Hi!

Soooo I’ve been radio-silent since exactly one year ago, with Writing Goals 2024. And I swear it’s not (just) because of BG3 (ignore my 8 more runs and 1000 more hours since last time. ignore. ignore.).

Part of it is because I hit (most of) my goals!

As seen last time, they were:

• Read through all three Tzimayat books (The Godbone Blade, The Fading Saint, The Goddess Revenant) for continuity purposes in descriptions, nomenclature and events. Tweak all books as needed.
• Complete Book 2: The Fading Saint main draft.
• Complete Book 3: The Goddess Revenant parallel draft.
• Complete Book 3: The Goddess Revenant main draft.
• Extra credit: Complete Book 0: Curseworks rough draft.
• Extra extra credit: PITCH!

Alas, I get no extra credit — though I did try. I read through the first short story from Curseworks, made some of the tweaks I’d planned, stared at it again, and went ‘this needs to be completely rewritten’. Which is fair, because it was the proof-of-concept story I wrote before I launched into the trilogy, and Things Have Changed — as they do. I definitely need to redo the whole tone of the thing, even if the bones will stay the same.

And, having reached that conclusion, I instantly collapsed into a heap of dun-wanna-do-it.

That was around mid-October, I think. So I basically decided to take the rest of the year off to do sweet fuck-all, and get back into the Book 0 Redraft and start the Pitching Schedule circa 2025. Which is in fact the plan for this year:

• Redraft Book 0: Curseworks.
• PITCH.

Yes, very ambitious, I know.

Look, I find pitching to be particularly stressful, and if I crash and burn with it this time like I did when I tried to pitch the War of Memory series (which granted was a lot bigger and a lot lower quality than my current work), I might turn around and fling Tzimayat onto Amazon myself at the end of the year just to get it off my hands. Who knows. And I guess I should put up some stretch goals:

• Extra Credit: War of Memory Series 1 Short Story Collections.
• Extra Credit: Tzimayat Series 2 Book 1 Rough Draft.
• Extra Credit: War of Memory Series 2 Book 1 Rough Draft.

Any one of those would be cool. Doing all of them would be insane. But…

Uh…

I may have, in fact, gone a little bit insane?

Because one of the other things I was doing in my sweet fuck-all phase was…

In fact…

Writing feverishly…

To the tune of 624 pages and 765k words so far…

Of fanfiction. For that BG3 Run #5 mentioned back in last year’s feral wrap-up post.

Look. So I decided I wanted to memorialize the run by novelizing it. So I happen to have a copy of the script circa October 2023. So I took 2500 screenshots. So I have like…fifteen save files of different points in the story. So I have (as mentioned) done 8 more runs since, am still finding new things, have a hit list of stuff I still want to do in the game, and have been taking relentless notes about what to put into the story and what scenes I should write and what to fudge around for story purposes and and and…

It’s a pet project. My comfort reading for the next decade. I’m allowed to be feral about it.

Also, just because I’m 75 clipped dialogues into my collection of 250 clipped dialogues, with who knows how many other dialogues to crib from the script, and am only sort of near the end of Act 2 at (again) 624 pages and 768k words, doesn’t mean it’s going to (continue to) consume my life for the foreseeable future. I cleared most everything on my Goals list while also madly hammering away at this fanwank in the background!

I can do this.

Check back in a year, I guess, to see how much I have devolved into a desert-dwelling book gremlin.