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Katalepsis post Book One Q&A (Patreon)

Published:
2025-01-25 01:33:55
Imported:
2026-11
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Content

Hello there! This is the Katalepsis Book One Q&A post!

What does that actually mean? Good question!

As the conclusion of Katalepsis Book One approached, several readers and patrons suggested that I should make a publicly accessible post for readers to ask questions. So, that’s what this is!

I’m not sure if this post will be of much interest to that many readers; over on the discord I already answer random questions all the time, but I do figure it’s nice to have something like this out in the open, especially for readers who might prefer not to visit the discord, or to get me ‘on the record’ about any aspects of the story you’re curious about. I've set this post up so that everybody can comment, not just paid patrons; I've got the default patreon 'comment filtering' setting on, so if you're a public reader and your comment gets accidentally filtered, send me a DM or otherwise let me know and I'll try to wrangle that into better shape behind the scenes.

Once Katalepsis Book Two starts, I might compile all the questions and answers here and archive them on the wordpress site, for posterity’s sake. If you’re not comfortable with that aspect of this, please do let me know along with your question, and I will omit whatever you like, either your screen name or your whole question, if you prefer. But I’ll still answer it here!

So! Feel free to ask away — about Katalepsis, about my writing process, or anything else you like! This is what we used to call an ‘AMA’, back in the day, I guess? I won’t answer questions about upcoming plans for Katalepsis Book Two, other than in in the most general terms; I don’t want to give anything away before it starts, of course.

I’ll do my best to reply to any questions, though it might take me a day or two to get around to them, depending on when you post them.

Well, there you go. Have at it!

Comments

Ani-mam

Are there any character or plot beats you had to drop because you couldn't make them work the way you wanted to? If so, are there any you regret?

Holly

How likely would a print-on-demand physical release of Kata be?

Giles

What changed plot or character arc wise in the course of writing book 1?

Kennyevilmonkey

Can we expect a beach episode in book 2? If your story ever gets a tv adaptation or anime, you need a beach episode. Just how it works I'm afraid, I don't write the rules. Also, mostly, I just want to see Heather being a silly squid girl with her friends 🧡

Ollieols

I have a couple if thats ok! 1. Which arc was your favourite to write, either because you felt it flow well, you were excited to write it, or any reason really? 2. You have probably answered this before, but is there a reason Lozzies poncho went from nonbinary colours to trans colours? 3. This may be a little spoiler for book 2 so you may not be able to answer this but will there be more cults discovered in Sharrowford or will it be broader in scope, exploring other parts of England/the world?

none placeholder

First I'd like to thank you for all the work you have done. So far I view Katalepsys as my favourite work of fiction and I'm endlessly thrilled to see more of its world and characters. Now, given that my main question about physical release has already been asked I have to fall back on my second most pressing question which is : How many people can you share this story with ? This is a personnal question with quite an obvious answer, obviously all of us readers are people you share this story with, but that's not my meaning. My own experience reading Katalepsys has been very intimate. And while I have promoted your work to like-minded people on the internet, my reaction to real life persons asking me what I'm reading has often been "You don't want to know." And that is a lie. The reality is that I do not want them to know. So here is the real meaning of my question : Is this a story that you are proud of enough, to advertise it to people who know you and matter to you in your personnal life ? Persons who might not share our collective interests and inclinations ?

skaianDestiny

Who was the character (or characters) that surprised you the most when you put them to page and let them find their own voice? Related, who had the most surprising audience reaction to you? Thank you so much for Katalepsis Hungry, and eager to see what the future brings!

DEMON GRRL

Is there ever going to be a physical release of Katalepsis?

HappyNoms

Is there a specific writing technique you use to figure out how to have 6+ characters in a scene effectively? (Does that just happen organically in a mysterious way from having the characters in mind 24/7/365, or is it a technique?) Reading Katalepsis 1 I've been struck multiple times when either many characters or literally the entire ensemble cast was in a scene, and somehow everybody gets good screen time and dialogue interactions and presence. It's quietly, imho, one of the subtler strengths of the writing quality. (It's always fascinating to read small insights about how Vonnegut would iterate line edits, or how Stephen King takes notes of real life people talking to recreate the realistic everyday speech styles in his books, or how Kim Harrison sometimes writes purely conversation and then backfills the scene actions/descriptions. )

skye lime

not sure if this breaks the no-book-2-plans rule but: you have confirmed a number of arcs/plotlines for book 2 in the discord, but mostly one at a time as they come up in conversation; could we get a list of confirmed arcs in one place?

HappyNoms

Not sure if it's legit to ask a second question, but curious how you came to love cosmic horror as a genre? I usually find in chats with literary friends, when they particularly love...noir mystery above all else, or history as the most profoundly satisfying genre, or so forth, that there is usually a fascinating psychological reason or insight in the backstory of how the genre love affair came to be.

