Ryan Sylander: Blog

Dearest readers,

Solid progress continues on the third book of Hook, Pick, & Lens. Past the halfway point now. Muse willing, it will start posting on SOL later this year! If you want to follow along with detailed progress updates and more, feel free to visit my Patreon page.

And, if anyone on here happens to speak Gaeilge, please get in touch! I have a few questions I could use some help with.

Cheers
RS

Dear readers,

I'm looking for a little information from an eye doctor or similar. Please get in touch! (edit: have what I need now, thx all!)

In other news, the writing continues to go well. Thanks to fans new and old for reaching out since my last post.

Back to the muse!

Cheers

Ryan S

Dear readers,
It's been just about 4 years since I finished writing DoF. Too long! Always surprising how life can fly by. I'm still alive, and still writing when occasional gaps in real life allow me too. Sadly, I don't have a story to post at this time, but I have made significant progress on both Opus 2 and the continuation of DoF in the last couple of months. Opus 2 in particular is shaping up. I can never predict how much writing time will be available to me in the coming months, and even if I could, the muses have their own agenda regardless. However there is some hope that this will be a productive run, and maybe you can read about Wexford again before four more years pass!

Mostly, I hope you are all well. I wish to sincerely apologize for not responding to reader feedback individually of late. When I was actively posting I made it a point to reply to everyone who wrote, but that is a daunting task when you haven't answered anything for years. But I have at least caught up and read every message in my email and in the new-ish SOL system. Apparently there are now comment sections after stories, and I figured out how to turn them on, I think!

So again, thank you all for the suggestions, critique, encouragement, and continued interest in these stories. At least for now, I'll be more active replying on the mail system, so feel free to get in touch if you want to discuss the stories. I always enjoy the dialogue, and indeed I've learned much from your messages over the years. All of it is welcomed, appreciated, and humbling.

I hope to offer some more to you soon.

Cheers
RS

Thank you readers, for the kind feedback on Depth of Field. I will be replying to everyone who writes, but some extra RL scheduling has severly limited my computer time since the last chapter posted. I'll be in touch soon!

Cheers
RS

Dearest readers,

The last chapter of DoF is on the posting queue. I humbly hope that you have enjoyed this continuation of the tale of Heather, Matt, Lara, and the rest of the cast. I certainly have enjoyed writing it, and I'm thankful for the input of my editor pcb, as well as formatting assistance from Lazeez at SOL. And as always, I love hearing from you, so never hesitate to write your thoughts!

(If you haven't yet finished DoF, then I would skip the rest of this note, as it might contain mild spoilers!)

But wait, there's more! I have a wee bit more DoF-related writing available to you. I have written two alternate-universe bonus scenes. These are flights of fantasy that aren't part of the 'real' story, but more like 'what-if' scenes with two of the story's sirens. Just a fun little extra. How to access them? In Ch. 38, a riddle-poem points Matt to a certain place. I told you in that chapter where that location is. But in Ch. 39, there are two more riddle-poems that point to locations that I intentionally do not name or describe in the story. Figure out one location, and you get your choice of one siren scene. Solve both, get both scenes emailed to you! If you want to have a crack at it, just send me an email with your guess as to the locations that the riddle-poems point to, using the SOL feedback system. Obviously, include your email! And who knows, this may not even be the end of the puzzles, heh heh.

The future:
So clearly there's room for more story, and indeed, Book Three of this series has been part of the plan since I started DoF. There's an outline and scenes written, and the first couple of chapters are already shaping up. Of course, there's also the Opus One world. Lots of ideas and scenes and half-starts have been made in that universe, too. I would like to return to it. Finally, there's a story that's been in my head for eight years about one of the characters in DoF that's itching to get out, something shorter than the books, but longer than a short story.

All these grand plans aside, I will warn you yet again that I write very slow. And I don't ever plan to post as I write again, so nothing will surface until I either finish a story or give up on it altogether. The experience of posting DoF after it was mostly finished was much more pleasant than the way I did LTTL or O1, posting as I wrote.

Perhaps the muse has returned strongly enough to prevent another five year hiatus. I certainly would like that. We shall see! I leave you with Heather's words: Love creates, we just discover. And hopefully I can write it down!

Cheers
Ryan Sylander