《Summoner's Journey》Not a chapter - the future of the story

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First of all, I would like to say that I’m sorry for keeping quiet for so many months. While I responded to some of the questions here and on my discord, I couldn’t bring myself to create an official chapter-not-a-chapter announcement.

Guess I’m a coward, but every coward eventually needs to find the courage to face his fears.

Summoner’s Journey is my first story, and while I’m proud of it, there are tons of problems that you, my dear readers, had pointed out in comments and reviews. Don’t get me wrong; I’m thankful for each and every piece of feedback you left because feedback is what we writers thrive on.

But...

(There always needs to be a damn ‘but,’ doesn’t it?)

...gradually, writing stopped being fun, and I can only blame myself for that.

The moment I created Patreon, the story turned from something I did for fun into another job. I had to keep up with a far rigorous schedule and couldn’t really take some free time when I needed it. Yeah, you might say I could have gone on ‘short vacation,’ but I did write nearly daily for seven months, and I loved every minute of it.

Still, deadlines were looming over my head like hatchets, which led to rushed chapters and a drastic drop in quality. I thought I could somehow push through it and fix what was wrong later, but it only got worse with each chapter.

So I stopped writing.

“I feel like this story is spiraling out of control.”

That’s a quote from one of the readers that I found, and that’s exactly how I felt.

Recently things calmed down enough in my life, and I’ve been thinking about what to do with the story. First, I considered removing the faulty part (that is, everything that happened after the ambush) and start from there. It sounded like a good plan, but then I dug deeper and found hundreds of faults in the early chapters too.

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When I reread my story, I couldn’t believe how stupid some of the characters behaved or how many things I tried to cram into it. Epic scope, epic backstories, epic battles, epic twists… I think you’ve got the idea. I’ve basically tried to do everything in the most epic way possible, but things just don’t work like that because you need to learn to walk before you can fly. And me? I couldn’t even crawl when I started writing.

So I went back to the drawing board, but then I realized something while planning the new and improved version. Fixing the story in a way that would satisfy me would turn it into something else entirely, and that was equally as bad as doing nothing.

I guess you know what’s coming next.

Summoner’s Journey is dead.

Killing my first darling, as writers like to call them, was hard, and I gave that decision a lot of thought, but there was no other way.

Still, I haven’t been sitting and twiddling my thumbs. Instead, I took one of the ideas I had shelved while writing SJ and began working on it, this time using everything I’ve learned the last year. And writing became fun again. I’ve even posted a few early chapter drafts from another account, and to my surprise, it received quite a lot of positive feedback, but I decided the delete the story and fix some of the issues that appeared.

Why post it from another account in the first place? Because I was scared. Terrified even. I know that dropping stories and starting new ones isn’t uncommon on RR, but I felt terrible about it, especially without informing you about my plans toward SJ.

So yeah, now you know everything.

Somewhere in the future, I will start posting the new story. I’m not going for a web serial format, as I did with SJ, but instead, the story will read like a traditional book—the first one should have around 350-450 pages.

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Also, no Patreon ever again. It’s a damn trap. However, I have a nice surprise for Patreons, who supported me in the past, but I will reveal it later.

What is the new story about anyway? Norse mythology meets Lovecraft in a magitech world, with a non-op main character and team-based combat. Sound familiar? It’s similar to SJ, but with more mythos, more horror, and a more focused story.

That would be everything, I think. I already wrote a damn wall of text instead of a simple announcement.

Thank you for reading and following the story, but more importantly, stay safe because the COVID thing doesn’t seem to want to go away.

And I’m sorry for letting you down. I truly am.

PS. I've posted this note on my discord earlier, and a few readers requested to learn how the first book was supposed to end. I will clean out my outline and post it there, in addition to answering any questions you might have. Still thinking about how to do it for RR, but it either will be a comment to this chapter or a new one.

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