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.