Schedule change + an update to benefits

Hi again. I’m here with an announcement I’m really anxious about making, but I think it's important to my long-term health and the story’s. I’m moving the scheduled releases to a chapter every two weeks, the rate my current writing speed can safely support. In exchange, once I start accumulating a chapter buffer again, I’ve decided to increase the early chapters on offer to all patrons. I’ll make those bonus chapters available as soon as I pull enough ahead to have them, up to a current cap of five.

There’s a lot of things I love about the format I’m working in! The way webfiction is structured differently from traditional novels is a better fit for the story I’m telling here, and its accessibility to both readers and writers is great. I can tell this very strange story however it wants to be told and never worry about fitting it into a marketing bracket or having a “take that, you worm” incident where some publishing company asks me to make Liadain 17 and in love with two slightly different beautiful boys. The regularly scheduled releases have even been good for my process — I get a lot more done this way than I would if I were just privately working on this giant series, with no idea what anyone would think of it when it was finally done.

I think I made the schedule a bit too fast for the way I currently work, though. Right now, it takes me a little under two weeks to write and edit a typical chapter. That timing, together with the occasional life interruptions, has steadily chewed through the big backlog I started with. Hence the delays you’ve been seeing here and there since I ran out, and especially since the holidays. So I’m slowing it down to a rate I'm sure I can reliably deliver.

I’ll still be working as hard as I can to make Nowhere Stars the best it can be and get as much of it to you as possible! While I can comfortably promise at least a chapter every two weeks, my schedule now should be more normal for a good long while, and I’ll do my best to aim for around three a month. As I start writing chapters beyond the one for the next regular release again, I’ll share them here with you. Patrons at all levels will get access to up to five early chapters as soon as they’re finished. Once that offering is reliably full, I’ll look at how my process is going and consider whether to add more to the higher tiers or move back up to a three-a-month schedule of regular releases.

When I launched Nowhere Stars, I was a bit restrained in my early access offerings — I didn’t want to fracture community discussion too much when I wasn’t sure how many people, if any, would show up to read this. But you have, and you still are, and I want a better way to thank the people helping me make this story than I’ve been offering so far.

Until that’s ready, thank you all again for reading and see you soon. ♥