Spectra

how much of the story did you have planned out when you started writing it?

Bibliofiend

Question time! Questions for Hangry Katalepsis! (Also posted on the discord, go join if you haven't!) 1. Will you ever do a live readthrough similar to how readers do in the discord, except from an authors perspective? "Oh, I really liked writing this part, I remember how blah blah character plot blah blah big women blah blah squid" type thing? :3c 2. What are some of your favorite lines you've written / quotes spoken by characters? 3. What chapters do you think are vital to go back to, for an abridged reread? Important chapters with with hidden meaning, foreshadowing that will hit harder now that book 1 is finished, parts with important worldbuilding that often get overlooked by fast readers but are vital to understanding the setting, stuff like that? 4. What was your favorite bit of foreshadowing that was or wasn't caught by fans? 5. Did you ever change anything retroactively, or alter your planning, due to jokes / comments made by readers, or other such things? 6. What are some of your favorite predictions that either ended up coming true, or were so wild and outlandishly hilarious that they stuck in your memory? 7. What hidden things were seeded throughout the book? I know there were some Lovecraft references, Spongebob showed up, and characters from Necroepilogos (go read it if you haven't!) made it into arc 24, but what else? 8. What do you think are the funniest versions of "xyz character is aware they are in a book"? 9. What happened to Lozzie's bunny ears? Did she give them away as a parting gift to an Outsider paramour? Were they stolen from her, and is book 2 going to be about going on an adventure through Outside and getting them back? 10. What do you think your biggest mistakes were, writing Katalepsis? What do you think your biggest triumphs? How has your writing/planning style changed over the course of the book? 11. What were Katalepsis's biggest literary inspirations? (Or non literary!) 12. Of all the character(s), who would you most want to have a conversation with irl? How do you think / wish these conversations would go?

Ophelia Magos

What's your process for editing the story? Do you utilize a full editor, do it all yourself, have betas? How do you keep such a large story organized while actively working on it for as long as you do?

emmavoid

What's your favorite dessert? and your favorite desert, if you have one :p

Klakkers

1: How long will Sarika keep being a tsundere with Badger? 2: Can you tell us more about the magical war Jan and a couple other side characters fought in? 3: How did the defeat for Edward Lilburn come about? Was it always the plan to have Badger Bamboozle him to "death", or where there other plans? 4: Has Tenny gone on many play dates with the girl they saved from the shamble swamp (can't think of her name right now)? 5: Would you consider Lozzie committing tax evasion with her Lawyer, Yuleson?

Gothic Catalyst

Thank you for Book 1! Just wanted to post on here! If I had to ask a question (you don't have to answer if it is to personal) how old are you? Ballpark works as well, just been curious, as you imply you have been at this a while. Oh, yeah can we get an actual layout of the Poly? Who is dating who and what kind of relationship they have with one another? (I'm sure some of them have sexual relationships while it is implied that others are just emotional. Like Heather x Sevens.

Gothic Catalyst

Someone on here mentioned that characters from Necroepilogos appeared, I must of missed it, who was it?

Foxing around.

Have you ever played Signalis? Also apart from Heather, who's your favourite character to write?

Kennyevilmonkey

The alien twins in the dream took on the appearance of Epilda, though it wasn't stated outright, and more just implied by the description of their appearance. Also, I'm the one who originally mentioned it...

Eugene Kozlov

Why did you avoid writing Heather-Maisie interactions in the epilogue? Were you afraid to mess it up, did you plan to explore it in Book Two, was it just artistic intent without any other reasoning?

J. Gobking Sparkle-Hearts

Personally I feel like I tell someone about Katalepsis at least once a month and I am... not "annoyed", shall we say, but disheartened by how many people simply don't read for pleasure anymore and the closest they'll get is listening to an audiobook or podcast.

HY

There's a few, but not that many, actually. Rather than fully dropping sub-plots or pieces of character arc, my style of plotting and structuring tends to sort of fold them back into the story when they eventually become relevant, or rework them as they unfold. I always hold onto anything that I cut, in case it might be useful later, and often it turns out those beats end up re-entering the story at a later point, transformed or changed into something that works. That said, there's two sub-plots which I did have to drop, and I regret both of them. The first was an expanded role for Lozzie earlier in the story. In my initial outlines there was a whole section of narrative where Heather got kidnapped and held prisoner by Alexander, and spent a bunch of time confined together with Lozzie, during which Heather and Lozzie would get to know each other. The way the narrative actually shook out meant that section just didn't have a place, so it's ended up on the cutting room floor, and never returned. The second is Zheng. I had big plans for Zheng's role in the story, but her nature as a character and the flow of Heather's narrative really ended up constraining her and what she could do on screen, and she became less relevant to the plot later on. I'm hoping to correct this in Book Two, by giving Zheng a true narrative arc of her own, either from her POV, or from somebody close to her.

