Inevitability

It's been a few weeks since my last entry here. I've been busy with a lot of things in my life. Something that has taken up a lot of my time has been the flat where my mom lived. I needed to remove all the furniture, paint the walls, basically clean it out as best as I can in order to give it back in proper shape to the landlords. It hasn't been the greatest of times, in fact I still have to go there at least a few more times to finish up with some painting I still need to do and washing windows and such. But it's almost over now. This part has been the hardest recently. All the memories that I had there...It's just another empty flat now. Someone new will move in, and I'll never go inside there again. It's for the best though. Life moves on. It's only natural.

The second thing that has been weighing on my mind is my impending return to the workforce. I was too idealistic thinking that I could make a living right from the get-go from writing a visual novel. I do feel a bit silly about my somewhat juvenile dream, but I also feel like it's what I needed in my life. To dream again. Without the crushing reality of adulthood always hanging over me and threatening my existence. It's good to dream. And it's fine that things didn't work out as great as I had imagined. I can only learn from this entire experience and do better next time. 

So what does this mean for the novel? What will happen to Light My Way? It will go on. Simple as that. I won't have as much time for it, that's true, but I will only start working in April. That means I have a full month to press hard with the current chapters that I already have written and finally finish editing them. If everything goes well, and it rarely does but let's stay positive, I will have finished editing up to and including Chapter 11. That's 7 chapters total which would give me enough time to settle in my workplace to get back into the groove of things. Once I'm comfortable again and earning enough to stabilize myself financially, I will get back into finishing writing the full story. I would say that it will be more or less by the time Chapter 11 will be out. So in case you are a hardcore Light My Way fan: don't worry! Lucian's story will continue. 

I'll be honest about something though...I did think that Chapter 4 was really good. I expected more people to check it out. Maybe I overestimated my story and my characters. Maybe they're not as interesting to everyone as they are to me. Either way, I still love what I wrote. I sometimes re-read parts of the novel and lose myself in them. By the time I realize what I'm doing, I'm already halfway through a chapter. There are so many feelings I get when I read my novel. And there's so much more to come. Things will be intense, but in a different way.

There is something I do want to mention about how Light My Way will be published moving forward. We might delay public builds by a month or even longer. This will obviously not affect anyone reading this unless you decide to unsubscribe, which is totally fine. I also realize that some people might have signed up for a dating sim type of visual novel, but got a fox that's losing his mind...so it's all good. I believe I am still in the process of finding my fanbase, or my fanbase finding me. 

I am no longer in hurry with pushing hard for builds. I also don't have the financials after the next 2 builds are done to be able to keep up. Between having a completely useless sprite set that I can't use which cost me close to 2000€, to my mom's funeral costs of 4600€ and now the rent I have to pay for her flat of around 2000€...I'm quite drained financially. I am glad I had the money to pay for all of this, but it has been the most difficult time of my life... 

I did get through it though. And that's a cause for celebration. Celebrate victories, however small or big they are. Anyway, this was meant to be an update on how things are right now and how some things might move forward from now on. Things are settling in nicely. Which is more than I can say for Lucian, Darius and Fabian in "Chapter 5 - Seclusion". But you can be the judge of that. 

Thank you for your support. I am glad that I started on this journey and it means a lot to me that you are here with me. I appreciate it more than you might think. Thanks.

- Hadrian Maximus