Truthfully, I wanted to take my next week off from The Hesitant Hero after chapter 25, which felt like a nice round number. When I made that decision, I also planned for this volume to probably end before the 30th chapter. Both of those things have changed by now. I definitely believe I have enough content left in me for another 5 or more chapters and – as you can see – I am taking the next week off after chapter 24. The reason for that, well, I haven’t worked out quite a few of the details for chapter 25 and onward yet. How did it get to that point? Well, let me explain.

When I started writing volume 5, I had some ideas about where the story would go from here on out, but it didn’t quite fit the narrative all that well when I was writing the actual story. I introduced the character of Ankh as a way to make things more interesting, but I do feel that a lot of the story inside the dungeon of Redsan needs to be cleaned up a ton before it is actually good. The start of it, the core problem and some of the main mechanics of the dungeon itself are great, but I think it all flows relatively poorly into each other. Three times does a party enter the dungeon – at least we see three of those examples – and each time they get a little bit further in. I want to keep things the same surrounding that, but speed up some of the slower parts of volume 5. To complement that, I want to change how we meet Kimi again. Now we only see her as she enters the camp and then promptly goes into the dungeon to save Mirgia and his party, but I’m thinking of showing a little bit of her short journey with the priests of Owlana. 

A second thing I seriously messed up is the time spent on things. Not that it doesn’t work out well, but I need both Cobal’s journey and Mirgia’s adventure to line up in the end, and as of right now, I think Cobal hasn’t even gotten to Marsolin yet while Mirgia is almost done with the things he needs to do. To combat that, I want to change the problems plaguing Redsan and adjust the reaction speed of the Sahilid. This means that – probably for the first time since I started writing this series – a final draft of this volume will end up looking vastly different from what I’ve been posting weekly. I apologize for those of you who are invested in this version of the story but I promise that the core moments that truly matter to the story will stay the same. Mirgia will still meet Teddy and go into the dungeon outside of Redsan, where he’ll be saved by Kimi. The priests of Owlana will still have some real bad eggs among them that try to start a dangerous ritual and Ankh will still be there to save the day. And then we meet Mel and Rolin.

When I got to this part of the story, I felt like the volume needed a bit more. My alternative was for the party to head straight to Milinia from Morpezo – as I’m writing this I’m realizing far too many of my cities start with the letter “m” – but then the volume would have ended by like chapter 25 and that’s too short. With the large influence that Owlana’s people had on this volume, I think it’s time for some of the other deities to start showing their hands too. And some of the more eagle-eyed readers might already have some idea of what is happening here. I think that the tower outside of Morpezo is going to be more interesting for the story than the dungeon in Redsan was, which feels kind of bad to admit, but sometimes you write something and don’t end up liking it as much as you thought you would. That’s the downside of doing weekly releases and this makes me that much more impressed by everyone else who does weekly releases of content. Before I started this blog in 2019 I would just rewrite the first ten chapters of a story repeatedly. You still see that when it comes to my other stories, but because The Hesitant Hero came into existence from a desire to just put something out there, I am not going to stop weekly releases at all. My hope is to have this story eventually reach double digit volumes and just keep it going as a fun side project while I work on my darling. I know they tell you to kill your darlings, but I refuse. I’ll just polish that story until I have one perfect chapter and no time left to finish the rest. It’s all about what makes me happy, after all.

Speaking of polishing a story, I am still working hard on the final draft of the first volume with the intent to eventually send it to a publisher. I’ll be honest, I think it’s a story that has some real heart to it, but I don’t know if it’s good enough to get anyone interested in it. Worst case scenario I’ll publish it myself in the long-term, if only to make a dream of having my own book come true. The only one I’m trying to please is myself after all. You’ll all be pleased to hear that when it comes to volume 1, I’ve not changed all that much. That’s a lie. I’ve changed a lot, but much of it is in the pacing, worldbuilding and character interactions. The core of the story feels very unchanged and it’ll be the case that if you never read the updated version, you’ll not miss out on any important content. Maybe a little bit, because in the original of volume 1 it doesn’t mention that Mana should find Dionil, Abu and Sorda’Thun, but it only mentions Dionil. That’s probably the biggest change I’ve made. That and the way that Kimi’s prison works mechanically, but that once again doesn’t matter past the chapters themselves.

It’s early August right now and I’m dealing with some problems in my private life. My mother is currently not very well and needs to go into the hospital for tests and check-ups regularly. I’ll need to stay with her a few times here and there, so there’s a good chance that I’ll not be in the mindset to write a weekly chapter every week. I also want the tail-end of this volume to be good enough to stay mostly the same in a future rewrite so that I feel good going into volume 6. Volume 6 is where I want both stories to come together and I have big plans for the upcoming arcs. Some that still need a lot of work to get the details ready for, but it should be exciting. To give you a little bit of a sneak peek into what you can expect, I want to finally have the party go into the Feral Wildlands. It’ll be a relatively big expedition with a large cast of characters, so it’ll require some good prep work on my end, but it should be fun. As for who all is going and what their destination is, you’ll have to keep reading to find out. For now, I’m going to take it easy for a few more days as I work out the specifics of the tower outside of Morpezo and if all goes well, I’ll have that chapter ready for you next week. Enjoy the summer – if you like summer – and as always, thanks for reading.