As I am writing this, I am waiting for the proof copy of the first edition of Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles book to arrive. It’s been quite a ride since I officially started this project on April 5h 2019 by posting the tale “The Shower Maidens” on my Patreon page – I’ve been consistently publishing more than 1,000 words every week, which culminated in a book with a word count of 103,000 words.

But I am not finished yet – in fact, I have hardly started!

German folklore contains multitudes. As the massive link list of German-language folklore texts at Wikisource.org shows, there are literally tens of thousands of tales out there – and the vast majority is not available in English. I have started to survey some of these sources, and as of this writing I already have 638 tales in my ToDo list that I want to translate – and that number keeps increasing constantly.

So beyond maintaining my Patreon campaign and publishing further translations, what are my plans?

My primary goal is to publish further editions of Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles. As “translating German folklore tales” is an open-ended task that could easily keep me occupied until retirement age and beyond, I will determine when I have sufficient material for a new edition by the accumulated word count. Just like the goal for the first edition was 100,000 words, the goal for the second edition will be 250,000 words. The goal for the hypothetical third edition would be 500,000 words – at that point I will likely have to divide the book into several different volumes, since a single volume would be too large for print on demand options. After that, my (still very, very tentative) plans are to publish a new edition after each additional 250,000 words – or at least until I get bored of this project.

I also have some (equally tentative) ideas for side projects, especially material for role-playing games (one of my major hobbies). I might also consider more specialized books on German folklore that focus on specific topics (such as dwarves, nixies, the Wild Hunt, and so forth), but whether I will find the time and resources to do so will depend on how successful my Patreon campaign is.

I am excited to see what comes next.