The Chronicle of the Last Bloom

If you've made it this far, you've reached a real milestone, and I'm genuinely happy for you — and grateful.

I'll probably be stepping away from publishing for a while. Life is asking me to study, and that has to come first. Some of the characters' storylines are finished; others aren't. I'll keep writing in the meantime, I just won't be posting for now. I'll wait and see how the novel does. I hope well.

But before I go, since I've apparently always liked talking about the writing itself more than the marketing, I want to be honest about something.

I'll admit I've been posting more often than usual, mostly because I liked talking to people about ideas — not about numbers, not about growth, just about the story, as a writer who calls himself one. And I think that's clouded my head a little. I've started noticing chapters I don't love as much as I want to. Maybe that comes from listening to too much noise in the forums. I think I need to sit with a story the way the chapters I actually love were written — reflecting, not reacting.

Here's what I've learned from my time there: none of it is worth paying attention to. It mostly just feeds human vanity, and we all have plenty of that already. I'm not complaining — that same vanity is probably what earned me my first ratings, and got two people to follow the story. But it also makes you doubt yourself. Seeing stories out there with no head or tail somehow racking up follows and reviews made me question how much chasing those things is even worth it. In the end it only feeds the ego, and nothing more. If I had to choose, a thousand times over, I'd rather have readers leave a real comment about the story itself than anything else. That was the whole point of writing this in the first place.

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*I'm not making excuses. I have that same vanity in me too.

And that's where it hit me: time will give you whatever visibility you're meant to have. You don't have to chase it. If the story is good, it'll reach someone, and from that someone it'll reach someone else, and so on. And looking around at the forums — I hope none of them ever read this — I haven't seen anyone get to where I'm actually trying to get, because I'm someone with a dream too, and I want to reach as many people as I can. A little pride, maybe? "A person has to be understanding, has to be empathetic — but you can't be left with nothing either, right? What's the point of any of this without dreams?"

I suppose the novel is my way of saying what I think and getting it out into the world, without anyone laughing at me for it — a story that, beyond entertaining, makes you think twice about your own choices. I know none of this justifies how good or not the story has actually been, and it's not trying to. Even if some part of me wishes it could. I'm honestly not sure how to explain it better than that.

I'll leave you with the narrator now, for however long it is before we meet again — days, weeks, months, probably not much longer than that. He has a few last words.

THE NARRATOR'S FAREWELL

Hello. The narrator is a little sad about this particular goodbye.

I hope you enjoyed the story of the Sovereign Mother, the story of Ilyrisse, the story of Flora, the story of the psychopath, and all the others we've told together.

The narrator doesn't have much else to say — only that I hope this story lasts, and that it stays somewhere in the memory of at least one of you, forever. And that there's a place, too, for the narrator who's walked alongside you for these few chapters so far.

May the story of the Between be eternal.

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