June 21 Update

"You wouldn't want to look at an old woman like me, right...?"

I don't think even a god could make Izumi wear bikini.

How's everybody doing? Enjoying the sun?

I was hoping I'd be posting about a new project at this point, but it looks like there was too much wishful thinking involved. 

I tweeted earlier I have not just one but two works I'd like to take to completion before moving forward with the 7th part of A Hero Past the 25th. 

One of them is coming along quite nicely, whereas the other one is not... It turned out to take more attention and effort than I imagined. At times, I even began to doubt if it was worth the hassle at all, and if it weren't better to just drop the thing altogether. But, I still believe it's a cool thing and you'll enjoy it, and that should make it worth the struggle.

What is that project, when and how will it be published—well, all of that is still a subject to change, so I'm going to have to ask for your patience once again.

Speaking of wishful thinking, I'm still aiming for August launch with Verse 7, despite everything. September in the worst case. The first draft is completed, I'm editing it now. 

It's a fairly straightforward story, nothing as complex as Verse 6. No elaborate side plots and social patterns to worry about, so I'm not anticipating huge technical headaches there. The trouble is in the story itself. It's a big game changer, in many ways.  Not everybody is gonna love it.

But yeah, I can't say anything about that either at this stage. Total silence.

It's frustrating for me, for you, but you'll be in for a lot of surprises. Eventually.

At any rate, thank you for your continued support.

I can't stress how much it means to me.

The first book of AHP25 has crossed 500 followers on Royal Road. The All Songs-page has 300 too. That's pretty great. But how I didn't put everything on the same page from the start gets more and more awkward by the day. 

But could anyone have predicted what this story would spiral into 3 years ago? Not me. 

If I were smart, I'd probably delete the first three fiction pages and repost them all in one, like it is on Scribblehub. There would be a good chance to enter the trending list and get more followers that way too. But unfortunately, I'm not smart, and it's such a pain in the ass, I don't feel like going through that now. 

It is what it is. Sorry.

In a way, I think the way the story is spread now also works in our favor. 

It filters the less interested, less attentive readers. I had a nightmare once, where the story really blew up and I suddenly had thousands of followers on Twitter, dozens of people asking me about the plot, like "this part sucked", "why did you write this instead of that?", "please change this and that". Every effort at answering was only met with more arguments. It was a nightmare. I woke up in cold sweat and was like, "thank god my works are not popular!"

I can focus on actually making them now.

Next time, I will hopefully have something amazing to show.

Until then, stay safe and don't eat too much ice cream.

See you!