The status of stories and future plans (Patreon)

Hello everyone! Making a public post here to sum up my current situation and where I plan to go next, since I know things have been pretty uncertain for a while, and there are big things coming up in the near future.

Right now, Hoard is coming to the climax of its second major arc out of a planned five, and after it does I'm going to take a bit of a break, so it seems like a good time to check in with everybody so no one's left twisting during the planned hiatus.

First I want to summarize my current overall writing approach and the situation it's left me in; this is all information I know I've put out before, but I'm repeating it here because I want this post to stand as a general guide to the state of things that will remain relevant until the next time things change enough that I feel the need to make a new one. Also, there are undoubtedly some new folks who haven't seen the previous notes.

After trying various posting schedules, the one I settled on that currently strikes the best balance between getting chapters out as regularly as I can and managing my increasingly frayed mental health is what I call my "whenever, whatever" schedule. This means first that I work on whichever of my ongoing projects I feel inspired to, because being able to switch between them did wonders for maintaining my focus and mental stability for the brief period when I was actually doing that, and second that I don't have a set posting schedule, because having deadlines turned out to not result in chapters getting done on time but just in me being constantly too stressed to work on them. I know this is a weird way to run a schedule, but it's what worked best for my specific cocktail of issues. After years of grappling with mental health struggles and having a general idea of what was going on, I finally got an official diagnosis last January: autism spectrum, bipolar disorder, and ADHD. No great surprises, though the doctor was able to add a lot of helpful nuance to my understanding of my condition.

Now, as I'm sure you've all noticed, the problem with the "whenever, whatever" schedule is that I've been working on nothing but Hoard for...gosh, I think it's been at least a year now. This negates half the benefit of that schedule, and has resulted in me suffering the kind of stress that has caused repeated schedule slips and unplanned hiatuses. This happened because of other brain problems that have caused me to be unable to work on, specifically, everything else I've been trying to publish. And this ridiculous confluence of factors is what has led me to the annoying conclusion that what I need to do in order to improve both my mental health and productive output is to launch new stories even as I have several others languishing unfinished. Life is wild, sometimes.

And with that recap done, here is the purpose of this post: I want to give a summary of every story I've got going, past, present, and future, and explain what's up with them and what to expect next.

• The Gods are Bastards: High fantasy steampunk-ish Western. TGAB is currently in the process of being traditionally published by Podium, with the first six books (which, after being edited, cover the story which are the first seven "books" online) contracted and so far, only the first released. They'll be coming out over the next two years. The web version is many volumes past that, and nearing its end, and I have been totally blocked on it because... Well, this is kinda rough to talk about, but TGAB ultimately is a story about moral complexity, with its most important theme that people do things for reasons that make sense to them, rather than malice, and the path forward for everyone involves understanding. And the truth is I just don't believe that anymore. I think, intellectually, it is the truth, but what I believe after living through the last decade of political events while my mental health steadily declines is that people are driven by pure malice and aren't worth engaging with. I'm in a place where I know that's wrong and I still just can't get past it, not while the world still is what it is around me. Revisiting TGAB means confronting a younger version of myself, who is a less skilled writer but a better human being, and every time I try I just fail utterly to handle it. I am committed to finishing TGAB, one way or another, as soon as I'm able. I just don't currently know the path to doing that.

• Only Villains Do That: Dark comedy isekai. Despite the "comedy" part of that, "dark" is equally valid and OVDT just proved too brutal and grim for me to continue handling while I'm slowly and quietly coming apart at the seams. It's a less specific issue than I was having with TGAB, and one with a more obvious solution: I just need to be doing better. So...obvious, but not easy or within reach. Same goes, I am going to finish it unless I die before I can, I just can't...right now.

• Dysland: Portal fantasy about anthropology and the spoon theory of mental health. Though it debuted to the public much later than OVDT, Dysland actually predates it considerably; I've been working on this since relatively early in the TGAB days, as an attempt to grapple with the earliest manifestations of the personal issues that ultimately drove me away from TGAB, caused me to launch OVDT, and then forced me to distance myself from that, too. So...I have the same problem with it. Dysland is planned to be a relatively tight five-volume story (like Hoard), but it's five volumes full of the horrible things people do to each other and why. I've gotta get myself into a better situation before I'll have the mental wherewithal to continue working on this.

• Hoard: Lighthearted high fantasy poly romance. My current focus and very much the gentler type of content I need to start recovering from burnout and stress and general despair. The only problem with Hoard at the moment is that with it being the only thing I've been working on for months and months, I am becoming increasingly burned out on it. This year's new publication schedule should remedy that. After its second and current arc wraps I will need some time off from Hoard to properly plan out the third arc, and thus my focus will shift elsewhere for a while, but this story has really captured my imagination and it's not going anywhere until it concludes, unless something else terrible happens to me first.

• Netherstar: Pulpy sci-fi action-adventure. I published three chapters of this in 2019 and never touched it again - in fact, because I first started the project as a way of working through something I was dealing with at the time, when that aspect of my life faded out I all but completely forgot about it, to the point I'm just not realizing I should've brought this back already because it would be tonally perfect for the new phase of my writing I am launching. It's been long enough I've forgotten a number of key details of what I had planned, so more planning and re-planning will be necessary first, but Netherstar will be making a return soon.

• The New Monsters: Pulpy violent action-adventure. I've been teasing this one for a while as I've been working on it in the background. Of the upcoming stories, it's the one that's had the most work completed. Pretty dark, but in a gleefully self-indulgent way, not grappling with Big Issues the way OVDT does, as the whole point is to make something less fraught that I can work on without triggering any personal issues.

• Death's Favorites: A somber meditation on grief and recovery, with base-building and progression elements.

• Emergence: Bugs, cool swordfights, and existentialism. I feel like this one and DF are signs of my continued growth as an artist, being pretty experimental by my standards.

• Terrabell: Hard to categorize; I could call this a CGDCT locked room mystery with a dash of cosmic horror, and every part of that would be incorrect but overall I think it captures the vibe pretty well. The most Hoard-like of my planned upcoming stories, being light in tone with a lot of darkness in the setting for those who read between the lines.

The summed-up problem with the currently-languishing unfinished stories is that I just need to be in a better place before I'm mentally stable enough to work on them again. And I mean that both figuratively and quite literally, as I have given a great deal of contemplation to this matter and deduced that what I need is to be receiving actual medical treatment for the bipolar disorder and ADHD, and living in a country less immediately threatened by fascism. So...I've done what I can plan toward getting these stories completed, and while I don't have any clear path to that right now, I know what the path is and I'm doing my best. None of my stories are abandoned, I'm just going to have to occupy myself with less fraught material until I've stabilized everything enough to finish some of them.

Once the current Hoard arc wraps, I am planning to take a hiatus of a month. During this time it's my intention to keep writing; a break for me doesn't mean I don't work, as in fact not working is so stressful for me I truly don't think I'll ever be able to take a proper vacation even in some pie-in-the-sky future where I can afford one. A break means I'm out from under the pressure to publish, which is where most of my work-related stress comes from. Taking a month or so to work quietly by myself should enable me to get some if not most if not all of the planned new stories sufficiently developed that I can actually start publication on them.

So the teal deer is: things have been rough, but good things are coming.

I really appreciate all of you for hanging in there while I struggle to keep my stories flowing. Hopefully the new plans will enable them to flow better, and I'll have more output for you in the year to come.

See you soon, everybody.