LIVE BOOK RELEASE CHAT | Nightshade Academy is published.

whoa okay this is the Moment of Truth can you guys hear me please let me know if everything's good on the audio are we good all right well I'm gonna assume that the audio is good to go for now I have a mic that I've attached and I didn't know if it was going to be all flaky on me but seems like it's all right so thank you guys so much for joining me uh a few things before we start to chat um first of all I live near an airport so if you hear a very loud boom every once in a while that is a plane flying like directly over my building second of all my apartment is close to a bar and they have a ton of live music late at night it is actually midnight right here uh or right it is midnight here in Thailand and they are having a blast downstairs so you'll probably hear a very faint music in the background maybe if you get lucky you'll get to hear uh Barbie girl they like to serenade me with that every night almost every night it's pretty crazy so uh let's see first of all big news Night sheet Academy is out it's finally done oh man it has been a long journey it uh I wouldn't say it necessarily took longer than expected to publish the book I kind of had a gut feeling that this one was going to take longer than capsule did but it definitely pushed me to my limits in terms of the time frame when I reached the end I was like going over every single deadline and those were hard deadlines so I could have really screwed things up but I didn't it's out thank goodness um let's see uh if you were here for the release of capsule first of all thank you for still being here because that's crazy it's been so long but I wanted to say for the release of capsule I had a release video come out before I did a live stream like this and the reason why I don't have a release video out right now is because I'm still working on it I thought it would be fun this time around if I actually filmed stuff the day of the actual launch so I did a little bit of filming today uh if you I think I posted about it I guess it was only on Instagram and the newsletter but I got a cake designed to look like the cover of nightshade Academy and I love it it's so cool I actually didn't I had no clue what to expect when I ordered the cake I just found this this cake shop on Instagram that lived kind of close to me and I messaged them a book cover and they're like oh yeah we can do that I didn't know what do that meant but I I ended up getting the cake today and it literally was the cover of my book I don't know how they did that they like printed onto the fondant or something but it was very cool and I actually got a slice with me here today which I don't actually feel like eating because I I had cake earlier uh had quite a bit of cake earlier uh I ended up taking the cake to this co-working space which I go to almost every day to work and my friends and I we cut up the slices and we distributed them to a bunch of random workaholic strangers who were working at like 10 p.m. at the office and uh yeah one one guy completely declined I said said hey do you want cake and he just said no and ran out the door so that was a little bit embarrassing but most people were very excited to have a piece of my cake and uh I still have quite a bit of cake left with me here but unfortunately it is now demolished so I can't show you the beauty that it once was um but I will be posting pictures on Instagram later and probably YouTube as well so you will you will see oh and of course the Vlog when the release video comes out so you'll see we actually got uh quite a bit of interactions on camera I believe my friend was recording I think she got some of that the interactions of us handing out the cakes and stuff um so that was cool yeah I've actually never done yeah I've never like I'm not used to going out there and kind of telling people about my book just the concept of I guess I I did do that one launch party for leaving wish years ago but even then I was really iffy about inviting people like I was so embarrassed to like ask people at school I didn't even tell anyone at school about it it was my teachers who found out through a newsletter that they were on and they're like oh you're having an event let's tell all the classes and it was so embarrassing um so I'm not used to like going out there and pitching my book as much as I am doing that online and like talking about my work uh today someone actually asked me someone asked me so what's Nightshade Academy about um and I I literally even though I have memorized my response to that question I was tripping over my words but um I I recovered I recovered in the end um I want to shout out to Elsa for ordering my book thank you it's coming Tuesday very exciting um man it has been crazy to to read the reviews for Night sheet Academy I think there's there's over 70 uh ratings on good reads right now and I would say the response has been better than the response for capsule which is really crazy uh I I'm not going to try to jinx it it's only a matter of time before I get a a horrible onear review that hates my guts but uh right now everyone's been so nice and everyone's really enjoyed it and so that's been really exciting and uh deserving of cake so yeah now that I've I've blabbered on for quite a bit if you guys have any questions or topics you want to discuss feel free to let me know otherwise I will just keep uh rambling for a little bit you can probably hear the plane coming in now uh oh sorry there's like an emoji covering this petition for a cake slic to be sent with every book order oh that would be great that would be great uh actually I I'm not sure how many of you you know the significance of the cake but I specifically ordered a chocolate cake because there is a chocolate cake um that makes an appearance halfway through the book that uh gets has a hard time the cake has a hard time so it is a very significant