It’s Monday again. To be fair, it’s Monday every week, so that shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone, but it sometimes feels more headache inducing than other times. I’m back in the swing of things after a pretty decent May break and although my body has been betraying me every step of the way, I’m working hard towards the end of the school year so that I can have a great summer holiday. Having 5 weeks off in July and August is probably the biggest perk of this job and I cannot wait. Before we get there though, there are lots of loose ends I need to tie and I can feel the stress building up, which is probably a big part of why my body is betraying me.
So let’s talk, how are you doing? How’s life been treating you recently? Still finding the time to read my blog? I’m honored and also worried for you. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? Either way, I’ve promised to clean up the website several times, but contrary to the last few times I have actually been working on it a little bit already. Over the next month I hope to make it so that everything looks nicer and is more organized. It’ll take some time and effort, but then we can head into the summer without worries.
I’m working hard on my stories as well, I promise. I’ve been procrastinating on finishing up the first volume of The Hesitant Hero. I’m only a few chapters in, but I think it’ll be a lot more polished than the version on my blog. The story itself will be mostly unchanged, but I have a much better grasp on the pantheon, topography and history of the people involved in the story. That does mean that you’ll probably start seeing some references in volumes 3 and forward that will fall flat without reading the newer version of the early volumes. I can only apologize and I will try my best to give context where needed. But the first versions of this story were very bare bones, since I didn’t have a lot of things figured out yet. To give a very small example, there is a desert in the story that the storyteller in Marsolin talks about. This desert was never mentioned before, but now it’s included in earlier chapters as a bit of a throwaway. I think stuff like that will help the world feel more real and grounded. Or I hope so, at least.
As for The Necromancer’s Daughter, you’re about to meet Bardoc, a character that’s been bubbling in my head for a while now. Originally Bardoc was supposed to be one of my D&D characters, but I didn’t get to be a player for a while and by the time I stepped back in the player’s shoes I had different ideas. Bardoc is going to be one of those characters that has a lot more depth to them than you might think. I’m excited to see how he’ll influence the characters that have been introduced into the story so far and what he can do to support Kaylirr in his slow descent into his trauma. Good stuff.
I guess that’s most of what I wanted to talk about with you today. You can expect more One Piece on Wednesday and more Hesitant Hero on Friday. I’ve already mostly finished both posts so that’s nice for me, I can relax this week. Oh, right, I wanted to tell you that I didn’t write last Wednesday. I had a really bad headache and up until that day I had written more than 1500 words a day every single day of the year. I debated writing through the headache but that would have been stupid. It did break the streak, but I picked things back up the next day and I think that was a healthier way to go about it. I’m still aiming for 500.000 words this year and I’m still well on track for that. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 