Whew, what a couple of weeks it’s been.
Bleeding Edge was released on the 21st of October – just under a month ago – and it’s done much better than I ever hoped it would. I knew the book was good and the cover art by Eric Summers was killer, but to see it have such an amazing reception has been lovely.
A personal highlight was sharing the top 10 in Science Fiction Action Adventure with Matthew Reilly. Reilly is the guy who gave me the guts to try this whole self-publishing thing way back when. Sharing a top 10 with one of the guys I absolutely love reading is a huge thrill.
We also hit #2 in Fantasy Role-Playing Games on the Australian Amazon store, which is where lots of LitRPG books tend to get filed into by Amazon. We stayed in the top 10 of that category on the Aussie Kindle store for about a week, which was just wonderful.
Bleeding Edge is now available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook formats. An audiobook will also be coming from Podium Audio soon. I’ll have more news about that when I can share it.
The physical books can be ordered through Amazon, but you can also hit me up directly for signed copies if you like. Just shoot me a message on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and we’ll organise something.
A few of you who’ve been following me for a while might have wondered why I made the switch from writing horror to LitRPG, and it really is quite simple. Since release a month ago, Bleeding Edge has made double what Carnifex has in the last 5 years since release. Bleeding Edge has also made more than Metro 7 has since I released it in 2014.
I want to make this writing thing a sustainable career, and the key to that is writing in a genre that I love just as much as horror but is more financially viable.
Some people might call that selling out, but I see it as writing cool as fuck books that also pay the bills.
Rest assured that the ideas for horror novels are banking up, and I’ll be writing a pure horror novel again as soon as I have the time, opportunity, and financial freedom to do so.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ve got six or seven ideas for horror novels that I cannot wait to start writing. I don’t want to wait, but they have to until I can break the shackles of the day job.
Side note, NaNoWriMo has been going for a few weeks now. It’s a little challenge that I throw myself into every November. I doubt I’m going to hit 50k in the month, but I’m going to try my damndest to get EDGE Force 2 finished by the end of the month.
Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me, and for your continued support.
As always, joining my Patreon is the best way of directly supporting me on this crazy journey. Leaving a review, spreading the word, or directly purchasing a signed copy of my books are all equally as valuable.
Cheers,
Matthew
Matthew J. Barbeler 
Woop woop! Congrats on the launch for Bleeding Edge, and here’s to you plugging away at the other ideas you have. Keep on keeping on, and all the best!