type of cake I feel like chocolate like a rich chocolate cake is the all-time celebratory cake that you have when something really good happens and yeah I I won't go I'm not going to spoil anything but chocolate cake is my favorite cake I don't know about you guys but there's nothing that beats chocolate cake I do want to say that I am already working on book two and I'm actually well I'm already quite a ways through book two I'm participating in nanoro this month it went was going really well until like the past couple of days because I've been so busy with launching Nightshade academy uh but I'm gonna get back to it tomorrow and I'm trying to get faster at writing and you know get the books out as fast as I can I know that there's i' I've never felt this type of pressure before I guess because I was writing Standalone for the longest time but now I'm in a place where I ended the book on a cliffhanger and people are actually waiting so I need to you know get my act together and finish the next book so so far so well that's not the phrase is it so far so good I don't know yeah I don't know um any anyways another thing that I want to say is as much as I love night trade Academy I am so happy to be moving on it is actually crazy um I've been working on this book for see I when people have asked me that today I've been saying two years but when I actually look back on it I think it might be closer to three years the timeline is mushy to me because it was I remember I started working on on it um the year before I left for Thailand and then all of my time here in Thailand has just been editing it this entire like new phase of my life I've just been working on this one project so it has been a significant part of my life and by significant I mean multiple hours every day uh during the most heavy parts of the editing process I would sometimes edit all day like nonstop so it was really intense um you'll see with my farm video which is coming out soon that I mentioned it was a farm video my my release video uh that I will be posting it also covers a period of time when I was wrapping up the final stages of the editing process for night shed Academy and I was on a rice farm for uh two full days like three days in total I think I was on rice Farm isolated from society uh and the book was the only thing I could really do uh so yeah yeah it has been a labor intensive project and I'm so excited to just be be done with it and be ready to move on I think I I do struggle with perfectionism with my books and I probably fixate over the details more than I should for example uh before releasing this version that is published I read the final draft three times just to make sure I read it three times in one week it was horrible I hated it I swore I could I was starting to memorize the paragraphs it was really horrible I don't recommend uh but I was that paranoid about making sure everything was good to go uh I'm going to take a look at these comments really quick oh sorry oh no no no no I hope the frosting is beet flavored you know actually I there's this uh restaurant that I go to almost every day called Salad concept uh they somehow make vegetables taste really good so it's it's been a good thing and they have these like juice shots that you can take and I just discovered yesterday yester that the juice they have like a a beat one it's not 100% beat but it's partially beat and I'm tempted to just get it just CA uh but I also don't want to be like gagging you know in the restaurant I I probably make be juice out to be worse than it is but I hate be juice so that's why the characters in my book hate be juu so that is a reflection of my my personal bias on the matter let's see uh which book has been your favorite to write I would say night Treat Academy uh yeah I would say I would say night Treat Academy for sure I think just the phase of life that I'm in right now has been much more peaceful for me than the high school environment although being in high school and writing this book that was an interesting experience because I could incorporate stuff from high school into my work uh but it's just been a much more calmer process and I've had more time to dedicate to the book or I'm not like sque squeezing stuff in between classes and I remember it was really hard to to make the time to write when I was in high school and it's not quite so hard now there are other things that stress me out now that's not homework assignments but it's just overall easier to manage my time I would say not that time management is ever easy uh so I would say just the process of writing for Nightshade Academy has made the process more enjoyable but then also just the fact that the story is so nostalgic um I actually can't even recall that much why I started writing capsule in particular out of all of the book ideas I had at the time whereas with night Academy was clearly the winner like this was the number one story that I wanted to tell so I'm excited I'm excited uh let's see have you read Kafka on the shore uh I haven't read much huki marami to be honest I filmed that video and then I read one book and that was kind of the end of it the sky weeps with us truly deserves its sorry I'm kind of far from the computer it's flowers it's time and Care taken with night [ __ ] Academy really shows through the right oh thank you so much thank you I would say that this book was the book that I put the most energy into the actual writing process and uh I discussed this with Grayson if you didn't see Grayson's video about nit Academy and the belladon trilogy check it out it's very good uh but I I filmed a video with with Grayson on his channel Grayson Taylor and I talked a bit about how I started to make my writing more concise in NRE Academy and I was able to trim it down from around 150,000 words to 115,000 words and let me tell you I literally thought it was impossible I told myself like this just