Update 20-03-2023:

Hey Readers,

It’s been a while. I needed a little break from writing. But now that I’m being more productive I thought I’d give an update.

I’ve been doing research. Watching videos on writing (Brandon Sanderson’s lectures are brilliant), reading books on writing/world building/character development, etc. I’d started doing this even before my break. Which is one of the reasons I’d felt that VAME wasn’t working for me.

It was a bit of a tangled mess of plot and unfulfilled promise. And to be honest it’s a little bit beyond me to fix… at the moment. Which is one of the reasons I have decided to start on a new project. A fresh slate to test my ideas on.

VAME has been a wonderful little project while it lasted. It finally got me out of a rut I was having. It was a writathon story that got me writing prose without quibbling about planning, details and other aspects that usually ground my writing down to a halt. Which is what I needed at the time. However that did lead to the current mess.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Thank you for reading this far. I’m not sure when my next story will be published. I’m not going to rush things and there is plenty more to do in the planning. I’m also not sure what will happen to VAME. I would like to come back to it when I have a little more experience.

Old Message:

Hey everyone,

Sorry, this isn’t a chapter. Lately, I’ve been looking back at the story and feeling like it’s lacking in various ways. I’m getting to the point where I would rather rewrite it than continue adding more to it. This has been eating into my enthusiasm to continue writing.

There are pacing issues, unfulfilled promises, changes in tone, annoying characters, etc. And I know I can do better. It’s been sapping my enthusiasm to write. So I have decided that it would be best if I were to start afresh.

I will try to bring at least this arc to a close, but I may need a small break before I can face writing those chapters. Afterwards, I’ll most likely be diving into the planning for a new story. In the future, I may revisit this story, but that will be a project for another time.

I hope you can understand my decision, and I'm really sorry for any disappointment this might cause. I'm grateful for all the support and feedback you've given me, and I hope you'll stick around to see what I come up with next.

Thanks

Naoru Machina