October 26th Katalepsis chapter will be delayed by one week!

Hello everyone! I’ll try to keep this short.

The upcoming Katalepsis chapter will be delayed by one week, both the patron and public chapter; there will be no Katalepsis chapter on the 26th of October. Katalepsis will resume as normal on the 2nd of November!

(I tried to write up a explanation below, but it turned out super long, because I'm anxious and being anxious makes me long-winded! Don't feel obligated to read it or anything, all you really need to know is that Katalepsis will be back as normal next week!)

First, my apologies. I really wanted to avoid this ever happening again, especially since I am now publishing on a 3-on-1-off schedule. However, I’ve been overwhelmed by events beyond my control.

Without getting into the grisly details, for the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with a medically related family emergency. I am completely fine, don’t worry about that; everyone else involved will also be fine, given time and rest.

This emergency has consumed a great deal of my time. I had hoped that the 3-on-1-off schedule and the buffer I had already built would act as a cushion, and at first it did! The schedule allowed me to push through this period almost without interruption. But then last week got even busier and the buffer was consumed.

I’m now staring down a very awkward situation. I actually have the next chapter 90% finished (when I would normally have it edited, finalised, and be onto the subsequent chapter by now) — but I am highly unlikely to be able to edit it properly this week, under good conditions, even if I sacrifice sleep. If this was happening at any other point in the story I would probably just accept whatever narrative or characterisation missteps I make.

But we’re in the final chapters of the final arc! This is … it! The story deserves better, Heather deserves better, and all of you — the readers, my patrons — deserve better than me fumbling the landing because I’m editing the chapter crouched over somebody else's laptop, in an unfamiliar room, on no sleep.

At first I considered powering through to post this next chapter anyway, then taking another week out in order to regain my narrative bearings. But I think that kind of stop-start publishing (and probably relying on filler) would be more frustrating for readers, not less. So, I’ve decided to simply extend the now-regular break week to into another. This will give me time to edit once (which I’m already going to do anyway!) then edit again once things are back to normal.

Katalepsis will resume on the 2nd of November. Hopefully we’ll be going all the way to the end of arc 24 without another break (unless we go to even more chapters, which we might!) I’ve updated the Table of Contents page to reflect this as well.

Necroepilogos will be published as normal; for psychological reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, I’ve been finding it much easier to write Necroepilogos under high stress, compared with Katalepsis. This is probably because Katalepsis is on the final few chapters, so everything has to be perfectly balanced, with nothing out of position, whereas Necroepilogos is right down in the thick of the middle, with more room for narrative manoeuvre.

Again, my apologies. This is the exact thing I really really wanted to avoid happening ever again, especially now that I’m already taking these regular breaks on the 3-on-1-off schedule in order to create a buffer! This means that patrons will only be getting 2 Katalepsis chapters in October, and that’s not acceptable, I know! Under any other conditions I would simply make the time, no matter what. But the sort of responsibility and disruption I’ve been dealing with, it’s not the kind of thing I can simply refuse in order to focus on my job (i.e. writing). It’s beyond my control, and people have been relying on me.

Next week, things will be completely back to normal. Again, I just want to reiterate that I am safe and well, and the other people involved will also be safe and well, it’s just been a very difficult few weeks of dealing with the fallout of some unfortunate and unavoidable events.

Thank you all for your understanding and patience; it is your generosity and patronage which makes any of this possible. I know I say this often, but it's true, even though I worry that repeating it is a bit much for everybody. It is your support which allowed me to switch to the 3-on-1-off schedule in the first place, and I cannot thank you enough for that; without that I probably would not have been able to push through this period at all, I would have had to go on a month-long hiatus or something, which is the absolute last thing I ever want to do. Writing is my life! And I am endlessly grateful for the flexibility and time which has allowed me to keep writing and publishing. I can’t thank you all enough.

Katalepsis will be back on the 2nd of November! Necroepilogos continues apace! I’ll keep doing my absolute best, thank you all!