Necroepilogos will be moving to a floating schedule; Maidens to stay as-is.

Hello, everyone.

This is going to be a long post (almost 2.5k words). I’ll do a summary first, for those who don’t need the full explanation.

Necroepilogos will be moving to a ‘floating’ schedule — i.e. I’ll post chapters when they’re done, rather than on set dates. This will mean less chapters, at least for a while; in the long run I hope it will mean more. Maidens of the Fall will retain the 3-on-1-off schedule; in the near future, Maidens might go to a schedule with no breaks, but I’m not going to commit to that right away.

Now, the long version. There is absolutely no need to read all of this, of course, but this is a big change and I feel the need to be as open as possible.

In my new year’s post a couple of weeks ago I briefly mentioned some anxieties about keeping up with both stories. Maidens of the Fall is very new, so it requires a great deal of attention, specifically a lot of forward planning and many editing passes per chapter. I alluded to the possibility of modifying my schedule to account for this, but I didn’t have anything in mind. That was not meant to be ‘foreshadowing’ or seeding the idea or anything like that. I did not expect this to happen, and I was not planning for it, let alone so soon.

However, over the last couple of weeks, in the wake of being briefly ill, I’ve realised that I’ve spent the last three months skirting a dangerous line.

I have to take a half-step back, somehow, or both stories will to suffer.

I am deeply uncomfortable with this! I want nothing more than to write both stories as rapidly and cleanly as I can. I’d publish every week if I could, with no breaks, and the idea of having to slow one of my stories down is painful. But I don’t feel like I have a choice. The only other option would be to compromise on quality.

So, what exactly is going on behind the scenes? I feel like in order to justify this change I need lay it out, from the top. This is going to be really long-winded, but I owe it to all of you, as my readers and patrons, to explain why I need to make this change.

So.

Part of the reason I started writing Necroepilogos back in 2022 is because I found myself with additional time on my hands. By late ‘22 I’d been writing Katalepsis for about 3 years, and I was reaching the point I could do it ‘full time’. By then, Katalepsis was mature as a story — I had a good handle on Heather’s voice and character (and everybody else too), I knew where all the plot threads were going, I knew the setting inside out, etc. Occasionally the story required a burst of re-plotting or extra planning, but that wasn’t very often. It sort of ‘wrote itself’. I was averaging 8k polished, proofread, publishable words of Katalepsis in about three full work days. Which was great! But I often had to leave a day in between drafting and editing, to let the material settle in my subconscious so I could come at it fresh.

I decided to use that time productively, to work on a side-project — Necroepilogos.

At first each Necro chapter was very short. It was an experimental side-project, filling that dead time while Katalepsis cooled off. Each Necro chapter used to take me a day and half of work, which left me tons of time to return to Katalepsis, no stress.

Necroepilogos grew in the telling, which I’ve since learned is something I tend to do. It’s grown way beyond my initial plans and expectations, and it’s not really a side-project anymore. It’s a huge sprawling narrative in its own right. On average, a chapter of Necroepilogos now takes me two and a half days of work.

This change crept up on me over time. It’s the main reason I switched both stories to a 3-on-1-off schedule toward the end of 2024 — I simply could not keep up anymore. Between Necro, Kata, and all the peripheral work like admin and correspondence with readers, I was working seven days a week, every single week, and getting incredibly stressed by any potential interruption, because I didn’t want to start skipping chapters or missing publishing dates.

Moving to a 3-1 schedule solved this problem during the final part of Katalepsis Book One, and then sustained me pretty well through the experiment with Katalepsis Book Two. Patrons and readers were very supportive of this, and I’m still more grateful for that than I can express. I cannot thank you all enough.

However, I have managed to back myself into the exact same corner, a second time.

This time, I know my limits. I’ve spotted the pattern early. People close to me have recognised the workaholic habit, and told me I need to make a choice.

Some of you probably remember that I promised an extra Necroepilogos chapter to patrons, because I had to skip a week in order for the publishing dates to line up. That was back in November; I have failed to deliver. Not only did I fail, but Christmas then consumed what little buffer I had, so when I got sick at start of January, I had to skip an extra week because there was no buffer, disappointing readers a second time.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned above, Maidens of the Fall is still very new, taking up so much of my creative energy. Forward planning, re-planning, extra editing, all of these things are consuming time in a way that I haven’t experienced since back at the start of Katalepsis. In the future, as I get all the pieces in place and the story truly finds its stride, I expect it’ll become easier to write. Octavia and the magical girls and others will eventually write themselves, just as much as Heather did in Katalepsis.

But it’s not there yet.

So, since the start of Maidens, I’ve suddenly found myself back to working seven days a week, even with the break weeks built in. I’ve even been working some evenings, just to make sure I can squeeze in all the forward planning. I didn’t expect this to happen. I made all my assumptions about schedule based on years of writing Katalepsis, without accounting for the unique pressures of a brand new story.

Over Christmas I told myself that I should see if this schedule works. Give it a couple of months. Maybe it’ll smooth out. Maybe there won’t be any need to pull back. I have those break weeks, right? I should be able to fit everything in. I should! This is what I do.

I then worked five hours on Christmas day itself. I should have taken that as a sign.

Being ill at the start of January has set me back so badly that right now, I have zero buffer for either story.

