September Extra - Patchwork Magic (Original) (Patreon)

Alright! I figured now is a good enough time to do the monthly extra, since I've had it ready for since the start of the month. Plus, I'm kinda curious how people will react to it :-).

This one, I feel, deserves a little bit of background. It's not actually important though, so if you don't want to read the wall of text, just skip down to the TLDR section at the bottom of the post ;-).

So, I actually started writing Patchwork Magic clear back in 2016, with it meant to be my next novel after completing and publishing The Chronicles of Henry Harper. Unfortunately, at the time, I hit a stumbling block...caused by the fact that my family all knew the Jacen Aster pen name and are mostly ultra conservative -_-. I, pretty darn obviously if you've read anything I've written, don't fall into that category. But when the two main characters (both female) increasingly felt like they were going to end up together, I found myself a bit stuck. I didn't want to get into a massive fight with my entire extended family (particularly as I was living with some of them at the time), and so I ended up dropping working on the story after attempting a brief kickstarter to fund working on it (and that failing miserably).

To be honest, I'd almost forgotten that I had like 25,000 words and a seriously complex notebook of setting information and plans, all just laying around. That is, until it hit me while I was working on Misfit System that I apparently have a thing for similar ideas :-p. While it isn't a System story, there are certain themes that are very similar and working on Misfit System made me remember the thing existed. I popped the file open last month, expecting to laugh at my own writing since I know I've gotten better...

Only to realize that what I'd written was actually still really solid.

Mind you, it was also in a much older style of my writing. My original writing style favored the sort of formatting you see in old school physical-first books, with structure like this:

........ Her rescuer grimaced, “Best wait until we get out of here for that.” She paused for a moment and seemed to resign herself to something. “I'd feel like an ass if I just left you here. I'm one of the only patchwork's that can navigate safely this far in. Well, mostly safely. The name's Sae, by the way. Figure you ought to at least know my name if I've got to nursemaid you out of here.”.......

That sort of in-paragraph dialog is now kinda old-school. Mostly because experts in the early 2000s realized, for various reasons, that it's kinda hard to read it on a screen and ebooks were becoming a major thing. I don't fully understand all their arguments and explanations, but I honestly can't deny they are right, either. Which is why my writing style migrated to an ebook/web format over time. Shorter paragraphs and separation of dialogue from descriptive text, as much as possible, to make it easier to follow on a phone/tablet/computer screen. So the same exact paragraphs becomes:.......Her rescuer grimaced, looking around at the chaos all around them.

“Best wait until we get out of here for that.”

She paused for a moment and seemed to resign herself to something, sighing and speaking up again.

“I'd feel like an ass if I just left you here. I'm one of the only patchwork's that can navigate safely this far in. Well, mostly safely. The name's Sae, by the way. Figure you ought to at least know my name if I've got to nursemaid you out of here.”.......

Anyway, since what I had was still felt solid to me and I honestly still liked the concept, I decided to treat overhauling the largest continuous piece of it as the extra for this month. You might find that parts of it still retain the older formatting as a result, simply because the conversion wasn't perfect. I'd probably need to make a couple more passes for that. But its been at least brought up to something like my current writing style and standard.

There's also a bit more of it than typical for an extra, 16k versus the more normal 10k, as I had that much of it I could convert or tie together quickly. Back when I first wrote it, I tended not to write things in order, so the remain 10k or so I have of it is disjointed scenes meant for deeper into the story.

Another side note? For those of you who originally came over from my Adult Games Patreon? You might also recognize some similarity of setting concepts to Left Hand Magic. Magitech is something I really like playing with the idea of, and I reused a lot of thought experiments from Patchwork Magic's brainstorming when I made that particular visual novel.

As for genre and such, this particular work is a completely original High Fantasy/Magitech setting I created pretty extensive setting notes on, and it shares some themes with Misfit System. Though it's considerably less dystopian than Cyberpunk 2077 :-p. Enjoy!

TLDR Section

This is an older work of mine I've updated to my current style and standard, as I realized it was still pretty solid and very reminiscent of the overall concepts used in Misfit System. Though it's a completely different genre (High fantasy with Magitech) and an all-original work. Enjoy!