Recent entries

Ano123

How do the people on Cradle age? Is it similar to many other Xianxia's, where the lifespan increases with every new cultivation rank? If yes, how old could a person approx. get?

Family of Racoons

Regardless of whether or not their lifespan is increased via ranking up, they will live longer on average. Their immune systems and internal organs appear to become far better at combating pathogens and toxins. As they human body ages, its immune system weakens, but who knows if that is the case with an iron body?

Furthermore, the elderly do seem to cling to life rather tightly, as evidenced by the jai clan. Not to mention that they would be well along their paths, and very hard to kill in combat.

Will Wight

As is usually the case with raccoons, Family of Raccoons is correct. Below roughly Underlord, it's just that their spirits compensate for age really well. Living over 100 isn't too uncommon.

At Underlord, you actually start to age slower. It partially depends on your madra, but Underlords can live to be 200+.

More advanced sacred artists can live even longer.

David Titus

I join your other fans in congratulating you on a huge milestone-300k sold is fantastic. Thank you for your honesty and openness on how KU works. My sense is you regard yourself as well treated by KU, something I had hoped is true but had no info about.

Being somewhat new to you and your blog, I may have missed an estimate of how many volumes you expect Cradle to be. Hearing from you on this, even if it is a rough guess, would be a great way to share with you where all of us are in the Journey, and a nice way to celebrate 300k sold.

Or, maybe you could share with us a tidbit on the creative process. Is there any recurring challenge, and how do you come out on top, or try to? When or how do you know you have a good idea for a series? Really any insight into how you work would really interest us and would be a way your fans could join you in celebrating a major milestone in your literary career.

Oh, and many thanks for this blog, which I am enjoying, while waiting for Blackflame.

Will Wight

I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but I've been VERY well-treated by KU. It's the bulk of my monthly income nowadays.

As for the Cradle volumes...SPOILER WARNING, I guess, although this is so fluid and subject to change that anything I say can't really be much of a spoiler because I haven't made my own mind up yet.

I'm planning 12 volumes actually on Cradle. It could end there...or not. It depends.

The answer to most of those creative process questions you've asked is "I fly by the seat of my pants."

Recurring challenge: getting up every day and going to work. I get paid regardless, there are no deadlines, and no single day is going to matter in the completion of a book. I combat that by putting myself in scenarios where I have no choice but to write--I'm locked in a hotel room without the WiFi password and no books or games. Writing it is.

Recurring challenge #2: demotivation. In every book so far, roughly into the 2/3 - 3/4 mark, I'm convinced that it's a pile of crap, the worst thing I've ever written, and completely broken from stem to stern. I just know that I'm going to have to throw it all out and start over.

It hasn't been true yet, but each time I'm sure that THIS is going to be the time.

And that's where I'm currently at with Blackflame. I am convinced it's garbage. But by this point I'm learning to predict my own issues, and I was ready for this. A week or two from now I'll be saying "Hm, this is better than I remember it being."

Or maybe for the first time it really is crap, and the book will be delayed.

How I know when I have a good idea for a series: when it sells well, because that means people are reading it.

For instance, I thought Elder Empire was a great idea. Much better than the ideas behind Traveler's Gate or Cradle. I crammed too much into the setting, that's true, but the "dueling perspectives" thing and the "epic fantasy with a Lovecraft backdrop" thing are both rich ideas. Plus it's more character-driven by definition, which is a neat change of pace for me.

Then not many people read it, so evidently it was not a great idea. Live and learn. Unsouled has outsold all of the Elder Empire books combined, I think, and if it hasn't yet it will soon.

So apparently that was the better series concept.

Less jaded and cynical answer to the same question:

I choose which new series to write based on what book I think I can enjoy writing AND what I can complete in a reasonable amount of time.

With Cradle, for instance, I'd been reading a lot of translated wuxia and xianxia novels, so I wanted to try writing one. I was passionate about the genre, I had a few twists on the established formula I was excited to include, and it seemed like it would be very possible to write without any hidden obstacles along the way.

That's pretty much it.

Xianxia stories are fairly formulaic to start with, so I knew I could at least write the first 80-90k words of one without much trouble. And initially I'd planned to release Unsouled as a free twice-weekly release here on the blog, but that's another story.

That was a much longer answer than I intended, I'm sorry. The creative process is a big topic--maybe I should talk about HOW I work more.

Problem is, I often feel like the answer is "I just kind of make stuff up until it all fits together." It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but instead of looking for the right piece, you just 3D print one to fit.

