Alex Weiss: Blog

Hey all, for those of you wondering when the next chapter of TAOA will be posted, the answer is tomorrow morning. I spent four days frying my brain at a music festival this weekend, but now that I'm back behind the keyboard, the story will pick up again, right where we left off.

I expect Part II to conclude by Thursday, and then I'll post the first chapters of Part III this weekend. I was hoping to finish Part II before I left, but it ended up being much longer than I anticipated (15 chapters), hence the delay.

Hope everyone had a nice, relaxing weekend. See you all tomorrow morning.

PS - I want to give a quick thanks to Goldfisherman, who's not only been assisting with proofreading, but also utilizing his previous engineering experience to help me keep the science and engineering portions of this novel as accurate as they can be.

A few readers have also pointed out minor technical issues that have already been fixed, so a thank you to those folks as well. Please keep those corrections coming.

I recently posted the first part of my new novel, The Arrow of Asterius, and I'm quite excited to finally publish it. I wanted to wait until I finished writing Part 2 before posting Part 1, which I just did this morning.

Much like The First Timers Club did when I started writing it late last year, this story has taken hold of me and will not let go. It's literally pouring out of me as fast I can write. I expect there to be six parts in total, and I'm having a blast writing it. Hopefully, you have a blast reading it.

For those of you still waiting for updates to The Protege and Forbidden Fruit, I can only fall to my knees and beg your forgiveness and continued patience. I started a new job shortly after the start of the year and it's monopolized a lot of my time. As I mentioned previously, FF is actually complete (as is FF Book 2), but I've been stuck in editing hell fixing continuity issues I created for myself after I decided to rewrite a large portion of Book 1 last year, and I need to resolve those before I can continue publishing. Excuses aside, I assure you that those works have not been abandoned (I love them far too much to ever let that happen), and I intend to post them here in their entirety as soon as I possibly can.

But The Arrow of Asterius will happen first. Again, I apologize (or maybe I don't), but I must go where my creativity takes me, and this story absolutely has me by the throat.

Kind of a random thought, but for the life of me I can never decide which 'Sex Contents' tag to use for my stories. I marked AA as 'minimal', but honestly it seems that no matter which tag I use, it's always somehow wrong. I'd say that maybe 10-15% of the story so far involves some kind of sex. Is that 'minimal' or 'some'? Where do you all draw the line?

And speaking of The First Timers Club, a sequel to that book is also in the works. It's still quite early, but I have it mostly plotted (well, it's completely plotted, but I have 2 different endings I'm trying to decide between), and the first few chapters have been written. I just loved those characters too much to leave them behind for good. I'm curious, though, how you all feel about that? Should I just let TFTC stand on its own, or would you like to read the continuing adventures of our mysterious protagonist? Drop me a note to let me know.

Greetings you beautiful people.

The title of my novel The Libertine has been changed to Forbidden Fruit, and is now the first book in the newly-created Gethsemane Academy series. As mentioned in my previous blog post, book two of the series has already been written, and is awaiting editing.

The editing of Forbidden Fruit has been going extremely well recently, allowing me to upload a new chapter nearly every day. The finished novel will likely end up being ~45 chapters long (140-150k words), give or take.

Progress on The Protégé continues, albeit at a slower pace as I rush to complete Forbidden Fruit, which partially explains the longer interval between chapters. The other reason progress has slowed is because I'm debating whether to expand the story into a full length novel, or keep it as a more compact novella as planned. Regardless of what I decide, I plan to devote all my attention to finishing The Protégé as soon as I complete the editing of Forbidden Fruit.

The process of editing and posting book two of the Gethsemane Academy series will begin only after The Protégé is fully completed.

Hello, you beautiful people. I just posted chapter 7 of The Protégé, and the first 13 chapters of my latest novel, The Libertine.

The Libertine has actually been in development for almost three years now. I started writing it in late 2019, and by early 2020 I'd completed the first draft, at well over 200k words. Then it sat, unedited, for a couple years while I focused on other things. In the meantime, I wrote The First Timers Club, which you can find here on SOL.

Around the time I wrapped up TFTC, I began writing The Protégé. The first six chapters poured out of me in just a few days. At that pace, I wondered if I could finish it inside of a month, since I expect it to be a shorter novel, but as the plot became more intricate, I realized I needed to do some outlining to make sure I connected all the threads, and hit all the story beats that will lead to a satisfying conclusion.

Concurrently, I also dusted off The Libertine, which is a story I love. Rereading it with a critical eye, however, revealed some plotting issues in the first half. Plus, the damn thing was just way too long. But I spotted a clear breaking point right at the midpoint, and made the decision to divide the work into two books, each well over 100k in length, and began extensive edits and rewrites of book one.

That work is nearly complete, and I felt the opening chapters were strong enough to share as a kind of teaser. I have several more finished chapters in the hopper, ready to post, but I've decided to release these novels as serials, instead of all at once.

I realize that serializing a novel is a point of contention between writers and readers. Readers don't want to invest time in a novel that never finishes. On the flip side, writers want their words read by the most number of people.

I released The First Timers Club as a complete, 180k word novel, that garnered an 8.4 rating (thank you to those who voted), but barely managed 6k downloads. I'd honestly rather have a lower rating and more readers, because that's why I write. For you, the reader.

Therefore, I've decided to release both The Protégé and The Libertine Parts 1 and 2 as serials, in the hopes that I can reach a wider audience, and perhaps entice readers to explore my back catalog. I can assure you skeptics out there that all three of these novels will be concluded. I'm a fast writer (3-5k+ words per day), so you shouldn't have long to wait. I have no set schedule for release. Chapters will be posted as they're completed.

To those who've taken the time to comment and rate, I can't thank you enough. Your feedback lets me know that my work is appreciated. I will be releasing a new chapter for each book in the next day or two, so please stay tuned!