🧙‍♂️Exclusive Interview with justinwrite2 of Tomebound, Must-Reads, and a Royal Road Prince's Fall

Apologies Everyone, here’s the Newsletter without typos.
Welcome, everyone 🧙‍♂️. In our inaugural edition, we bring you an exclusive interview with justinwrite2 from Tomebound, give you our under-rated picks of the week, and address the fall of a Prince of Royal Road.

WEEKLY RECS | WHAT’S OUT THIS WEEK | INTERVIEW WITH JUSTINWRITE2 | FALL OF ACTUS |

Weekly Recommendations - These all rock, seriously.

What’s Releasing this Week

Interview with justinwrite2 from Tomebound

I’d like to formally thank justinwrite2 for reaching out to this budding Scribe. You can check out my review on RR. You should read Tomebound now. Like, right now. It’s seriously awesome, and I can’t wait to see where it goes. Here’s another link. If you’re an author and want to be interviewed 🍟, you can send me a message here.

Saga Scribe: I want to start this interview with something a bit personal. I know that you’ve studied and followed along with Sanderson’s course, and the quality of Tomebound is clearly high. Do you have a literature background? Studied creative writing outside of Sanderson’s YouTube course? Did you have a grandparent that would read you stories? I’d love to know if you have written in a professional capacity for work or even high-level schooling.

justinwrite2: I started writing Tomebound on December 14th of 2023. According to many, my writing skills are lacking–several find my first chapter quite slow and tedious by litrpg standards. I dropped out of college, and the first time I showed my family and friends my work, they accused me of using AI, because (as is a common joke in my discord) I can rarely write a sentence without a pair of typos.

Saga Scribe: You’re quite good at creating different character voices and making them stand apart. What types or even specific characters do you find most challenging to write and how do you work through that?

justinwrite2: I really feared character work at the start, primarily because I’m on the spectrum and getting to know people has always been hard. I found that writing is easier than I thought, simply because I can look at characters i love and try to emulate them in written form. Helena, for example, is based on the mother figure in Kiki’s delivery service. I struggle the most with Callam’s character; he is both outspoken, and quiet, and I lack the ability to be both. I work through it by writing slower than a turtle changing shells. 

Saga Scribe: Here’s an easy one. While your story is a self-proclaimed ‘slow burn’, I especially loved the small worldbuilding scenes. Do you have a favorite scene that you’ve written so far? What about your readers? Did some of their favorites surprise you, and why?

justinwrite2: I love the Seedlings, as they remind me a lot of the magic I felt playing Golden Sun. I love the paperfowl because libraries are quiet places, and I love reading outside. Bring those birds indoors. I love epigraphs, because I can do things like this: 

“Life's toil buys pardon or penance. Pay enough and you’ll reach the heavens.”

Perish Tithetaker

The play on word with Perish? So much fun.

Saga Scribe: You're grinding and working extremely hard on your story, and it clearly shows in the quality of your work. Knowing that your goal is to go full time as an author, how is that journey going for you? Have you found it challenging to balance the demands of marketing and promotion with writing? What strategies or methods have you found effective in managing both aspects of your career? How’s your sleep schedule?

justinwrite2: I write slowly, so I have to promote more, which makes it really challenging. I constantly worry about boring my potential readers, or annoying them. Also, my first chapter is slow. Some people read it and its candy—its exactly what they want. My focus as an author is on those readers. If you love magic, then my book is for you. Going full time is a dream, but it won’t happen until I publish. Then we will see if my goal if writing a litrpg for the masses comes true. Every decision I have made is toward that goal. From the slow descriptions, to no blue screens to chapter 20…

Saga Scribe: Let’s talk themes. Clearly this is a theme driven novel with Literacy, information, and power being cleverly mixed together. How do these themes influence your character development? Do you have any personal beliefs or experiences influencing the themes in your writing? Have you encountered any different interpretations of your themes that made you see your own work differently?

justinwrite2: Like many who love to read, I started off really struggling with reading. English is my second language and I wasn’t exposed to it for a while, so when I started reading I was really far behind. I knew what felt like to not know something everyone else did, and it sucked. I think this resonates with a lot of readers. Many people fall in love with and find most rewarding the things that challenge them the most.

Saga Scribe: Softball question incoming. I also love old school JRPG’s, though I haven’t played Golden Sun. Do you have any video game recommendations? Or do you think everyone should go old school and get into those older games?

justinwrite2: Play what you enjoy. Golden sun was everything to me because I was eight, the parents were broke, and it was the only game I could afford. 60 hours in, I discovered there was another half of the game. That BLEW my mind. Golden sun was a love letter to those kids who couldn’t afford to buy several games, and just needed a place to lose themselves in. I’m hoping tomebound can be the same.

Saga Scribe: This is purely for my own personal knowledge and archive. Growing up, my friends and I would always ask each other “Where would you go in an Apocalypse?”. Zombie/Nuclear, not System. If you had to pack in 5 minutes and sprint to a location to survive, where is it?

justinwrite2: Costco.

Saga Scribe: Last questions, and I appreciate you taking the time to answer these. What your writing schedule like? I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you plot and structure everything out. No pantsing here. Do you have arcs that go the distance planned out? How do you approach a blank page when you’re alone writing? Music and tea? Heavy metal and chips?

justinwrite2: I’m a heavy pantser. Even my epigraphs are pantsed. However, I do have a plotted idea out for the first 3 books that covers high level themes, so that helps. But most characters are written on the fly.

Thanks again, justinwrite2. Check out Tomebound!

Fall of Actus, but adds $40K/year to Salary

After weeks at the top of Rising Stars, Actus’s new series, Nightmare Realm Summoner (it’s great, obviously) has fallen from #1 on Rising Stars. Looking at the followers and views, this is only because of Rising Star’s timelimit.

That’s OK for Actus, though. With a diligence that few writers can match, the series has brought in about an extra $3700.00/month on Patreon.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, thank you for reading 🙂 

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🧙‍♂️Saga Scribe