Writing Update: August 2025

Hey everyone. We have a little writing update from Tao: 

Writing update time. Sorry if this is a little on the shorter side, things are a little hectic and I'm going to try to be brief.

System Apocalypse

The 3rd System Apocalypse Short Story Anthology is going up on Backerkit soon for funding! Lots of new shorts from the co-authors and a bunch of old and a couple of new works from me!

Craig is working on book 4, promise! He's hoping to have it to me by end of the year, so we'll get released when we can. Jason just let me know that book 2 is finally moving quickly and I should have the final draft to review by September. So we might have an end of the year release, but we're not certain. Will do our best to get it ASAP.

We have covers for book 2 of Jason's already made and are working on book 4 for Craig's. I can say they're super pretty.

And Kismet is getting new covers too soon... as well as the original series. 

Hidden Dishes 

The fourth volume is moving along at a decent pace. I am adding 500 words every other day or so to the series. It's a slight change of pace, hopefully still fun; but I needed that to keep the series fresh. If we keep to deadlines, the book should release end of the year / January 2026.

Dungeon Brawler

Releases of the Patreon chapters continue apace. We have the first book being recorded for audio and we'll make that available for patron's obviously. 

I'm working on book 2 right now, it's about 80k words in. Figure another 40-70k (I know, big variation) to finish at which point we should be end of the year(ish). The goal is to get the third book at least 1/2 if not 2/3 done before we pin down the exact release date for the entire series, but we figure around Sept 2026. 

That means we'll be able to rapid release books 1, 2 and hopefully 3-5 with minimal delays. Not great on the pocketbook but at least good in terms of external (non-patreon) readers. If you want to read it first, check out the patreon. :P

Climbing the Ranks

Book 4 of Climbing the Ranks is done with drafting. It's significantly smaller, though, at only 100k or so. It is a strange drop, I know, but rather than just writing and writing and then ending it at a weird size when it didn't make sense, I figured to end it where it makes sense and have a proper 'book' than have it be weirdly sized.

It's going into edits later this year (current editor is busy and because of the Manglish, we can't use anyone else); so the book itself is a while away from release. I'm not writing much for book 5 yet, for obvious reasons; but it is planned! I love writing Climbing the Ranks and am happy to keep adding to the world so long as I can.

A Thousand Li

Obviously, book 12 has come out! Go read the end of the series. Not the end of the world... but we'll cover that in the update below.

In the meantime, work on the Ace Books print-only release is continuing. I got the proofs back, so I need to go over it with a fine tooth comb, fix everything and then send that back by the end of this month.

Book 2's exclusive short story just got copy edited and sent back, so that's well on the way to getting fixed. Lots of work left there, and book 3's short story needs to be written by the end of the year. I'll probably get right on that once book 1's proofread is done. Not that I don't have things to do like...

Celestial Cataclysms

The sequel to A Thousand Li, my epic fantasy that takes place in both the heavens and the Middle Kingdom and more is now back from the developmental editor. When it went to her, it was 250k words long.

I'm about 196 pages into editing book 2 and I've already added 22k words, so we're looking at least a 300k word long book. Maybe more. This thing is huge.

The goal is to have the edits done by end September so that the copy editor can start work. We'll have proofreaders working on this in December or so, and then get working on cleaning up and finishing by end January where Travis will have time to start recording.  

At the same time, for obvious reasons, I will have to start writing book 2 soon after. By the time I'm done, book 1 will have taken probably a year and a half to write, so I figure a once a year release schedule for Celestial Cataclysms is going to be the average. 

Other Projects

For once, as much as I'd love to take on new and exciting projects, I do not have the time. There's just too much to do, with the extremely large number of words I have to write. As much as I'd like to tackle some more of my novelettes and the numerous other ideas... nope.

This is all that's being written. At least so far. I'm focused, for now, because I just don't have the time to do anything else.

Other Notes

I am going on a semi-holiday soon, for most of August. I'll be working for a few hours every day, getting edits done and some words, but the focus is to enjoy my time off. Frankly speaking, I need it. I've already written 525k words this year, which is a LOT.  I'll also be at a bunch of other conventions and shows soon, watch out for posts about it, but it's mostly in Canada and 1 UK event. 

As always, feel free to ask questions and once again, thanks for your help and support.

This wouldn't be possible without all of you, whether from sharing or telling friends about my work or buying and directly supporting me. Thank you.