Saga of Ebonheim's second season is complete!
This season was...a struggle to push through. It didn't help that after the Verdant Pathway story arc, I couldn't decide on a proper direction for this story (for this season). I knew the broad strokes of what I wanted to go for—some character development (or growth) and a bit more world-building. But I struggled with how I wanted to execute it. There was just too many paths I could go with, which almost made me want to roll the dice to determine what would happen next.
I also may have overestimated the effect of introducing a lot of characters and factions at once...there are so many pieces and perspectives to juggle, taking up Ebonheim's screen time. I empathize with readers who value a singular perspective in stories since they might find my writing a bit disorienting...and I can't do anything about the pacing either since it would've been a headache to rewrite all this stuff.
In any case, despite how rough this season may be in comparison to the first, I was satisfied with a lot of things—like showcasing other notable characters besides Ebonheim, expanding the backdrops beyond the town itself, developing Ebonheim's relationships a little more, and setting some groundwork for later arcs.
I hope I did all this justice! I honestly wouldn't blame you if you found these developments unsatisfying.
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And I also suffered from massive burnout. In addition to having the writing energy sucked out of me, the editing process was starting to kill my momentum. Fortunately, I managed to keep the weekly releases up while dealing with workload issues.
But fret not! I have ideas for the third season in mind already and will start working on those soon!
Now that Season 2 is complete, however, I'll have to take a bit longer break. Two months to be exact. I'm still in the process of editing Season One for an Amazon Kindle release (probably later this year or early next year). I planned to have it done a couple of months ago, but alas...I realized I had a lot more to edit since I'm planning on splitting Season One into two books, which means moving some events around and adding more chapters to fill in the gaps.
Not only that, but recently, my other story "Slumdog Hero" was picked up by a publisher so I'll be spending a couple of months editing that story as well. Paired with a full-time job that regularly assigns overtime...it's not a healthy mix for a creative person.
Anyway...I digress. I just wanted to explain the upcoming hiatus and also apologize to you readers who've followed this series thus far. Thank you all for following and commenting on this series!
When the story updates again, I'll be fast-tracking the releases to five days a week for a month before returning to its twice-a-week schedule. Look forward to that and thanks again for reading! See ya!
Zanafar