I’m back from my break. It was a good break and necessary. As always, I feel more refreshed, and I want to go back to telling stories and writing chapters. It could have been a longer break, but I also felt the desire to get back to work.

I suppose I’m a bit of a workaholic. Which is strange, because I never thought I’d be. I rather resent the thought of overworking. But if it’s something that matters, that’s different, right?

Hey, if you’re reading this and confused why it’s not a blog post, it’s because I have an announcement. I had the thought as I started my break, but I wanted to think on it. I have a new change I want to try out, and it’s this:

From now on, I’m going to divide each month into four weeks. Two weeks I’ll write The Wandering Inn. One week I’ll take off to rest and outline The Wandering Inn. However, instead of using the third week to write regular chapters, I’ll be taking it to write other projects or longer-form works I can’t stream or show you right away.

I wanted to let you know in advance of October, especially if Patreons wanted to change their pledges because it does mean fewer immediate chapters. But I hope it actually just lets me release many of the stories and projects that have been languishing. It also gives me more time to outline chapters, which tend to be the best ones (the recent Pisces chapters were thoroughly planned out which I think is a good example of that).

I don’t usually have chapters in a backlog or ones I know I need to write. But because I write so intensively for the next chapter, I don’t have time to finish other projects. I had a backlog, and I spent it to write other chapters—I will rebuild it, but I realized I’m unwilling to take time off to finish projects that need editing.

At this moment of October 1st, 2026, I owe a lot of chapters I’ve committed to. Oelnnox the Facility, Rickel—that is to say nothing of unfinished mini-chapter ideas. Believe it or not, this is actually sort of a new problem.

Hence, me wanting to structure my month, so I have a guaranteed week to work on projects. This will, in theory, allow me to make solid work each month on chapters (one of them, for instance, will not immediately be published; I have a unique plan for releasing it).

There are also even bigger projects which I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned, but you may remember if you’ve been a reader and Patreon for a while.

The Singer of Terandria Series is not finished. Book 4 of the series—Warsong—is one I owe readers to finish the series. It will fully bring Cara’s backstory and that of Belavierr herself to where they are before Ryoka Griffin meets them. I think it’s a great story, but I haven’t had the time to work on it. It’s frankly daunting given how last time I took a few weeks off to work on Huntsong/Ghostsong I burnt myself out so badly I was speaking in rhymes by the end of it.

There is also…Griefman. The superhero story which I have written, but is in need of edits to bring it to the standard I want. That story—I came up with it years ago to process my grief about my grandfather’s passing. Now, it’s time to finish it.

Other projects too. I actually had the idea to write another book in the Singer of Terandria series, following the adventures of Huntress Haeight. A novelette, hopefully (which probably means it’ll be a 500,000 word epic), following a winter-hunt from her perspective. The working title is the Beast of Laenglemor.

I just want to write these stories, but I will never take the time to do them while I’m focused on the next chapter. So this change is necessary, and I want to try it out—at least a few months! Anything I finish I hope to share with Patrons at least, so it may be fewer words right now, but they’ll be stockpiling up in secret until I release more.

I hope you understand my reasoning here, but I do know it might feel bad. That’s why I’ve titled the post like this. 2 chapters of TWI, 1 chapter of other writing, one week off, until all the side-dreams I have are done. I’d omit the one week off if I could, but the writing is just…hard on my joints and mind. I still feel bad about it, since I feel like I shouldn’t need a week off.

But a reader did just remind me that writing 60,000+ words in a week is a lot. Apparently, the writing competition, NaNoWriMo, only asks people to hit 50,000 in a month, and I guess that puts into perspective where we’ve pushed the bar. I’ll do my best to also write to the new constraints and keep the pace feeling good.

That’s what I’m planning. It’s a bit nerve wracking because it is a change, but I am excited to finally get some of those stories I know are important out there. Griefman, among others. And if we get one wondrous moment out of all the muck and writing, another great story—it will be something I’ll be very proud of. Hopefully new stories will bring more people to read The Wandering Inn as well. We shall see. Thank you,

—pirateaba

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