eyes yet to open - 22.1 (Patreon)

Chapter builds a nest beneath the floorboards, stuffed with fur and books and stolen socks, purring all through the night when the humans least expect.

Surprise, it's a new arc! Out of nowhere! Nope, this isn't the final arc of Book One, not just yet; arc 21 was getting very long and a bit thematically unwieldy, and I realised that if I kept going until the planned stopping point it would end up as the longest arc in the story so far. So, arc 22! You can think of it as the last intermission before things slam into the climax of Book One. Arc 22 will be comparatively quite short; my outline calls for 5 chapters, but it might have room for more. We'll see! If anybody is interested in planned structure and stuff, I've updated the table of contents page over on the site, in quite a bit of detail.

If you do check that page, you might notice something else: there's not going to be a Katalepsis chapter on the 21st of October. That's two weeks from now. This is the first time I've ever actually planned to skip an update, and I want to give you all plenty of advance warning. I've been trying to avoid having to ever do this on purpose, but I'm going to be spending a significant portion of that week helping a family member with going to hospital; I won't actually be taking that week off writing (I'll still be plugging away like normal!) but I can't be certain of my usual schedule, work hours, or basically anything, so I can't be certain of having a chapter ready by Saturday morning. I'll be using that week to bank as much drafting as I can, to hopefully avoid this happening again in the future. There is a teeny tiny chance that the chapter might go up as normal anyway, (because I am about to spend this week attempting to write two chapters, double-time!) but if that happens it'll be a nice surprise. So! Thank you for understanding, and I can promise that after that small planned break, Katalepsis will be back as normal.

And! Finally! There's only so long Heather can put off the conversation she's been avoiding! Most of the others seem ready. And she needs a plan. A real plan. Onward we go! Here's that link, as always!

https://katalepsis.net/2023/10/07/eyes-yet-to-open-22-1/

This week's password is: heliacal

An epub version is also attached, below!