Reaching a Breaking Point (But in a Good Way) (Patreon)

Hey everyone. Happy Thanksgiving and all that to those of you who it applies.

I wanted to touch base and share some thoughts I've been having lately. It's no secret that I've been struggling with my mental health ever since volume one's release, and it's made working on it an uphill battle until the last couple of months where I've started to see some significant progress in my recovery. As of now I'm getting relatively reliable work done on editing the chapters I wrote while I wasn't feeling good. A running thing with these edited chapters is that they are swelling in word count because of the additions being made to them. Most of them gain at least a few thousand extra words, although a few of them have doubled in length altogether.

To say the pacing is different than the first book is putting it mildly, and for a long time, that's been worrying me. By the time I'm finished editing, it's very likely that it will surpass the first book in word count despite the first book covering roughly a whole week of Oliver's life as opposed to this one's current... three days.

There's a lot of reasons for this. One is that I can't help myself and I get really into the banter, especially when I'm going over chapters and adding more while polishing them. The other is that a lot of this book is group scenes where Oliver isn't just talking to Mia, but Mia's roommate Zoe as well, and then Rebecca joins in on the third day meaning there's a big chunk of chapters where Oliver is juggling four different girls in one scene.

There's also the fact that Zoe starts off as essentially a shut-in who doesn't leave the house and her development will see her slowly growing out of that with Oliver's support. The conflict of this next arc of sorts is framed as Oliver needing to help Mia and Zoe sort out their awkward friendship as soon as possible, so I more or less wrote myself into a corner with that as he can't really engage with her in any other way then lounging around their apartment for a few days before there's a shakeup at the end of the third day. Given that the first book ended on a big bombastic ending, I've been very self-conscious of that even before the page count started swelling.

The answer isn't to cut out the new jokes, banter and flirting I've been adding in the reediting, because I genuinely feel that the chapters being edited now are closer to what I would've written at my prime. They needed to be touched up because for a very long time I was not writing anywhere close to that, and I'm SO much happier with the new versions of the ten chapters I've produced thus far, but the couple of people I've seen who weren't pleased with my pacing in the first book are definitely not going to find an improvement here. It's just the type of writer I am. I like writing long, meandering, comedic slice of life conversations ala something Clerks, and the first three days of volume two are that on steroids.

The problem is that the climax isn't supposed to be for another three days in story, and I cannot for the life of me justify waiting any longer to release a fucking book both for the sake of my own sanity and for financial reasons. I've felt terrible about how long this has taken me, how long I've kept my new fans waiting, and at how slow the story has progressed in general. I'm doing better now, yes, but if I wait to end it on the big note I was planning to, I have no idea how long it would take me to actually get the damn book out.

Since I've been making steady progress lately, I've come to terms with what I want to do.

I want to finish editing the chapters I've set out to edit, which will stop at the shakeup point right as the third in story day ends, and then release it. I did warn in the afterword of the first book that future books of LARPG might end on a cliffhanger, but because it was wildly more successful than I expected it to be, I didn't expect I would actually follow through with that threat. I felt pressured to live up to the big climax of the first book especially because I'm self-conscious of most of the second book just being Oliver sitting around chilling in the same location.

Again, I want to reiterate that this is a structural problem caused from 1, Zoe being a static heroine at the start, and 2, there being an immediate need for Oliver to focus on Zoe because the situation is directly tied to Mia's happiness. I'm pointing it out to say that future books won't have this problem as future heroines will not have similar issues that restrict the pacing. It's not just going to be Oliver sitting around playing video games on the couch with nerd girls 24/7, I was just stupid and couldn't predict how this was going to affect the plot.

Not that I think it's bad. I love the material I've written so far, especially after the recent round of polishing I've done as of late, I'm just scared of publishing a slice of life book like this that doesn't have as much of the spectacle as the first one after making people wait for nearly two years to piece my brain back together, and on top of that, it still doesn't evem move the character's sex lives forward all that much.

Some people were upset that the first book didn't have full sex scenes yet, and yes, I'm sorry to confirm they still won't have had actual sex by the end of the second book, and at this rate, probably not the third, either. I assure you, no one is more dissatisfied than me. My books before LARPG had tons of sex scenes, and I really, REALLY like writing sex scenes, but LARPG is a very different story than everything else I've written and the build up with each heroine is integral to the whole dating sim aspect of the series. There still going to be be some big sex things that happen in the next book, and after that there is a hugely exciting lewd scene that I originally planned on ending book two that will now be shuffled forward into the third one...

Man. I'm really rambling at this point, but I hope it at least gets across how much this damn story means to me and how worried I am about living up to everyone that supported me. LARPG was the first real success I've ever seen in my life, and I just don't have the words to tell you what that meant to me. I want it this series to last for a very, very long time, as I feel that's the strength of the slice of life genre. You stay because you like the characters, and we haven't even remotely scratched the surface of all the material I already have planned for the heroines have been introduced, let alone the ideas I have for future heroines. When full sex finally enters the picture, it will be a very big part of the story going forward, but I don't want people to think I'm intentionally stretching things out before that point. I'm writing the story how it makes sense to me, and the good news is you hopefully won't have to wait much longer to read more.

All this to say that I expect the next book to probably come out sometime in the first quarter of 2026. I have like 25 more chapters to do a second draft of, and while this is progressing quite fast, the book is going to have a cliffhanger. I'm just at the point where I don't even care anymore because I'm doing better now, damn it, and things will only get better from here.

Anyways... thank you for making it to the end of my anxious schizopost. Obligatory mention that if you can't wait and would like to read what's currently out, my work is on my Patreon for only $1 a month, just don't feel pressured into it, okay? I'm doing fine. (If you're reading this on Patreon ignore this, I wrote it with the intention of sharing elsewhere, too.)