HY

I'm not sure yet! I'm going to look into this over the next couple of months and see what my options are. Turning the first ebook into a print-on-demand physical release is probably easy enough, and once I get other ebooks out, I expect I might be able to do the same with those.

HY

Oooh, gosh. That's a huge question, and actually quite difficult to answer. The short answer would be: 'everything and nothing' - but that's kind of a cop-out on my part. The longer answer requires a little explanation of how I plan and outline narrative. I tend to think of stories in the planning stage as a series of landmark scenes - narrative beats that I absolutely know will happen - surrounded by a vast uncharted territory of narrative between each landmark. So I know I want to write scenes A, B, and C, but I have no idea how to get between them. I leave that up to the characters. And in leaving that up to the characters, perhaps things are totally different when I get to scene B; perhaps things are configured differently to how I thought they would be. Scene B still happens, but it happens in a different way, with different consequences than I thought it would. That's just an example, but I hope it makes sense. In the case of Katalepsis, there are almost no landmark scenes which I didn't include, but I gave the characters total freedom to determine how they got there and what happened once they were there. So, in a way, everything changed beyond my plans at every step of the narrative. The only big major structural changes I ended up making were: 1 - Jan had a much expanded role compared to what I planned (she was really supposed to be a Book Two character), and I did not expect her to get together with Lozzie. And 2 - Zheng had a reduced role compared to what I had planned.

HY

Yes! Absolutely! I once promised there would be a Katalepsis beach episode, and I have not forgotten that pledge. The beach might be Outside, but it's absolutely going to happen, 100%. Heather does need to go for a nice swim with all her tentacles, after all!

HY

Of course that's okay! Ask as many as you like! 1. Arc 14, hands down, no contest. When Heather went to Carcosa, alone, without her support network, it pushed her in ways I had not been able to achieve prior. Writing about the King's palace, the King himself, and Heather's confrontation with him, it opened up what the story (and I!) was capable of doing. The almost magical realist tone in some places, the expansion of cosmic horror potential, the theatrical nature of the King, all of it was just an absolute delight, gave me room to explore things in ways I had not before, and was also just a lot of fun. And getting to finally resolve Heather's lingering guilt over Alexander was deeply cathartic for me, too. 2. Lozzie's poncho was not originally intended as nonbinary colours, that was actually a hoodie she was wearing, I just thought that colour scheme looked cool! I am however absolutely delighted that people saw it that way, and perhaps I'll bring it back in the future. There was no special meaning to changing the colours. When Lozzie returned from Outside with her trans flag poncho, this was my (admittedly rather tentative) way of introducing that concept into the narrative, which I believe I should have been a lot more clear about at the time. 3. Ooooh, um. Good question! I can't answer in detail, but I will confirm that my current plans include some narrative in Sharrowford, but also some narrative in other places as well! We'll be doing both, I hope.

Ollieols

Thankyou for the response! Im super excited for the next part.

HY

Thank you so much! That's an incredible compliment, and very kind of you to say, I really appreciate it. You are very welcome, and I will keep doing my absolute best for you and all the other readers. To answer you question - yes! I have shared this story with, for example, members of my extended family who do not read this kind of fiction and do not understand what I am doing with it. When people ask me what I do, I tell them I write fiction. I am incredibly proud of what Katalepsis has become, and if somebody else doesn't like it, then that's up to them; their dislike doesn't diminish my happiness or pride in what I do here, and the enjoyment of all the readers. I understand what you mean, though! Sharing this kind of thing can make one feel oddly vulnerable, and it still does with me, even though I've been doing for a long time.

HY

I know what you mean! I can't imagine not reading for pleasure, personally. And thank you, for recommending the story to so many other people, that is very kind of you.

HY

You're so very welcome! Thank you, for being here, for enjoying the story, for all your support! And I'm very excited for the future too! I have so many plans. As for your questions, the first one is quite difficult to answer. Heather herself, I think? More than anybody else, she has been a constant source of surprises for me. But that's a bit of a cop-out, since she's the protagonist and solitary POV. A more serious answer would probably be Eileen. I had no idea if Eileen would actually function until she hit the page for real in arc 24. I wasn't sure if I could make her work. I didn't know if she would just fall flat, or fail to get across the sort of 'eldritch mind transition' thing I was going for. But the moment she started doing stuff on the page, I was just blown away. I truly did not expect the part in the archives to work as well as it did, or for her to write her own chapter in her own voice - I had it planned, of course, but I didn't think it would happen like that! She surprised me as much as she surprised Heather, in the end. And the second question, the most surprising audience reaction? Jan! No contest. Jan was meant to have a very minor role in Book One; she was meant to turn up briefly in order to make Maisie's body, but otherwise lurk on the fringes of the cast, then have a much expanded role in Book Two. But the audience just loved her, beyond my wildest expectations, so she ended up turning up quite a bit more than I had planned.

