This blog is basically just an update on the animation Kickstarter progress, but I didn't have a clever title for that, so I decided to abuse the W key. It has displeased me.
First of all, a huge thanks to all of you who have already backed the Kickstarter! We have about two and a half weeks left, but many of our fans have already thrown fistfuls of bills at us through their computer screens, and I can't say "thank you" enough. No matter what we end up making, I'm excited to produce some visual content. It's a new medium for me, and I won't rest until I've written for every format that exists. TV, video games, tattoos that appear on your body while you sleep, TikTok. But I have to say, this has been a BUSY couple of weeks in the tent where I live. You've seen a lot of content from me in the last couple of weeks, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. We have a bunch of stuff in production that will be coming out over the rest of the Kickstarter. Like I promised a few weeks ago, you'll be sick of me by the end of this campaign. Sick of my posts, sick of my voice, sick of finding me in your kitchen junk drawer as I steal your random paper clips. And if you haven't seen a bunch of content from me over the last week, here's most of it. We put together this YouTube playlist to contain all of our animation Kickstarter videos, so I could share only this one link and not pepper you with fifteen of them. Thanks for sticking with me, everybody! Talk to you again soon. From the inside of your dreams, where I'm trapped. -Will
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A lot has happened in the last few weeks, from releasing The Engineer to announcing a new Kickstarter for a Cradle animation. It's a busy time for us here at Hidden Gnome, especially as I continue to work on The Knight.
But while this may seem sudden to you, it's been a long time coming for us. A little over two years ago, we got an email from a Hollywood agent saying that his client was potentially interested in animating the Cradle series. In itself, that's not so unusual; we regularly get emails from people wanting our rights, or pretending to be influential experts, or trying to trick me into opening the secret gateway to the Underworld I keep in my basement. This one caught our attention because he said he represented Jay Oliva, and I recognized Jay's name. I watch a lot of animation, which includes a lot of superhero cartoons, and Jay has directed a lot of my favorites. I mean, a lot. I recognized his name off the top of my head, and I'm not normally someone who remembers the names of directors. Seriously, look at his IMDB page. I set up a call with him as soon as I could, and one thing stood out to me immediately: he wanted to animate Cradle. He'd read the books and he wanted to see them animated. Since then, we've been getting to know each other and working on developing some kind of animated Cradle adaptation. At first, we planned to pitch to Netflix, Amazon, or another streaming service. But as time went on, we began to ask ourselves...Why not go straight to the fans? We don't know how much we'll be able to do, because budget is a real concern with these projects, but we'll do as much as we can. And whatever we end up making, we're passionate about the story of Cradle getting told. And we'd like to see how far we can go together. -Will This very evening--in about an hour, actually--I'll be doing my usual pre-release YouTube livestream for the release of The Last Horizon, Book 2: The Engineer.
Check it out right here, at 6 PM Eastern tonight, December 3rd! That's about an hour from now! Tonight, I plan to discuss the writing process for this series, The Captain, my plans for The Last Horizon series, your questions, the true meaning of Christmas, and the location of the antidote to the potion that crawls through your veins even now, transforming your every cell. When The Captain came out a few months ago, I couldn't say too much about my writing process for it because you hadn't read the book. I would have sounded like a raving lunatic. Now that you have read the book (or don't mind spoilers and want to check in to see if this series is for you), I can rave like a lunatic about the story and you might understand me! While there's some back-and-forth with the comments, so I can't guarantee exactly what we'll cover, I plan to talk about my general development deciding to write The Last Horizon, developing the series, and then writing The Captain and The Engineer. Especially because, as many of you know, I started writing The Captain before Dreadgod but finished it just before Waybound. That was an interesting experience, and I'd like to share. If that sounds interesting, pop on in before the potion reaches full strength! You'll need that antidote before the transformation is complete. -Will I was informed by my brother Sam that today is National Author's Day, which I didn't know and may not actually be real. But if it is real, it's a good chance for me to thank some of the authors who have helped and supported me over the last ten years since I started writing!
This list is by no means exhaustive. There are a lot of great authors who have supported me since I began authoring, but these were the ones who came to mind first or who bribed me the most. Andrew Rowe The first one was a no-brainer. Andrew has supported me and my books since the Traveler's Gate Trilogy, and in that time has written many books of his own. I'm sure you already know who he is, but he's also the one who coined the term "progression fantasy" after we tried to come up with a subgenre term to describe our books. Dakota Krout Another easy one, because Dakota has been supporting me and my writing for years. I first met him at DragonCon while he was working on his first book, and it's amazing to see all the writing he's done since. Not to mention the publishing. Evan Winter Here's another guy whose books you've probably already read. Evan wrote The Rage of Dragons and The Fires of Vengeance, and you might not know that he's been a big proponent of Cradle. I've never met him, but he was always one of the first to congratulate me on a new Cradle release, and from everything I've seen of him online, he seems like a swell fellow. The bee's knees. The cat's pajamas. Bryce O'Connor Oh no, how embarrassing, I seem to have failed to link Bryce's author page. I think I accidentally linked you to Bryce's latest book, which came out yesterday and is the sequel to Iron Prince, which I publicly read and loved years ago when it released. Well, too late to fix my embarrassing mistake now, better just press on. Delilah Waan And now for a twist! I don't know Delilah (and her YouTube bio suggests that's a pen name), but I was made aware of her YouTube channel last year when she participated in my stream about writing and self-publishing. She asked some of the best questions, and then--to my surprise--edited my stream together and posted this awesome video summarizing and providing commentary on what I said. That's a unique kind of support compared to the others on this list, but I both appreciated the work and respected the result. It's way better to watch that video than to watch my whole stream, so if you're at all interested in my writing and publishing process, check it out! Thanks to all the authors on this list and the many authors who have supported me but aren't on the list! I didn't forget you, I just only had time for so many. Maybe next Author's Day. If it's real. -Will Happy Halloween, everybody! I don't have a treat for you this year, but I do have a trick: I'll show up at your house tonight asking for candy. I may be disguised as another person. If you don't figure out which visitor is me, I'll steal all your houseplants.
Also, The Engineer is now available for pre-order! And on Audible too! Releases December 5th in all formats! (We're still not allowed to do pre-orders for paperbacks, but they'll be available on the fifth of December!) It's almost exactly the same length as The Captain, but I can't promise anything else about its interior. Maybe it's not even a novel at all, maybe it's just my diary behind a super-sweet cover, you don't know. I didn't exactly plan to release this on Halloween, but I do love Halloween. The aesthetic is just so cool. Maybe one day, I'll release a Halloween-themed fantasy novel. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking it could be about a skeletal king of Halloween traveling to the North Pole to try to take over Santa's duties. Truly, inspiration is a mystery. Just like what I'm going to do with all your houseplants. -Will |
The Knight Progress:
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May 2024
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