Much Ado About Blades & Barriers
I debated a few times whether or not to write this blog. More than once, I leaned toward just putting up an announcement. But I try really hard to do as much transparency as possible on this site, for the folks who want to know what goes into writing as well as the people who just care about the stories. So in the end, I felt like this was a good chance to shine a light on one of the harder calls to make behind the scenes, as well as get a sense for what my audience as a whole wants.
With that pre-amble done, let’s jump to the heart of the matter: Blades & Barriers. It’s been a fun story overall, and it’s given me a chance to flesh out some world-building aspects I hadn’t gotten to play with before, but, to be frank, it needs work. While I eventually found my footing on the general direction I wanted the story to go, getting there was hit and miss, and it saddled the tale with aspects that detract from, rather than enhance, the overall story.
Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I’ve written before about how not every story works the first time through. That you have to be willing to go back, start over, and change your own ideas if they aren’t clicking. It took me three tries to get Forging Hephaestus right, and both of the first iterations were over 50k when I pulled the plug. Recognizing that a story needs changes is a big part of being a writer and allocating your time. If this were any other book I was working on, it wouldn’t even be a blip in the radar. The issue is that this one is a web-serial, which means people are in the act of reading it, so it’s not as easy to just pull everything down and start over.
Still, Blades & Barriers needs reworking. It has a few more chapters left in the buffer, and then it will probably go on hiatus so I can start looking at how to rebuild. It almost certainly couldn’t be back before Year 4 is done, and as you all know the serial aspect of this site is coming to an end soon. But I promised you the end of B&B, so it feels wrong to tear the first version down and then charge for the re-worked effort later down the line. The best ideas I’ve had for how to remedy that are:
1) List the new version on Kindle Unlimited. This makes things easy for everyone who uses Amazon, but it also pre-supposes that you use Kindle e-readers and have a KU subscription.
2) Make the ebook free on my site, while keeping it at normal prices on Amazon. This would be a way to get a free version available to every kind of e-reader, but also introduces a few more steps that some folks find bothersome.
I’m sure some of you are wondering why not just do both? Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t let books in KU be given away elsewhere, so these methods are mutually exclusive. Granted, we’re talking about a book I’ll have to rewrite from the ground up, so policies might change by the time B&B is actually ready for release, but I highly doubt that will be the case. Amazon has made no bones about wanting to be sole market for ebooks, and KU exclusivity is a big part of that.
That said, I’m very open to other options/ideas if y’all have them. The internet is big and wide, so I’d love to learn about other methods of book distribution if they make things simpler for everyone. Leave them in the comments, or let me know which free book method of the two I listed you think would be easier. I’ll try to weight the decision toward whatever works best for the greater part of the audience.
Now then, let me give some info to pre-emptively answer questions you might have:
1) All money remaining in the B&B fund will be put into the SP fund once the hiatus starts. I don’t want people to feel like their donations went nowhere, but obviously I also couldn’t keep a donation section open for a property that isn’t posting.
2) SP will not be taking over the Tuesday slot. I know some folks have their hopes up after Year 3’s schedule was temporarily increased, but this time I have a less confined schedule, so unless something drastic changes there’s no need to race the clock and get everything posted.
3) The old B&B will stay up temporarily, for those who want to catch up even knowing that the rework is coming. Most likely it will come down in October, when other site work is already scheduled to take place.
4) As far as canon goes, the same rule applies here as to the rest of the web-serials: Nothing is set until it is published. There will be some changes to the core of B&B, but luckily I kept it far from the SP story-line, so it should have no real impact on Year 4’s story.
5) I have no estimation for when the new B&B story will be available. Since I’m starting over, it could go in a lot of different directions, and there’s no guarantee it won’t need more work even in the second incarnation. I’ll keep you all in the loop whenever I have something solid to announce, but realize that this book is getting taken back to square one, so there’s a long journey ahead.
Hopefully that gives you all a good understanding on what’s to come, and where my mind is at in making this decision. If there’s an obvious solution to getting everyone from the site free copies, by all means let me know. My main goal here is to do right by everyone, to provide a worthwhile story for you all to enjoy. Even if it is going to take a taaaaaad bit longer than originally expected, I’m still going to see it through. It’s the least I owe you all after so many years of support.