On The Protector and the Annihilation's Release Day (06/08/2026)

06/09/26:

THE PROTECTOR AND THE ANNIHILATION IS OUT. It came out yesterday on the 8th of June. Happy Pride!

I wish I could just talk about Pride, and how much I have for this book—but I have a ton of thoughts I want to process.

First, I will say what I said elsewhere—

This book is my pride and joy. I spent 6 years chipping away at it to give people a sense of a world full of many characters and queer experiences, and I will always be proud of how much this series has grown with me and how I wrote it down, toiling with my blood, sweat and tears. I hope everyone enjoys it! 

Definitely want to say “Happy Pride Month!” Growing up I always wanted a series with a fantastically large SFF setting that centered BIPOC queer experiences and decided to tackle the task on my own.

Along the way I learned, felt happiness, and wept a lot!

Now that I’ve expressed what I did elsewhere right after releasing the book, I want to chat about my thoughts regarding The Protector and the Annihilation releasing in 2026.

It felt important to release The Protector and the Annihilation in the mid-2020’s.

I don’t know why with exactness—maybe it’s because this book feels like a memory of being in my 20’s and teens. I worked on its subplots during my early- to mid-20’s in particular, finished up the bulk of it by 27, started writing in 2020 when I was 28, and now I feel I’m growing older.

I’ll be writing more Blue Horizon books and works as I continue through my 30’s and 40’s, but something made me realize it’d be difficult to start Blue Horizon with the same mentality I had while creating it if I were to publish it at, say, 37 to 39 years old.

Because that was a suggestion I got from an agent I do respect—that I make the book smaller. I believe that would’ve taken me 1 to 3 years, and by the time it’d have wound up published, I would’ve been 37 to 39 years old. That’s a big if I was able to traditionally publish a rewritten and revised version.

While I did consider taking up the task of making a smaller version of the book, because I formulated it as an epic fantasy—and because up to the mid-2010’s it was going to be a webcomic, as till around 2015 publishing an LGBTQ+ fantasy novel wasn’t something tradpub considered seriously—I decided to take up the task of writing it out the way I’d planned for some time.

Because it’s a celebration and remembrance of a particular time period to me, I won’t regret writing it as an epic science fantasy. That said, it is an epic science fantasy series, with an emphasis on fantasy, so a lot of the action does and will take place in the far-flung future fantasy decade of “9990’s ATF” some 100,000 in the future and 100,000 lightyears away!

This book has characters (and their story arcs) which I hold immensely affectionately. I’m excited for the day I see more people’s thoughts and opinions on it! Happy about the reception for Blue Horizon thus-far.

Relatedly, I’m happy I’ve built up a lot of surrounding, supplementary works, like the comics, games, art and short stories—they’re meant to be supplementary and interesting to check out after reading The Protector and the Annihilation in particular. I'm glad if people enjoy the works either way.

As people on Bluesky already know, I will wind up working on the main Blue Horizon webcomic—currently called Blue Horizon: Year 9999—which I long ago shelved as an idea (by the mid-10’s). That’s something I want to do, but it’s hard to grapple with the fact that I’m willing to do both!

It will be an alternate continuity to The Protector and the Annihilation, but very close in terms of character arcs, and will have the same worldbuild and magic systems!

When it comes to The Protector and the Annihilation itself, I will be bringing it up a lot through the next years. I need to as an indie author, but in general I won’t let go of my pride of having created it!

Writing novels is something I’ve always particularly wanted to do, and writing is something I adore doing. I’m glad to have been able to create something like The Protector and the Annihilation.

Happy belated Release Day! A note for Neocities and Buttondown readers that this release day encompasses Amazon and Itch dot Io only; it will release wide on the 15th. Thanks for reading.