I found myself with more time than expected at the weekend because two seperate plans were cancelled. I used the time to catch up with some overdue writing. I’ll address that later in the entry, but we firstly need a little background.
I’ve occasionally mentioned that I write fantasy stories under a pseudonym on a well-known website. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not at a stage where I wish to claim ownership of these, so references to the plot will be vague.
Since my last update about the matter on 27 August 2024, the situation has progressed a little.
After writing 24 parts of my first story, which we’ll call Series A, I then posted an unrelated Series B. That comprised seven parts, drip-fed from April 2024 to February 2025.
In September 2025, I then added a surprise 25th part to A. I consider B to be complete, but I also thought A was complete at 24 parts, so there’s always the possibility of another.
If you’re still following that, good work.
With that unexpected time available at the weekend, I cracked on with two new pieces.
The first is a one-off story that isn’t intended to be a series. It’s also set in a different universe from the other stories, where genetic modification is almost as easy as laser eye surgery is in our world. I’ve been working on this for months to reduce the worldbuilding and exposition in favour of story. I’ve now struck a suitable balance, so that’s been submitted.
The website has decent standards of quality control, so there’s always a wait for approval, but I hope to see that online over the next day or two.
The second is a new series, which we’ll call Series C, and is unrelated to the aforementioned two series. The difference here is that I know where the end-point will be, whereas I kept writing A and B until running out of ideas.
The main character in Series C is travelling a specific circuit so the reader knows from the outset how many parts there are expected to be. This also more easily allows me to introduce recurring characters at specific points without resorting to retcon techniques. What the readers won’t know until the final part is that the character is not quite who she claims to be.
All I need to do now is keep up the motivation to write those parts without too many other distractions.
Gavin Cameron 