What relationships surprised you the most?

Honestly? James and Arrush. I wasn’t actually planning on it, and the thing James goes through of having a kind of sudden realization that he does want to pursue this about mirrors my own experience. Because James hasn’t pursued relationships up to this point; he fell ass backward into something with Anesh and Alanna, and he’s thrilled with it, but he didn’t do that anywhere close to on purpose. Taking a more confident approach, finding someone that he wants to spend more time with to actively see how things develop, that’s new to James, and I find it’s an interesting thing to write.

I doubt their relationship will be frictionless, but I’m interesting to see how it turns out.

In contrast, relationships that didn’t surprise me include Anesh and Keeka, because Anesh starting to explore his own sexuality was something I had wanted to touch on. Also Karen and Texture-Of-Barkdust quietly oopsing into being non-romantic life partners is funny to me.

Someone also asked about Morgan, Elizebeth, and Color-Of-Dawn. Their relationship is kinda in the background, but it’s still canonical. I think it’s one of those things where they’re three kids who have spent one of the most formative years of their lives surrounded and influenced by the Order. And James specifically. And so especially with a camraconda constantly asking for cultural justifications, polyamory doesn’t seem that alien or weird to them? They also share the bond of all being some form of Chosen One, which I think will be the kind of pressure that either makes them inseparable, or ruins their shared life. We’ll see.

A lot of the relationships in The Daily Grind aren’t planned. I don’t, like, go into a chapter with the narrative intent of making two people smooch. But very often, I write a scene and read back over it and I think to myself “these people are desperately into each other” and I’m just not the kind of author who doesn’t act on that.

What bit of magic are you most excited to show us?

It will come as no surprise that I plan to introduce more dungeons in this book. But I think what I’m actually excited to share is more exploration of the magic the Order already has.

There’s so much that they can do with the things they’ve got. Maximizing use and discovering new facets. Stuff like putting the red absorb powers into action, or figuring out what the hypnoplant does. I wanna spend so many words on going over orb tests or the intricacies of a teleport transit network in a way that is probably not narratively needed, but I’m gonna fuckin’ do it anyway because I think we’ve already proven that no one will stop me.

Why is Debt still hanging out with DeKay anyway?

Debt feels like he owes DeKay a lot, because she took him in and gave him access to a consistent source of structured information, when he otherwise had nothing. If she hadn’t, then JP probably would have still let him grab a ride back to the Order, but Debt doesn’t know that. Even after staying with them for a while, he’s someone who’s grown up in the minds of two people who are suspicious to the level of paranoia about a lot of things for different reasons.

So part of it is just that he stays with her because she’s the bad situation he knows, and not a new, riskier situation that might be worse. But also, he has seen James and the others, and how they interact with and accept informophs and physical people alike. And I think he still hopes that DeKay can change.

What dungeontech is most likely to be forgotten (discounting the chair that makes you forget it)?

Oof. I feel attacked by this one.

I’m pretty bad at remembering that the resistance programs exist. Potions are also tricky, since there’s a bunch of them and I like to add to the list in the document chapters and then I kinda forget because characters didn’t “talk” about them. There’s also a lot of small dungeontech that’s situationally useful, that I sometimes forget for the situation it would be good in.

I suspect that the real answer to this is that there’s something I introduced and then have already forgotten, that someone reading is currently yelling at their screen for me to think of. I’m sorry, the internet doesn’t work that way, you’ll have to leave a comment and tell me.

I do remember the upgrade ritual, the phone, every iLipede, the lamp, and most of the logos items. So it’ll have to be something other than that.

Are the chanters capable of individuality? Do they have personal favorite foods or songs or something?

This one was prefaced with the fact that it might be a bit of a spoiler, but I kinda wanna talk about it anyway, even though there’ll probably be more detail in the next book.

Yes, chanters are individuals. They’re just individuals who have had the exact same lives, lacking in meaningful stimuli or much in the way of emotional depth beyond despair. They move in groups because it makes them feel safer, and their method of communication is one that’s inherently communal to a large degree, but they are all still capable of their own personalities. They just need time, space, and a little help to fully come into their own. Even then, though, they’re never going to be able to completely escape the damage that’s been done to them.

Which is depressing, and a tragedy. But, like... yes, correct. This is the inevitable result of looking at another person and labeling them as lesser. Human or otherwise, on the scale of whole populations or single individuals, it always ends up like this.