Sean K

Congratz! I just want to say one more time that the Cradle books have been amazing! I even had to buy my friend Unsouled for his birthday! I also bought the Crimson Throne, but I haven't gotten to read it yet as I was finishing up the Nice Dragons Finish Last.

On a side note, how has your total sales growth been growing? I remember you mentioning that you had a huge sales growth on all of your books when you released Unsouled and Soulsmith. Do you normally sell 1k books a month? Which months are the slow month (So I know when you buy friends books!).

Granted, feel free to tell me "STFU, that's my income, I aint tellin you!" I'm just curious more so about the growth of your sales as you keep on adding so many great books as opposed to the sales figure!

Will Wight

I'm always more than happy to talk about my sales numbers. It's hard to find information like that out there from other independent Kindle authors.

Every time I add a new book, everything else gets a small bump in sales (especially previous books in the series). Putting a book on sale tends to do something similar.

I normally sell way more than 1k books a month. 1k would be a slow month. 10k would be a high month (probably a release month), but on average would be somewhere around 5k sales.

Which months are slow months? I'm honestly not sure. I'd have to look through my records, and it's still hard to tell. It depends on when I release, really. Release months are big months, and the sales trend steadily downward over about 4-5 months until the next release.

That fact, combined with the fact that there's a two-month delay between me selling the books and receiving the money, is what makes my income so...swingy. I have to save most of it and predict how much I'll be making for the next few months, otherwise I could find myself in an uncomfortable scenario.

I.e., "I'm not making any income, and even if I released a book tomorrow, I won't be making anything for the next two months."

The amount the books have generated is pretty huge (at least by my standards): almost $600k in three and a half years.

"How could you ever have financial problems?" you may be thinking. "That's way more money than you need!"

It's true, that's way more money than I need. And honestly, I haven't had any financial problems, but only because I've saved and planned ahead.

The problem is, that's gross income. Not profit for Will. So all taxes come out of that--and being a self-employed single guy means I'm paying a ridiculous amount of taxes--and so do all business expenses (all trips to conventions, everything I do to isolate myself and write, any computer equipment required for me to write, all book shipping, covers, editing, ordering hard copies so we have some to give away, and so on and so forth). On top of that, I pay all my insurance, which a salaried position would usually cover, out of pocket.

So bottom line, my PERSONAL takeaway is basically like a 50-60k salary.

Which is still very comfortable for me personally. It's WAY, WAY more than I ever expected to make writing, and I could certainly do with a lot less.

But imagine you're living on a 50k salary, but sometimes your boss says "Eh, you might not get paid for the next two months."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I try to keep up frequent releases.

LYRIAN RASTLER

I thought beta readers didn't exist right now? Will u be having a competition or something?

Will Wight

You know, over the last couple of weeks, I've suddenly gotten a surge in emails and comments saying things like "Hey, I heard you were having a contest for beta readers!" or "I read that you need more beta readers!"

I don't. I can't remember ever saying that, but evidently I said something that gave people false hope.

Let me dash that hope against the cold, hard rocks of reality right now: most of the beta readers I have are people I know in real life. I don't need more. Honestly, I probably have too many as it is; my bottleneck is the amount of time I have to spend on editing, not the number of editors.

However, I would SOMEDAY like to open a few beta reader slots to the general public, just for fun. But that would involve a contest or some kind of screening process, because I have to know that the applicant is capable of giving me helpful feedback. Otherwise I'm giving them an Advanced Reader Copy for no reason, which is a different thing from beta reading altogether.

TL;DR - I am not looking for beta readers. And while I don't expect that to change anytime soon, I will make it ABUNDANTLY clear if it does. I'll announce it so many times you won't be able to swing an announcement without hitting an announcement.

Jordan

To my soulsmith question.. I thought the hammer badge was for a forger? So why is it on the cover of soulsmith? Or am I dumb right now and not remembering correctly..

Will Wight

In Sacred Valley, a hammer represents a Forger. And only Forgers can be Soulsmiths.

Outside Sacred Valley, a badge with a hammer on it represents WHO KNOWS? I'M KEEPING IT A SECRET! BWAHAHA!

Hosoke

I'm pretty certain Will stated somewhere in some comments thread that sage was several stages above Underlord. And Ethian, I would suspect, can drink poison because of his iron body. Will will likely confirm this somewhere.

