NOVEL NEXT AUTHOR NOTE: Hiatus and Eventual Return to Iardyss
Hey everyone! Apologies for the long delay in getting to this Author's Note.
It's a hard message to deliver, but A Crucible of Light will officially be going on hiatus (though unofficially, I've been doing a terrible job at communicating and haven't updated this story in a long, long moment). A Crucible of Light was my first story attempt in a long, long time and the first one I've shared with the world. I learned a lot while writing it, and have learned a lot more since (and am still learning).
A Crucible of Light was my first story. A passion project I decided on a whim to share with the world. Originally, it wasn't written with publication or an audience in mind. As a result, I really fumbled my way through the initial journey and learned a lot of lessons along the way. The lessons I've learned:
1. When to listen to the market, and when not too compromise. A Crucible of Light found more success and readers than I could have ever originally dreamed of. It eventually landed on Rising Stars, and I made the decision to make certain changes to make a very off-market book a little more on-market. This included adding the System. This changed the feel and writing of the book in several ways, which eventually compounded and caused several issues as a writer.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
2. Outlining and planning. A Crucible of Light was originally planned as a sprawling epic, with several interweaving storylines and hundreds of named characters. I am still proud of the world I've built, but as a first time writer, it may have been too ambitious of a story for me to tackle. I would have planned the first book (or even 2) to be standalone and more limited in scope, with a potential for growth and expansion.
3. Writing multiple stories at once. Royal Road is filled with behemoths whose word count output seems like an avalanche. I, sadly, am not a behemoth. I ended up trying to juggle multiple writing projects at once (and, more importantly, posting deadlines) and burned myself out with the attempt. I am still writing multiple stories, but have decided that my best bet is to only be actively publishing one at a time (while others are being worked on in the background, at my own pace).
Before I end this Note, I wanted to leave you with the message that A Crucible of Light isn't being dropped forever, or for good, though I will likely not be posting another chapter in this story as currently published. These characters and the world of Iardyss still live in my head. I am doing extensive re-works and Iardyss will see the light of day again some point in the future (though it's too early to make promises of specific dates). Whether it will be a more traditional re-write (as so many have done on Royal Road before), or something a little more fundamental (more akin to a spiritual successor), time will tell (the final product will continue to evolve).
In any case, it felt wrong to just leave the story hanging in the void, so a final (for now) update seemed appropriate.
Cheers,
RM