18th July Necroepilogos chapter will be delayed by one week

Hello all!

This week’s Necroepilogos chapter will be delayed by one week; this applies to the patreon advance chapter and the public chapter. Necroepilogos will resume as normal on the 25th of July!

My apologies! This isn’t a health-related or emergency break, this is because of the story itself. I had do this this once before, back in February, and I was really hoping to avoid this kind of break a second time, but my reach has exceeded my grasp. I wish I had planned for this kind of break in advance, so I could have announced it when I posted the previous chapter, but I didn’t think this would happen.

Now, some context, for anybody who is interested! If you don't want to read all this, no worries! The short version is simply that things will resume as normal, next week.

Arc 11 was a tidal wave, which I ended up surfing; originally it was meant to be a much slower, longer, more complex arc, swapping back and forth between three or four different POVs. But then Lykke turned up, Eseld clung to the POV role with every ounce of her strength, and the tidal wave rose higher and higher with every chapter. I’m extremely happy with how it all turned out, but it did involve pretty much every single on-screen character breaking wildly from my plans and outlines (and even some off-screen characters! People the audience haven’t even met!) I am very satisfied with the crashing of this tidal wave — and I dearly hope you all enjoyed it — but the aftermath is littered with some very interestingly shaped pieces of metaphorical narrative driftwood, some of which I have not planned for! Last week’s patreon chapter was originally meant to be an interlude, but when finished it seemed to fit better as the first chapter of the next arc; in retrospect, I can now see it was probably better suited as an interlude after all, since it was the final impact of that tidal wave.

So, three quarters of the time I would usually have spent drafting the next Necroepilogos chapter has instead been spent down in the guts of the story. I’ve had to summon things that weren’t meant to happen for many arcs yet, and cover their bones in flesh; I’ve had to draw diagrams and maps and a little chart of where everybody is — emotionally as well as physically; I’ve had to re-examine the nature of a POV I did not expect to write. And so on!

All this is to say that Necroepilogos needs to take a one-week break in the publishing schedule, so I can root around in those zombie-girl innards and push all the organs back into place. If I finish rushing out this chapter before I glue the limbs back on, it would seriously compromise the quality; this next chapter is going to be a fresh experiment in some new ways, and I don’t want to risk it being sub-par, or rush the rest of the necessary planning. You all deserve better than that.

Again, my apologies for this; I value my own consistent publishing schedule and I know many readers enjoy it too. It seems that the pace of my writing and publishing these days does require some more dedicated planning time than I often expect; in the future I may attempt to bake this into the publishing schedule of Necroepilogos, which is something I need to think about some more.

I’ll still be working as normal! I’ll keep doing my best, and Necroepilogos will be back to the usual schedule next week!

(For anybody worrying, Katalepsis is unaffected by this! Katalepsis is going ahead as normal, this is purely about planning, not a health-related break.)

Thank you all, for all your incredible support. I don’t like taking a break from the publishing schedule for these reasons, but I deeply appreciate the time and opportunity your support has given me. I couldn’t do this without all of you readers, this literally would not be possible! Thank you so much.

Elpida’s undead crew will return as usual, next Thursday! See you all then, back down in the tomb!