HY

Maybe! I'm going to look into the possibility of print-on-demand stuff for some of the ebooks, but I'm not yet sure how feasible that is. I hope so, though!

HY

Good question! And ... no? There's no specific technique I use in order to manage those kinds of scenes, at least not that I'm aware of. When there's a lot of characters in one scene, I tend to do a lot of mental 'blocking', like in a film - I'm constantly keeping in mind where all the characters are, physically, in relation to each other, as well as what they're thinking, what their motivations are, and how they're feeling; sometimes I have this up in a series of notes to one side, while I'm writing. The first draft of this process is often a terrible mess. Sometimes one or more characters won't actually do anything or say anything, because in drafting I was focused too much on others. When that happens I take a step back and ask myself why that particular character wasn't doing much - was it because I, the writer, forgot them, or was it because they actually don't want to do anything here, or because they want to do something else? When editing I then go back in and add that character; but - and this is the really important part - I make sure that these new contributions actually change the other things that were already happening in the scene. One line of added dialogue can adjust everything after it! And thank you for complimenting this. I always put so much effort into the prose and flow and dialogue, so it's very nice to see that readers enjoy it so much!

HY

I'm actually a bit reluctant to metatextually 'confirm' any arcs for Book Two. Whenever I've mentioned them in the discord it's always been with the intention of expressing my desire to include them in Book Two; however, I'm keenly aware that my various plans may not survive contact with the page. I don't want to confirm a series of arcs only to leave readers disappointed if one or more of them ends up not working out. The closest I'm willing to come to this is Heather's short little list near the end of the epilogue, where she briefly touches on characters who we might follow in the future.

HY

Ask as many questions as you like! It's fine! I first encountered cosmic horror by accident, by way of Warhammer 40k, which I was into as a young teenager. One day on the internet I came across an article about the influences which had gone into the creation of Warhammer as a setting, and there was one line about the 'Cthulhu Mythos', which I'd never heard of before. This was long before the modern explosion of interest in Lovecraftian fiction and cosmic horror. Lovecraft's stories themselves were only available in these really trashy trade paperback editions with ridiculous cover art. Other cosmic horror stories were either pretty rare, or only published by small presses (mostly Chaosium, a publisher which did a lot to keep the genre on life support for decades). I fell in love with this stuff instantly, despite the many (many!) issues and flaws with Lovecraft's stories. The suggestion of vast cosmic unknowns, the sheer scope which seemed to lie behind so much of this fiction, and how different it was to a lot of the science fiction I was also reading at the time. The difficulty of obtaining other cosmic horror fiction by other authors also lent the whole thing an air of strange mystery, suggesting to my young mind a whole cosmos of this stuff just beyond my sight, glimpsed partially through every short story collection I could get my hands on. I got very into the philosophy which went along with this stuff, I spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of it all, and I started to notice the influence of cosmic horror in other areas of culture that I hadn't before. When I was a teenager, I even tried my hand at some very basic short stories, but they were never any good. When the modern boom of interest in cosmic horror happened, I was incredibly happy. It was like this thing from my own past had finally been recognised more widely.

HY

The short answer? All of it, and yet none of it! The longer answer requires a bit more explanation about how I plan stories; I've basically answered this question below already, but I'll expand on it here in more detail. I treat narrative outlines and plans as a series of landmarks; for example I might have scenes/events A, B, and C, all of which I know will happen in the story. But between those landmarks is a vast territory which I cannot map before I actually get down there. So let's say I write scene A and it goes pretty much how I expect, but then I have to rely on the characters themselves to get the narrative to scene B. By the time they reach scene B, perhaps they're in a totally different state to the one I expected; perhaps they react to the events of scene B in a way I didn't plan for. Maybe a big conflict is solved easily, or maybe what was supposed to be a minor point becomes a gigantic issue. This then influences small changes to scene C; perhaps that scene is now very different, perhaps it happens later, or sooner, or has totally different consequences to what I expected. I had the whole story planned out before I started writing Katalepsis, as a series of landmarks, general plans for each character's development, and so on. But I had zero way to know what would happen when the characters got down there and actually started doing stuff. Every event forced me to re-plan and re-outline what came next. I guess I see plans and outlines like a very rough map. Once you get down there in the actual landscape, you can't rely on the map anymore, you have to work with what's in front of you.

