Elessar Lore
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Important Update + Plans for Return
🕑 Added 2025-01-01 09:55:33 +0000 UTCHey everyone! It’s been a while since you’ve all heard from me, so I figured it was time to finally break the silence. I’ve wanted to for a while actually, but never wanted it to be a “yup, still alive, still going through it, still figuring things out” type message. It’s taken until now for me to have some concrete news I can share and actually be ready to share it, so I’m sorry if this is coming a little late.
Normally I’d get straight to the point, but I get the feeling anyone still paying attention to System Reset has a decent amount of patience. So I’ll put the TLDR at the bottom and first I’d just like to extend my gratitude to everyone who has supported me in my absence, and everyone who’s still eagerly awaiting System Reset’s return. The fact that I can even point to yall and know with certainty that folks are out there wanting more has been good for my mental and kept me writing.
So now’s the part where I get to the point, with some good news and meh news (and some unrelated bad news that I’ll share at the very end of this message). The good news, which I hope may alleviate fears that we’ve dropped this story, is that System Reset will be returning to RR and patreon! But unfortunately it won’t be now, but in March 2025. So it’ll be just a little bit longer before I can show you what I’ve written.
The main reason for this is because I don’t want a repeat of what happened last time. When I launched all the way back in March of last year I had no personal backlog and a very loose outline for the novel’s next chapters. I’ve talked about this before in a private post before, but the reason I came in with so little planning was because it was an impulse decision. I was facing some rough circumstances and was considering giving up on writing for a while when Krazekode convinced me to just post and see what came of it. It was a really stressful period of my life but it gave me the push I needed to realize I could do this as a living and I’m very thankful for that now. But it was very much a sink or swim situation and in hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised I didn’t rise above the currents.
There were a few lessons I learned from the experience that I think will aid me when System Reset returns. They’ve also influenced my plan for what that return will look like, which I’ll get into in a sec.
First, I learned that I don’t perform well under pressure. That’s not a good quality to have as a RR author with no backlog who’s facing financial hardship. Second, I learned that I can be very self conscious and perfectionistic about the writing I show my readers. I already knew that one to an extent, but I think in the back of my mind I always thought I’d overcome it, which I still haven’t. And the third is also kind of a no-duh to me now, but I learned that balancing working a job with my writing wasn’t something I was capable of. I learned a few other things really, but those I’m keeping to myself.
On a broader scale, my greatest lesson was the most obvious one: Basically, in order to succeed on RR, I learned that I’m someone who needs to feel sufficiently prepared. Ultimately, I think the thing that led most to SR’s hiatus was that I still wasn’t certain what SR’s future was as a story. Once I got to the point where I needed to start deciding things that would have an impact way down the road, I froze up, and the anxiety of owing my readers both content and satisfying conclusions only made me freeze up more.
Addressing all these problems are both why I’ve been silent the past months, and why SR will be coming back in March rather than now.
On a little happier note though: both the story and I are in a much better place than back when SR went on hiatus. SR’s audio got picked up by a publisher and shortly after that I received an advance which has let me slowly phase out of my job so that writing can have my full attention. And on the other hand, SR’s long term plot is a lot more actualized than it used to be and I have a lot more confidence in the stuff I’m writing nowadays. But I think the best news I can probably share is that I’m just a lot better of a writer than I used to be, so I’m very excited to show y'all what I’ve been up to lately.
With that out of the way, I’d like to share what’s changed with my plans:
SR Book 1 was originally going to be a chonker, as in covering all of NIghtmare. Over time, Kraze and I both realized that Nightmare has a lot more story than can fit comfortable in one book and we’ve decided everything up to the end of the second arc is going to be book 1. This second arc hasn’t been released anywhere yet, I’ve just been writing it in private because I wanted the entirety of book 1 to be finished before I serialize SR again. As for arc 1, that would include everything up to chapter 19, and the interlude will be moved to end it off as “chapter 20” rather than being placed right before like it was on my patreon.
I have some small qualms with some of the writing I’ve released so far, so a few things will be changing in revision/editing, beyond just prose. I’ll have a list of any significant changes when SR comes back, but overall it's the same story. So I figure I at least owe it to my readers on RR to put the current final chapters of arc 1 on there as they are now.
Furthermore, the reason I’m waiting until March is twofold: It’s how long it’ll take for Book 1’s completion and revisions + edits, and also how long it’ll take me to create an in-depth outline for Book 2, and to write as many of Book 2’s chapters as I can to pad out my personal backlog even more so that I’m coming back as well prepared as possible.
Some of the finer details and my exact upload schedule I’ll be sharing in another update closer to March, since plans can be subject to change. But the TLDR of things is: Right now, I’ll be putting all of arc 1’s chapters (1-19 + interlude) onto RR for those who want to read them. Then when I come back in March I’ll start uploading the rest of B1’s chapters on RR, with 10 ahead on patreon before continuing serialization properly this time.
Sorry for the silence, but thank you for waiting. Hope yall are looking forward to it as much as I am! ^^
***
Now, as for the bad news I mentioned:
This happened very recently and I don’t really have a better place to put this since most of this message was written in advance, but it’s with a heavy heart that I’d like to share that my cat, Sophi, has passed away. She was the love of my life and I featured her often on my patreon, so it didn’t feel right to announce my presence without acknowledging her. I’d also like to post a proper goodbye for her once I’ve processed things more and share all the cutest photos I’ve been holding back.
But until then, I’ll just wish y'all good tidings for the new year. It’ll be a good year for System Reset.
Stay safe <3
Edit: Heya! For anyone checking back, it's definitely gonna be the latter half of March that I return, or early april failing that. I got my chapters ready but I ended up having a lot more edits (both to prose and story) that I wanted to make, and I wanna make sure the chapters I return with are up to par. I'm getting real close though, and I'm very excited! Cya soon <3
Comments
Elessar Beverly
Happy new year!
James Faulkner
Yessssss, I’m so excited for this to come back. Happy New Year!