Will Wight

Did he drink poison? I don't remember that, but I've been elbow-deep in Blackflame for so long that I can't remember any other books. Either way, Eithan has his own ways of dealing with poison. His own Iron body isn't especially good at that, but he knows how to do it.

LCSpartan051

Honestly my biggest shock came when i figured out that if Eithan is so powerful, as is shown when he easily stomps all the other elders, and the Sword Sage was more powerful than Eithan, then HOW THE F*** DID JADES KILL THE SWORD SAGE???

I mean poison, but still...

Will Wight

There is a reason.

A lot of times I have to go back and add explanations later for mistakes I made, but this one actually wasn't a mistake! WOOHOO!

You're right that under normal circumstances the Sword Sage could not have been killed by Jades using any means, including poison (you know, unless they got their hands on some really good stuff, but that's far beyond the scope of Sacred Valley).

There were extenuating circumstances, I promise!

Will Wight (paraphrased)

Tiberian Arelius was younger than Seshethkuunaaz

Questioner (paraphrased)

"Naru Huan is described as having given up some chances for his personal advancement so that he could better lead & govern the BFE. If Saeya & Huan had swapped ages and Saeya was the Empress instead, would she have made the same sacrifices?" 

Will Wight (paraphrased)

Will's answer was "Yes, but not at first" and from there talked about how he's got a decent amount planned for Saeya (including the character arc he implied in that answer), and while she's going to be more directly relevant in Uncrowned, she's going to be even bigger in the next books because there simply wasn't enough room in Uncrowned to tell her story.

Will Wight

Cradle Word Counts:

--Book 1, Unsouled: 89,097--Book 2, Soulsmith: 86,534--Book 3, Blackflame: 111,484--Book 4, Skysworn: 86,760--Book 5, Ghostwater: 90,870--Book 6, Underlord: 103,130--Book 7, Uncrowned: 93,571

Questioner

Why is the Arelius monarch listed if hes dead?

Will Wight

Because his faction is still there competing on his behalf.

Will Wight

Will on Magic Systems

Questioner

Hardness is generally held to be a measure of how detailed and strict the magic of a world is, most often it's a way of knowing just how scientific the understanding of "magic" in a universe is. I've never seen it viewed as being able to predict how a character will utilize their skills.

Will Wight

Actually, that is exactly what a “hard” magic system is (according to Brandon Sanderson, who popularized the concept). It’s how clearly the reader understands the limits of the characters’ supernatural abilities and how they can be used to solve problems, not how scientifically understood magic is in the universe.

If you haven’t read Sanderson’s articles about his Three Laws of Magic, they’re a fascinating read.

I personally would put Cradle toward the harder end of the scale, but there definitely are soft elements (at least as the system has been presented thus far). E.g. what can a Monarch not do?

As for LitRPG, there’s nothing wrong with there being soft LitRPG magic systems. That’s okay! You can have a soft system with numbers, and there’s nothing wrong with softer systems. LotR and ASoIaF both have soft systems. But a lot of times people expect LitRPG to scratch the itch for hard, consistent, numerically calculated systems, and they often don’t. Even some of the really good ones!

Questioner

I don’t follow that.

Will Wight

I highly recommend Brandon Sanderson’s essays on the difference between hard and soft magic systems; he makes it very clear!

Questioner

Sanderson certainly doesn’t write anything of the sort.

Will Wight

From his First Law essay:

“We generally know exactly which powers Spider-man has and what they do. He 1) Can Sense danger 2) has superhuman strength and endurance 3) Can shoot webs from his hands and 4) Can cling to walls. While in the comics, he does sometimes gain other strange powers (making the system softer), he does generally stick to these abilities in the movies. Therefore, we’re not surprised when Spider-man shoots a web in a bad guy’s face. We’ve established that he can do that, and it makes sense to us when he does it. It is narratively a Hard Magic system, rather than a Soft Magic system.”

Since we know Spider-Man can shoot webs, we can predict that he will solve problems by shooting webs. Whereas Gandalf might do anything with magic. We can’t predict what he can or can’t or will or won’t do magically.

That’s all that “predict” means in this context.

I do agree with you that what OP is describing is a story flaw more than a soft magic system. The author making up a solution to a plot problem without introducing that solution earlier or defining its limitations is bad writing, it’s not a hallmark of a well-written soft magic system.

But that was effectively his point, wasn’t it? “I enjoy Cradle more than most LitRPG because Cradle is more consistent with the way its magic is used in combat.”