needs to be a long book there's too much content there's too much that happens there's no way I can cram it into a shorter uh period of time there there will be no breathing room and after you know studying some books like Ender's Game by Orson Scott card and some other non-fiction books that were really concise and I loved the writing style uh and then looking back on leaving wiv which actually was a more simplistic writing style I realized that I really like the close attention to detail and being able to tell a lot with fewer words and so I really challenged myself to trim down uh as much stuff as possible that wasn't necessary and I also knew that some people would wouldn't like that because I I know a lot of people like immersive writing styles even I like reading books that are really immersive and grounded and like rich in description uh but I think for my own work I really liked going in the direction of Simplicity and leaving more up to interpretation for readers to fill in the gaps and so Night sheet Academy I I tried to uh trim it to the bare bones of the story and kind of let the story and character speak for themselves and not handhold the reader through the entire process um I think I did do that a little bit with capsule and I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I just prefer doing it the way I did in night TR Academy so I'm very happy with how the writing turned out in this final version um what is your guess as to how much coffee you consume during the writing of the book well let us see I can actually uh oh I don't have my phone with me here uh calculator let me pull up a calculator really quick so let's say it was two and a half years because my memory is hazy two and a half times let's say 2.5 that is that true I would say about 2300 lattes according to my math which sounds absolutely horrible um but that's yeah I think that I think that might be it uh interesting question let's see uh congrats on release day thank you uh who's your favorite character in book two oh my goodness let me see I don't think I can choose really uh there are a lot of of interesting characters first of all I will say that uh Everest she will be playing a larger role in the story and I've done done some sorry I've done some really interesting things with her character um also I will mention that it's not going to be from yashi's perspective book two is making a switch it's going to be multiple perspective uh which may be kind of weird at first but for me it's been working and it seems like the only way to tell the story to the best the way it needs to be told uh I've thought about it a lot I've agonized it over that decision actually for for months and months because it just felt weird to focus so much on yashi and then kind of Branch out but it has to be done so we are branching out we're going to see a lot of pinto uh Pinto is one of the the leading roles in this story so we see a lot from Pinto's perspective and that has been really fun to write kind of getting into Pinto's head more uh I can relate to him a lot I would say Everest okay to answer your question I would say Everest has been kind of a favorite character for me and then I would also say um it's really fun to write From santi's perspective as well uh he's just very his sense of humor is very fun for me and I also really like this new character Arrow who you guys will eventually meet and she's just uh a the type of character I've never really written before it's very new for me so that's that's been exciting and she's probably one of my favorite characters in book book two uh let's see I'm really excited to buy the book and you i' like every book you write ever since I read leaving wish bille how would you describe book two okay thank you so so much uh let's see book two uh I don't want to give too much away for those who haven't read book one but I would describe book two as more of a mystery Vibe so there is a lot of it's kind of half mystery half War I guess I could put it that way uh there is a lot of just the theme of like discovering the truth is still very present and there's kind of this ongoing investigation going on all of the characters are scattered about it's the everyone's just scattered and you're going to see old characters come back and that is all I will say let's see here oh in three words that was definitely much more than three words I probably described it in three sentences there or three paragraphs um in three words okay let's let's give this this a shot um detective uh strategy and I'm blanking here let's leave it with uh yeah let's I I win the game I only had to use two let's see uh when did you come up with the idea of using one of your past books as a plot point in night shade Academy H I think it's from the YouTube Community actually I never really thought about rewriting the book until I had that one video take off in which I talked about the book I unpublished at 13 and then uh especially the video I posted to follow up where I actually read the first chapter of the sky weeps with us there were quite a few people who said you should try rewriting it and uh maybe it was peer pressure or it was like subliminal messaging and I was somehow you know like there's a puppet master and now I'm writing this this story uh but it did definitely did play play a role like it it planted the seed in my mind and I couldn't really stop thinking about it after that and eventually when capsule was over and I didn't know what to work on was the idea that kept haunting me so I it kind of came out of necessity or programming I would say rather than my own will or decision uh let's see here um will we see V's perspective my answer is I don't know yet I don't know but we will see her perspective at some point during the trilogy I just don't know if book two is the time but uh we will we'll have to see we'll have to see uh with the plot point question I mean as in the