“Kept you waiting, huh?” -Solid Snake. It’s time to bring the world where the sky’s on fire back to the spotlight.

And so, it begins.

It’s no secret that I keep busy. Lately, though, we’ve all kind of semi-vanished. Well, there’s a reason for that. Okay, several reasons. Many of which actually have nothing to do with the point of this announcement. But this announcement was a factor, so here we are.

For those not in the loop, hi. Pull up a seat. Get comfortable. Maybe grab a coffee. Here’s the short version. For the past several years, our team’s been working on something. Something big. A large-scale web novel project called – as I’m sure you can guess by now – Burning Sky. We released an early version of Volume 0 – Burning Sky: Prelude – in early 2020. Now, a bit over a year later, we’re that much closer to launching the project in its full scope. And when I say we’re close, I mean we’re close.

There are some logistics to work out, still – payment method (if we’re even going to charge at all, or just bank on donations and merch), platform, etc. But while we’re working that out, there are a few steps we’re more than happy to start rolling out to get you guys ready. Before we do that, let’s talk about the details you already have access to. Let’s…

REVIEW

Burning Sky is an Action/Adventure Fantasy Epic. A Web/Light Novel connected universe of stories that all weave together into one titanic tale. This begins with seven series that will expand to nine after a bit, then narrow down to a smaller number as things progress. The seven titles that will debut first are as follows:

• Burning Sky: Heroes
• Burning Sky: Dawnbringer
• Burning Sky: Prestige
• Burning Sky: Odyssey
• Burning Sky: Bushido (formerly Senshi)
• Burning Sky: Virtue
• Burning Sky: Adventure

With Burning Sky: Kindred and Burning Sky: Divinity set to debut after the first volumes of the initial seven conclude.

No. You will not have to read all the titles. The primary storyline takes place mostly in Burning Sky: Heroes. You can think of it similarly to an event comic. One main book to get all the most important details of the story, with a series of tie-ins that you can go without, but will enrich the overall experience by informing the world, delving further into “secondary” characters, etcetera. Now then…

WHAT’S NEW?

Yes. Let’s move along to the exciting part. With the story so close to being finished, we’re happy to announce that we’re going to be initiating a Burning Sky Open Beta period in the near future!

Open What-Now?

If ya don’t know what that is, it’s normally called a “Beta Reader,” but we’re geeks so we’re just lifting the terminology straight from the video game development playbook. We send the current draft of the story out to a semi-select group of people we choose, as well as anyone interested, to get some early feedback and make any adjustments we feel are necessary before the launch.

Will I Have To Read The Whole Thing?

Nope! Because we aren’t giving you the whole thing! Here’s the rub. While we actually did complete the full drafts of most of these stories, those are all much earlier drafts that, internally, we always knew were going to be heavily changed anyway. Doubly so when we decided to change up the entire format into something much shorter and lighter, to make for breezier reading. Why doesn’t that concern us? Because the goal changed, over time. We adapted. While the original plan was to finish an entire book and gradually release the chapters in chunks while we just worked on the next ones, the length of time it took us to finish the ones we were already working on made it clear that that wouldn’t work. So we evolved our approach to a sort of live-writing formula.

What we’ve done, here, is write five chapters per title. You’ll only be expected to read those. Forcing you to read seven full books in the amount of time we have would be brutal. No. In this instance, it’s more about figuring out if the style is jiving with you guys and if we’re headed in the right direction with the narratives. That way we can make sure to continue what we’re doing well in subsequent chapters and do less of what isn’t working.

How Will This Work?

I’ll go into greater detail when this whole thing actually begins. For now, here are the cliff notes.

• If I don’t contact you directly, but you’re interested, then you’ll fill out a contact form OR you’ll reach out to me on Discord or Twitter.
• Once you’re on our books, we’ll provide you with private links to the stories, as well as a list of survey questions (mostly generic, though some will be tailored specifically to the story you’re reading at that time).
• Once you send me your feedback, you move on to the next story, rinse, repeat. Until all seven are done.

There’s other stuff. Amount of time being allotted, reading order, etc. Like I said. Next time. For now, there’s a bigger, more immediate announcement to make.

Oh?

Indeed. See, it’s like I said. The main story is mostly contained within the pages of Burning Sky: Heroes. The thing about that is that Heroes is a direct follow-up to Burning Sky: Prelude. Like… it literally picks up seconds after our little prologue ends. We can’t very well expect you guys to churn out especially effective feedback on a sequel to something you, in all likelihood, haven’t read. And let’s be honest. That book came out over a year ago. Even if you had read it, I doubt you remember it all that well. If you did, then hey, I’m glad you enjoyed it that much… or hated it that much. Whatever. That’s where this next part comes in.

BURNING SKY: PRELUDE (REMASTERED)

Yes. This is happening. In order to give more people an opportunity to read the original story, as well as refresh the minds of anyone who just… doesn’t remember after all that time, we’re taking it back. We’re relaunching Burning Sky: Prelude. But we’re not just reposting the original chapters. We’re re-editing it to fit with the updated format. The entire story is going to read faster and feel lighter, despite the content being basically untouched.

Not only that, but when we begin this process, we’ll also be updating the site’s look. And… another thing. We updated the site to a proper business plan a while ago. Meaning plug-ins. One of which is a PDF embedder. That’s right. Once we figure out all the bells and whistles, we’ll be able to host the story directly in PDF format, in the way it was meant to be read. Which, by the way, will mean the ability to see the story in its full InDesign-formatted glory.

Of course, that’s an option you’d also have if you were to follow the story on Voyce.me. Yup! We’re also posting this updated Prelude over on the home of Ghost Light Exorcist! Now, if you’ll pardon my shameless plug…

Burning Sky: Prelude (Remastered) will be launching on Friday. The original chapters will be broken up into smaller, more digestible pieces. But those pieces will be uploaded on the same day. One chapter will release per day until all ten chapters (well… nine, plus the epilogue) have been released. Then, once that’s over, there’ll be a short lull, then the Open Beta period will begin! In other words, break out those reading glasses, boys and girls!

IN CONCLUSION…

I did promise a pretty hefty announcement, did I not? There you have it. An Open Beta, a project relaunch, a huge update on the progress of the story overall, I’d say promise delivered… for once. There’s more to talk about, of course. We’ve been having a lot of more serious business talks, of late, regarding the future of the blog and the direction of our more commentary-based content. Unfortunately, technical issues cratered our plans for the summer, but we’re still very much dedicated to Bulletoon having a massive role in the future of the site. So we’ll touch base with you guys on all of that stuff soon. But I hope you’re as excited as we are for this project and all the stuff that’s coming from it.

’til then, thanks for reading, as always, folks. It means a lot that anyone values anything we put out. Be it original content, a story analysis video, or a plain old anime review.

Keep Up The Awesome!
Voyager