<– 004.028 | Index | 005.001 –>
All of the following is completely optional to read. This is no narrative. It in no way affects the story. I’m mostly going to ramble for a few words.
Hello, thanks for reading.
Book five will continue as scheduled. No intermissions. Tune in next time for 005.001.
Despite that, there will be a slight change to the pattern in book five. Book five will be five chapters long and focus on Wayne roughly fifteen years prior to the start of the series. I originally decided on that course of action earlier this year when I started falling behind in my writing because of other responsibilities. So, in lieu of spending time thinking up and writing extra chapters, I decided on this interlude. As an added benefit, it has given me a good chance to collect my thoughts before going forward with the main story.
After the short interlude that is book five, book six will be back in the ‘real world.’
Anyway, what to say about book four?
First, despite its bumps, I hope you enjoyed the majority of it. Initially, I was far more concerned with the early half–the part within the prison–and feared it would be more of a slog to get through than the latter half. According to the comments, that was not the case.
In retrospect, it is fairly easy to see why. Too much combat and not enough forward progression in the Willie’s domain arc. I’m not quite sure what set it off, but I had a sudden desire to write a bunch of combat scenes and Willie’s domain provided a good excuse. If you look back at the earlier books and even the first half of book four, you’ll find that there are very few combat scenes and the combat scenes that exist typically are inter-spaced with plenty of non-combat things going on.
The reason for that stems mostly from me tending to skip and skim combat scenes in other peoples’ work. I find them less interesting than other aspects of writing and generally skim for major injuries or revelations. Yet for some reason, I decided to do the same thing I skip through.
Something I’ll strive to avoid going forward. Not combat scenes, but the lack of plot advancement during such scenes.
On a whole though, I did enjoy writing book four and I do hope you enjoyed reading.
Now for some side notes:
First and foremost, a sincere thank you to everyone who has donated through either Patreon or PayPal. I don’t make much through Void Domain, but a day or two worth of meals a month does lessen burdens elsewhere.
I mentioned in the Author’s Note 003 that I had a severe lack of time. That has been mostly resolved. Unfortunately, mostly thanks to Dark Souls 3, I’ve not quite caught up to my preferred ten chapters ahead of schedule. I said unfortunately, but it might not be the worst thing. Being slightly behind brings me closer to the comments of the currently released chapter. Feedback and other such things are easier to take into account when I’m not living so far into the future.
While I’ve mostly died down on Dark Souls 3 mania, I decided to catch up on a few other games I had missed out on. Not quite to the point of obsession, just casual playing after I finish the day’s writing.
From that, some might find this to be mildly amusing. Genoa is the only one described as having perpetual sunglasses in story, but they just looked so good on Lynn Cross that I had to leave them on. Hicks was a default character that looked too cool to get rid of. Eva was injured and after that mission, half the team was injured (I know, I’m bad). And yes, I installed a mod just for Arachne.
Back to story-related things, I’d like again to point out that a good amount of referrals to this story come from Top Web Fiction. As such, I would appreciate any extra votes in my direction. It is a quick click once a week and helps a lot.
And, like I said in the previous notes, if you like another story more than mine, go vote for them. If their referrer list is anything similar to mine, they’ll appreciate it.
Anyway, enough babbling. On to the trivia section!
– As I mentioned in the comments way back a long time ago, several of the demons within the prison were to speak a different language. Logic had them unable to speak English due to their long-term incarceration. Hard to learn a language that did not exist when you were locked up. I changed it because filtering everything through Prax-in-Shalise’s head was not fun to read. It dragged everything down. A fairly last minute change, but for the better, I think.
– Des was supposed to have a chapter or two of her own, as an inside POV on Sawyer. Something of an effort to flesh him out and not, as one comment put it, leave him as an evil Gary Oak (I still haven’t played Pokémon) who shows up at the worst possible times to cause trouble. Unfortunately, none of the chapters fit and flowed well with the rest of the book.
– Poor, poor Eva only had the point of view in seven chapters out of twenty-eight. Maybe that will teach her not to get so incapacitated that she is effectively unconscious for so long. Rumor has it that she is quite upset that Juliana stole the show. The indignation! I’m sure she’ll strive to steal the spotlight back once book six rolls around.
-I don’t know why I put reading recommendation in the trivia section. It started out as a trivia with the Discworld reference, but now it is sort of a thing. So here’s reading recommendation 004:
H.P. Lovecraft‘s entire written works are available for free online. Now, most of those are short stories, but that’s still a lot to go through. As such, I’ll pick out a few of my favorites. I actually dislike a number of the Cthulhu mythos stories, so if you already read them all, maybe some of these will be a bit different.
Herbert West—Reanimator — A little longer than the others, this is the story of a mad scientist bent on defeating the concept of death. One part might be racist, just so you know, but still a good story overall.
The Cats of Ulthar — Lovecraft loved cats. Like, a lot. Don’t bully cats.
Cool Air — The tale of a man whose swamp cooler broke.
The Outsider — The protagonist sees something a little 2spooky. One of the best, really. I enjoyed it a lot.
Nyarlathotep — An Egyptian tours the world, showing off fancy delights and ??? My second favorite HPL story.
The Music of Erich Zann — A man looks for an apartment building he once stayed within and, while looking, describes his experience with a viol player that lived there. Absolute favorite story. If you read nothing else on this list, read this one.
Stats:
Chapters: 28 (+zero Extras)
Wordcount: 114,258 (according to WordPress’ built in word counter (including Extras))
POV counts (max of one count per chapter (including Extras)):
Juliana: 10
Eva: 7
Shalise: 7
Zoe: 5
Catherine: 3
Genoa: 4
Arachne: 2
Nel: 2
Alicia: 2
Wayne: 1
Des: 1
Devon: 1
Irene: 1
That’s all, thanks for reading book four. I hope you enjoy book five.
Yeah, The Music of Erich Zann is definitely among Lovecraft’s greatest works.
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I particularly love The Mountains of Madness, and the one with an ancient relic at the top of a church. The latter has a sequel from one of Lovecraft’s colleagues, that goes along with one of L’s earliest poems, and they form a frightening trio. I’ll go find them if you want.