repeated dialogue the sky weeps with us probably should have mentioned that oh gotcha yeah yeah incorporating the sky weeps with us um H I definitely knew that I wanted a call back and I liked the phrase a lot it I didn't want it to be the title of the book but I really love the sky weeps with us as a phrase and I also was in the situation where not to spoil I'm trying not to spoil it um where I actually needed a phrase an interesting phrase in the story and so it just so happened that I was able to integrate that really seamlessly uh but I didn't necessarily create the plot points around incorporating that phrase or try to find a way to cram it in it just so happened that oh I need a phrase here why don't we just used that so that worked out really well um it's cool that it's multiple perspectives makes every character feel fleshed out ah yes I'm glad to hear that I actually when I think about it I think I kind of Thrive with multiple perspectives that's kind of what I've been writing even going back to leaving wish bille I mean capsule really stands out for that because we have you know Jackie Peter cat uh but even going back to leaving wish I had thrown in you know the story is about Benji but I have his friends perspectives I have his mom's perspective thrown in there um so there's a lot of perspectives going on and uh nitri Academy was kind of confining because it was all From yashi's perspective but at the same time I think it worked out really well because we got a really like tight feeling is kind of what I was trying to go for for Nightshade Academy we in one person's head were locked at one location for a majority of the book and you can't really Escape so it's very confining to and I think it worked well for the story and it might have been too much to to hop around and just given how much needed to be established in the first book but I'm ready to to dive into the multiple perspectives um I have been playing around with uh incorporating some unexpected people's perspectives into book two that may or may not make the final version uh uh at its core it switches between uh pinto and Santi who some of you may may or may not know so that is the the current like two main characters um have some other stuff sprinkled in there that like I said I don't know if I will keep or not um I would also like to just give a huge thank you for letting me have an art copy of the book it's the worst one the first one I've ever had and I loved reading it thank you so much for reading it and being an arc reader uh man like I couldn't have possibly gotten all of these reviews without you guys I'm very grateful to have so many positive reviews even like I you're supposed to leave honest reviews but yeah I'm just I'm very happy for the response I received and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book it was so nerve-wracking to send this book out uh especially after how much I hyped it up because I didn't really when I was working on Nightshade Academy I was creating yoube content but I was like I had my old I didn't really know what I was doing not that I know what I'm doing now but I really didn't know what I was doing then and and it was just kind of this little thing I was doing on the side of school that just happened to kind of do more well than I thought it would do and yeah but I I didn't really I wasn't thinking about like ways to promote my book that much and uh yeah so there wasn't much hype I didn't make like a whole series around behind the scenes or anything crazy like that so the fact that I did that for like n sheet Academy that really like put a lot of pressure on me I think looking back oh goodness people know how much effort I put into this book how much time I put into it I've made this whole behind the scenes thing and I'm pretty much promising that it's going to be good I was really stressed that I was just G to have like a poor of a bunch of one star reviews like I wasn't expecting this or like like why would why was there so much hype if it's not even good but yeah I had a lot of like uh anxiety around the the the whole Advanced reading reader campaign but uh the response was overwhelmingly positive which is just amazing uh I am publishing probably in summer still Gathering beta feedback when should I start promoting it on social media and how do I do it I have a very small following um H I would say you could start now but don't feel the need to like figure everything out you can just make it fun I think and not put too much pressure on yourself and uh but yeah from the advice that I've generally heard sooner is better and my experience ends up uh affirming that I would say because uh I started off with a very small following when I was working on leaving wish and I wasn't expecting anything to happen with that and you never know like stuff takes off really randomly apparently there is no way to control it that's kind of what I'm coming to terms with is algorithms are constantly changing and you don't really know when you're going to be relevant or not or when people are are going to um discover your like you'll have new people discovering your stuff uh you have some control over the the chances but you don't have complete control over it so just having more content out there will help your odds so I would say you know get started as soon as you you can but don't put too much pressure on yourself uh the book trailer for nade Academy was very cool and a bit unexpected uh what was your process making it h yeah I don't remember why I decided to make it actually I think I just I think I just thought it'd be fun and I wasn't planning to make it at first so that's why it was kind of unexpected it was also unexpected for me uh the process for that was actually I don't have like a behind the scenes video which is kind of nice I got to just like work on something without doc documenting it but the process for that was first of all I