HY

So many question! Wheeee! Okay, let's see ... 1. Oooooh! I've never considered doing that before! I would love to do that, actually, it would be a bit like a commentary track on a movie or something. I don't know if I would have time, certainly not soon, but maybe in the future. 2. I know this is a bit of a cop-out, but I can't even begin to answer this question! There's just too many, there's so many lines in this which I love, so many little snippets of language which I enjoyed or was really happy with. If I tried to answer this fully, it would take a week. If I had to pick just one? Probably Praem's line from chapter 5.4: “Do stars have names, before humans give them such?” This was one of my early attempts to encapsulate Praem's blossoming sense of self, and I still remember it often. 3. Oh my gosh, haha, um! I think this might be an impossible question to answer. The way I handle foreshadowing and thematic building is so very gradual and widely dispersed, it's difficult for me to pinpoint those moments. I think if I had to name one part, just the first arc itself; there's a lot of thematic foreshadowing crammed into the first arc which did not come to fruition until the very end of the story. 4. Too many to name! But my absolute favourite? The few readers who predicted that Heather's tentacles would eventually be revealed to function in the same way as real life cephalopod neural tissue, as an expression of inner plural selves. 5. Nope! Well ... nothing serious? I have very strong opinions about not trying to 'hoodwink' readers by changing actual narrative plans or plot structures in response to comments/reactions/etc. I think there's been a trend of that kind of thing in television and movie writing for about a decade now, and it's deeply unhealthy and not conducive to good storytelling. Even when readers didn't like something, or reacted to it badly, I never veered off the main structural plans for the story. That saaaaaid ... I did work in a few reader favourite jokes. Nothing more than a little touch here and there. If a certain line or joke got really responses, I tended to iterate on it a touch more, later on. I never changed characters based on this, just added little touches when they went down well. The only thing I really changed based on reader responses was Lozzie; I've mentioned this elsewhere, but early on in the story I was clueless, I thought readers would pick up on Lozzie being trans. I thought the literal flag poncho would get comments! But it didn't! So I committed to actually making this textual, impossible to miss, and then featured in dialogue itself. This was really the only big change I ever made based on reader reactions, and it wasn't a change to underlying truths, just a more overt presentation of what was already there. 6. Oooh, good question. My favourite prediction which did not end up coming true was about Raine; a lot of readers questioned Raine's 'normality' over and over again, always expecting Raine to have some dark secret, that she was either a construct made by Evelyn, or a zombie made by Evelyn, or supernatural in some other manner. But nope! She's just a human being! 7. Uhhhh. I'm not sure I can answer this off the top of my head! I haven't actually kept a detailed list of references anywhere. The big ones are Lovecraft, cosmic horror fiction in general, but especially the fiction of Ramsey Campbell (Sharrowford was heavily based on Campbell's Brichester, and OJ is heavily inspired by one of his creations). The initial trek through Carcosa makes reference to Roadside Picnic. There's literary references from Heather. Uh ... more than I can remember! I'm sorry I can't answer this more cleanly, but I genuinely have not kept proper track. 8. You mean in Katalepsis? Probably Praem. Sevens and the King seem more likely to actually address the audience, but they're still bound by their limits. Praem is a maid, and maids have no limits. She knows she's in a story. 9. Hahaha! Oh dear, um. I just kind of stopped describing them much! They're still on her poncho's hood. Perhaps they will appear again in Book Two! 10. Oooh, hard question. My biggest mistake was probably simply having too many characters; if I was writing this all over again I would try to focus things a bit more in Book One, reducing the roles of some characters and shunting their full narratives over to Book Two. My biggest triumph is the realisation that the characters need to have control of the story at all times. I didn't fully understand this when I started the story; I'd just come off writing the same novel over and over, trying to make it work, and I just couldn't make it fit. With Katalepsis I gave control over to Heather and those around her, and it just ... works! I am a conduit for these characters. Riding that wave is the best technique I have ever discovered. I think my prose style has gotten more confident over the course of the book. I've learned when to go all-out, and when to pull back. I think, anyway! 11. Lovecraft, Campbell. Gormenghast. Caitlín R Kiernan. Touhou (Katalepsis actually started as Touhou fanfiction, believe it or not). Bloodborne. And uh, a lot of slice of life anime??? Kind of? I've often joked that the true Katalepsis experience is playing Bloodborne on one screen while watching slice of life anime on another. 12. Evelyn. I'm not sure if it would go well! But I would love to just sit down with her and see what she thinks of me, as her ... creator? I guess???