I knew getting sick would put me back a bit, but I was skipping a week of Necroepilogos, so I thought surely that’ll let me build more buffer, right? I was tempted to treat this as a one-off; I don’t get ill every month, after all. But all I did was take two and half days off to recover. Two and half days of being sick — of not working — ate away at the time I needed to build the usual week-to-week buffer. Last week’s chapters had all the time they needed, but this week? If I am going to publish both Necro and Maidens this week, I needed to fit 8 days (or more) of work into 7 days.

All last week I knew this was going to happen, I could see the tangled equation in my schedule. I started furiously planning how I could fit it all in, how to pull a strategic all-nighter, or work through the evenings, or maybe crunch one chapter up and make it really short, etc. That stress caused a relapse in an illness I don’t talk about very often, which then put me back even further, and made finishing both chapters truly impossible.

So I am faced, this week, with a painful choice — write the chapters badly, or cut one of them, after just skipping another Necro chapter.

This isn’t viable.

I didn’t take a break over Christmas, I didn’t take a single day off; and then two and a half days of being sick was enough to throw me into complete disarray.

I could push myself like this for another couple of months, tell myself I can handle it, that I don’t want to let readers down. Because I don’t! I don’t want to let anybody down. I love my stories and I want to write both of them all the time. But I made a promise to patrons back when I went to that 3-1 schedule, that I would, first and foremost, avoid burnout. I’m not burnt out yet, I’m nowhere near it, but I could easily push myself there.

More importantly, the stories themselves would suffer in quality. Maidens is new, and it needs so much extra attention. It’s so easy to make narrative missteps with a new story. If I don’t give it everything it needs right now, it might stumble and fall. And Necroepilogos, despite being a ‘matured’ story, does not deserve to have itself compacted down just so I can fit it in each week.

In the back of my head, I can’t help but wonder if this may have catalysed the problems with Katalepsis Book Two last year. Sure, it had deeper problems, but I wonder. Did running two stories at the same time encourage me to neglect forward planning? I don’t know. I can’t be certain.

But if I push this now, Maidens will suffer. I can’t do that. It’s my main project, and I have to give it everything I can.

So, what of Necroepilogos?

I don’t want to put Necroepilogos on hiatus. As a story, it’s fine! I want to make that extra clear; Necroepilogos is doing great. Narratively, structurally, there is nothing wrong with it. There is no internal reason for this story to go on hiatus. Nothing needs reworking, or fixing, or changing.

But I have to be practical, or perhaps mercenary. Maidens of the Fall is my main project, with the overwhelming majority of readers and patrons. I have to prioritize it first, else both stories will suffer as I start to trip over my own feet.

Necroepilogos must return to being a side-project — but not in terms of scope or depth or detail in chapters, because that would do a terrible injustice to it.

I must treat it as a side-project again in terms of schedule, something I write in the gaps between Maidens chapters.

Why not just reduce the number of the chapters? Why not go down to 2 Necro chapters per month, or a chapter every other week? Well, because I need to figure out exactly how much time I can dedicate to Necroepilogos as a side-project, and right now I simply don’t know. If I set a new schedule and then start missing chapters again, that’s just going to create more disappointment. It’s better to rip this plaster off all at once, as quickly and cleanly as I can.

This won’t be forever. As I mentioned above, I expect Maidens will become easier to write as it matures, just like Katalepsis did. Perhaps Necro will only go on a floating schedule for a year, or six months. Maybe in a few months time I’ll figure out how to make this fit better. Maybe the lack of additional time pressure will free up my brain to simply push forward with more Necroepilogos with no problems. If things stabilise, I will return Necro to a 3-1 schedule.

Does this mean there won’t be a Necroepilogos chapter this Thursday? Almost certainly, there will not. Will there be one on … Sunday? Monday? Tuesday? I don’t know! I genuinely don’t. It might be a couple of weeks between each chapter for a while. All I’m going to commit to right now is to place it firmly back into the side-project slot, and then figure out what that means as I work.

I know that readers and patrons will be disappointed by this change, especially those who are subscribed only for Necroepilogos. To you, I apologise; I cannot see any other way out of this particular problem than to take this half-step back, at least temporarily. I can promise that behind the scenes I will keep doing my absolute best; Necroepilogos is not going on hiatus, I will be working on it regularly, and I do not plan for this reduction in frequency to last forever.

I’m sure that some Necroepilogos patrons will probably want to cancel their subscriptions, and I completely understand that; you will be getting less story for your money. To those who want to cancel, you have my complete understanding, and there’s no hard feelings. Whatever happens, the story will remain free to read online for everybody, whether you’re subscribed or not. I hope you continue to enjoy it, whatever pace I’m publishing at.

I will admit, this is a little scary! I know that much of my popularity as a writer comes from my consistency, and this is probably the most inconsistent thing I’ve ever done. I don’t want to do it, but I know that any other choice will potentially lead to much worse long-term problems.

Finally, I want to mention something that I’m going to attempt to do, but I’m not going to commit to just yet. I think I’ve learned my lesson with making promises or commitments that I can’t quite keep.

All this is essentially a shifting of focus, to spending more time and effort on Maidens of the Fall; as a result, if this goes well, I might start publishing Maidens more often, without a break week, as I did during the first few years of writing Katalepsis. I figure that is only fair to the higher-tier patrons, those who are here for both stories. My intention is to accelerate Maidens to a more natural pace.

At least, that’s what I would like to happen. I’ll do my best.

Thank you all so much for your support. I know I say this often, but I really mean it; I could not do any of this without all of you, the readers and patrons. You’re the ones who make my storytelling possible, and everything I do here is for all of you. Thank you for making this real.

See you again soon.