realized that I had a lot of content to work with from the Audio Drama from all of the voice actors so I I had to go through and like pull a lot of my favorite lines and I just like made a really long list and then after that I had to go through the long list and I had to organize them and delete certain ones and then put them back in and put kind of create a dialogue that had sort of a mini story or at least didn't like made some sense so it wasn't like they were just saying completely random stuff it kind of had a progression to it of increased intensity and yeah I kind of had to structure it out and that took some time uh and then I sent those notes to uh Juan who did all of the editing for the the audio adaptation he's amazing I love working with him it's just so fun whenever you work on projects together so I sent him my notes and he said yeah I'll see what I can make and so he he pulled all those lines uh from the original and re-edit them re-edited them and then added music which was uh all of the original music from the audio drama as well so he added music added sound effects I believe that he pulled all of the sound effects from the Audio Drama although he might have added some new ones in as well and then he sent me like a audio file that was one minute long and then I took that and then I had to fish through the internet for uh like licensed Clips or like Clips free to use that I could incorporate into the video which was so hard uh I didn't realize how hard it was to just find like I I wanted um like boots walking through the forest that was so hard to find uh so it was a lot of like searching on my part to to find the right Clips I went through a lot of variations it first started out with like this um character like opening a door and then the boots walk in and then the boots stop um it's just there was too too many boots so yeah it was a quite the long process but um like uh Juan and I we both edited I did like the visuals he did the audio and it was very fun um oh got nothing else here if you have any questions let me know what time is it okay I I still got time uh it is still like it's kind of crazy it's midnight here so the release day is ending for me but it's going to be going on in the states while I'm sleeping or maybe not sleeping and working on the video we'll see uh I was planning to get it out in the evening your time for those of you who are in the States but I don't know if I'm willing to to pull in all nighter so maybe I will uh get some rest and start fresh tomorrow but I will have it out shortly because I want to have it out obviously around the time of the actual launch uh I'm very excited to edit the cake Clips because like me and my friend like passing out cake to strangers in the office was so awkward um and I I'm excited for you guys to see that that was just yeah it's like yeah um I'm pretty sure they're like yeah I'll take the cake don't talk don't tell me about your book they're probably thinking like why are you telling me about your your book um but yeah that was interesting um do you think nade Academy would work if it was adapted as a series oh do you mean like a like a show series or like a series as in more than a Trilogy the auto drama was awesome it makes me wonder how cool that would be I'm guessing that you mean like a TV show or something um do I think it would work uh yes I I I think it could that would be very fun it would be very interesting um I don't I I feel like it would it would be really interesting because due to the the lack of too many descriptions in the book um the fact that it's rather simplistic I feel people can have very different interpretations of what the world is like which is pretty cool actually I saw um like a reader make a one of those like mood reels on Instagram an advanced reader made like a a mood re for Night sheet academy uh and there were certain things in it that differed from my interpretation which was actually very cool and I really like that uh how do you work with beta feedback because there's a lot of feedback and I will still get more so do you have any advice on how to organize it and implement it yes I'm I wrote out something like my process for this a while ago um and it would it' probably take me a while to fish it up so I'll try to go by by memory but the IDE the idea the general idea is to just break it down into stuff that you need to change and stuff that you could potentially change like you're considering changing and then stuff that you're not going to change um and kind of organize their feedback into those three sections and probably the middle section is going to be the longest like stuff that you could potentially implement but I think that's important to do so that you can work on the stuff you need to change that like the feedback um let's say a lot of people say the same thing you know that you need to change it uh put it in that section work on those things first because I have made the mistake in the past of uh hearing one one or two beta readers say something and I'm like oh that's a good idea and then I spend like hours and hours implementing it and then later realize that I shouldn't have done it um so yeah just It's Tricky especially if you have a lot of feedback because uh it won't if you have a lot of beta readers it's a lot of times uh you'll have conflicting feedback where someone wants more of something someone wants less of something and so there's a lot of weighing pros and cons in that case so just be really careful before you actually make any changes what was the editing process look like for you H um I usually work on writing and editing uh generally in the mornings now not really the the evenings I think I used to write at night more but I don't I I like writing first thing when I wake up up it's kind of like something I look I look forward to doing uh during my day like the most enjoyable type of work that I do so I like