Back From Vacation + AYEH Updates (Patreon)

Hey gang! I'm back. The visit to my partner's family over vacation was wonderful; while we couldn't see one of her dads, the other is doing very well and we had an absolutely lovely Thanksgiving dinner with his wife's family (and apparently some of them are checking out my Patreon now, so uh... hi, guys). I got a lot of spare time to read, relax, and do some thinking. I am feeling a lot better about my work and my life in general. So... yeah. That's pretty cool! Thank you all for being patient with me. I have some important announcements to make in light of all my recent relaxation and braining.

The first is that I want to do a rewrite of Are You Even Human. I realize that probably comes as a surprise to those of you that read it; AYEH seems to be quite well-liked, and indeed, it's an idea I'm very much excited about. I really haven't done anything wrong, per se, but there's a lot I feel like I can do better. Much better. And I want to. I think it's going to bother me more if I try to press on and ignore the issues and ultimately cause more delays than if I just go back and rewrite things. So... here's how that's going to go.

The first three chapters are going to be largely the same. I might touch them up here or there, but it's mostly the same stuff; I'll repost them with whatever edits they have in a big block, along with the fourth chapter, which is where the diversion will actually start to give you major new content. The main focus of the rewrite will be having Julietta and Emily meet Christine and Anastasia in the incursion scar rather than at the military base, giving me a better opportunity to organically flesh out them, their powers, and their relationships with each other while showing more information on the aliens and just a bunch of other really small things that have been adding up into a huge itch for me. 

So... yeah. Sorry if you were looking forward to the next AYEH chapter in the current chronology, but rest assured a lot of the same general stuff is still going to be important—those characters, relationships, and events were important pieces to the story, but they were assembled wrong, like a jigsaw puzzle being forced out of place. I figure since my Patreon is sort of an early-access club in the first place, hopefully it's not a big stretch to shuffle the board a little before the story has been released to the public. The nature of serial writing means I don't usually have the luxury to do these kinds of edits, but... I think AYEH needs them. It's a very important story to me, and I want to get it right.

The second announcement is just me reaffirming something people have been telling me for years: it's healthy to have breaks. Because like, holy shit did I need that vacation, no matter how unfortunate its circumstances. I am... not sure exactly how I want to go about forcing myself to take regular breaks, though. Some authors I know take a week off every month. Other authors are just faster writers than me so they can hit their quotas and still consistently have multiple days off every week. I'm not sure what I should do or how I should do it, and I'm open to suggestions. This kind of thing isn't something I'm good at.

Either way, expect the start of the AYEH rewrite Monday or Tuesday, and the Bioshifter chapter on Friday. Thank you all for your patience, and I'll see you then.