NEWS: Past and Future Plans

Hello! It's time for another news update as we head into the very end of Feast or Famine. After the chapter that was just posted, there are only two more chapters left in the entirety of the story.

When I started writing Feast or Famine, I imagined this as a slow-burn story taking 6-9 books to complete. That was, pardon my French, utterly deranged. I crashed hard when Feast or Famine failed to make a splash on Royal Road, and that got worse due to various personal matters that happened over the course of writing the second book and starting the third, which led to the massive gaps between chapters that defined this book.

I've always had a problem when it comes to series length, but in the past those problems existed in the abstract; my first ever novel was meant to be part of a seven volume series, but I never even started the sequel. Feast or Famine made it abundantly clear that I cannot write a story that long, at least not yet.

So, this book is the last book. Feast or Famine ends two chapters from now, and I hope you'll find that ending satisfying. It means a lot to me, and I'm ultimately proud of how far I've come, even if I have a laundry list of complaints about the choices I made with this series.

Some of those choices are not to do with the writing itself. Although the money was necessary for my survival, I regret that I agreed to the Kindle Unlimited deal and taking Feast or Famine chapters down from Royal Road. I think it hurt discovery, but it also goes against my ideals for this kind of content. In the future, I do not want my stories to be pay-walled like that.

So what is next? Well, I can assure you that I will continue to write for as long as I can. I have a story planned out, the first few chapters already written, about a college dropout who makes a deal with a talking cat for dark magic in order to spend more time with the magical girl she has a crush on, who also happens to be her roommate. It's toxic yuri! But it's also meant to be much lighter than Feast or Famine. As much as I enjoyed touching on many of the topics in Feast or Famine, I want to take a step back from the mire of gloom and suffering that pervaded this story.

I hope you'll stick with me. I couldn't have come this far without any of you.

When that story goes live, I'm going to change how the Patreon is structured. There'll be a free tier for Discord access, a $5 tier for advance chapter access, and a $20 tier to get your name below each chapter on RR. Existing patrons at the $3 tier will keep their price as an acknowledgment of supporting me when I needed it most.

If that story is successful enough that I can justify treating this as my job, I hope to start a second story in parallel. If that happens, it'll be under a separate $5 tier, with an $8 tier that gets both. Legacy patrons (i.e. you guys) will see both stories for the price you pay now.

It feels weird making these changes, because they feel a lot more business-motivated, but I want to make a living as a writer. I can't rely on just the people who go out of their way because they want to support me, I have to draw in more of the crowd who only join a Patreon when it offers enough "value" to justify the price. In accordance with that, I'm going to wait to post the magical girl story to RR until I have a lot of chapters on Patreon.

It's going to be an interesting time. I hope you stick with me. And thank you all, for everything.