to have that at the start which is maybe not a good idea maybe I should do the stuff that I hate to get it over with but that's usually how I do it uh and when I'm really heavy like deep in the editing process um then I usually spend a long time like however long it takes to get through what I need to so I I create a schedule for myself and usually that would involve like editing one chapter a day and I'll have like a long list of notes of changes I need to make and then just overall trying to make it better and however long that take that that however long that would take is how long I would spend on it that day um sometimes it wouldn't take that long and sometimes a chapter needed to be like completely Rewritten and it would take me like the entire day and part of the next day but generally I I edit most most of the time in chronological order and I assign like a certain amount of scenes or chapters per day to work on uh I don't really go by a time length like writing for two hours a day because I I don't really like to stop Midway through a process I like finishing it off uh how do you decide what from beta feedback you use and what you don't change um I think the two main factors is to the two things to think about is how many people are saying you need to make that change and uh why like whether or not you actually want to make it so there are some cases in which a lot of beta readers say something but I don't want to make that change and I have a valid reason maybe it has to do with like uh the next book that in the series or uh it's just my own personal preference and sometimes you have to make tough calls like that gener generally I will follow what the majority says but there are definitely cases when if I like really oppose what the majority is saying like I ask myself why and sometimes it's better to go against the majority in some decisions um if it was a series do you think action or animation I'm I'm anim or sorry I my sentence just that was the weirdest thing my sentence okay um okay let me re restart that if it was a series do you think live action or animation would work better I am biased because I love animation I will admit that uh I haven't been watching that much TV lately but I for a while ago I was watching quite a few more liveaction shows and I kind of got out of the whole animation phase but it still has a very uh I still you know it's very nostalgic to me I loved carons and animation and Anime growing up I just absolutely despised if I knew that there were real people I'm oh it's a real people movie gross I didn't watch any of that um so I watched a lot of Animation so I would say animation on that one just because I'm biased that way um how many pages are there in the book and what's the word count the word count is about like 110 115 somewhere in that range uh thousand 110,000 115,000 and then the page count I believe is three the gosh I I should know this it's close to 400 like three 380 or 70 some somewhere like that um it would have been much longer if I hadn't trimmed it down how do you get motivation to write because sometimes I don't write for a long time and I don't feel motivated to I definitely understand that I I think it's been easier for me just because it's become such a big part of my life now and I'm I think it just comes down to the habit of the thing like I I'm just accustomed to working on my books every day and so I don't really think of the alternative of what else I would do with my time or um it's just something I do and so like having a a routine or something I think helps you get into an autopilot mode where you don't have to like decide to write or feel inspired to you just kind of do it because that's what you do I think if you can get to that point then it becomes much easier and like uh it was definitely harder when I was a student but uh having a schedule time to write like even in high school where I'd write a specific time every day I remember that helping a lot to actually stay consistent um when I had like classes and stuff like that I will say um maybe I shouldn't be saying this but I am working on another side project that is not booked to and it is is a spinoff and uh you didn't hear it from me but it may or may not be coming out uh like halfway between book one and book two and I'm very excited about it and I already have the cover designed which I won't be dropping yet but I do have the cover designed and I have written quite a bit of it and I love it and it's set in the past before yashi goes to the academy a long time before uh I don't think yeah he's not even born at this point so I'm writing a spin-off and I'm very very excited to share that it's probably not going to be a fulllength novel I'm thinking it it'll be a Nolla but I will have I will share more when I can share more and I I know things are are more official about like release dates and stuff like that but it has been fun I have gosh I I have so many ideas about this series and even so many characters I want to explore more it's like uh there's so many stories I could I could tell I like there's there's a lot of backstory for every single character or at least the main ones and I could imagine how interesting would be to just like explore that I have to kind of hold myself back a little bit like stay in the current timeline um but yeah I just I love this story so much and I I know that this is kind of like what I should be working on just because I remember when I uh when I published capsule I had quite a few readers who wanted a sequel and they they messaged me saying they wanted a sequel or they said it in their uh Goodreads review or or something like that and even though I was hearing that a lot I didn't want to write a sequel and I knew I didn't write want to write a sequel but now it's like if anyone says oh I would love I would love to read a backstory about this character it's like I have a novel idea for it