Intermission & Status Update (Patreon)

Hello to all my beautiful amazing intelligent wonderful patrons!

Unfortunately I have no chapter for you today, so instead I've got this status update and another little look behind the scenes. But first, an explanation.

I finally went and broke one of my rules / guidelines. I started posting Daughters of Demeter book 6 when I was only halfway through writing it. And exactly like I should have predicted, life & bad brain stuff got in the way and now we've hit the halfway point for book 6 and I'm not ready.

So here's how it went down, more or less.

Back when I was working on Daughters of Demeter book 5 I ran into some trouble figuring out what to do with the last chapter. My original plan was to end the book with chapter 150, and that would actually be the end of the Demeter Saga. Except there were a bunch of loose plot points that hadn't really been resolved yet, and as originally written that last chapter was way too busy and rushed.

I ended up having a conversation with my muse about what to do, and she dragged the cast members in for another staff meeting. It was shorter than the one we had at the beginning of book 5, but I've included the minutes of that meeting below.

After that wrapped up I decided to expand my existing chapter 150, and that actually became chapters 150, 151, and 152. So you can imagine have much stuff was skipped or glossed over in the original draft.

And there were still some unresolved details left to cover, but I thought I could take care of them in an Epilogue chapter. That became two epilogues, then three. Then I decided they were Extras rather than epilogues. Then more of them kept happening, and around Extras # 6 I realized it was turning into a mini book.

At that point I thought 'book 6' would be a little coda to the whole adventure, and I thought it would be a nice touch to have Nyssa show up unexpectedly at the very end so she could join her big sister Amanda for fun space adventures. I planned to switch back to Amanda's PoV for the very last chapter, 165, where the Persephone would land and Nyssa would emerge with Gwen & Tanya for a surprise reunion.

Then the Demeter would fly off into the sunset & that would be the end.

Only right at the last minute Nyssa went and got herself kidnapped by some bounty hunter, & suddenly I was stuck with another crisis for the Demeter crew to deal with and not enough time to get it all written before the first chapter was scheduled to drop!

And finally, ontop of all that, my muse flitted off & got herself excited about a completely unrelated project. (Patrons at the Oracle tier & above have already seen a sneak-preview chapter of that.) That other project isn't finished yet but we have about 20 chapters done & expect it'll be a full 30-chapter book. The only thing we're not sure of right now is if it's going to be a one-off, or if this is 'book 1' of a new series.

Anyways back to the lack of chapters. I'm worried that all our 'status posts' are going to start sounding the same because we're still dealing with physical & mental health issues, and those are still impacting our ability to write as much as we want to.

That's also impacting our commissions, folks will probably have noticed that it's taking longer & longer to get those chapters out each month. We've even had to turn down a couple folks who contacted us directly about commissioning stuff, since our Patreon commission slots are all full. Unfortunately the slots are full because we had to cut back how many we're offering each month.

As for the 2nd half of DoD book 6, I'm hoping we'll be able to resume posting that soon. Next week is probably too optimistic, but I'm aiming for the start of April. I have a handful of chapters written but I'd prefer to finish the rest of the book before I start posting them because it's easier for me to handle plot and pacing that way. Same with editing.

I feel like we maybe got away with the break in this case, from a writing point of view? Book 6 had that natural split in the middle so they really are kind of like two separate half-books.

I'm sorry for leaving you on a bit of a cliffhanger. I'll do my best to make it worth the wait. And now, here's the minutes from that second staff meeting.

