Wife and I have successfully relocated to the east coast. I'll be assembling furniture all this week but I am happy that things will probably return to normal for me in early November, just in time to not publish any chapters of Unjust Depths in November, in case you were wondering.
I am planning at the moment to publish two chapters in December, or one in December and one in January-- Knights 11 and 12. I also am planning to put out a new version of the epub sometime soon. It's been a while. I also want to restructure the TOC so that Anthology 1 and 2 are different pages. This is to accommodate my plans for Arc 4, "The Victor and the Accused" which will not have traditional Episodes. Instead, a series of mini-arcs will have named chapters within each. You'll see what I mean-- this basically allows me to write a long succession of smaller, different adventures focusing on different characters and locations in a huge and changing war front, in a way that i felt the previous structure did not allow me to do. "The Past Will Come Back As A Tidal Wave" is a very long chapter in a very specific location with a certain theme that pervades it. This has made it very intricate and difficult to write. I hope that in the new structure, I want to try telling more stories, different stories, some that follow each other and some that are nonlinear, that together, piece together a place or a military operation, without the restriction of a single theme, a single umbrella, a single throughline. You'll see what I mean when I start doing it.
I have outlines for the next few chapters of "The Past Will..." and am hoping to finish off this Episode in early to mid 2025. Ultimately this arc was incredibly ambitious, long in the making, it is defining of Arc 3, and just maybe I bit off more than I could chew. I think it's not a coincidence that midway through it, my health collapsed, I began to have troubles with writing day to day, and I had to stop serializing on a schedule. Something like this also happened after "Book 2" of The Solstice War-- that one, also, had so many interlocking parts. These are the stories I want to tell, and I will tell the story of "The Past Will..." to its completion and finish Arc 3 in 2025 but it's been difficult. I think I am okay with all of my fans hating me and leaving in droves with this Episode because it fits the narrative I tell myself in my head. Consistency is important, and I'm the only one who matters in this, after all.
Another thing I'm thinking of doing is writing a fantasy book. Not as a serial, because if I had to commit to publishing something alongside Unjust Depths I'd go insane as you know. But rather, just writing something on the side little by little. You may or may not see it someday. I was thinking of this theme of what might have happened to the terraformed mars that the Aer Federation was beginning to colonize before it collapsed-- I don't know that I mentioned any of this before it might be in the text of Unjust Depths somewhere. There's a lot of cryptic Aer Federation stuff everywhere I don't always perfectly remember it outside the context of writing a chapter where I research my notes and previous chapters and such. ANYWAY. The Mars stuff may or may not matter but in thinking about it I got this idea for a story about revenge and genocide and traveling a huge fantasy world and destroying democracy. You know, things that fascinate me.
Anyway, the Girls Frontline 2 beta is coming out in mid November and I do know one thing: if I get in, I WILL be gaming.
In fact GFL2 releasing in December might derail some of my plans, ha ha ha.
It's been a difficult few weeks with the move and being in uncomfortable living spaces while apartment hunting and such-- but I am lucky that things are moving forward and my wife and I have the resources to take care of things. Right now, while I would be happy to get back to writing, I would also like to enjoy life.