The Germanicus Newsletter, May 2025

An article, a sequel serial, Royal Road, and more.

Hello and welcome to the Germanicus Newsletter. At the moment, the Germanicus Fiction Empire is still in publishing hiatus. This was describe in the update post linked below:

Now it’s been almost a month, and I’m posting this just to let people know that I’m still alive, and I’m still writing.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been really busy with other things. I won’t get into the details because I don’t want to write about personal things that have nothing to do with my writings.

That said, I do have things to say/write.

First, I figured I should share a summary of what I’ve been doing in terms of writing:

• 5/7 Report - #6

• 5/7 Report - #7

• 5/7 Report - #8

Let’s address the elephant in the room first: I have yet to finish Book 2 of The Santara Commentaries. I also have yet to really move the needle on The UEC Stories.

But that doesn’t mean I did nothing. As I said in one of the reports linked above, I finished a sequel for Prisoner and Ransom. At some point, I do plan on putting that story out as a serial like with the first story. But that will have to wait since I really do want to advance the stories of both the Santara Archipelago and the United Earth Coalition.

Also, feel free to check out my works of nonfiction on Indonesian and American. While my recent works in that blog have been rather curt, I was able to put up a banger of an essay (if I must say so myself). Please check it out:

Comedy is not an Excuse for Blasphemy

But going back to fiction, I have also been publishing my stories on Royal Road. Personally, I haven’t been getting much traction there. Sometimes I wonder if I should even be doing this. But I have my reasons. For one thing, I don’t want to put all of my eggs in the Substack basket. Also, putting the stories that I’ve already published here on other platforms is an easy way to branch out. As an author, I’m a big believer in publishing wide. If you’re a reader on Royal Road, feel free to check out the stories I’ve been publishing there:

• Adventures in Balkania (recently completed)

• Prisoner and Ransom: The Perils of Agent Jen (just started)

Speaking of Royal Road, one annoying thing I’ve experienced there is the risk that my submission might get rejected due to plagiarism concerns. What plagiarism? Well… mine. Since the story I was publishing there have already been published here, Royal Road flagged my submission as plagiarism.

Imagine being accused of plagiarizing yourself.

I think the problem is the fact that I didn’t use my name for Royal Road. Instead, I went by “MPM-GCP”. I’m sure I wouldn’t be dealing with this problem had I used my real name there, but I don’t feel like it.

I guess I should be glad that the people on Royal Road were doing their due diligence. I just wish they would dig deeper, deep enough to know that MPM-GCP is the same person as Michael P. Marpaung. And it’s not like I’m keeping it a secret, I put my Linktree in my Royal Road profile:

As for the other things I’ve been doing as a writer. I don’t think there’s really much to say, at least in the context of Germanicus Publishing. I will summarize them in these bullet points:

• I haven’t been reading much in terms of books. In fact, the only reading (for pleasure) I did was one chapter of Barren Metal every week. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

• Thanks to my going to law school here in Jakarta, I have been writing in Indonesian. This is good since before my classes, I haven’t written anything substantial in Indonesian since I went to college in 2010. I have a personal goal of being able to write a novel in Indonesian, or at least a short story. And by that, I mean write from scratch, so no translation and definitely no AI (not that I’m a blind AI hater).

Like with my last post, I will close with a link to the Paid Perks Post of Germanicus Publishing. If you are already a paid subscriber, consider this a reminder of what you’re getting with a paid subscription (so do take advantage of them). If you’re not (IOW, you’re a free subscriber or a wanderer), then I encourage you to look through it to see if a paid subscription to this Substack (of $5/month or $35/year) is for you.

And remember, I have a lot of content here in Germanicus Publishing. Please look through the archive. If you don’t know where to begin, consult the Official Guide:

Until next time,

Michael P. Marpaung

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