September 16, 2023 - Update

Hi!

I finalized the book cover this week. Thank you to everyone who provided input. The final product is better for it, and I’ll post it tonight on patreon. Writing continued to go well this week even with the travel this last weekend and resulting cold.

I’m really behind on responding to comments and plan to make time this weekend to fix that. The good news is that I feel on track despite the false starts that caused me to remove a month’s worth of writing. Hopefully I can repurpose some of those chapters in the future (I left them up on Patreon, even though I’m not using them right now).

Book 8 had the most complete outline I’ve ever managed to create, even if it changed a lot as the story progressed. Book 9 has been more like the previous books in that I haven’t used much of an outline. So much needs to get addressed, I feel like the book will be done by the time most of it is written. Some of the issues that need to be written are from book 4!

I had always intended for book 9 to have some elements that broadened the scope of the world/story. But it has exploded in volume, and I feel like I’m running along a cliff edge as I balance new concepts while keeping a focus on the story goals the series already has.

My whole life I’ve daydreamed or zoned out as stories formed in my mind, but this book has taken that to an entirely new level. Every idea is compared against the worldbuilding in eight novels and studied to determine if it breaks anything. Over and over, my mind constantly churns through ideas and their impacts to the continuity of the series. I know I drive my family crazy sometimes (okay, most times) with this behavior.

The truth is I love the complexity of it all, even though I complain. Book 9 combines elements of the past 8 books with the story BRB has already written plus the one she is writing now, along with two unpublished series that currently only live in my head and are running in parallel with the current series. I’m doing my best to integrate it all, but I do worry sometimes that my love of complexity has perhaps gone too far this time. Like with most things, time will tell.

I’ve opened chapters 19, 20 and 21 for Root.

I’ve opened chapters 22, 23, and 24 for Harvester.

I added chapters 25, 26, and 27 for Step Master, Blapy’s Favorite, Divine, and Axiom.

Enjoy!

The only reason I put so much effort into this story is because of the support and encouragement you provide. Thank you so much for that. Without someone to ask what happens next, the story would never get told.

Take care,

AFK