Will the potion department be renaming itself Reagents?

There are a finite number of fitting words that start with R that the Order’s different branches can be named, and I feel like I can invent new divisions faster than you lot can come up with these.

Do the camracondas enjoy any video games? Possibly with the skulljacks? Can they use VR headsets?

Because the skulljacks allow for unprecedented control of artificial limbs, and the handful of engineers that are working on arming every camraconda in the building are dedicated to their calling, camracondas are increasingly capable of playing games manually.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Color-Of-Dawn enjoys fighting games, and is better at them than Morgan. Watcher-Of-Birds has a growing fascination with Dark Souls. Ink-And-Key and Paper-And-Words both like obtuse puzzle games and hang out to work through them. Resplendent-Pine-Smoke, Myri, and Knife-In-Fangs play Overwatch together, though the first person in that list does so through a skulljack directly. He’s not the only one, some of the humans in their group do too. Sunrise-In-Clouds also uses a skulljack, and is working through every MMO currently operational to find out which one he likes most.

Camracondas can technically use modified VR headsets, and they’re close enough to clothing that the ‘refit’ blue orb power lets the modifying happen. Without stereoscopic vision, it looks a little weird for them, but they have enough depth perception that they can still make a valiant attempt at playing Beat Saber.

Rufus historically has had a problem with communication, but could it be solved with shaper substance?

Probably! Rufus is held back by the same thing a lot of people in the Order are; fear that changing himself will mean losing himself. An unhealthy relationship with his own trauma, and the belief that other people need the help more since he can get by without it.

He’s wrong. But he has time to learn.

If you play a game with a skulljack, how does lag feel?

Frustrating, but not actually that much different than when you play with analog controls. Unless you’re using a really bad wireless connection, the lag would be between input and server response, so it would feel basically the same as lag always feels. You’d just know it a lot more sharply.

Will James’ polycule eventually expand to consume the entire Order?

Nah, probably not. There’s enough people who are in their own closed relationships, or are just aromantic or asexual, that no single polycule could cover everyone.

How much of the book itself was planned before you started?

I had a few things I wanted to do, and I had a lot of momentum from the end of book three, which I felt was a really good jumping off point. I knew I wanted to do something mean to James, I knew I wanted to do more with Harlan, I knew I wanted to do a lot of deeper looks at some of the dungeons. And I knew that I wanted to listen to James when he said ‘we need to put our magic into action’.

A lot of book four was me finding ways that the Order could reach out and nudge the world into a better shape. They’re not going all-in on that yet, but because of the specific nature of a lot of their dungeon access and magical power, there’s some things they can do almost effortlessly. And if a thing costs nothing, then doing it might feel narratively unfulfilling, but it’s not exactly meant to read that way; a lot of what I wanted for book four was a series of small victory laps where they got to casually fuck around, and find out that they were perfectly capable of fucking around.

And I think it came across really well!

Will the Daily Grind ever change genres entirely? Becoming something like an apocalypse or isekai story?

I have considered either alien invasion or zombie apocalypse. Maybe a nuclear winter?

Honestly if I ever do shift genres, it’d probably just be to ‘coming of age story’, and I’ll write a series of novellas about ratroaches and stuff animals and chanters growing up in the morning twilight of a new age of Earth.

Can infomorphs be ‘put into stasis’ and stored in a written or otherwise recorded format?

No, for the same reason a human cannot be stored as a corpse. Part of their life is a process, much like an organic being, and if that process stops, too much is lost that won’t come back even if the process restarts.

Does the vending machine have a search feature?

No, it’s just a single badly laid out menu, and it thrives on chaos.

What’s with all the food in the story? It seems like half the conversations happen over lunch.

Two things. One, it give characters some business to do, so I can inject motion into the scene a little. And two, well... I like food.

Partly because I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants and enjoy cooking myself, but also because meals were how my friends and I socialized for a lot of our lives. A meal is a great little natural space for a conversation; you’re trapped with someone else, but only until the food is done, and that logical end point takes a lot of pressure off. Food is also just one of those things that I think we often assume we’ll never be surprised by, but there’s just so much of it to explore. Humans can eat some weird stuff, and the idea of getting to share that with new friends who maybe haven’t ever gotten to eat anything is the kind of fun that I write the story to get to.

Will any of the fan created dungeons from this last contest make it into the Daily Grind?

