Chapter Update

Quick update, mostly focused on Spellblade 7.

First, Mob Sorcery's audio is now up on Audible for pre-order. It's releasing on Jan 30th. I've listened to a fair bit of it and it's good. Nice range of accents, as you'd expect if you've read it. Nina's amazing, as always, and super emotive. Fia sounds right out of the Sopranos.

Also, Spellblade 6 audio comes out on Boxing Day.

I've gone over the feedback from the recent post about the early chapters. A lot of people are satisfied, but there's a groundswell of folks who are unhappy for various reasons. While there's one common thread I can find, some of it is stuff that leaves me uncertain of how to react.

The big issue appears to be pacing. Spellblade is always fast-paced and dense, as there's a lot to get through and even the slower moments have a lot of character content, without much slice of life stuff to space things out. It's written like a normal fantasy novel where things are always happening, instead of lots of meandering. This means if you miss something or you've forgotten elements of the plot or characters, you'll be blindsided.

I try to include reminders about stuff, but this is both becoming harder over time, due to the sheer amount of stuff that's happened. It's simply impossible to include a plot recap every time a character shows up or an important event takes place. Especially as some people are going to be entirely aware of why events are occurring and be annoyed at the paragraphs of explanations, while any hamfisted reminder won't actually help the readers who have forgotten as they'll likely feel it should have been done organically.

On top of this is the general subject of pacing out events. If Spellblade has lots of low periods after any major action, it won't get anywhere. We're already at a point where I know a lot of people are going to complain when the series doesn't at Book 7, and to be honest, the difficulties getting this book off the ground and the reasons for it have made me reconsider extending the series.

The choice feels like one between ditching a lot of content and spacing stuff out. It's not a "why not both" option, because I just don't have the time to write huge monolithic books that include literally everything. Some of this is also exacerbate by the fact some people just don't like some characters and content in the books, which leads to a certain level of fatigue.

Because I want to get Spellblade 7 done and this frustration has me strongly considering ditching it and writing another book entirely, I'm going to try to make some changes and push on. They are:

• Chapters 1 and 2 remain largely the same. I'll try to explain Artemis's stealth ability better, but I think this has been completely misconstrued.
• There'll be some time set aside to react to Otto and Artemis in Chapters 1 and 2, so that people can understand where the books are going. I may cut the dream stuff about the multiverse at the start of Chapter 3, because I'm worried people will misconstrue it as Nathan jumping worlds (and I know some people hate that idea).
• I'm still uncertain how to handle the Astra stuff, given how many people just missed any problems with her in Book 6 and have completely forgotten about her backstory in Book 3. This feels like a divide between people who reread the series and those who don't. Astra has some major involvement in this book, particularly around the middle.

I don't know if there'll be any chapters until after Christmas given this mess.