Continent? What kind of dragon and level was it? 

Will Wight

It was on the ice flower continent if i recall correctly, and what level was it? I am not at liberty to discuss that, because it may or may not come up.

ReSpenDlent

Do you ever write profiles and interviews of your characters before writing them into your stories? 

Will Wight

That's a technique that I've heard people....wow the word really is ReSpenDlent, oh cool okay. So I ever write profiles and interviews with my characters. I don't anymore, I used to do that, that was before i wrote a real book. See I did it for short stories, so i did because that's kinda a common writing exercise, i'm sure that why you mentioned it. And that is a good way to create characters, but i found to me, i was doing that more to stall for time and not write than i was to allow me to write. so i spent a lot of time interviewing my characters and having them explain what was in their pockets and doing all those other character development exercises, which i have nothing against, if they work for you great, but for me i realised i was doing that instead of writing them. So the one thing i have found that is a little helpful, is, I thought of doing this not to long ago, is for character dynamics, character interaction. So like Lindon and Yerin, so they know each other well, they've been interacting a lot. So one thing i do occasionally, very briefly, is i sort of think about or write down how they would interact in a certain scenario. I have them talking to each other and talking with other people together, in order to get an idea of their interactive dynamic, so they feel like they've had a lot of conversations and they talk back and forth. That's something that I think I'm probably going to do more. I've recently started thinking of character dynamics as something that i can play with a lot more than I do, and that's something that I'll probably be using that tool for.But for me, that exercise initially took the place of actually writing, so I stopped doing it.

Bamfious

Who has ascended to Monarch fastest without inheriting the power? How long did it take them and what’s their story?

Will Wight

yeah see that's still a great question, its just its another one of those things that its hard for me to answer, i really should do the research on this question and actually answer you cos you've asked me several times. So who ascended to monarch the fastest... that's a difficult question for me to answer, because i actually went back and looked over, this is kinda cool, i went back and did a timeline of all the living monarchs now, the 8 monarchs who are currently on - 7 monarchs who are still currently on Cradle. And so I have a good timeline for Northstrider, and Akura Malice and people like that, but i don't have, yeah i'd have to look it up, i'd have to partially look it up partially make it up. So i could make it an answer right now, but i'm afraid that it its going to contradict something else i'll say later. So that's why its tricky for me, so i apologise i really do wanna answer this question, I will eventually, I'm gonna make it happen. Its actually seven, seven are left.