Goodness, I'm bad at updating my blog. It's been over a year! I need to do better. While I frequently comment in the comments section for the current book, I know many readers do not see that.
As the blog title indicates, Book 6 will commence publishing on Monday, December 23rd. It will publish on the same schedule as Book 5: Monday / Thursday.
In general, it is safe to assume Book 7 will follow, and then Book 8, etc. I've promised before, and continue to promise now, that I will not intentionally cease publishing without letting readers know well in advance.
Also (and see below for more, but some people won't read all the way down): expect a significant update to the early books (especially Book 1) in the new years. Book 1 is the only one with truly 'new' stuff (I have intended to replace the St. Louis chapter with something else for three years!), but it doesn't affect the overall story. However, there are an enormous number of 'style' fixes to Book 1 to make it consistent with the others, and a diminishing number for 2-4. There are also typos and such which have survived unfixed for years which will finally be addressed.
On to some personal news and updates:
As of slightly over a month ago, I am no longer employed. It turns out that's not bad news, but figuring that out required a fairly significant examination of our finances and investments. We were already planning a move (hopefully in 2025), but we've made a major change in destination. That's not entirely financial, but finances certainly play into it. My wife was going to retire in 2025 anyway, but I wasn't. With the change in destination, we can both afford to actually retire.
This is definitely an early retirement for me. I've looked at options, but taking a local job makes little sense since we're committed to moving. Taking a job in the area we're moving to makes little sense based on both timing (we have no idea how quickly we can move) and pay scale. Finding a remote job in my existing field is complicated and might not happen quickly, and there could be issues with the move there, too. So, we've agreed it makes little sense for me to actively look for a job as of now.
That makes my job, for now, moving. We have an enormous amount of 'stuff', stuff that requires sorting and downsizing before we can move. Not having a job really makes that practical; I have no idea now how we could have managed a move while both holding down full-time jobs.
My goal is to make writing my 'retirement job.' We should be fine without additional income, but additional income would be very welcome all the same. Thus, some of those long-awaited monetization things should happen in 2025: publishing on Bookapy (and perhaps on other platforms) and exploring something with Patreon or the like. I'm not sure what Patreon would look like. Advance reader options, perhaps? Something of an ongoing 'tip jar'? Both? More?
In any case, I don't need to make a living at writing, thankfully. Having it bring in something will both increase flexibility and make it easier to justify writing time, though.
I have absolutely no intention of curtailing cost-free serialized publication of VoaT on SoL, of removing anything from SoL, or anything else. Any monetization of VoaT will be entirely optional for readers. That doesn't mean I might not write something entirely different and publish it on another platform, but my intention is to keep VoaT going just as long as I've always intended it, which is pretty much 'indefinitely.' There's always more I'd like to actually write and I don't see that changing. Kids, careers, and all of that will be a lot of fun to explore, and I expect plenty of surprises along the way, especially as the story continues to slowly but surely deviate more from the way things went in our universe.