Endings

Despite the name of the post, don’t panic. I’m not leaving or anything, if that was the concern. This is about an ending, though.

I’m still being unproductive about the Christmas Special and should have learned my lesson about trying to write short stories ages ago when I stopped doing them. I left it unfinished, took a break, and my interest shifted back to Spellblade, and it’s hard to build interest in it again. Especially as I’m neck-deep in a lot of very interesting and important stuff with Spellblade.

There’ll be a few topics here and some meandering commentary, so to get things out of the way for those uninterested and hopefully minimize people completely misinterpreting things, let’s have some bullet points:

· Spellblade 7 will be delayed for a while. Likely March, maybe even May as I’m away all of April

· It’s delayed because I am going to end Spellblade on a 2-parter that I won’t start releasing until it’s done, in order to prevent the second half from being delayed as has happened previously

· This means other books will get delayed until Spellblade is finished

· There’s a new Patreon tier if you’re interested in supporting me more for any reason

· Join the Discord by integrating your Patreon with it or using the invite code: https://discord.gg/s8JwgUwykm

· Mob Sorcery 1 audio is out on the 30th. Get hype etc

In terms of Patreon updates, I still want to finish the Christmas Special, but Spellblade 7 chapters will likely take a bit because I’m trying to get it right. I’m bothered by Spellblade constantly needing rewrites and reworking, and it’s a factor of the sheer complexity and size of the series, which can be difficult to match with the desire for frequent and consistent Patreon updates. I saw the strongest growth on Patreon late last year when I was consistently posting Mob and Spellblade chapters, and naturally people also leave when I stop, but if I respond to that pressure by pushing out chapters then I personally think they’ll be hot garbage.

Anyway, let’s talk about ending Heretic Spellblade.

But first, I think I need to talk about something else.

Divided Attentions

When I took a break at the start of the year, I picked up an epic fantasy game that I last played in 2021. It has a huge, sprawling story and I respected its scope and the ambitions of the author. It was also unfinished, but was approaching its end. I figured by now it was would either be done or damn close.

Well, it’s not. In fact, very little has been done in the 2-3 years since I played it. But we’ll get to that.

When I replayed the game, it initially helped a lot with refocusing on Spellblade. Reading epic fantasy helps with writing epic fantasy, and it invigorated me with a bunch of cool ideas and pushed me to rethink some of the plans I had for Book 7. All was well.

Until I got to the new content. It was long and complicated, sure, and many aspects had lots of effort put into them, but it also felt rushed in a way that was very obvious after binging the rest of the story. Huge worldbuilding mistakes were made, battles weren’t really happening for character-driven reasons but because the plot needed them to (and were driven by a personified diabolus ex machina), continuity errors were made, major plot revelations were just not reacted to etc.

Honestly, I had a very Game of Thrones Seasons 7/8 reaction to this section of the game. Hell, it even had the same issue where the writer just flat out forgets that distances are an important thing. Imagine a book where an aerial battle takes place over California’s coast and it’s an important plot point that fighters are crashlanding in Florida.

I’m not ranting here because I want you to hate some unnamed and unfinished story. Rather, it’s why I think it dropped in quality that bothers me, and threw me off.

The game’s updates slowed down several years ago. Actually before I last played it. They moved onto greener pastures and almost certainly make several times more from their new venture, but still want to finish the game. The Patreon money they pull in is decent, but I’m pretty sure if they pulled the plug tomorrow they’d still make more than enough that it wouldn’t matter. I also believe the author when they say they’re trying to finish the game properly. That’s likely why it is taking so long.

Instead, to me, the issue is that they simply can’t do everything at once. They’ve divided their attention too much to finish off the story they started, and it likely takes too much time and effort to jump back in and get up to speed on the game’s expansive story and characters every time they need to do a major update.

This is a problem that I find relatable, because I’ve actively tried to avoid it. Whenever a series gets really long or big, they tend to find ways to avoid the problem of mounting complexity. A few authors are simply really good at balancing extremely long and complicated arcs without tripping over themselves. Many just don’t care and retcon the shit out of stuff, knowing that their fans will just make shit up to defend them. Smarter authors find ways to effectively invalidate or ignore past stuff, although the methods might not be smart and are controversial (e.g. girl-a-book harem authors; or simply writing out a lot of the cast; or ascending to higher planes of existence; going to a new realm/world etc).

