Xalir: Blog

I just submitted chapter 20. Apologies for the late post today, but I've just finished spending 27 hours rereading Stupid Boy in one VERY long sitting. Yeah. I probably could have used some sleep at some point. Insomnia is a hell of a drug.


Thanks again for all the unwavering support for My Journey and all the words of encouragement. I will try to write something a little more glib when I've had some sleep.

I just posted Chapter 19 to the queue. This covers most of Matt's hospital stay and some of his most important conversations with Dr. Spencer.

So a funny thing happened to me last night. I resolved that I was going to take a little break from Book 4. My concentration was wandering. I'd write a sentence, check my mail, take a drink, look at Facebook, listen to some music, wander around the house and generally feel listless.

I decided that this was the perfect chance to start rereading GYounger's Stupid Boy series, leading up to his release of book 4. So I settled down to read. And I started to get the same feeling like I couldn't settle to one task. Strangely enough, the task that kept drawing me away from that was writing. I wrote nearly twenty pages last night between getting reacquainted with David Dawson.

I also got reminded yesterday of a story I'd read. It's one of JRyter's called Hero. I always thought the story had a good premise, but I thought there was a lot of meat in the story that had been left on the butcher's block, so to speak, so I'm thinking about taking a crack at writing my own story in that spirit once I need a serious break from My Journey.

As always, feedback is ALWAYS welcome and appreciated. I try to answer everything people send my way, unless it's done anonymously. Thank you all for making this experience so positive.

Today I'm doing a larger post. It includes a VERY short chapter 17, a longer interlude 2 and chapter 18 as a bonus for reaching 1000 votes. I hope you like them. The short chapter is pretty self-explanatory once you read it, as is the switch back to Lana's point of view right afterwards.

As always, comments, critique, corrections and general feedback is welcome. If there's a line, phrase or conversation that sticks out and makes your day, I want to hear about it. Please let me know. There are several that make me smile even after I read them 20 times.

Thanks for all your support and for sharing My Journey with me.

I've submitted the next chapter for posting. It may show up as chapter 17, but the truth is, it's far more interesting than that. The chapter is entitled Interlude 1 and is NOT told from Matt's point of view. It should only take a moment for most of you to figure out who we're following this time.

Special thanks to all the people who've been telling me how they feel about the issue of paying for advanced access. I can only say that it's humbling how many people feel this strongly about my work so far. Thank you all.

Chapter 16 is awaiting moderator approval.

Ah, the restaurant scene. This was a good scene for me for many reasons. I felt like it was a brief glimpse into Matt's potential to adapt to his situation. It was also the sudden change of direction that took the story away from what I'd intended for it in the beginning. This chapter's conclusion was a complete surprise for me and I hope it has the same affect on all of you.

As always, thanks to all the people that have sent me feedback and corrections. I appreciate every email you send and I reply to them all except for the anonymous ones.

As a final note, I've had several people this week ask if they could buy advanced copies of the book as a whole. I have mixed feelings about that practice and mostly I feel like it's a little presumptuous of a first time writer to be selling his work when the original plan was to post it for free. Consider this a call-out for opinions. After this chapter, people may be a little biased toward wanting to know what happens next, but hopefully I can get a read on what people generally feel about paying an author for first read on new content.