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I stand here, at the end of Volume 12, in the same situation as at the end of Volume 11, wanting to pretend I need only one more volume to wrap everything up.
The thing is, I believe it even less than I did then.
This story is a learning experience. I’ll bet I could go back and rewrite it in half the words now, but I would be leaving all kinds of little tidbits out, and I don’t want to.
So I will confidently state that Volume 13 will not be the last volume, because I now have too much experience to believe I can pull it off. I’ve only now set up the arc that takes the fight to the enemy.
As stated previously, Your author, Eric Fretheim, online as Fushigi on this site and on Discord, and as /u/ericthefred on reddit, has a plan! I profoundly stink at following it, but I’ll continue doing my best.
Real Life continues to hate me, as I said before, but the feeling is mutual, so it’s okay. I have my family and my fiction. I’ll be fine.
I mentioned previously that having to commute to work rather than do my work at home (which improves my productivity, so if they had any sense they would let me do it) had done a number on my physical health. That continues to be the case, and you’ve seen the results.
What’s worse, although I am now already retirement age in any civilized society, and getting close to it even here in Cyberpunk Dystopia, I have no choice but to keep working. It’s not doing my emotional health any favors to have a president who keeps roiling the market and making my retirement funds shrink while his proxies go on TV to say stupid things like “losing money doesn’t cost you anything” and “people don’t care about the value of their 401ks” (that’s a kind of retirement account in the US. The one I have, in fact. And yes, there have been people on TV saying exactly these things. I really wonder how much longer they can induce their voters to swallow this horseshit. It’s impossible that anyone actually agrees with their nonsense, but I’m sure their faithful are still trying to convince themselves to agree.)
Okay, enough rant. All I’m saying is, this is why I can’t keep up the output I would like. But it would do my health worse to stop altogether, so I will continue writing, however slowly. I will not be doing the appendix I wanted to do though. After this, I will be publishing the first chapter of Volume 13. I’m going to press myself to output more than one or two chapters a month, but I can’t promise anything until my personal situation improves.
Thank you for sticking with me, and please enjoy!