HY

It's all just me! I don't have an editor or beta readers; I've never had the funds to afford the former, and the latter would have to be a fan, and I don't like the idea of exploiting fan labor, even by accident. I consider self-editing to be one of the most important skills I've ever learned as a writer; learning to cast a critical eye over one's own prose is the most difficult and most important leap I've ever made. I reread two books every year - Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (by Renni Browne and Dave King), and Writing Tools (by Roy Peter Clark), just to keep me sharp. My process is pretty simple! Drafting a Katalepsis chapter takes about 2 workdays. I go as fast as I can, without concern for quality; as I do, I keep a set of notes - things which need to be edited, changed, emphasized, added, adjusted, etc. I don't do these things on the fly, while drafting, I save them up for later. Then I do an editing pass. This is where I believe the real work of writing takes place, because the result of the editing pass is often totally different to the draft. I take all the notes I made during the draft, and then go line by line, fixing the chapter, making changes, and trying to get some kind of finished shape. Then I do a proofreading pass. Some might call this another edit. I get the whole chapter, with nothing more to add or take away, and I read it out loud, from start to finish, in one go, often while standing up. I do the voices, I speak as Heather, and so on. I make dozens or hundreds of tiny adjustments to wording as I go. Sometimes I do a second proofreading pass as well, if I wasn't happy with the first! As for keeping the story organised, I use a program called Scrivener for writing and organising all my notes. And I keep a lot of notes!

HY

This specific kind of homemade chocolate cake - sponge halves, lot of whipped cream in the middle, and about half an inch of solid chocolate frosting on top. Favourite desert? The McMurdo Dry Valleys! Antarctica is amazing.

HY

1. None can truly tell, least of all me. She's probably not quite so tsundere when they're in private. 2. Not until Book Two! I'm sure we'll find out more then. 3. Badger's plan was always in the outlines, yes. I didn't know how exactly it would go until all the pieces actually came together. Edward was always going to end up dragged off by OJ, but the specifics may have been different if Badger had failed part of his plan. 4. Not yet! Her name is Natalie, and I'm sure we'll see her again in Book Two as well. 5. Probably! She doesn't have any income, just her inheritance from Edward, but that is quite a lot, and she might need to hide some of it from the mundane authorities.

HY

You're so very welcome! I'm delighted you enjoyed it! Haha, indeed, I don't want to give my exact age. I will say that I'm old enough to remember not having the internet at home, but young enough that I grew up with it. As for a layout of the polycule, sure! I'll try to draw up an official diagram or something and put it on the site, that sounds like a bit of fun.

HY

I see this was already answered! And yes, it's Elpida, but only in like, fictional form. Oddly enough this ends up implying that Necroepilogos exists in Katalepsis as a story. Hm!

HY

I have played Signalis! I absolutely loved it, and wrote a short essay about it. I consider it to be a triumph of the survival horror genre in a way I didn't think was even possible anymore. My favourite character to write, other than Heather? Evelyn. Evee is in many ways the secondary protagonist of Katalepsis, just as important. And her dialogue is always really crunchy, I love writing it. Or ... hmm. Maybe Praem? Praem surprises me all the time. She's so comforting. I guess it's between Evee and Praem, sure.

HY

I'm planning to explore Maisie properly in Book Two. I didn't want to tack her on to the end of Book One, as a sort of afterthought of Heather's narrative. I felt like that wouldn't do justice to her as a person. She deserves her own narrative space.

HY

You're very welcome! I'm really excited for it too!

A Sentient Mongoose

Who are you voting for in the sexiest monster tournament?

HY

Vampires! I know, I know, vampires are so 'standard'. But I can't resist. My vampire obsession is no secret.

Eva Grimm

Ah, it's awesome that you read your chapters aloud to proofread! It seems to me that I always find the most mistakes that way, so it's refreshing to hear that someone I respect so much as an author does the same thing.

HY

It's an absolutely invaluable technique! I can't recommend it enough, indeed. It's also led to me reading most other fiction out loud (even if just under my breath), because it really transforms the experience, especially when a story has a distinctive voice. Also, that's very kind of you to say, thank you!

Foxing around.

Ohh. Where could one read that essay if you published it?

Mihira

One thing that jumps out to me on a re-read is the evolution of Lozzie. I'm not sure how exactly to describe it, but a reductive version is that she becomes much more goofy in later arcs. We get a relatively small amount of time with her before her rescue and jaunt outside, but in what we do see she seems more normal, more likely to have a recognizable human conversation about stuff. Later, even after the hands problem gets resolved, she's by no means a joke character or anything but she's relatively prone to comedic antics, or just expressing herself in ways that others can't make sense of. I'm curious if that's an intentional evolution? Is it just that we're seeing her relax and be herself more? Or did spending so much time Outside before coming back change her, or perhaps being trapped Inside afterwards for so long did? I'm curious!

