Hello everyone who has made it this far, thank you! Writing Undying Emperor continues to be enjoyable for me, allowing me to move between styles and structures to challenge myself while exploring the world and characters. For Act 5 I wanted to see what I could do with a split timeline but better than I did in Act 2. I wanted to take advantage of future knowledge to throw curve balls and surprises, attempting to take advantage of what might be perceived as low stakes to surprise and develop the intrigue. Unfortunately, I did have several people say that they felt the pace was slower than they would have liked.

I'm honestly not exactly sure what the failure point was. Perhaps the ratio of time at the feast to time in the war was too even? Maybe I didn't hint well enough that something would matter at the feast? The overall structure of the story already takes for granted that Lucius survives and rises, leaving the tension and surprises to the realm of "how though?", which I know causes a large amount of potential readers to check out very early but that's not the type of writing decision that can be "fixed", it just is what it is.

Going forward, I'll say that there are going to start being a few more jumps in time. Act 6 might feel almost episodic because it will be about the fall out from the attempted coup playing out over a good deal of time, not a specific war campaign of chasing an army through the countryside. There are many aspects that need literal time to develop. Future plot arcs will happen quickly, others might involve entire years skipped over. Such is the tale of a man's life.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I hope you will come along for me in Act 5.5 as I attempt a more intimate and thoughtful style of writing, exploring the writings in Leomund's journal during Act 5. I didn't want to undercut the final grieving over Nikolai but such a scene would have ground Act 5 to a screeching halt if given the time I feel it deserves. This will also give me an opportunity to explore certain aspects of the world that have been taken for granted thus far in the story. I expect it to be relatively short, like the other side stories, and soon resume Lucius' story directly.

There is at least one revelation that could be guessed at this point, but it seems that so far nobody has. The twists that did happen, were they satisfying surprises?

Undying Emperor will resume next Monday with Leomund's Journal. If any of you are interested in a more direct discussion forum, that is available through my book club (link is in the notes but for now, I let the link expire weekly)

Lastly, while I appreciate positive reviews and they keep me motivated to keep producing, I am always interested in hearing about my short comings because they give me an avenue of improvement beyond mere experimentation. And, thank you for all the recent comments.