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Daughters of Demeter Meeting Minutes
Date: December 10th, 2023
Location: Demeter's mess / seated around the dining table

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viola: idk how to handle chapter 150. there's a lot of routine stuff we've already seen, it feels repetative

muse: timeskip. jump ahead.

viola: right... yeah if we jump a day or two past all the boring stuff we can -

muse: no no no. if you're going to timeskip do it like you mean it. jump a full year ahead

viola: ... ok but a whole year? isn't that extreme? a lot will happen in a year

muse: nah it'll be cool. you can use a couple paragraphs to summarize a few highlights, then the readers will pick up the rest thru context. remember Faet? you skipped like 50 years or something to the epilogue

viola: and some people were confused, others hated it.

muse: yeah but by comparison a single year's nothing. if folks complain just point them at Faet

viola: i... but...

muse: You jumped three or four years for the Mara epilogues. there's loads of precident.

viola: yeah and the same thing happened, people were disappointed. plus it's caused a load of trouble since then, because Mara's timeline is way out ahead of Amy & Luna

muse: DoD isn't in a shared universe setting so you don't have to worry about any other stories

viola (sighs): i'll think about it. your examples were both epilogues tho, this isn't an epilogue

muse: whatever. timeskip! timeskip! timeskip!

viola: idk. i'll think about it. and i'll try to ask the characters

muse: they'll love it. you should let the characters vote on it. they'll vote yay!

muse: Blood of the Covenant skipped 3 years after the prologue, 4 years in the middle, and 8 months to the epilogue. The whole story covered 8 years! Even the Welland saga had a bunch of jumps in it. You skipped almost a year between chapters 3 and 4!

viola grumbles and glares at her muse.

viola: ok gang you know where we're at and you've heard what my muse is proposing. can we all vote yay or nay on the one-year time-skip idea?

Amanda: I have no preference either way. I suppose a year off might be nice though? After five years in the Navy then a solid half-year of adventure with the Demeter, some down time would be appreciated. And I could maybe help out around Ganvis. Not that I want to go back to farming, but I have that experience.

Sarah: I might get bored being stuck planetside for a year? Then again I guess there's stuff I could work on. Irrigation pumps or something? I guess my vote is no preference.

Rebecca: No preference. Although I reserve the right to change my mind if Ella's still an insufferable bitch.

Jenna: I think I'd like it? It would be a welcome change for a time. I vote for the time skip.

Jenny: My only concern is if the ship is planetbound for a year it will probably have to be shut down completely. That means I'll be offline, effectively asleep for the duration.

Sarah: Not necessarily. Maybe we can hook in to ground power? They have a transmission network running off wind turbines.

Cam: Sure! I've got all the stuff we need in my workshop, assuming nobody's claimed it or gutted it yet. If it's still there though, I can rig up a ground power feed. We might wanna shut down parts of the ship to reduce the draw, but there's surely enough available to keep you going Jenny.

Jenny: Thank you Cam

Cam: As for me I don't really know? I was just getting used to life in space, but I suppose if folks back home don't treat us too bad then it might be nice visiting them for a time?

Gwen: I don't mind a time skip as long as there's progress in the interim. Even if I can't convince the princess to return home, it would be nice to have something to show for our efforts.

Tanya: Ditto. The Persephone crew is actually starting to come together finally, now that we're working. I might not mind staying out here after all? Exile or not, the freedom is refreshing.

Nyssa: I am 100% in favour of a one year time skip if it means I finally get to see Amanda in person! I miss my sister and I'd love to meet her girlfriends and her other friends and maybe have some space adventures of my own!

Amanda: Ok wait, why does Nyssa get a vote? She's not part of the crew, she's not even a regular cast member. She hasn't even appeared on camera, all we've had are letters and the odd photograph.

Nyssa: Because we're family, sis!

Amanda: How did you even get here? Who invited you to this staff meeting?

Amanda eyes the author suspiciously while her ears angle forwards & her tail twitches. The author shrugs then looks pointedly at her muse, who appears to be stifling a grin and trying not to laugh.

viola (sighs): so that's... two votes for the long time-skip, four of you sound like you want it but didn't quite say so, and everyone else was 'no preference'. not a single one of you voted against it. even if we discount Nyssa that's still one solid yes vote plus four wishy-washy kinda-yes votes

muse: told you so!

viola (sighs again): i'll think about it. no promises.