Mihira

Ah, Patreon and me accidentally posting a big reply before it's done, a far too common experience... I had a second curiosity about Lozzie. It always catches me by surprise that her gender is respected by the antagonists, maybe not Alexander but especially Edward just _feels_ like he'd be the kind of guy who rejects that. He makes a few digs near his death that seemed aimed in that direction, but there's no attempts to deadname or misgender before that point. Maybe that's because he's trying to present himself as the reasonable, flexible negotiator and he knows that's a bad look? The fact that Lauren is her legal name stirs my curiosity too. I'm not sure there's a question here exactly, but I'm very curious about Lozzie's early life, and about her parents and what happened to them.

HY

No worries about the double reply! It happens to me as well. Patreon can be a very fiddly sometimes, it's not the best setup. So, questions about Lozzie! First off, Lozzie does change a lot over the course of the story, you're absolutely correct about that; when we see her early on in the story she's deeply traumatised and also being held prisoner, confined by Alexander, totally focused on trying to get out and escape. As she is freed and then manages to settle into a new life, we see her relaxing and being herself more than before. Lozzie acts in the way she does because she likes being that way, she is intentionally being goofy and silly and just having fun expressing herself in those ways. We sometimes see hints of her getting more serious from time to time, but those are rather rare, simply because she doesn't like it. The second question is a bit harder to answer! Alexander and Edward seemingly respecting Lozzie's gender was actually an emergent property of what I didn't want to write about - I didn't want to write about realistic transphobia in Katalepsis, I didn't want to have to grapple with that in this story, and I also felt that including it would seriously detract from Alexander's philosophy (the core reasons he was wrong), and from Edward's goals (the real reasons he is doing what he does). It felt like a cheap shot to include that, whereas I wanted the focus to remain on more complex antagonistic motivations. This has led to the rather absurd position that Alexander is a mass-murdering abusive cult leader who thinks nothing of sacrificing children to his goals, but won't stoop to deadnaming his own sister. A bit silly, I suppose! But I stand by it as a creative choice. He does make a few digs in that direction, I sort of 'coded' some of his dialogue as spiritually transphobic, especially in how he uses the wrong name for Heather. As for Lozzie's early life and what happened to her parents, I might actually touch on that in Book Two!

Mihira

"This has led to the rather absurd position that Alexander is a mass-murdering abusive cult leader who thinks nothing of sacrificing children to his goals, but won't stoop to deadnaming his own sister" In fairness, I don't think any of his negative qualities actually disqualify Alexander from accepting that his sister is his sister. His abusive relationship with her may mean it's something he could have used if he wanted to verbally tear her down, but we don't see enough of that to really be too conspicuous. I think the biggest brain-itch I get about it is that she strongly rejects her legal name later on, when presumably she herself picked it, but perhaps that rejection developed from it's use by Alexander and then Edward(or his representatives). Heck, maybe she always wanted to name herself Lozzie and her parents insisted on something slightly more proper! Managing that as an element of tone does make sense though. I think in most contexts, anyone being directly transphobic to her would start to demand the scene and/or storyline be more about that, when it isn't. As it stands, Lozzie's existence as casual trans rep is quite comfy for this trans girl. (Also on my readthrough I definitely noticed the poncho colors long before it was directly addressed and ran to the comments to see if anyone else had, and was shocked by the silence!) Thanks for the great story, and I eagerly await book 2!

Tanksalot

What character (aside from Heather, naturally) would you think have the most interesting perspective on the events of book 1? (As in, if it was rewritten from another character's perspective, who do you think would make it the most interesting?)

HY

Indeed, I think you're correct about that, it's actually not too difficult to reconcile the parts of Alexander's character. Some readers have pointed out that his 'transhumanist' approach to cosmic truth could quite easily accept Lozzie's physical transition; perhaps he has nothing against that, and even considers it a positive, but that doesn't stop him being abusive, controlling, and derogatory in other ways. The point of Lozzie's name is an interesting one, since it's coded like transphobic deadnaming, but the way I used it is more to show Alexander's obsession with control and basic disrespect for Lozzie's autonomy, rather than to depict him as literally transphobic. And thank you! I'm glad that Lozzie's status and the way she's presented in the story is 'comfy' - that was a big part of my intention! I didn't want to have to drag real-life transphobia into the story, no matter how important that might be in other kinds of narratives. I wanted Lozzie's trans status to just be another part of who she is, without needing to be the focus of her entire character arc, something normal, something that does not have to define her entire narrative position and role. As for the poncho, yeah, same! I really expected readers to notice it and point it out, but it turns out that was way too subtle. That taught me an important lesson, and that's part of why I made the theme more overt later on. And hey, you're very welcome indeed! Thank you so much! I'm looking forward to Book Two as well!

