(TLVery Happy [https://forum.royalroadl.com/images/smilies/biggrin.png]R at the end, but please feel free to read everything)
Hello,
it has been a while. This is the author. Obviously.
First, the apology. I don't want to justify things or push blame away from me, but there was a reason for my rather abrupt and unexplained hiatus; my external hdd on which I stored all my fiction drafts, notes etc (also some other things which are missed ;_/ ) suddenly broke, due to gravity. Not my fault for knocking it off the computer case, but physics'.
That led to a lot of frustration, and writing reminded me of the loss, so I stopped and tried to forget. Pathetic, I know. I restarted writing a couple of months ago actually, and now I have around 80000 words for this fiction.
This is the good news, because you can expect updates pretty soon. Now my thoughts on what I have: I am not really happy with it, for different reasons.
My writing style has some flaws, of which I became painfully aware. First, it has too much exposition. There is a lot of describing going on, some fights are rather well coreographed and stuff along those lines. But I feel like I could scrap 60% of the novel and would only stand to gain from that.
I don't really like my characters much as well anymore, and if the author says so, it stands to reason that this is a problem, I think.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
And last but not least (when listing the major flaws): a lack of perspective. I stuck with the protagonist, to let the reader experience and explore the world with him, but now I feel that there is something severly lacking. This also contributes to the former two problems, as the lack of insight into other characters makes them less sympathetic and it could be a lot more interesting to have someone else interact within a part of the world that I want to describe, instead of the MC oberserving or brooding over it and just describing it in detail.
So, in the end this story feels like a sloppy first draft to me, and is in need of a rewrite. Now, the bad news. The thought of rewriting and rescuing this dumpster fire does not fill me with happy anticipation. I do this for fun, and rewriting it doesn't sound like fun. Just continuing does not, either. At least for now.
I also admit that I had a lot of notes and ideas for this, and am currently in the process of recycling it into a new story on the side. With all the experience points I got from the first two attemps of writing a novel, I feel like I can defeat some of the minor bosses (problems) I ran into before. It won't be a pure litRPG, so no pointless calculating, excel-sheets and remembering/re-reading just so most of the readers can just skim over the character sheet anyway. There are multiple interesting characters and perspectives (although it has a main-character). And I wont release anything before I have a satisfying arc/first book ready.
TL;DR: new chapters ahead, they kind of suck (I think), I might rewrite or abandon this novel (or even just continue), and I will release something at some unspecified point in the future, but only after it has some sort of ending/satisfying arc. Can take a week or two, or half a year. Sowwy for being so unreliable.
Thanks for reading this, and anything I posted before and hereafter.