Above the mage

Chapter 93 [Author's Note on Launching the Book]

Important note: It will be available tomorrow!

This is my second book, so I can be considered a veteran author by now, but to be honest, I'm still a bit clueless during the initial stages of writing a new book.

After all, the previous book, Sword Cultivator, had a rather bumpy road to success. It was released directly, only to be eliminated in the first round of the new book season, and it took four months of writing without any preparation before it was finally published. This book, Mage, is the only one that has gone through the entire new book process.

Overall, I have a lot of feelings and a lot to say.

Even online novel authors tend to have a strong desire to express themselves.

However, I also know that my fellow readers are here to read the novel and aren't interested in my rambling nonsense, so I usually try to keep a low profile.

The author's author statement upon release is one of the few opportunities for the author to speak freely and reasonably, so let's take this opportunity to ramble on a bit:

1. "Above the Mage!" will be an excellent story.

Your grades are clearly not good, and your writing is clearly a mess, how dare you say that?

That's all.

Because I really like this story.

So for me, it's a wonderful story.

Nothing more than liking it.

Similarly, because I love it, I will do my best to finish writing this story.

2. Book title.

The original title should not have this exclamation mark; it should have been called "Above the Mage".

However, "Above the Mage" is already taken, so I can only add an exclamation mark (!").

At first, it was annoying, but upon closer reflection, I realized that without it, I wouldn't be able to use this book title.

So after a while, it stopped bothering me.

3. Regarding the style of the book

First of all, although the background is Western fantasy, it's because mages and Western fantasy are a perfect match; changing it to another background would be too mismatched.

However, when I was writing, I did not deliberately make the word choice and sentence structure conform to Western fantasy, nor did I deliberately avoid Chinese words.

The reason is simple: it's written for Chinese readers, so there's no need to raise the reading threshold.

Furthermore, since I created this world, I legally have the right to the final interpretation.

I even tried my best to lower the reading threshold that might arise from the Western fantasy setting. For example, I cleverly used "Chinese-style" foreign names for the characters: Gao De, Amy, Pierre, and other important characters in the future will also use the same names.

To be honest: the background of the mage is Western fantasy, but the core is still "xuanhuan" (Chinese fantasy).

After all, I categorized it as Fantasy/Otherworldly Continent, not Fantasy.

However, this does not change the fact that it will be a pure mage novel, without any fighting spirit warriors or anything like that.

Yes, and it will still be a "clichéd" story. Like Sword Cultivator, it will have many "clichéd" plots and an extremely "clichéd" ending.

Of course, it is very different from sword cultivation.

After all, sword cultivators and mages are very different.

4. Prices and the Economic System

As you can see, prices are an extremely important part of this book.

I stitched together the price systems of medieval and 19th-century Europe.

Why suture it like this?

Because this is a supernatural world, the gap between the rich and the poor is too great. The lower class still lives a medieval life, but the upper class can enjoy many alchemical creations similar to modern technology.

In addition, the prices of most of the common items mentioned in the article can be found by searching for information about the scale armor, so these prices should be roughly the same as the actual prices.

For example, 4 pounds of rye bread cost 6 copper coins.

However, for a few items, I couldn't find specific data on prices even after searching online, only rough descriptions. So I could only rely on common sense and extrapolate from the prices of known items.

For example, regarding the price of wheat bread, I found this statement: "Historical records show that the price of wheat bread can be several times to more than ten times that of rye bread."

Blind spots in thinking will definitely exist, so if any of you brothers find any problems with prices, please leave a comment and let me know.

If there's a problem, my friend should fix it, but you can't just say "I think there's a problem"; you have to give your friend the evidence!

The prices of ordinary items are traceable, but the prices of extraordinary items can only be set by myself.

For the price increase between tiers, I used the tier increase formula, with a multiplier of 4.64.

The pricing of different types of extraordinary items generally follows a principle: the price of a repairable item of the same tier is about ten times that of a disposable item, and the same applies to repair fees.

