u/BlueHeronDancer

Just finished painting on procreate my title for my latest book on Royal Road. I remained true to the style and everything was done in oil paint brushes. Would love some feedback on if it looks ok or if I messed anything up? Story is a sci-fi fantasy progression story.

I just want to share the excitement and love I have for the community coming together and reading my new series! I have officially final edited for Royal Road all of book one and am starting book two detailed drafting! 🥳 I may re edit before publication if I ever go that route, but right now I’m more focused on book two.

Marek’s Awakening has 150 followers, it just hit #23 in Sci-fi Rising Stars, and I finished a big personal milestone! 💯 I have met so many authors and new friendships on my journey this last year, and can’t wait to see what the future brings 💙 That’s me pictured above and the cover for Marek.

What are some recommendations from the community on how to handle marketing and gaining momentum? I’ll include the blurb and link below as well.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/161670/mareks-awakening

A progression sci-fi fantasy about survival, found family, dungeon worlds, and a half-broken man trying to build a safe place. Releases 3x/week  🥳
Marek Rynn was raised in places that failed. On a decaying frontier habitat above a dungeon moon, survival meant knowing which walls would crack, which doors would jam, which air vents would lie, and which people still had time to be saved. Marek learned early how to read broken systems, salvage what others missed, and keep people alive when everything around them started coming apart.
Then the cancer reached his throat.
With his voice ruined and his time running out, Marek accepts the one offer that looks like a way forward: a corporate medical program promising treatment he could never afford. Clean rooms. Real doctors. Official contracts. A chance to live.
The promise is a trap.
He wakes inside a secured research facility where patients are assets, treatment is ownership, and every procedure brings him closer to becoming something the corporation can use. The disease is still spreading. The experimental nanites in his body are keeping him alive only well enough to be studied. His legal status has been rewritten. His future has been signed away. And the next phase of the trial may erase what remains of him entirely.
Then impossible things begin to happen.
A tool slides across a tray. A latch trembles. A door resists closing. Pressure shifts before danger arrives. The nanites were meant to control Marek, but something in him is changing faster than the blacksite can contain. The system begins marking a path that should not exist, and the power waking inside him may be the only weapon he has left.
For the people who own the facility, Marek has become priceless.
For Marek, that makes escape urgent.
Getting out is only the first fight. Beyond the blacksite waits a frontier ruled by corporate recovery teams, ruined stations, black-market routes, dungeon worlds, and settlements stripped bare for profit. Marek is hunted, weakened, and trapped in a body that could fail him at any moment. But he is still a Delver. Still a Havenwright. Still the man who walks into dead places when someone inside is still breathing.
As he uncovers the truth behind the nanites, the trial program, and the system that turns desperate people into property, survival becomes more than escape.
Marek does not only want freedom.
He wants a place no one can take from him. A refuge for the discarded, the hunted, and the broken. A haven built from wreckage, guarded by people the powerful thought they had already used up.
And if the frontier gives him even one chance to build it, Marek Rynn will make it hold.

I just want to share the excitement and love I have for the community coming together and reading my new series! I have officially final edited for RR all of book one and am starting book two detailed drafting! 🥳 I may re edit before publication if I ever go that route, but right now I’m more focused on book two.

Marek’s Awakening has 150 followers, it just hit #23 in Sci-fi Rising Stars, and I finished a big personal milestone! 💯 I have met so many authors and new friendships on my journey this last year, and can’t wait to see what the future brings 💙 That’s me pictured above and the cover for Marek.

What are some recommendations from the community on how to handle marketing and gaining momentum? I’ll include the blurb and link below as well.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/161670/mareks-awakening

A progression sci-fi fantasy about survival, found family, dungeon worlds, and a half-broken man trying to build a safe place. Releases 3x/week  🥳
Marek Rynn was raised in places that failed. On a decaying frontier habitat above a dungeon moon, survival meant knowing which walls would crack, which doors would jam, which air vents would lie, and which people still had time to be saved. Marek learned early how to read broken systems, salvage what others missed, and keep people alive when everything around them started coming apart.
Then the cancer reached his throat.
With his voice ruined and his time running out, Marek accepts the one offer that looks like a way forward: a corporate medical program promising treatment he could never afford. Clean rooms. Real doctors. Official contracts. A chance to live.
The promise is a trap.
He wakes inside a secured research facility where patients are assets, treatment is ownership, and every procedure brings him closer to becoming something the corporation can use. The disease is still spreading. The experimental nanites in his body are keeping him alive only well enough to be studied. His legal status has been rewritten. His future has been signed away. And the next phase of the trial may erase what remains of him entirely.
Then impossible things begin to happen.
A tool slides across a tray. A latch trembles. A door resists closing. Pressure shifts before danger arrives. The nanites were meant to control Marek, but something in him is changing faster than the blacksite can contain. The system begins marking a path that should not exist, and the power waking inside him may be the only weapon he has left.
For the people who own the facility, Marek has become priceless.
For Marek, that makes escape urgent.
Getting out is only the first fight. Beyond the blacksite waits a frontier ruled by corporate recovery teams, ruined stations, black-market routes, dungeon worlds, and settlements stripped bare for profit. Marek is hunted, weakened, and trapped in a body that could fail him at any moment. But he is still a Delver. Still a Havenwright. Still the man who walks into dead places when someone inside is still breathing.
As he uncovers the truth behind the nanites, the trial program, and the system that turns desperate people into property, survival becomes more than escape.
Marek does not only want freedom.
He wants a place no one can take from him. A refuge for the discarded, the hunted, and the broken. A haven built from wreckage, guarded by people the powerful thought they had already used up.
And if the frontier gives him even one chance to build it, Marek Rynn will make it hold.