The Wandering Inn has released its first book in stores. I have seen it, held it, and so many of you have bought a copy, and we are at a marker for a long journey I didn’t think I’d reach.

I wasn’t sure what I’d write for this blog, because the hardest thing for me to talk about, in the millions of words I have written with so many characters people tell me are realistic or speak to them, is—myself.

I don’t know how to write pirateaba’s emotions out. I don’t think pirateaba engages with how they feel enough. Let alone for something as complex as this, which is my relationship to readers I have never met, this story, and ten years of my life.

But if I were going to tell a story about pirateaba…there’s an irony that today, I can tell you what this means with another story.

I missed a call this morning from my father. I was about to go to bed at 9 AM when I checked my phone and saw a missed call and voicemail. My grandfather had passed away in his sleep, and my father was letting the family know.

If you don’t know of him, I have written about my grandfather a bit. I keep my life private, but I once wrote a piece of fanfiction about him for his 90th birthday; the Depthless Doctor story.

He’s always loved fantasy, and I remember reading The Wizard of Oz books on his shelves as a kid. I’d go to the library when I visited his house, and play Power Pete on his Mac. He was a fan of Robert Jordan, which I only found out after I had also read The Wheel of Time.

Thus, when I started writing The Wandering Inn, he became a reader. I was very surprised, because I didn’t expect him to want to read my story at his age. But he read every chapter, and when he heard about Patreon, well, he never figured out how the internet worked, so he’d send me a check every few months as his subscription.

In return, I’d write him an email every Saturday, and put the latest chapter in a word doc and resize it so he could read it. He’d sometimes send me an email back, and it was how we talked. It was a good way for us to share a bond, and even into his late nineties, he kept reading each chapter.

As his health faded, he became less able to get around, and I knew he was having falls and needing assistance in the retirement home where he lived. The day came, this year, when I was told he would be confined to a bed, and that did feel like a sign.

However, this was also the year the book was coming out, and this part you may know—I asked for people to help boost the story so that it was a huge success. Not just because I wanted it to be for all those reasons of popularity and business, but because I wanted to hit the New York Times’ Bestsellers’ list.

You see, he lived in a retirement home, and he’d try to describe my book to his neighbors and friends, but web serials are tricky to grasp. He never had a book he could point to, and the list…everyone knows that, right?

So I asked for help, and I’m still not sure as of writing if we hit the bestseller’s list. But now that you know who he was to me, in brief, here’s the actual story.

Again, as of writing I have yet to get my advance reader copies of The Wandering Inn. I think they’re headed to the team—but when we were at the LitRPG Convention, we got ahold of a few books. I think literally five or so to be precise; the first ones HarperVoyager had.

Well, some of the team there sent me a copy of the book as soon as the convention was over, because they knew I wanted it for my grandfather. I signed it, wrote a message, and my mother (who is very proud) got the book out via priority mail the next day.

It turned out that was the right decision, because he got the book five days ago, a day before it fully launched worldwide. So when I was visiting the bookstore, the day after, he gave me a phonecall to say thank you, and I got to thank him as well for his support. It was short, but in hindsight, that’s significant.

He passed this weekend in his sleep, and but for all the little coincidences and choices, he might never have gotten to hold that book. I have a picture of him with it, and it is selfish—there is a life I will never know fully, and so many things of him that are his own tale I can’t tell.

But I am glad he got to hold that book and see my message thanking him in it.

That’s what the book means to me. We don’t have the same relationship, you who read these words and I, who may never meet you. But the story means something to you, and you have said so in the countless messages I cannot reply to. The comments and the support, vocal and silent.

Good stories should mean something. Often, I don’t feel the weight of what I write. It feels like someone else’s deeds, and I only feel negative when I do my job poorly, and a kind of relief when it is well; the ecstatic triumph is a faded memory in moments.

When I hold my book, I do not feel very proud or emotional if I think of it as my accomplishment. It is just paper and ink, and I did not do the printing. But when I think of the people who have read it, my family, my grandfather, the readers I have come to know, and the ones I have understood in some small way—

Then it matters. I could tell you stories of some beta readers, and at least, from my perspective, how they live and what moves them. I understand them only through The Wandering Inn and the strange confluence of fate that brought us here.

I am grateful for it, because it has made my life better in every way. It is the only adventure wanted, and here we are.

So, to my grandfather, thank you. He passed away nearing a century, and it is not a huge, gaping wound in my chest or even a sudden, sharp incision because I knew it was coming, just not when. It’s just a part of me, changing now I know he’s gone and we won’t talk again. I still shed tears, and I will still think of him in the coming days, months, and years. For the rest of my life, I hope.

That’s legacy. That’s what a life means, and so thank you as well, for the piece you can also claim in my story. The book isn’t the end or the beginning. It’s a marker on that long, winding road in the darkness, that glows like fire in our memories. A wondrous beacon when we’re uncertain. Or just a piece of paper and ink that money can buy, if it means nothing to you.

I know what it means to me. Thanks for reading,

—pirateaba