Following these two principles, pricing should be reasonable in most cases.

However, there are bound to be some oversights. If any of you find any bugs, please feel free to point them out.

A more reasonable worldview needs to be improved by everyone.

5. Regarding DND

Most of the spells in the book are taken from D&D.

In terms of spell design, D&D's spell system is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and rigorous.

However, it is not entirely copied; it has undergone some modifications. Therefore, do not completely follow D&D when reading, and do not use D&D settings to criticize your friends.

In addition, only the spell entries are taken from D&D; the other background settings are my own creations.

Furthermore, before writing this book, I had absolutely no exposure to D&D; my understanding of D&D was entirely based on memorizing information from various sources.

So if there are any interesting uses of magic, I, being a novice, don't know them. If any readers do know, please let me know in the comments. Thank you!

Finally, if you have any interesting ideas about how to allocate skill points for certain spells, feel free to share them in the comments section. I think they're really useful!

6.Updated

In the eyes of most readers and even the author, the mage's achievements so far have been rather mediocre.

In layman's terms, this is an achievement where the author could disappear at any moment.

But actually, I'm quite satisfied with the results so far.

After all, my friend's previous novel, "Sword Cultivator," took four whole months to write before it was published, and it only had less than 1500 favorites when it was published.

But with 1500 favorites before it was released, and 50 or 60 initial subscriptions, the sword cultivator story has been written to more than 3 million words and is now completed. The average subscription is 5000+.

When the monk finished writing, he had over 1500 favorites, and now he has 1.15 favorites.

What more could you ask for?

It takes the author's conscience to create a beginning and an end, and I will continue to do so.

So don't worry about your buddy running away.

We'll try to make a strong push later on.

If you have any good brothers who have followed me through the sword cultivation journey, you should know that my biggest weakness is not my writing style or plot (disclaimer: this is not to say that I am good at either of these), but rather my update speed.

My updates are indeed terrible, I admit it.

Therefore, the update strategy is "to do our best and to guarantee success."

We will strive to maintain stable updates.

Guaranteed to be completed.

7. About the main character

The protagonists I write about are lawful, neutral, and somewhat kind; I would never write a protagonist who is particularly aggressive.

—I can't write that either.

Therefore, in some storylines, the decisions made by the protagonist may not meet the expectations of some readers.

To paraphrase what I said when I talked about sword cultivation: This is a typical case of differing opinions. You may not like or agree with it, but you can't start criticizing it or think that the choice is wrong (righteous face).

The reason I set Gaode's identity as a student in the Department of Mathematics at Peking University is mainly because I feel that "magic" and "mathematics" are actually very similar in temperament and have something in common.

In my opinion, besides having a cheat code, a protagonist's personal abilities are also very important in making them a protagonist.

Students from the Department of Mathematics at Kyoto University represent Gaode's "personal ability".

In addition, I did graduate with a degree in mathematics and now work in statistics, but I am not a top student from Peking University, and I graduated three or four years ago.

Therefore, most of the math-related content in the book is based on newly researched information. Please forgive any shortcomings and don't take it too seriously.

After all, I'm writing a novel, not an academic paper.

7. Some random thoughts

Random Thoughts 1: If any of my good friends who followed me from the previous book might remember that when I wrote about sword cultivation, I said that if there were to be a next book, I definitely wouldn't write about a system.

I always keep my word, so "Wind Spirit Moon Shadow" really isn't a system! It really isn't!

Random Thoughts 2: During the first round of reading the new book, I asked to follow it for two days. I found that asking to follow it was a really troublesome thing, and most of my good friends don't like reading this kind of thing either, so I simply stopped caring and let things take their course.

The same applies after the book is published. Unless it's a summary at the end of the book, I try not to include any content outside of the main story to reduce the author's presence.

Random Thoughts 3: I just saw a comment from a reader in the comments section today, and I can't understand why spell model construction requires taking a potion.

I can understand if readers don't understand, after all, I haven't written it yet.