Probably not exactly as written, but I plan on stealing a bunch of the ideas. I’ve mentioned before that I think part of what makes a fun magic system is a sense of literal interaction with the world, and some people had really cool ideas that played in that space. Which I am going to abscond with.

One person had a lot of technical questions about magic systems, many of which I’ll try to answer in story, but one I’ve chosen for here: can the shape substance replicate specific biological phenomena in real life forms? Things like eel bioelectric production or octopus distributed intelligence.

Yes. As long as the person trying to give themselves echolocation or the ability to see into infrared or whatever actually understands the biological principles at play, then that can work.

The thing about shaper substance that I think I need to explicitly spell out a little clearer in the story is that it can do a lot. It can replicate what evolution has made on Earth, and go one step further. But, if you don’t tell it exactly, precisely, what you want it to do? It fills in that blank space in your knowledge with components that technically work, but also hurt you. Constantly. Forever.

You can give yourself biological sonar, a second brain, an extra parallel cardiovascular system, wings or tentacles or eyes, whatever you want. But the farther your imagination gets from a stable working life form, the more work the shaper substance has to put in. And when it puts in the work, no one likes the result.

What’s the biggest change in the fifth book going to be?

I’m going to do a thing that I’ve been holding off on for a while: having the characters take actions that change the world, and having the world react. Specifically having random civilians react, because they’re the ones who these things impact. It’s hard to try to put a face on, like, statistical approval rating for large scale behaviors. But I’m gonna do what I can.

Do any characters have favorite bands or genres of music?

I’ve intentionally shortened this question, because there isn’t a world that exists where I have the mental capacity to come up with favorite songs for every character in the story. I can’t even remember every character in the story.

That said, there’s a few people that music is really important to, and they’re fun to talk about.

El likes the Offspring. She originally got into them because a friend of hers liked it, and then she ended up with a CD in her car on one of her original before-she-met-James Route Horizon delves, and she just clicked with the band. She associates them with ‘driving music’ now, and has a playlist of her favorite songs. Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace is her favorite album, but only for one song.

Keeka likes The Crane Wives. He listened to a lot of music James gave him, and he sees his own anxieties about the wider world and a potentially hostile humanity reflected in the spiteful anger of bands like Zebrahead or Linkin Park. But Crane Wives was the first band that he found, intentionally, when he started looking for music himself. The Fool In Her Wedding Gown is his favorite album, because it’s the first one he heard, and it made him look up a lot of new words. It also made him cry, but he doesn’t understand why.

Texture-Of-Barkdust likes Cake. Originally it was a compromise with Karen, on the days when they shared an office to work on finances. Karen would suggest singers like Aretha Franklin or Gloria Gaynor, and Texture-Of-Barkdust would suggest wordless free jazz with lots of horns. Texture-Of-Barkdust, though she didn’t ever openly admit it, was self conscious about her voice, and the skill of Karen’s picks constantly reminded her of it. In turn, Karen found that she couldn’t quietly enjoy the kind of jazz her associate enjoyed, and that it constantly drew her attention a little too loudly. Cake was a compromise, beginning with their cover of I WIll Survive, and spiraling out from there. Texture-Of-Barkdust particularly likes the album Comfort Eagle, because it’s a reminder of a lot of time spent working with a friend.

Karen likes Cake. For the same reasons, though she wouldn’t ever say it. She always surreptitiously skips the song Short Skirt Long Jacket, though, because there’s a line in there with her name attached, and she doesn’t want anyone to associate it with her.

Planner likes Kraftwerk, and has told no one.

I realize that I’m basically writing fanfiction for my own story here. Some of this might creep into the main work at some point, so be on the lookout for that I suppose.

When will The Daily Grind be back for public chapters?

In about a month. Patreon gets to be six chapters ahead. I’ve considered doing something where patrons get chapters faster, but I’m gonna level with you all, I spend a lot of time writing, and I’m not that fast at it. I don’t really know if I could improve my output quantity without tanking quality.

But yeah. A month or so. Pretty short break this time.

Can you make the story more queer?

Yeah I’m on it.

This isn’t a question, it’s the lead in to the end of this.

And that’s all for this one. Thanks to everyone who had stuff to ask, sorry if you’re the one person who had a million interesting technical questions about magic and I skipped most of them (Come join the discord! There’s so many people who want to talk about this stuff!) and as always, I’m so glad you’ve all chosen to come along with me on this bizarre journey.

See you when I get back.