Somehow, against all odds, I managed to get a proper job that actually pays a decent wage. I know right, that’s crazy. I’m teaching secondary school three days a week now. I have four classes with the kids’ ages ranging from around 12 to 15. As of writing this, I’ve had my introduction lessons and my own introduction at the new job. My first impressions are pretty good and I think I have a good chance of feeling at home at this job. I teach four lessons every day, each lesson taking 50 minutes. The rest of the day is reserved for lesson prep, making tests, grading tests and everything else that comes with teaching. On top of all of that, I’ll be spending one or two days a week at my own uni. I still have a few courses to complete, after all. I’m hoping I can schedule them all in one day, which saves me quite a bit of money and effort when it comes to traveling. My uni is about a 90 minute commute each way, so doing that once a week is more than enough. I have of course quit my job as a mailman. I do miss it some days, since it was quite relaxing to work outside and listen to podcasts, but it doesn’t earn enough to justify giving up an afternoon every week when I already need every bit of rest I can get.
Speaking of rest, some of you might be wondering what this means for my blog and uploading schedule. That’s also what I wanted to talk about today.
I started this year with a very lofty uploading schedule and that has been slowly getting less and less lofty. I eventually settled on a schedule where I upload three times a week. Mondays are reserved for either an anime/manga related post or something off topic. Wednesdays are for One Piece and Fridays are for The Hesitant Hero. That schedule is going to stay the same for the foreseeable future. Having said that, The Hesitant Hero is not far from reaching the end of volume 2. I’m very excited about the content that’s still left in this volume, but it doesn’t cover many chapters. I’m too hesitant to give an accurate number, but II don’t think it’ll reach 35 chapters total. That means there will be a break from when it finishes in early October until when I pick up with volume 3 in 2024. I am hoping to fill this void with some other stories when I can, but I have been struggling to write something good. I have one story I’m working on right now, and I like some of what I have, but it’s still extremely rough around the edges. (Not that Hesitant Hero is perfectly polished, but it’s definitely closer to a proper story).
So from October until December we might stay somewhere between 2 and 3 uploads a week. The Necromancer’s Daughter will still be monthly, and I’m working hard on the chapter for September 2nd. I’m happy about Danae’s story compared to older versions, but I still find it hard to write it in a way that gets the point across properly. I’ve got much to learn as a writer.
Lastly, I made a promise to myself at the start of the year. Before the year was over, I wanted to have the first volume of The Hesitant Hero completely revised and edited. By December 31st I want to have a document that I can confidently send to a publisher. So the next few months I will write a bit less to make time for the editing process. I do hope to participate in NaNoWriMo again, like the last two years, and hopefully get a nice draft for volume 3 going. In a perfect world, volume 1 gets picked up by a publisher and that’ll give me a boost in motivation to edit the second volume much sooner. I’m still incredibly excited about the future of this story and I hope to be able to share it with people. Mana is growing as a person but just like my own journey with mental health, it’s not always going to go in an upwards direction. She’s gone through a couple of traumatic events this volume and I’m excited to write how she overcomes the aftermath of this in the next volume. We’ll also learn more about the cultists and where the Crown Prince is at. There will also be some characters that have already been introduced in this volume that we’ll see more of. I won’t spoil too much, but there’s much more story to tell.
To all of those who have stuck with me through the last few years, thank you so much, you are my motivation! The only reason I can stick to my schedule and properly write my stories is because I know there are people reading it. Thank you so much and I’ll make sure to keep posting for a long, long time!
Hey, future Nick here. Well, I guess past Nick compared to who’s reading this, but future Nick compared to when I wrote the rest of this post. Today was the first full day of teaching classes and man am I tired. I managed to get through every lesson pretty well, being quite pleased with how things went. I activated my printer codes and promptly failed to figure out how to properly put in the paper. It’s not like I didn’t find the place for the paper, but after I refilled it it kept complaining. I’ll probably update you folks on my progress as a teacher, for example how excited some of the children got when they saw manga on the bookshelf pictures I shared with them, but right now I need a nap.
Opal Kaharis 