already and I'm like ready to write it so I just know like this world is definitely like uh VE for some reason very motivating to me and very attached to this world much more than the world of capsule which is cool uh what are the most important things to ask your beta readers I would say asking them what parts they were bored at and what parts they wish they wanted more of those are the main things that I focus on so uh if they wanted something to last longer you could play around with the idea of adding more scenes like that um although you don't have to sometimes it's good to leave them wanting more but uh the parts that are boring for them that's definitely a challenge uh and that's something that needs to be focused on the most I would say is parts that drag and it's impossible to to H get the perfect pacing because everyone wants something different uh people will always say that a book is too fast or and someone else will say that the book is too slow and that's just how it is and one thing that I've noticed is nobody says I I haven't read I've read a lot of reviews I've never read a review that said the book started off way too fast but then it slowed down and then I was engaged they always say the book started off slow but then it the pace got faster and I was engaged and I've come to the conclusion that I think all books start off slow like because you're not going to dive straight into the intensity um I'm getting into too much technical conversation here but that's just one thing that I've noticed and so you can't please everyone when it comes to the whole amazing thing I always get stuck with writing a little bit and spending lots of time adding flavor and fancy phrases instead of actually developing the story how can I write without getting stuck detailing um I would say the solution the solution for that is pretty easy because I had the same problem and that would be to not allow yourself to edit until you finish the draft or uh finish the stage of editing that you want to finish so once I write a chapter I don't let myself touch it until I've written the full draft which is what I'm doing right now I've been very tempted to like I'm like oh I just want to change that that line that Pinto said but I don't do it even though it probably wouldn't hurt to change one thing here or there but I don't want to get in the habit of like going back and editing when it's not the right time to do that hi Phillip uh let's see I'll probably go for like 12 more minutes to answer questions or or just talk about random things I don't want to go over the hour Point might be dragging it out too much if it doesn't come bursting out of you don't right H I don't know might depend on the person but sometimes sometimes I found like if I'm not feeling motivated or something if I actually just sit down and try it'll it'll start coming but yeah sometimes it just it just doesn't doesn't work I had a really bad experience with uh like I started off really strong with nanor rimo this month and then I had this one day um that I just could not write for the life of me and I was so upset that I actually just left the office and I went home and I watched uh like I just watch stuff on my phone on YouTube or whatever that I was not very proud of myself that day but yeah some days for some reason the writing just just doesn't come naturally how do you get some ideas for your books well honestly I have no idea I just get random ideas and I jot them down in my notes app and it's I I'm sure that a lot of it is based on personal experience that it experiences that I have in real life sometimes uh like a friend will point it out to me like oh did you base this on that one thing and I'm like hm actually maybe like I think subconsciously I do that but it's very rare when I'll meet someone who is interesting and be like oh like that person would be a really interesting character in my book it is yeah that's not really something that I typically do um so I think ideas are not necessarily random they're probably sparked by something but I don't really process what the spark is it just to me it seems random how do you get beta readers just ask a lot of people uh show up on on these forums or Facebook groups or Discord servers or there's so many online communities you can ask people in person um you can ask friends and family I was able to get beta readers for night Academy when I had no audience at all no idea what I was doing so it's possible you just have to ask a lot of people some people will say no but you will get some yes so that is the strategy I would say just ask people um I was get a lot of inspiration for my dreams the best part is that nobody knows oh that's so nice you know I don't dream so I'm very jealous of that I very rarely dream and when I dream it is always a good morning because I feel very proud but I'm still trying to figure out why I don't dream anymore I used to but I I just wake up like I close my eyes and then I open them and it's the next day like Minecraft is that how Minecraft works I think that's how it works there's like a I don't remember it's been a long time uh but yeah I I I miss dreaming so if anyone has tips on how to dream again please let me know maybe I'm getting too old but um yeah that that's very cool dreams are probably a great place to get inspiration just because they're so weird at least as I can recall I found that Writing Down Dreams immediately after I wake up makes me remember them in the future okay I should try that I think I just need to get in the habit of like prompting myself to think to like ask myself what my dream was about because maybe I do remember I'm just not thinking about it at the moment um I tend to remember my dreams if I keep writing them down in the Okay so we've got another person saying that I will try that I will try writing my dreams down and maybe I'll actually be able to remember them um we'll see we'll