Schedule Moving Forward + Talking About Outcast

Making this post available to all tiers so people can decide what to do with their Patreon subscriptions. If you're Tier 1 or Tier 2, I recommend not reading below the 'Schedule Moving Forward' point section just yet, as there will be some spoilers in this post & potentially the comments section.

Schedule Moving Forward

The general plan is this: I'll take a few weeks to prepare the final Outcast book for its kindle release while also creating a detailed plot outline for the next story, which is currently set to be another fantasy LitRPG. After that I'll start writing again, and will post chapters to Patreon for the new story as they come.

I'm not sure if the schedule will remain one chapter a week or go back to two. It partially depends on the chapter length; two 6500+ word chapters a week isn't really feasible at this point. The rest of it depends on how burnt out I still am after taking it relatively easy for these next few weeks. To be honest...I was kinda underselling how burnt out I was in my earlier postings. Most of Outcast Book 6 was written in burnout mode (by that I mean over 200k words of content), and I had to work very hard to make sure the quality didn't dip as a result.

Regardless, I'm not stopping writing no matter what. There's nothing I'd rather be doing with my life, and I've got some ideas for the next series that I'm excited for. Some time spent not writing Outcast should help a lot with recharging my creative juices; much as I love the story, it went on a lot longer than I thought. It was originally meant to be a trilogy...whoops.

I'll make sure to keep you guys posted on things and give you exact dates as soon as I have everything ready.

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The rest is for people who've read the final epilogue chapter.

The End of Outcast, and the Beginning of Something New

It feels weird writing this. I've felt weird since the moment I finalized the epilogue and its ending.

It's hard to fully express how much writing Outcast has changed my life. Without getting too personal - I'm in a much better place than I was before I started it, and that's entirely because of the fans who were kind enough to show enough support that I could make this a career instead of a pipe dream.

There's a reason I say 'thanks for reading' at the end of every chapter. I really mean it.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Although pragmatically, it kinda would've been more sensible for me to extend Outcast for a bit longer. It's rare that authors in the serial space manage to make a follow-up series that reaches the same level of success as their first hit. At the very least, I know some people would've enjoyed reading After The End content.

With that said...I really wanted to end the story at this point. Emotionally, I think it makes the most sense, and it's what feels the most fulfilling to me. After six books, Rob is finally home. Writing anything after that point would just dilute the impact.

Speaking of Rob - I'm a little nervous about moving on to a new main character. Rob was commonly cited as one of people's favorite parts of Outcast, and why the story worked for them. With that said, for the next story, I can't just write someone named Bob who acts exactly like the old protagonist. I don't think that would be satisfying for anyone. While the story genre will be the same, I want to explore different characters and themes. I think you guys are going to have a lot of fun with the ideas I'm cooking up.

Other than that...there's lots of stuff I could say about writing Outcast in general, but I wouldn't even know where to start, so consider this an impromptu AMA. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

And to everyone here, whether you started reading Outcast at Chapter 1, midway through, or just recently - thank you once again. It was a wild ride.