Bad news, good news. (Patreon)

TL;DR: I'm taking next week off for mental health (and to get ready to move); big chapter to round out this week.

Writing this story is what I do. It occupies the vast majority of my time and I'm usually revising and editing late into the evening or even early into the morning. Some days are easy, some are hard, and when the whole week is hard, I end up with a constant headache and my body forgetting how to sleep properly. Which means it's self-care time. Not a euphemism.

As some of you will know from comments I've made here and there, I'm currently in the process of buying a house. My first house, in fact, which is only possible because of my amazing readers. That's you, and you're awesome. I literally can't thank you enough; I would die of dehydration in the attempt.

I'm a pretty hardcore man-child. I'm sitting here, wearing my own merch, going on about my job writing a kung-fu wizard story on the internet. As it turns out, attempting to do all the things I should have done over the course of my adult life (first house, first car, insurance, annoyingly complicated taxes) in about a month isn't working out great. I didn't plan it this way; that's just how it came down. Well, the car was my fault, but it wasn't a huge deal. My assistant had to do a lot of running around with contracts. I sound like to total douche bag. And now my self-insults are turning American; I need this break so much.

While I am very much looking forward to being in my new house, I'm currently at the stage where it's all paperwork and brokers and insurance. That's just how it works. But when all that stuff comes in the roughest writing week I've had in a while, it's just too much. I'm writing this sometime after midnight on Saturday morning and I am just wrecked.

I'm well aware that there are plenty of people working way harder for far less money, who don't have the luxury of giving themselves a week off. But in the interest of not pumping out a bunch of crappy chapters while my mental state gets worse and worse, I've decided to take a break. Next week will have no chapters. Not Patreon, not Royal Road. That's the bad news.

The good news is that the fact that I've spent about 30 of the last 48 hours writing, so tomorrow's chapter is a biggun. I won't be sure of the final word count until I finish editing and proofing it, but it's got some heft. Around the third or fourth longest of the entire series, I think, although I'd have to check. I'm not going to check. Of course,

Normally, I'd split a chapter of that length. Frankly, I should have. I could have taken something for the headache I've had all week and be asleep right now. But this is a chapter that I think deserves to remain intact, even if Jason is barely in it.

I know the timing isn't ideal. I know that I keep deleting sentences because they make me sound pissy, because I'm cranky when I get tired. And I am so very tired, so now it's time for self-care. Still not a euphemism; I don't have the energy for that.

I got up this morning with this chapter already written. The first draft, anyway. I had feedback from my main alpha reader (my friend Chris) and all I needed to do was edit. I could finish up early and learn a new board game for my group tomorrow.

It's coming up on midnight and I'm mostly done. The chapter is about 60% longer and most of what I had already was rewritten. I'm writing this while I wait for my assistant to proofread it, then I can proofread it, he'll post it and you can put all the mistakes we missed in the errors channel on the discord. I sound flippant about that, but it really does help me out. It's coming up on time for the next big error sweep, in fact, which means my assistant will be almost as busy as me for a while.

Okay, at this point, I'm just plugging on aimlessly because I'm kind of woozy. I've made one and a half mediocre masturbation jokes and been complaining pretty non-stop, but I'm actually rather happy with how this chapter came out. I'd be pretty grouchy if I sank all this time into it and I wasn't, so there's that, at least. Also, I gave this post a quick proof, but I may have missed typos.

My assistant is taking a long time with the proofread. I guess it's a long chapter, but I may have made a lot of mistakes. In fact, I almost certainly did. The squishy inside my head is a  little more squishy than normal right now.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter. If you read it when it goes up, I'll definitely be asleep.

-Shirt