Weekly Update - 5/15/24 (Patreon)

Last week, I made the decision to return to Captains' Days, a story I hadn't touched in months, simply because it hadn't won any of the monthly votes, but Tommy's voice had been plucking at the back of my skull for a while. I've tried fighting those stories before. They end up slowing everything down until I give them voice, so I let Tommy step into the forefront and wrote another chapter. That story's got a lot of legs to it, so I'll probably need to make a point not to let it go too long in between chapters again. Besides, Tommy's fun to write.

The next thing in the pipeline is QT2:i5 which I'm a couple of pages into. Release today seems unlikely, but we'll see how much I can bang through before my usual boardgame/poker night on Wednesdays. It's an intermission focusing on Sergei, and should be a nice change of pace, as well as continuing to torment everyone with the cliffhanger I dropped at the end of QT2:25. Some people love cliffhangers; some people hate them. I try to use them when there's a natural point to do so, but also try to avoid overusing them, because if it's always a cliffhanger, I feel like they lose their power. We haven't seen Sergei since Book One, but his influence has been felt in a lot of decisions that have happened since then, so it doesn't hurt to see how all of that's affecting him personally.

Oh! I know most readers are already reading most of the QT spinoffs, but I wanted to call attention to one in particular, QT: Aotearoa, a spinoff set in New Zealand, which you can read over here. When the author contacted me right after I dropped QT2:14 here on the Patreon, he wanted to spin off from there, which I was happy to let him do, but had to insist he couldn't put anything out publicly until QT2:14 dropped on public sites. I worried that the six-month wait was a lot to ask, but he waited and he's got a great story going on, so definitely check that out if you haven't already.

Also, I like to give recommendations for things to watch and/or listen to, and so this week's recommendation is for an Apple+ TV show called "Sugar" featuring Colin Farrell. It's a modern noir that I just couldn't help falling in love with. If you like the Bosch show, you'll get some similar notes here, and it's well worth the time.

And, as always, here's the public release schedule:  5/18 - QT2:i3, FG3, 5/25 - MG18, 6/1 - QTAA 6, CARP 7, 6/8 - Captains' Days 1, QT2:17, 6/15 - QTPT16, Neon Stonehenge 3.