Also, when I said what I did about it being okay for LitRPGs to have soft magic systems, I was really trying to be polite to LitRPG as a whole and not say “Yeah, a lot of LitRPG magic systems are just really poorly constructed.”

And now I’ve said it anyway. Look what we’ve done.

Totally agree. One of the reasons I keep reading LitRPG despite it not being to my personal taste is that I feel like it should be. I love video games and I love progressive magic systems, so it should be a perfect match, so I feel like there's probably that LitRPG out there that I'll just fall in love with one day.

P_Tigras

According to the second sentence of Underlord, Sector 99 like Sector 100 has been abandoned:

Pariana was the last Abidan stationed in this nameless world. Sectors Ninety-Nine and One Hundred had been completely abandoned, but they still clung to Sector Ninety-Eight.

But....according to the second sentence of the same book's epilogue, while Sector 100 had been lost, Sector 99 was under attack, but not lost, at least not yet:

The Abidan were under attack all across their border worlds, from Sectors Ninety through Ninety-Nine. Sector One Hundred had already been lost, and the others were soon to follow.

So was Sector 99 temporarily retaken without comment by the Abidan during the events of Underlord? Or do we chalk this up as another number-related oops?

Will Wight

My intention there, which I obviously didn’t communicate clearly, was to show that the situation was different between the prologue and the epilogue. In between, people like Suriel are going around to reclaim lost territory and contest Iterations that are up for grabs.

Questioner

What is the status of EE?

Will Wight

I’m sorry, I am shamed. Ideally I would have gotten Kings/Killers out two years ago.

Here’s the deal: this time, I’ve made real progress on OKAK. I knew I could stop, finish Uncrowned (because I had made a clear plan for Uncrowned before Underlord was released), and then resume work on OKAK pretty seamlessly.

I was going to give you a more specific timeline, but I know beyond the shadow of any doubt that no matter how many times I say “THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE,” I would get angry emails asking why I didn’t hit the date I set on Reddit. People flooded me with disappointed or angry messages after I didn’t hit the Uncrowned date from my April Fool’s schedule, so...

Anyway, I’m working on it! I mean literally, I’ve been writing it, and some of it is done enough that I might share excerpts on the blog soon.

Questioner

Why does the Jai Clan think they can attack the Arelius family if they are affiliated with a Monarch?

Will Wight

Most people in the BFE do not know that the Arelius family was connected to a Monarch on the other side of the world. Those who DO know also generally know that he’s dead and that the main House Arelius isn’t in any shape to avenge anyone.

Wodan

Hello, I am making a 3D version of Jai Long's spear, or at least my take on it. I am far from finished but I have a question regarding the appearance of the scripts that Soulsmiths use. Do you have any particular font in mind for them? I imagined it as connected Chinese symbols.

Will Wight

I imagined it as simplified Chinese script, something more like Japanese hiragana or katakana. 

Lil' Blue

Could the Abidan survive a punch from Saitama?

Will Wight

Any Titan could endure a physical impact of any amount of force, because their defenses stop things on a conceptual level.

AC Cobble

This doesn’t count as a brag because I’m the one saying it… Underlord: Cradle 6 debuted as the #5 best-selling book in the entire Amazon Kindle store. That’s bonkers for any book, but even more so for an independently published fantasy novel. I’m jealous, obviously, but I have to know what that is like! Does it change anything you do in the future — do you start calling Steven Spielberg?

Will Wight

It was very exciting, but other than my own delight and entertainment, the only thing it actually changed was my introduction. Now, instead of driving new people away with my personality, I can speed up the process by saying “Hey, I’m Will, did I mention that my latest book was the fifth best-selling on Amazon on the day of its release? No? Well, buckle up, because I have pictures!”

And then by the time I get my phone out they’ve usually bolted through the nearest door.

AC Cobble

Your latest book was Underlord: Cradle 6, and I believe there’s a Book 7 in the works. I’ve also heard rumblings of more in the Traveler’s Gate world. Tell us, what is next!

Will Wight

Book 7 of Cradle is certainly in the works, but I’m also trying to finish Elder Empire this year! I would also love to start a new series. Any new series. I just like starting new things.

AC Cobble

What is your favorite book someone else has written?

Will Wight

I don’t know about individual books, but I’m a huge fan of the Wheel of Time series and the Dresden Files series. There’s also that black leather book that keeps appearing under my pillow at dawn no matter how many times I burn it. I’ve tried to resist opening it, but it whispers into my ear all night…