Even if I write it down, I can still understand why people don't understand, since everyone has different ideas.

As for those who can't understand it, they might spit out a few words, and I don't care.

If you don't even have this much resilience as an online novel author, you shouldn't be writing online novels.

I noticed someone commented below: "It's copied from the setting of 'My Best Friend'."

When my friend saw this, he couldn't help but sigh deeply.

This is reality, more like fiction. Novels are like this: minor authors have no human rights and are suppressed by passersby.

For example, many readers said that I was trying to ride on the popularity of the steady senior brother in my previous novel, but it's not a steady style at all. I couldn't even imitate it properly. They used this point to criticize me, which made me quite depressed at the time when my resilience hadn't been developed yet.

The truth is that when the guy decided on the book title and created the book, he had never heard of the "steady flow" genre, and he didn't write it with the intention of being a "steady flow" writer. Moreover, at that time, the "steady flow" genre hadn't even been released yet and hadn't gained any popularity, so how could he be riding on that coattails?

To avoid suspicion, I have never watched "The Steady Master" yet, for fear that if any similar plot appears, I will be accused of trying to piggyback on his fame.

As for this book, I haven't even written what potions are yet, and I've already been accused of plagiarizing the setting of My Best Friend just because of the name "Potion" (sigh again).

Random Thoughts 4: To those who don't like it, the plot of "Above the Mage!" might be a bit old-fashioned, a bit bland, or even a bit toxic, but at least I can boldly say that it's a rather unique story.

Because my friend didn't follow any particular book or genre; he simply wrote the story he wanted to tell.

A familiar topic: about "water".

Having read the launch announcement, my fellow readers should have already sensed the style of this book: it's quite detailed and includes a lot of specific details.

Of course, this is just my own interpretation; many readers would simply and bluntly define it as "water."

But no matter what, we've painstakingly researched a lot of information, and the background we've created definitely needs to be depicted bit by bit to enhance the texture of the world.

The simplest example is prices. Without enough detailed descriptions of daily life, people would think that 300 gold coins and 3 gold coins are no different, just a difference in numbers, and there is no sense of reality.

Another point is that online novel plots need logic, and logic requires foreshadowing.

for example.

For example, if I need 500,000 in real life, and I never buy scratch-off lottery tickets, but today I casually bought a scratch-off ticket and won 500,000, does that make sense?

They don't get along, but this kind of thing still happens.

But can online novels be written like this?

No way, if I dared to write that, my brothers would definitely tear me apart.

How should I write it?

Before the demand for 500,000 arises, I need to establish that "I" usually have a habit of buying scratch-off lottery tickets.

It would be best to add a short storyline where, because scratch-off tickets are not selling well recently, the merchant decides to release more tickets to increase the winning rate and thus motivate people to buy more scratch-off tickets.

Only after these two layers of foreshadowing can the plot of "I" winning 500,000 yuan in a scratch-off lottery be logically introduced.

That's the gist of it.

8. Listing

My primary goal in writing is to finish the novel I want to write and like, regardless of the results. If I can also make money, that would be even better.

My job is alright, fairly stable, and I can barely make ends meet, so I won't play the victim.

In addition, I actually saw quite a few good brothers who came from the previous sword cultivation, and to be honest, I was very touched.

However, I must say that mages and swordsmen are completely different styles of books, and you are welcome to read them if you like them.

But if you don't like it, that's okay, you can wait for the next one.

Maybe I'll go back to fantasy/xianxia in the next game.

Don't subscribe to a sword cultivator even if you don't like mages, or I'll feel ashamed!

After all, it's not easy for anyone to earn money.

I hope that the good brothers who subscribe to the Master are doing so because they genuinely like this story, and not for any other reason.

Finally, even with a part-time job and extremely slow writing speed, writing four or five thousand words a day does require considerable effort and sacrifices most of my personal time.

Therefore, I'm working hard to write.

If you guys like what you're watching, please support the official subscription.

There's nothing wrong with that!

(End of this chapter)