Hi! As I was writing out the date I realized it was 9/11 and because I live alone and it's Saturday and I'm not around any people, I just was like "Whoa, I completely forgot about that" cuz I'm like 22 and I don't watch the news, I'm not talking to anyone. So that's a thing. Okay.
ANYWAY!
Volume V is up! If you hadn't already noticed...
So, I wanted to do a formal announcement thingy because here's the tea, friends, I actually have the first three chapters finished of Volume V, not just 1. Gasp, what is this? Me...being like...prepared?
What does this mean? Well, it means that for the time being, we're gonna have a release schedule! Yes, that means every two weeks a chapter will come up. That'll be every other Saturday starting today.
I put it in my calendar and everything like "Hey, update the book today" and I'm like "Will do past me."
If you're impatient and want to read the chapters now, you can become a patron on Patreon and read ahead. I mean, if you want to. If you can wait, then sure, do that.
I worked diligently all day today and late last night to get the Volume V cover done, it was tough work because...like, so many different faces there on the cover. But it's my favorite cover I've ever drawn. Like, quality work me. ;)
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be so self-interested it's just I'm so happy to be here at this point and have this volume published. Here's the tea, again...I have been working on this story for so many years and I really trapped myself in a corner with Volume IV because of...well...bad writing. Too many plots and too many characters at once. So I'm basically cleaning up the mess of my former self and have been doing that for the past, like, four years...oh my gosh.
Okay, shout out to anyone who has been reading this story since I first published it, cuz...I don't know if any of you are still out there...
The reality of the situation is the hiatus really cut down on my following cuz people got tired of waiting. In my defense the year that nothing was released (cuz there was a year where it was just frozen in time) I had been hospitalized and was dealing with some serious mental health issues (spoiler alert, I'm okay now and my medications work so don't worry about me).
So here I am, like, older and wiser and really proud of some of the writing that I've done through this story. Is it sad that I don't have as many readers as I once did? Of course. Validation is great and having such a popular story was like...really cool. Didn't think it'd ever get that big.
But I remember--oh gosh I used to tell this story all the time--but when I was on Volume I and I was like "Yo, why am I even writing this". At the time I did have this whole thing written out in my mind for how I wanted to end things (like with Marigold's whole Syramin thing, though details changed through time) so I had a direction to go, but I felt unmotivated cuz I barely had any reads.
And then I looked at the most recent chapter I published and saw 8 reads. And was like "8 people care about this story, sooo I'll keep writing it".
And now I sorta feel like I don't even need the readers to still wanna write. I just wanna complete this story. And I might churn another volume out while I'm at it, so that's fun.
Yeah, so that's all I guess. I don't know how this turned into a rant where I talk about writing the story and stuff. I don't know, I like to talk about writing. It's fun! At least I think it's fun. I hope it's fun to read too, I don't know. Hey, you know what I like to do, reread the Christmas special where Liddan has a Christmas Carol thing happen to him. That's one of the few chapters I really like to read.
I don't know what I shared that. I don't know why I've written so much stuff today, eh, okay I need to close this somehow.
Uhhhh, like, love yourselves and remember who you are sSiMBAAAA okay bye!
