General status and side stories

As I've mentioned in Discord, I'm rewriting Abyssal Road Trip for self-publishing.

The working title for the series will be Song of the Phoenix, and tentatively, book one will be Ashes or Reborn from Ashes. (Let me know which you think is better or if you feel neither of them appeals.)

Book one is being edited, and I plan to spend three weeks at the end of May writing book two (while still releasing two chapters a week, so no pause). The twenty-fifty chapters in book one contain lots of new content and changes, and book two will also have some big differences flowing on from the changes in book one. Major events still occur, but trying to add more life to the Abyss in book one.

Once I've finished it and am ready to publish, I'll send copies to all those who have supported me. I've been told of a distribution mechanism I can use for that with the email addresses from Patreon.

With the changes I made to the system/ profile in that rewrite, I will also look to apply those changes in a rewrite of Hell's Songbird and Chained.

I was initially going to apply those changes to the existing Chained and Hell's Songbird, but that led me to look them over before I resumed writing on them. While their writing is much better than the early Abyssal Road Trip, they still contain many lessons.

Hell's Songbird lacked an overarching sense of personal threat. Lesson: Hell is just too big to be an effective big bad, needed a more developed face to add to the threat. Given Isa's flighty nature, I'll look to redo it in a vignette style with many mini-arcs to ramp up the tension while I explore many parts of Hell. Meanwhile, the Concept of Luck will lead her from one place to another, twisting beings' lives for better or worse.

Chained has a pacing issue with the journey north simply taking time. I found that reasonable when I wrote it, but now I plan to compress it. I think it would also be better as a quiet spot after a bunch of action where I've already established Sideros' nature. The exploration of her nature I was trying to show with her behaviour to her companions, but that drew things out. As such, its rewrite will start much earlier, and Sidero will be up to her neck in trouble. It will include details on how she got her initial levels and the scramble to keep what sanity she could.

While I effectively finished Book 1 of Fluid, I'm unhappy with some aspects. The plot element with the elves finding out about her didn't work as I had hoped and muddied the waters. I will use the people involved, but there will be some new events and confrontations, as I'll reduce the scope and keep her True Song from leaking out until later.

Edited to add: I won't be stopping writing Abyssal Road Trip; instead, the rewrite will take scenes I craft here and either expand them or fine-tune them for the plot flow.