One of the things I was excited about with having the blog actually on the main site was that I felt it would be easier to talk to all of you, which is really important to me. The blogs before had to be really planned out (that's what it felt like anyways). So I'm going to take advantage of the new easiness and ramble a bit about loads of things that are on my mind and see what you guys have to say! So here we go:
The Podcast!
I'm having a blast acting out all our favorite dragon shifters, though I'm nervous as we get these new dragons in the mix as my accents are... well... oh, boy, no professional voice acting here! But beyond loving audio and wanting to do this, as you guys know advertising Raythe Reign is... challenging. Though it is not porn, a lot of places act like it is. Oh, you write gay romance? Oh, you mean PORN! No, no, I don't. Really. I think my members would like more romance in it-- No, no, you write porn. That's all that "gay romance" really is...
SIGH. HEADDESK.
So we're constantly looking for new and interesting ways to bring people into the site. Not to mention that we love to actually MAKE things. Manga. Art. Stories. Hopefully, games and live action videos, too! We need more members for that!
Anyways, we combined a new art form, i.e., audio with advertising, i.e. listen to a great story for free but if you want to read more sign up, and voila! The podcast!
We have no idea how its going to do, but its really fun and I sincerely hope that you guys are enjoying. You'll get four chapters or so a month, and the podcast will be 10 chapters BEHIND what's on the site, because you guys get everything FIRST.
A New Serial
As you guys might have read in an earlier blogpost, I will be doing a "wrap-up" serial called Dark Magic that will answer all the outstanding threads in The Pact 1 and 2 and WHCC. While I definitely will be doing that, I really want to do something NEW. So I think I'm going to do that new thing first. We have The Fell to indulge our love of all the characters we already know for right now.
What stories are in my head?
A TON! So many different ideas, but I'm leaning towards another story in The Merman Universe.
This story takes place after The Merman 2 where the existence of Mers is now common knowledge. King Cetus and his Consort Zed are routinely meeting with heads of every country. They and all our other favorite Mers have become something like rockstars. But the existence of Mers and hybrids have caused some havoc in the world as well. People are routinely throwing themselves into the ocean--and many drowning--trying to see if they have any Mer blood in them.
But our hero knows he's a Mer. His parents are Mers. And they had long ago fled the Mers and having been hiding on an island, pretending to be human. Now, they must wrestle with revealing who they are--or not--to the local community. Their human friends and neighbors' reactions though are the least of what they have to deal with if they are found out by other Mer. It seems as if our hero's parents had good reasons for fleeing their Mer life, reasons that will come back to haunt them all.
Now, all of this is subject to change! Because I have a Cinderella idea (m/m obviously). I have a space opera idea. I have a Ghost universe idea with a rent boy rescued by Yakuza idea. A southern gothic witch family idea also snuck in there.
SO MANY IDEAS!
But I'm going to take my time on this.
The Shop and Dark Earth
Sylvia Frost who designed the new site is working on a totally new shop that will concentrate on our manga, prints and merchandise sales. People have been asking (and we've been promising) shirts, etc. for people to buy, but the quality sucked or it required us to ship and we simply didn't have enough people to do everything we wanted to do so we put the whole idea in the "future" pile where ideas go to die for years.
Anyways, with Sylvia joining the crew so many wonderful things have gone from the "future" pile to the "now" pile. Coming up we'll be debuting the site, some cool clothing designs, beautiful prints (she ordered one for me and its DROOL-WORTHY) and more. We'll be adding stuff based on your desires. You'll get to vote on designs, etc. I'm personally looking forward to finally have some RR t-shirts.
And, finally, we'll be selling The Dark Earth 10 there FIRST. We'll do a big sale and everything for you guys!
So that's...
All that's fit to print right now. There's more stuff I could ramble on about, but that's enough for this Raythe's Ramblings. Tell me what you are thinking about in the comments. It doesn't have to be about the site, but can be about movies, music, books, whatever! Go to town. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.