The Short of It

I'm going to post the DC rewrite to Patreon (public posts) up to the end of Book 1 before I go back and restart the novel on RoyalRoad. Then, I'll start posting Book 2, with Patreons getting as-edited updates and RR being on a timed release. Changes will mostly affect setting and some of the transmigrated characters, not major plot points. You won't have to pay to read the story, but I won't stop you from tossing out some tangible encouragement my way.

►► Click here for the Patreon Link ◄◄

The Long of It

It's taken me a while to sort out most of the internal naysaying that killed my flow with my "Divine Creatures" story, and to really examine how extreme I wanted to go while stripping away the influence from Michael Chatfield's "Ten Realms" saga. The story is mine (in all the over powered, too-light-novel-y ways), and the characters of my Divine Creatures are very much mine, but the setting he came up with is a fun twist on a lot of xianxia tropes.

That's involved setting things aside for long enough for me to let the emotional grumbles go and to really dig in to what are the classic tropes, what are the twists Mr. Chatfield brought in, and how much of that do I need to set aside to avoid taking away from Mr. Chatfield's works, and how much farther do I want to go to make sure my story isn't huddled under the shadow of his works, and how far *can* I go without losing the story I started with. That's a lot of "ands" to get through.

It's also involved going back to the story I was writing when I was first introduced to Mr. Chatfield's books, and the world building there that got put on hold when the "ou! shiny!" of the crossover story yoinked my writing time away. That made me realize that one of the reasons Mr. Chatfield's work resonated so strongly at that point is that we're both pulling a lot of the LitRPG concepts from the same cultural pools.

I think pushing more toward the xianxia feel is going to make me happier to write the story. The system of the new world is going to get mushed around a bit, but I haven't been able to unsee how every LitRPG System reminds me of Chatfield's, no matter how much the stories I've read (and written) predate his works (or my exposure to them), so I've given up seeking a perfect cleaving there and I'm trying to focus on just getting the writing done.

The first chapter isn't going to be substantially different, and we'll see how well I get the rest of it cleaned up in the rewrite. I'm also going back through and seeing what reader feedback I can incorporate into the rewrite without it leading to a complete scrap, toss, and back to the drafting table.

Pretty much, I'm expecting that you'll be seeing me working out world building in the rewrite.

And, in a week or two, I'll start putting out the original story from the world of Kestra's origins as a patron bonus. If people like it enough over there, I'll bring it over to RoyalRoad.

🙃