HY

Evelyn, I think! In a way Evelyn has always been the secondary protagonist of Katalepsis. She's the one other character with the most to lose, the one who goes through the most development and change (except for Heather herself), and the one who is present and involved in almost every step of the narrative. She's not as narratively central as Raine, for example - but Raine actually goes through less development and change over the story; Raine's conflicts are more simple, whereas Evee's are complex and difficult. And I think Evelyn would also provide a very different perspective on things than Heather, with totally different judgements and attitudes to almost every element.

Tanksalot

Some follow up questions! How do you get yourself into the heads of your characters, and who do you find hardest to write?

HY

That's a very good question! And I'm not sure I can answer it in a way that will make sense to anybody except myself, but I'll try. I've been doing this for such a long time now that getting into a character's head comes naturally, though it's the product of deliberate technique. Most of how I do it is basically acting; when I'm writing, I'm often also speaking the dialogue out loud, going through the motions that a character might, letting them sort of "speak through me" as the scene unfolds. I try to let the character come through me, as if I'm just a sort of conduit for the person. This doesn't work unless the character is well-defined in the first place, of course, so this is also based on a lot of very basic foundational work of figuring out what they want, how they think, how they talk, etc, but once all that has been written up and pre-determined, it's mostly just acting! As for who I find hardest to write, I'm ... not sure! They're all challenging in different ways. I think the character who can trip me up the most is Zheng, but that's only because she needs a lot more narrative space than I've given her thus far in Book One.

The Pink Bunny

One thing I've actually been wondering for a while.... Is earth, our dimension, special somehow? Initially I figured that ours was just one of many, another of the infinite worlds in the greater universe, not fundamentally different from Camelot or Wonderland or Carcosa. But there have been some events that suggest that earth is somehow unique, metaphysically distinct in some way from the worlds of Outside (the main one that comes to mind is what happened to the Forest Knight – totally fine in all dimensions except our own). Just something I've been wondering for a while

HY

I'm not sure I can answer this question without gesturing at the hints I've woven into the story so far, but that probably won't be enough to provide a concrete answer. Other readers have speculated about this at great length too, trying to read between the lines of what we've seen of Outside and the wider bubbles of reality. This question might get explored in more detail in Book Two, so for now I'm not going to give a metatextual answer, only a brief summary of what we've seen in Book One. Earth does seem to be distinct from all of the Outside dimensions we've seen through Heather's eyes so far - penuma-somatic life is invisible and intangible, Outsiders cannot survive there, etc. Outside dimensions seem to exist on a sliding scale, with some of them more alien, some more recognisibly similar to Earth, with similar physical laws, biology, etc. Perhaps Earth itself is older or younger in some fashion, or closer to some kind of metaphysical boundary which means it works in a particular kind of way, where Outsider lifeforms and ways of existing don't work, or work less well. However! This doesn't mean Earth is unique. We've seen a few specific hints about this. Saldis once mentioned "other strongholds of humanity". The King in Yellow was heavily implied to have begun his life as something similar to a human being, but Outside. The Plant Twins seem to come from a very non-human civilization which had/has physical laws and magic like on Earth. There are these little hints dotted throughout the text that there might be other Earthlike dimensions out there, but perhaps they are just as difficult to access as Earth is. Perhaps we'll see more in the future.

fionag11

Watching you write must be very entertaining! Do you have a room-mate, significant other, or family member who likes to be the audience of this, and maybe give feedback?, or is it a strictly private endeavour?

HY

I do have a significant other! But I have to write and edit alone; I actually shut the door and keep myself secluded while I'm working. Trying to speak dialogue or prose out loud as I write becomes impossible if I know somebody can overhear me - it's not that I'm embarrassed to let somebody hear, but that even a tiny bit of awareness of another person's attention tends to totally scramble my ability to act as a conduit for a character, because I suddenly become aware of 'myself'. I'm actually struggling to explain this, it's not something I've tried to put into proper words before. I hope that makes sense!

The Pink Bunny

Ahhh, I see! I somehow didn't even think of that, that the enforced mundanity on earth is just another way for a world to be. Some sample bias, perhaps, of the Weird worlds, the "Outside" worlds just being the ones most accessible, where more mundane worlds are both less useful/interesting and also harder to get to. Thank you!

HY

You're very welcome! This is one of those meta-narrative questions which has been hinted at during the first book of Katalepsis, but probably will be explored more in the future, so while I wish I could say more about it, we'll have to leave it to Heather and the others to discover it first-hand!

IllegibleScream

It seems like there's a lot of Prime realities that have proper physics and consistent rules, and then Sub-Prime realms that exist at the whims of specific entities or as temporary phenomena. The short lived stars of the multiverse, if you will.

HY

A very interesting way of looking it at! It's always fascinating to see new theorising on the metaphysics of Outside, thank you.