Hello, everyone, and Happy Holiday Season to you all! ♥♥♥

With the year about to end, I thought it'd be nice to sit down, look at these past months, and reflect a little about all the things that impacted the development of "Love the Guard, Be the King" and my dev career in general in the past twelve months. 

But before that, I have a special gift for you all. I finally released my first Anthology book (yaaay) with a collection of short stories, drabbles, letters, and poems about Love the Guard, Be the King! All of them are organized by date and POV to create a nice timeline of your DC's life in the castle (and the lives of the secondary characters even before that!). 

This anthology is a big collection (~40k words) that should help deepen your connection with the characters and the world of LtGBtK. The short stories are all revised, edited, and some are even expanded with exclusive scenes and extra tidbits about the lore of Five Kingdoms.

Also, it's **free** from today until Saturday (4th), so make sure to grab a copy! ♥♥♥ 

You can read the .epub in any ebook reader out there—in your PC, in your phone/kindle/ebook reader, etc. I hope you all enjoy it! And if you do, please leave a small note on the book page if you can. ♥ Here's the link. ♥

Now, onto the devlog. If you only want to check the news and updates, you can just skip the next few paragraphs. ♥

Okay, let me preface this by saying that 2024 was f******* hard for me and the whole world, but it also allowed me to sow a lot of the seeds that I'm hoping will grow in 2025 and bear fruits in the next years. In July, I refused a predatory contract from the company I used to work for, so I was fired—and that only made me even more certain that I needed to find a way to develop my writing career on my own terms. 

I went back to freelancing as a literary editor (I focus on line editing, which is something I LOVE), but, mentally, things were even harder than financially, which were very hard xD. By then, almost all of my finished books were locked into a contract and not generating any money, so the only thing I had to show for my work was my game. It almost felt like I was beginning from scratch, and that messed with something in my head. LtGBtK and its community on itch/tumblr and mainly on ko-fi basically saved me, and I'm not joking.

Out of all of my stories, only LtGBtK felt truly mine... and I felt lucky to be able to work on it properly. To have people to share it with. To know that a lot of amazing people out there were enjoying my work.

I think that's when it ***really*** hit me that only indie publishing can really give you ownership (and responsibility) over every aspect of your creation. I know I have a lot to improve. Like, I know I'm terrible with marketing! XD My anxiety and social phobia make things really hard on that front (even these monthly devlogs/answering comments can be a challenge when things are complicated in my head), but I know I can make it. I'll improve and study and change and do things slowly, at my own pace. 

For 2025, I decided to shift gears and focus 100% on indie publishing my books and games (with freelancing on the side to cover my expenses while I grow my game dev career cause these past 6 months taught me a lot lol). As I did with "The Lady of The Sand Manor" (my anthology book), I'll start posting my books on Amazon, Google books, etc, but my main focus will be Itch.io and my games.

BTW, you can already play the demo for my next short game!

You can play it here! "Trek to Dead Water" is a short game that shows a different facet of Five Kingdoms. If you like short stories with action and a lot of romance/friendship (depending on your choices), you might like this one! TDW is a mix of text-based Interactive fiction and Visual Novel, and it has two love interests—Yulie (she/her), a "deluded knight" with a difficult past, and Tod (he/him), a con-artist-slash-arcano-in-training with more than a few secrets in his puffy sleeves. And there's a poly option down the line too, so.... 👀 Ahem.

Here's what you can expect in 2025 (the title reveal is here):

• The last chapter of Love the Guard, Be the King + edits (Q1 - 2025)
• The first chapter (at least) of... drumms, please! "Ward the Dragon, Love the King," the second game in the series!!! ;))) (Q2-2025)
  
• The release of the complete version of "Trek to Dead Water" (Q3 - 2025)
• Adjustments on the Tiers on my ko-fi, so it'll be more accessible to you all. I'll also add my books to the rewards, yay!
  
• Monthly releases for the supporters build, rather than one release every two months.
• Book releases, since I'll have the rights to my books back (I write mainly queer science-fantasy, and the first book I'll release is my award-winning superhero book, so I'm really excited for this one!) (Q2 - 2025)

And that's it! But also, that's... yeah, a lot. But I'm excited. I'm hopeful. I'm thinking that things are gonna work this time! More than anything, I know that all this is within my capabilities, so... yeah. Kinda confident too. ♥♥♥

It's 18:14 now, and I have a list of things to do for my New Year party. I have to clean and cook and rush to the market (hopefully, it'll still be open). I'll do that with a happy heart, wishing that every single one of you will have an amazing time with your family and/or friends. All I want from 2025 is 1, the courage to do the things I'm afraid of and 2, that it will be kinder to ALL of us.

A kiss and a big hug to everyone,
Ligia - Ursa em Percurso