Happy Holidays Everywhere!

Your gifts have arrived!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I hope you are having a wonderful season. To celebrate, I wanted to do something a little different this year. I’ve been working on some exciting projects to bring the Academy to life in new ways, and I realized the best gift I could give wasn’t just showing you what I’ve made—but giving you the keys to the kingdom so you can create too.

Here is your C.L. Stone Christmas Gift Bundle:

🎵 Premiere: “Lover’s Call” Music Video

First up, the boys have been busy. I am thrilled to present the official music video for Lover’s Call, a brand new song by Gabriel x Victor. Seeing the music and the characters blend together has been a dream come true.

🎥 The Guys... On How to Be The Guys

Ever wondered how the animation magic happens? I’ve put together a special introductory video featuring the guys themselves, animated and explaining exactly how you can animate them. It’s a fun, meta look at the tech behind the faces we love.

🛠️ The Keys to the Sandbox (Whisk & Sora)

This is the big one. I want you to be able to play in this world. I’m sharing the specific tools and recipes used to generate these visuals so you can try your hand at it.

• Whisk Recipes: Get the specific “recipes” to generate the guys consistently. [Link to Recipes]

• C.L. Stone Sora Account: If you prefer using the Sora platform, you can access the account here. [Link to Sora Account]

• You can use other tools. I used Kling and HeyGen for a lot of the singing dub matching, but there are others. I picked Whisk and Sora to share because they were the easiest for beginners.

🔓 A Special Announcement: The Sandbox is Open!

I am officially releasing these AI-generated assets for you to use.

I will continue to produce “official” anime episodes and content for my YouTube channel as best as I can. However, I know how creative this community is, and I want to see what you can do.

Here are the rules (or lack thereof!):

• Recreate away: You are welcome to recreate your favorite scenes from the books or invent entirely new scenarios for the characters.

• Monetization is OK: If you upload your creations to YouTube, you are absolutely allowed to monetize those views (ad revenue). Go for it!

• Obviously, never make anything illegal. You can’t use the images or videos to harass anyone or misguide anyone. Every image and video generator has restrictions on use. Follow the guidelines or rules of each where they apply.

• The One Restriction: You cannot package this content and sell it, nor can you put it behind a paywall (like Patreon exclusives). I need to retain the underlying rights of the characters, so please keep the content free for everyone to enjoy.

• Credit: A link back to my website or channel is always appreciated, but it is not required. I want you to have fun creating.

I can’t wait to see what you create. I will be sharing all assets I have so you can also generate from my own images and videos. I’m figuring out how to share so many. Please be patient. It might just be a DropBox with any images and video you all can reuse. I’ll post again when I have it together.

I will be making custom official voices. That will be coming next. It takes a while (and a lot of credits) to make the voices and I’m very picky about their actual voices. Gabriel’s and Victor’s singing voices are finished but the others take more work. (This is the reason for delay in more audiobooks, I was unhappy with the provided voices so working on official ones custom for these guys.) I’ll provide those as soon as I can!

Have a safe, happy, and creative holiday! Thanks for hanging out here with me.

For general book news because I know you all want to know: I do hope to have a preorder for the next Ghost Bird book out in Jan/Feb. I don’t have a release date planned, it’ll likely just be a preorder so I can give plenty of time for an editor to schedule time. As you all know, I’ve had a couple of years of emergency family things between my dad with dementia and my mom passing away, and on top of that dealing with long covid and some lingering brain fog which makes writing 100k+ word books very difficult. This stalled a lot of my momentum for book writing. I appreciate everyone’s support during the last couple of years. I’m doing what I can for my own healing but the books are always on my mind to complete.

Things have finally slowed a little here. My goal for the next year (or two) is to finish them all up. I may do some strategic things here and there to make this happen. And this is under the hope that there aren’t any more family or personal emergencies. I may not be able to get all of them published in the year, but just hoping to get them all drafted. That’s usually the biggest hurdle for me.

I’ll go over more of this in January when I’m more aware of timelines. As you all know, I don’t usually like to give solid deadlines or anything unless I am sure I can meet them. (I’ve been wrong before and it confuses everyone) And I try to only post when I actually have some answers or something to offer.

Anyway, hope all is going well! Please enjoy the videos and creating. I’d love to see if anyone makes anything. If people give me permission, I’ll post some in the next newsletter if you want to submit anything.

As always, and if you are new, the Meeting Sang series and other free stuff are always available:

Introductions Printable Coloring Book

Meeting Sang Series:

• Kota

• Victor

• Silas

• Nathan

• Gabriel

• Luke

• North

• Sean

• Owen

The Academy Cheat Sheets Remastered

If you haven’t already:

The Meeting Sang Audiobooks

Check out the free books:

Introductions: AMAZON ♥ B&N ♥ KOBO ♥ IBOOKS ♥ GOOGLE PLAY

Thief: AMAZON ♠ B&N ♠ KOBO ♠ IBOOKS ♠ GOOGLE PLAY

Melody: AMAZON ☼ B&N ☼ KOBO ☼ IBOOKS ☼ GOOGLE PLAY ☼ SCRIBD

Also, we have an album!

Gabriel x Victor

Spotify

Apple Music

iTunes

Deezer

iHeart Radio

YouTube Music