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Apologies for so long without an update or a new chapter. My situation hasn't changed much since my last update, but there is hope on the horizon. Finally found someone to fill the open position that has been causing me so much stress.
I've been having trouble with chapter 28. At this point I've completely written it 4 times. This is the first time I've really felt like my loose outline is biting me.
Usually I have stories much more tightly planned. With Spellman I have some tentpole events, but the stuff in between is usually written on the fly. It's worked so far, but right now it's causing trouble.
When not publishing serially, it wouldn't be a big deal. I could just write some other stuff and come back later. In fact, I have done this. I've written lots of stuff for some of the bigger future events (plenty of stuff for Kevin and Sarah's wedding, for example), but that doesn't really help when the next chapter posted still needs to cover time before that.
I hope to get it done this upcoming week. I think I've finally figured out a way to solve some of the problems I've been having.
I finally finished writing ch 26 this morning. Once I have a chance to go through and get it edited, I'll submit it. Should be this evening.
I'm sorry for the delay in getting this done. It's been extremely difficult to find any uninterrupted time when I could get in the "flow" of writing. Usually I'll finish a chapter in ~3 writing sessions, but this one took me closer to 10, only being able to get small portions finished at a time.
It's been a hell of a week for me at work. Had someone quit unexpectedly so I've been working for the last 12 days straight, and averaging about 3 hours of sleep during that time. I'm hoping to have Ch 26 done by Monday, but I can't promise it.
Hello everyone!
I'm at the point now where I'm feeling 100% back to normal in terms of my health, which is great!
Now that I'm healthy again, my wife has taken the opportunity to put me to work doing lots of house and yard work that has been neglected for the past month while I was sick. So in the past week, I've moved a lot of furniture around so we could paint, I've dug up and removed old bushes from the yard, planted some new blackberry bushes and peach trees, fixed our fridge, and so on.
I've also been catching up at work with my regular job, training a new hire, etc.
the important bit: For now the plan is to scale back and release one chapter a week, hopefully on Saturdays, while I build my backlog up again.
The hope is that once I have a healthy buffer I can go back to multiple chapters per week, but for now I'd rather slow down and let things pile up a bit so I don't feel like I'm constantly on a knife's edge with getting things out on time.
Expect Chapter 22 by Saturday afternoon, or Sunday morning at the latest. I do have some family visiting this week, so that's also slowing things down. Just another reason to get my chapter buffer built back up so events like this don't have to affect the release schedule.
Happy Star Wars Day to any and all my fellow nerds.
Just wanted to give a quick update:
1. My health continues to improve. Still not all the way there yet but I think I'm only a few days away from being back to 100%.
2. My illness didn't just put me behind on writing, but on work with my real job as well. I was also just moved up to a new position, so that double-whammy has taken up most of my attention this week. I'm hoping to finish chapter 21 tonight, but it might take me until tomorrow. Optimistic about getting it out to you on Saturday.
3. I'd like to get back on my...biweekly? semiweekly? I've never been able to figure that one out. Let's just say twice a week release schedule. I'd like to get back to that pace, but right now I'm not confident about maintaining it consistently. I'll try to keep you updated, but for right now I'm just going to write as much as I can and release when the chapter is done.
4. A few different people have asked about support through platforms like patreon. I don't currently have one set up, nor do I plan to any time soon. Until I a) am confident in my consistency and b) have enough of a buffer to provide something worth paying for, I'm not going to try to mess with that. Maybe someday.
Once again, thank you all for your understanding and support. Writing this story and seeing so many people enjoy it has really been huge for me. We're up to 400 followers here, and each chapter has been getting around 10k downloads (whatever that means in terms of actual number of readers) with similar numbers on other platforms.
It's been wonderful to make writing a part of my life again, and I hope to keep things going for a long time. Spellman is going to be a long story, but I have plenty of others that are always competing for attention in the back of my mind.
P.S.
One thing that I've never been quite happy with in the story is the formatting of text message conversations. Especially as things get more involved and they get used more, it can be hard to follow who is saying what without the usual dialogue tags. If you have any thoughts on ways to make this better, let me know. Whether it's just adding more tags after the italicized text to reorient, or formatting the conversations like
Me: Hi, this is a text message
Melissa: This is my reply to your text message
I'm interested in your thoughts.
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