I’ve tried to keep the spirit of actual epic fantasy, which eschews most of those tricks and just eats the complexity head-on. I do use at least one trick and split up the harem, even if some people endlessly flip their shit about the idea.

But it means every time I return to the series, it’s vastly more complex than anything else I’m writing. I worry that if I don’t find a good way to end the series on my own terms and at a good point, I will return to it in 12-18 months and it will be just like the game author. There’ll be a noticeable drop in quality, because I simply don’t “get” the series anymore and I don’t have the time to dedicate to it when I have a bunch of other series to also write.

A final aspect is just that I want a finished series, and for it to be finished while I’m feeling positively about the series. Spellblade is too big and important for me to not finish it, and it would be the worst to end it out of obligation. Especially if I was returning to it after a long gap, knowing that it might perform poorly for that reason and that people will be unhappy because it will feel worse than an ending written now.

To be clear, I’m not rushing an ending. I still plan on including all the plot elements I originally intended. The only thing I’m going to be cutting is the timeskip I planned between Books 7 and 8, and that’s potentially for the better as it would have included a ton of extra stuff that I may not have had time to do justice. I originally worried a lot about how Book 7 would end, and I feel the changes I’m making will improve the overall story. I just want to get it all done now, even if it takes a while.

There’ll also be the question of covers. I am commissioning one final cover of Tarako, which leaves me a “spare cover.” I have Fyre, Artemis, and now Tarako.

Except it’s not really spare, as I needed a final cover for the second omnibus. I don’t plan to release that for a while after Book 8, and I’ll need to talk to Podium about the possibility of whether they’d actually do an audiobook omnibus and potentially record a couple of the Spellblade short stories (which might incentivize me to actually finish Kadria’s backstory). But I might shuffle the covers around. The Artemis cover is almost certainly the Book 8 cover, as I think it’s just too damn good to not end the series on. But while the Fyre cover is hot AF, I’ll need to see the Tarako cover once it’s done to determine which gets Book 7 and which becomes the omnibus.

New Patreon Tier and Discord

As briefly mentioned, there’s a new Patreon tier. I thought of doing some ramblings about this, but I’ll try to keep it short.

I’ve had a number of people ask if I’d add a higher tier so they could support me more. I’ve been wary, as I knew I’d feel pressured to restrict content to the tier. But I’ve gotten more used to having Patreon income rolling in and ignoring the ebbs and flows of people subbing and cancelling for all sorts of reasons.

In short, there’s a new highest tier ($25) and I expect it to remain the highest. It adds no new benefits, except a fancy color on Discord. You’ll have my gratitude and thanks if you choose to support me with it, but it’s entirely because you choose to and can afford to. I don’t think there’s anything I can offer that’s worth $25 a month, so I’m not going to try.

The other part of the reason I’m more comfortable adding this tier and also not doing free months anymore is that I’m less concerned about “freeloading.” When I started, I worried that having consistent income from Patreon might make me lazier, as it certainly does with some creators. There certainly are some very perverse incentives from Patreon, after all, and many stories of grifters.

After being on here for 2.5 years, I’m less concerned about that. If I decided to leave harem, I know that I’d shut down the Patreon rather than leave it running for ages, milking people, for instance. I came very close to removing annual memberships last year for that reason. I have a better measure of how I react, so I’m more comfortable expanding Patreon a little.

As a sidenote, adding new tiers to Patreon is the definition of pain. I had to manually go through every post I’ve made and add permission for the new tier to view it. Holy shit, how is this platform like a decade old but lacking a bulk post edit feature? What are the software engineers paid to do all day?

Oh, and the Discord is going well. I really should have started it ages ago.

Schedule Schmedule

Yeah, the schedule is fucked. I am not a man made for sticking to a plan.

I’m going to try to get Spellblade 7 and 8 done by the end of March, but if they’re not done, then there will be a lull in releases. Honestly, getting them done by March would definitely be best, as I could then take April off as a refresh period. It’s just a lot to do in 2 months or so.

Anyway, that's the update. Writing is slow going otherwise.