see um keep a dream journal I sometimes see patterns in my dreams oh that's scary I don't know if I want to Di into why I'm dreaming about certain things do you read Russian literature I don't think so no I don't um would you recommend any Russian literature because I will look into it I've been reading a lot of um non-fiction lately I've been reading uh well my favorite one that I've read like in the past uh few months or so actually I don't know when I when I finished it uh was lost connections that book was very very good very eye openening and I I also read like deep work and all these like kind of productivity self-help books but yeah they' they've been really interesting I I just like to listen to audio books and stuff while I'm while I'm eating dinner this I figure it's probably better than Netflix even if it's kind of like the same information and I've also been re listening to uh what's it called essentialism the book essentialism uh that I think that's Greg mchan and yeah I've been re listening to that and literally all of his points that he's making it just gives me that same like aha moment from the first time and it's making me realize how horrible my memory is like I remember reading it and it was life-changing and I'm reading it a second time and it is like equally life-changing it's like did I not soak in any of the information it's like it went through one ear and then sat in my brain for just a little bit and then and then went was just weird uh but yeah I I think it's made me realize I need to reread stuff sometimes every time I see her here dream journal I think of Shark Boy and Lava Girl oh that's such a throwback oh that's crazy I man that that movie I remember when I watched it when I was younger being really angry because I felt like it was a ripoff of SP kids I absolutely loved Spy Kids that was like one of the movies I watched the most growing up the first one the other ones weren't that great but the first one there's just something so nostalgic and like like dreamlike about it um but yeah I don't know I love Spy Kids that first one probably just because I watched it a billion times when I was little did you think n Academy took as long as you thought it would or did it take longer than you thought hm it took longer than I planned so I had a date that I wanted to finish by and it took longer than that but part of me knew that it was probably going to exceed the time that I set aside for it so I wasn't really surprised when it happened um so I guess I guess yes and no to that question War and Peace okay interesting I will look into that crime and punishment is pretty good okay okay how do you write about War I actually had to do a lot of research on actual wars in the past and different strategies that are used to uh especially in book two oh my goodness cuz uh I will just say book one is setting the stage but book two we have like an actual war going on so I actually had to to figure out like what are actual strategies that would be used in war and like it's interesting because there's a lot of different ways to go about like defeating the enemy there's like very like just grou gruesome ways and there just very like sleek and cunning sort of ways it's it's really interesting to learn about like the different styles of of like taking down the enemy um but yeah I did quite a bit of research about that all right I will be uh closing this off pretty soon if you have any last minute questions type them out very very quickly please um oh fun funny story I don't think I got it on camera but uh the cake actually had like uh it had night shet Academy on it in words and then it had yashi and it had at the bottom it had my name and my friend purposefully cut through my name right down the middle held the knife it was very funny it was very night sh Academy to me like night sh Academy humor that was very fun um I have been playing around with like the humor in book two that has been interesting um I think book two will be challenging to edit but I'm having a fun time making a messy draft right now Professor Ember is so cool oh man Professor Amber is just like channeling the like meanest version of myself onto the page it's like what is like the the most like uh I don't even know like she's very serious and Stern and takes herself too seriously is how I see her takes her job and herself too seriously and it's almost humorous in its own way so it's been very fun and I love I loved writing her kind of monologues where she's just like very condescending U but yeah I I love I love writing about Ember uh fiction or non-fiction obviously fiction for me because I write fiction but I love reading non-fiction uh I read more non-fiction Than Fiction I would say What books do you suggest well right now I'm kind of on a whole like Enders Game High because I I read it again recently so I would say Enders game I really suggest that for fiction and then right now like the main non-fiction books that I would recommend would be uh lost connections and also effortless and essentialism effortless and essentialism are are by the same guy those are both yeah those are all really really good all right this has been fun thank you guys for attending uh it's been it's been nice to chat with everyone uh thank you so much for supporting Nightshade Academy's launch I will be back soon with the Like official release video and I'm excited to share it because it's kind of more of a casual kind of Vlog thing but it it covers a long period of time I started working on it a while ago in terms of the filming process so keep a look out for that and uh it will likely be titled something along the lines of I isolated myself on a rice Farm to finish writing my book something like that so keep a looks out I will not make any promises on the exact time it is coming out but I am trying to get it out as soon as I can so once again thank you for being here and I will see you soon