• Home
  • Books
    • The Last Horizon
    • Cradle >
      • Kickstarter Bonus Content!
      • Kickstarter Special Edition Ebook FAQ
    • The Traveler's Gate Trilogy
    • The Elder Empire
    • Kickstarters!
    • Buying Will's Books
  • A Blog of Dubious Intent
  • Merch
  • Say Hello
  • Hidden Gnome Publishing
  • Press
  • Podcast
Will Wight, New York Times Best-Selling Author of 'Cradle'
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Last Horizon
    • Cradle >
      • Kickstarter Bonus Content!
      • Kickstarter Special Edition Ebook FAQ
    • The Traveler's Gate Trilogy
    • The Elder Empire
    • Kickstarters!
    • Buying Will's Books
  • A Blog of Dubious Intent
  • Merch
  • Say Hello
  • Hidden Gnome Publishing
  • Press
  • Podcast

In which we ramble on.
And by we, I mean me.

Progress Bar?

11/29/2016

77 Comments

 
Thanksgiving is over, after which I had to respond to the usual deluge of work that piled up over the holiday. I'm finishing that up tonight and tomorrow, so if I haven't responded to your comment or email yet, fear not! It's coming!

One of those tasks that I've been working on is the November short story, which I'm trying to get finished and out tomorrow. Fingers crossed! It's in Cradle, because I wanted to use this opportunity to help me test out some ideas for Blackflame.

And speaking of which, the time has finally come to add one of the most-requested features to the site: a progress bar.

I haven't added one in the past, mostly because it's impossible to keep it accurate. An average week of work for me is chaotic, so a progress meter might go from 17% to 19% to 15% to ???%. Anything I put up will be an estimate by definition, because I don't know how long the book will end up or how hard it will be to get there.

Of Dawn and Darkness, for instance, took me way more work hours to complete than anticipated because it just ended up being harder to write.

Also, there are multiple phases in the writing process. I'd need to progress from 0-100% in planning, then go to word count, then editing, then the second draft, then editing again, and then usually final changes followed by release preparation. That's six phases, and they're very fluid; I go back from the first draft to planning many times. 

Now that you know kind of how it works, I'm looking for your input! What should it look like? How and where should I display it? What information do you want to see when you check the site?

I saw one reader suggest marking progress in stages from Copper to Underlord, which was hilarious and appeals to me. But what do you want to see?

​-Will
77 Comments

It's a Thanksgiving Sales Miracle!

11/24/2016

28 Comments

 
It's Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., which means it's time to give thanks for everything awesome in our lives!

I have a lot to be thankful for this year: my Stardew Valley crops are coming in nicely, I've begun recording the City of Light audiobook, there's a new bundle of my old stuff up, and I won a hefty Amazon Kindle Unlimited All-Stars bonus check this month!

So many people read my books on Kindle Unlimited last month that I was dubbed a Kindle Unlimited All-Star, meaning that I'm one of the top-selling writers in the Kindle Unlimited program! In fact, though they didn't tell me my exact rank, they said I was in the top thirty! That means that I'm somewhere between the twenty-first and thirtieth best-selling out of all the authors in Kindle Unlimited!

That's only counting KU borrows, but the All-Star bonus for me was an extra five thousand dollars! It's a Thanksgiving miracle!

So uh...if you have Kindle Unlimited, and you're wondering whether I get paid for KU borrows, fear not: I do!

What that tells me is that people are really enjoying the books, which is awesome! In celebration of the holiday and this new round of good fortune, I'm putting both SEA and SHADOW up for free over the next four days!

That's Black Friday through Cyber Monday, as my culture-savvy friends tell me. Why isn't there a cool name for the weekend? Like Chartreuse Saturday and Buy A Bunch of Stuff Sunday.

TL;DR - Kindle Unlimited is awesome, Of Sea and Shadow / Of Shadow and Sea are both going to be free for the next four days, and I'm thankful for you! A lot of the people on this blog have been with me since the beginning, and the ride's still going!

-Will

P.S. Next time on The Blog: after this weekend, I'm going to put up some sort of progress thingy for Blackflame. Maybe a progress bar, maybe a percentage meter, maybe periodic reports, maybe arcane symbols that flash meaning straight into your brain. We'll discuss it next time!
28 Comments

The Ancestors of Cradle

11/13/2016

84 Comments

 
Have you finished both Cradle books too quickly? Do you wish there was something else you could read to scratch that itch? Are you sharpening your pitchfork right now because I'm writing something that isn't Blackflame?

Well, you're in luck!

Cradle was my humble, meager attempt to write a story in the xianxia* genre: a subcategory of Chinese novels that have grown popular on the English-speaking Internet over the last couple of years thanks to sites like WuxiaWorld and GravityTales (not to mention the hard-working, dedicated, good-looking fan translators who provide such works to lazy monolingual English-speakers like myself).

I've had a lot of people ask me if Cradle was inspired by these Chinese works, and I usually respond by saying "Absolutely!" and then listing my favorites. It's the reason why I chose to put Unsouled in the Asian Myths and Legends category of Kindle fantasy.

But after tonight, when people ask me these questions, I don't have to type out an answer every time! I can just link them back to this post! Behold, as my laziness sheds its skin to reveal its true shape!

IF YOU DON'T SEE THE REST OF THIS POST, CLICK "READ MORE"!

Read More
84 Comments
    ​The Pilot Progress:
    Warp 9

    Last Written:

    "That's it. You're getting cursed."

    Amount Complete:
    9X%

    Archives

    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013

    RSS Feed

    Want to get short stories and book releases before anyone else? Sign up below!
    Hey, what about those short stories you claim to have already written?

    Apparently they're kept here!
Copyright © 2025 Hidden Gnome Publishing
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Last Horizon
    • Cradle >
      • Kickstarter Bonus Content!
      • Kickstarter Special Edition Ebook FAQ
    • The Traveler's Gate Trilogy
    • The Elder Empire
    • Kickstarters!
    • Buying Will's Books
  • A Blog of Dubious Intent
  • Merch
  • Say Hello
  • Hidden Gnome Publishing
  • Press
  • Podcast