Life, Interludes, Artefacts, and the State of the Project

 So, as some of you may know, I got a new job recently, and consequently needed to delay the release of Roots interlude 1.

As of today, it's up ([read it here]), and as you'll see, it's quite different from anything I've published before.

** Interludes

The frequency of these may decrease--we'll see--but for now, for every 3-5 chapters, I'd like to spend an update to publish some supplementary material. The one just published is diaries and correspondances from the story's characters. Others might be excerpts from in world texts, or even just explicit world-building lore dumps. The story will be fully understandable without them, and I imagine some readers may choose to skip them. For me, they serve a dual purpose of letting me share details of the characters and world that couldn't make it into the main text, and providing (ideally--though not last time) a bit of a rest from the frantic work of pumping out the real chapters.

** Artefacts

One thing I'd like to experiment with in interludes from time to time is showing photographs of in world objects that I've constructed and staged for viewing. In this first interlude, I've shown some letters and notebooks. In the future, I might show textile works; wood carvings; etc, or even do entire interludes in the form of in-world music.

This is because, when I say, "I am a multi-media artist," I mean (in case you haven't gathered it from my choice of project) that I am interested in an utterly ridiculous number of media, and that the more of them I can pull into a given project, the more engaged with it I can be.

So, every couple chapters, I get to carve, or sing, or embroider, or make weird science fantasy props, and it's my book, and you can't stop me.

** The State of the Project

New job. Too many migraines. Life is chaos. Roots is on.

The next few updates, we're going to be aiming for once a month, rather than twice. If I'm honest, I'm not even 100% percent confident that I'm going to be able to consistently meet that for the next few chapters. Based on the data that I've gathered from doing the last three-and-a-bit chapters, there's absolutely enough time (in fact, I specifically chose my work hours to be sure there would be time), but between life and health, I am not functioning at full capacity at the moment. I'll do my best, and it'll have to be enough.

What I am 100% confident of is that by the time these next three chapters are done, I'll be able to reduce the work-per-chapter notably by re-using assets. The first big time skip of the series is gonna be done, and all the characters and locations are gonna look the same for a while. I doubt it'll be enough to immediately hike the update rate, but in time, between accumulation of experience, accumulation of assets, and accumulation of engine improvements, it will be.

We're still early days, team. Still figuring things out. Hang in there, and thanks for tuning in.