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So, Volume 10 is in the books.
Your author, Eric Fretheim, online as Fushigi on this site and on Discord, and as /u/ericthefred on reddit, has completed yet another volume. As I mentioned, this one has been a weird journey, because nothing really flowed the way I expected. I wonder if I will rewrite it eventually.
If you are a free chapters reader popping in to read this when you haven’t unlocked the preceding chapters yet, it’s probably okay this time. I think I can avoid the spoilers this time.
Truth to tell, Volume 9 and Volume 10, between them, aren’t anything like I originally envisaged, although I don’t regret writing them this way. But they have, between them, been a very different character than the preceding eight volumes, and I wonder if readers like it or hate it.
I’m not going to do a big Q&A this time. Mostly, because it’s difficult this time to think of what readers might be asking. I’ll just talk about the two Tianas a bit.
Spirit Core Tiana is the Tiana we know and love from the first nine volumes. She’s technically the ‘real Tiana’ in the sense of the main character who goes by that name whom we’ve been following. She will start going by the name ‘Sen’ in Volume 11, but she will be distinctly the one carrying forth the original main character position.
Amnesiac Tiana is _not_ Tiana before she died, but an imitation of her, a persona worn by someone who is in fact the same person as Spirit Core Tiana. And she will not vanish, per se, when Spirit Core Tiana comes back to her body, but… well, she will face difficulties in the process. It’s actually an important plot element, so I won’t say more.
These two Tiana’s _will_ be one person again at some point in the future. I’m not saying how long from now. And they will both continue to be characters in this story. You will have noticed by now, however, that the various incarnations are also tag-teaming their way through the story. That will continue in the next volume as well.
I’m predicting for now that I will actually end up extending this series to a total of 12 volumes. Mostly because volume 10 ended up much slower than I expected and I have too much story left to write.
Well, this is going to be all for now. Like I said in the last volume, Real Life has been brutal lately, owing to a variety of issues, and right now I’m barely keeping up just with creating chapters. I greatly appreciate everyone who has stuck with the story this far, and I’m looking forward to continuing on in this journey with you!
I had planned to insert a couple appendices, but for now, I am doing only one, because the other (a full dramatis personae) is not complete yet. I’ll put it at the end of the next volume.
