Well, for those curious, I'm still not dead -- I'm not that lucky!
My mother has Alzheimer's, and it's gotten fairly bad here lately, with her having issues remember even such important things as her kid's names, and which house is her own. My sister was helping me to take care of her, with us alternating care every three to four days, but she was recently diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, leaving her unable to help any more. The whole burden of taking care of mama is now on my shoulders, so as you guys can probably imagine, my freetime is greatly diminished, and I have little to no time for writing -- even as much as I desire to and need to use it as a carthartic release.
As such, I honestly don't think I'll be coming back to this story anytime again soon. To be totally honest, I'm not entirely certain I even want to come back to this story. This was written as some sort of fantasy self ego/power trip, and it was basically intended to be some sort of manly wish-fulfullment tale -- and then it just got off track. Perhaps I was just going through a dark patch in life, and some portion of my mind needed some sort of self-flagelation as a carthartic release, but looking back at this story now, all I can say is, "Umu... It needs to be torn apart and completely redone! I really don't have a wish-fulfillment fantasty for being tortured, tormented, and enslaved!!"
Ah, well! /Shrugs. Maybe it was necessary at that time in my life to just help me transition onwards and forwards, away from those darker thoughts and ideas. I dunno. All I can say at this point is it seems to me that it'd be a lot of work to back up to where the story got off track, and then to have to rewrite it from there onwards, and my free time is truly limited at the moment. I really don't think I'll be trying to do such a thing anytime soon, so you guys can consider this little tale "done/dropped".
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
I honestly don't know if I'll ever come back to it and revisit it again. At this point, there's no plan for me to do such a thing, but who knows what the future might hold. Often, I surprise even myself, by finding myself doing things that I'd long ago told myself that I'd never end up doing again... I won't say there's absolutely no chance for this story to be rewritten, reworked, and retold, but I can positively say that there's no plans for that sort of thing at the moment.
Instead, when I had a little free time over the Winter and Spring, I used it to work on something completely different -- "The World Renewal Project". I've now got the first "book" written for this new series, and if any of you guys are interested, you can read it here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/42809/world-renewal-project
Currently, WRP sits at around 70k words or so, on my PC, and I've uploaded the whole introductory "arc/prologue" for folks to read and enjoy. As time and life allows, I'll try and add some more to it, but don't expect any sort of daily updates, or even any sort of regularly scheduled updates -- my life is too hectic to allow for such things.
All I can say is what I aways tell you guys: Enjoy it, if you enjoy it, for as long and as much as possible, because I don't promise anything more than what you already have available on the website here. Honestly, I have no idea what the future might bring, so I make absolutely no promises about the future. I mainly just write for me, and if others enjoy it, then that's fine too. If not, that's fine too. I'm just tossing it out there for the folks who might like it -- https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/42809/world-renewal-project