Done Editing + Other Updates (Patreon)

Hi hello, all! Still very sick and bleh, but had a few things of note for today.

Firstly, as of tonight, I will have finally finished editing book 3! I plan to send it over to the audio folks later today, and I'm sure I'll soon have updates on when the audiobook will be out. Truly, this took me more than triple the amount of time I thought it would, and it's hard to express just how excited I am to be done with it. At ~230k words, it will be the longest of any of the books so far.

Tentatively, I'm leaning towards publishing the third book around September 10th, with a Royal Road and Patreon stub date of September 4th. If you're on Patreon in the first place, I imagine this doesn't matter much to you as you've already read book 3, but be advised that I'll be taking all the book 3 content down on that date. For the publishing, I'll likely do a single week's pre-order rollout, much like I did last time around.

In terms of book 3's content, I changed a number of things in all the edits. With the exception of one larger change, very few of these things will have any impact on the story moving forward, but if you're curious,

Minor Changes

• Good number of chapter ordering switches. For instance, in the RR version, we meet Nella and Oachin in chapter 19 and then don't really see them again until chapter 30. In the updated version, they join the party in chapter 27, keeping things much closer together. That awful break where I switch from the deaths to the war scene has likewise been fixed by moving that chapter.

• Some chapter cuts. In the RR version, I felt that things started a bit too slowly, and Tess’s spell-training and class-trial arc takes up part of chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The Bind Weapon class trial was greatly shortened, cleaning up that section and allowing me to chop a chapter there.

• Some easter eggs and foreshadowing were added. For example, in the scene where Tess is examining all of the archmage’s secrets in his study, one of the items he pulls over is now the locator token for Sett.

Moderate Changes

• A lot was changed about Emin’s rationale for “betraying” Tess, and extra clarity was added to Warram’s plan to capture her and why the dungeon run ended up with a special boss in it. Emin is made to be slightly more sympathetic, and it no longer feels quite as strange that they just happened upon this fancy forge. Ultimately pretty happy with these changes, as they feel more consistent with his character and clear up some loose ends.

• While most of the final dungeon run remains as is, parts were changed to pace it better and give it a more “ominous” feel so that the darker tone doesn’t come out left field as much.

Large Changes

• In an effort to make the end section of the book feel less bleak, and in keeping with a lot of the votes and feedback I got from the poll, Nella now lives through the final boss fight. Her Sunset skill keeps her from fully dying, and when the boss dies, she levels, assigning her free points into Constitution. Tess then fishes her out of the magma with conjured life-mana chains and rushes her out of the dungeon with the others. Despite living, her body is essentially one lump of charcoal by the time she leaves, and it’s implied that a lot of the damage is going to be permanent and soul-deep.

  • I’m always very reluctant to go back and change plot points, but I think this serves as a nice middle ground between “too dark, but Tess really learns her lesson” and “really light, but Tess learns nothing,” and I’m looking forward to the opportunities this change opens up. A big thank you to everyone who voted in the polls, and I hope the many "let her live" votes are happy with this one!

In the end, I'm left mostly satisfied with how the book is looking, even if I still find myself grumbling about certain sections that I would have wanted to edit another ten million times. I didn't spend quite as much time as I wanted to on the Emer'Thalis war scenes, for example, but I think that's the sort of feeling you're always going to have as an author, and as some point you just need to push the book out of the nest.

Anywho, this next little stretch is going to be a bit hectic for me, with a lot of competing tasks to complete. Sickness aside, I'll be doing all the various publishing things, which tend to be a fair amount for the week surrounding the publish date. I've also demolished my backlog with all this non-stop editing and really need to build it back up.

On non-work hecticness notes, I'm also supposed to carve out a few days for my mother to visit, as she is about to self-publish her first book (!) and needs some tech help. (I also should theoretically find some time to read her book once she lets me.)  And on one last and much less serious note, I have sworn a blood Oath to a friend to allot a few days around the 26th to play the new Zelda game (and we know how serious blood Oaths can be). Will be attempting to do this all without an admin week, but I will keep everyone posted, especially if my body does not figure itself out and get better in the next few days.

That's about all I got! Expect some incoming posts once I have a pre-order link, and otherwise, here's to a much speedier release of book 4!