Eye Opener needs your help, dear reader!

  First things first, I’ll be taking a one-month hiatus to restore the backlog for Patrons.

  Eye Opener will return to Royal Road with book three, Eye on the Prize, on November 4, 2024. Cam, Lena, and company will be back in action, and your journey with them will either continue, or reach a conclusion I hope you’ll enjoy.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  How that return happens, and where the story goes from here, depends on you.

  Please read on and give me a hand.

  As things currently stand, I cannot afford to keep producing Eye Opener at the rate I have.

  A bit of context:

  A while ago, I worked on a series of YouTube scripts about basketball. These were under 2,000 words, so even with time for research, I could often knock them out in a day.

  I was paid about as much for each script from a fledgling YouTube channel as I’ve gotten for some entire months of patronage since I started posting Eye Opener.

  That’s fairly typical of the contract work I do, which is my full-time job. There’s little room for growth in that kind of writing, and it’s not usually all that compelling -- scripts about a sport I like represent pretty much the best case scenario. It does, however, pay the bills.

  I’ve been declining a lot of that work to bring episodes of Eye Opener to you on a regular basis. In part because I love this story and these characters and want to share them with you. In part, yes, because I hoped there would be real room to grow a fanbase here and write fiction full-time.

  I still hope so.

  I’m not soliciting for donations or Patronage. I trust that if you’ve read faithfully up to this point and you were in a position to support my work financially, you’d have done so. Anyway, I know it’s a heck of a tough sell to encourage you to hop onto the Patreon at a time when the book you’re reading isn’t updating!

  I am, however, asking you to throw your support behind my new novel, .

  When I first posted Eye Opener, it topped out at thirteenth place on Rising Stars. So, so close to the top ten. Just one or two more five-star reviews, a few more positive ratings, another dozen favorites, another fifty views, and it would have made the front page of Royal Road. If that had happened, you’d have had twice as many people to talk about Eye Opener with and we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.

  If can scale those heights -- and with your help, I believe it can -- that will give me confidence to continue to prioritize Eye Opener. The Mechaneer is fully written in advance, so it won’t interfere one way or another. You’ll get the same pace of Eye Opener releases and the story can reach its natural conclusion.

  If not, then I may have to scale back the speed of new chapter releases again, and try to find a way to bring things to a satisfying conclusion in just one more book. Does it suck to have to shift plans that way? Yeah. So does getting dental bills that wipe out all of your savings.

  So please, dear readers, distinguished guests, keep your Eye on the Prize and help me out here! Every view, rating, review, follow, and favorite you contribute to could translate into much needed income for me -- and more and faster chapters of Eye Opener down the line for you.

  (Oh, and I happen to think The Mechaneer is pretty darn fun in its own right!)