Hey everyone

Sorry I won't have a chapter out today. I will be catching up at the weekend with all the writing.

The reason for the delay is that in the MMORPG I play a large alliance threatened to siege my guild's castle if we did not accede to their demands. We said no, not very politely. A siege was then declared against us by that alliance. Most of my spare time this week has been spent co-ordinating efforts to prepare siege equipment and acquire materials for rebuilding, hiring mercenaries, and contacting our allies for support.

Meanwhile, the guild leader of our closest ally has been trying to de-escalate the situation, and correct all the propaganda and misinformation floating around. One of the guilds with whom we had a defensive pact turned against us because of some faked screenshots of DM conversations on Discord, and that took a while to set right. However, the de-escalation efforts with the large alliance have born fruit, without us having to concede anything.

Honestly the amount of drama that goes on in MMORPGs is insane. You literally cannot make this stuff up. And everyone is so serious about it, while at the same time going around repeating, "It doesn't matter, it's just a game." But of course, it clearly does. That's why we play these kinds of games. And it can be an emotional rollercoaster, but at the end of the day it is a game, and if it gets too much we can just log out and get on with real life.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As you can imagine, this gives me amazing material to put in my stories, but also gives me less time to write those stories.

And I have so many ideas – pages and pages of them. It's a real challenge trying to chose which one to start next. We are getting close to the last arc of Book 1 of The Seventh Spire. After that I haven't decided whether move completely to the new story, or write both The Seventh Spire and the new story at the same time, but do one chapter per week for each.

This is the first time I have been writing as I go, instead of completing something and then posting it. I think it's helped my writing enormously, and having people follow it, and expect regular weekly chapters means that even when it gets difficult, I can still power through until the words start to flow more easily again.

So, in summary, thank you very much for following Josh's story, and posting your feedback. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments if you are not sure about something, or if you think someone is acting out of character. Constructive feedback is always appreciated!

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