First, before anything else, thank you for your patience. It’s taken me a while to get to a place where I was ready to write Eight’s third book, which you’ll be happy to hear I am now doing.

The first chapter is publishing today! There’s a map and a cast of characters too, so please enjoy.

There are a few things you should know before starting to read, though.

1. I plan to release Eight’s first two books on Kindle Unlimited, and in order to prepare them for that, I’ve spent the last year working with a professional editor to do developmental edits, line edits, and final proofings of the books. It’s been hugely instructive. A slog too, but the time invested has been worth it. Not only are the first two books much better as a result, but I’m also seeing a difference in the quality of my writing for the third book.

2. Those edited versions will be published later this year. There will also be an audiobook forthcoming. I’ll share more news on those two developments as I get them.

3. The writing overall is a lot tighter, especially in the first book, but I didn’t make any major changes to the plots. However, some things were tweaked:

I fleshed out Ollie’s background, so that he entered his new life with a deeper grounding in bushcraft. His documentary company, Southwind, had produced a reality series called Land of the Living Lost that asked people to live under stone age conditions, and of course Ollie jumped in to help crew the production. I also cut Ollie’s interest in anime. It was enough for the story for him to be a dedicated fan of science fiction and fantasy. Also removed was Ollie's experience with pottery. He had enough on his plate with woodworking. Diriktot was changed to the God of Order (Fallen). As part of his spirit journey with Ikfael, Eight picked up a soul mark called Mana Door. Ikfael became much more interested—maybe even obsessed—with Emma Peel from the Avengers. She created a moving water sculpture named Knight Otter who is basically Emma as a human-sized otter. I’m cutting the copper boxes and will be using indented, bolded text to signify System messages. There aren’t any good solutions for ‘blue boxes’ for ebooks, and doing things this way will save me a ton of work later. Hopefully, this change won’t affect the flavor of the text too much.

4. One final announcement: given all the effort put into improving Eight, I’ve decided to release the books under my real name. I’ve used 3seed as a handle on social media, in gaming, and as a pseudonym for years now, but the person behind the handle wants the credit.☺️

So, yeah, I’m Samer Rabadi, and this is me here: https://twitter.com/3seed.

It wasn’t exactly a secret, given my Twitter handle, and even a little digging would’ve turned me up. Still, I’m going to be more explicit about using my name, including changing my handle on Patreon and Royal Road.

That’s all the updates I have. I hope you enjoy book 3, and thank you again for your support.

TL;DR

Book 3 is starting today. The upcoming chapters will reflect some minor changes made during a year of editing. Nothing plot related though. No copper boxes; System boxes are now signified by indented, bolded text. My real name is Samer Rabadi, and you’ll see Eight on Kindle Unlimited later this year. There’ll also be an audiobook version too.