May Monthly Update | Patreon

This is a crosspost of the May Monthly Update that was posted for all members on my Patreon. Posts archived here will always be ones that are free on my Patreon, and never feature exclusive paid content.

Hey all! It's been another month, so welcome to the May monthly update! As always, we're going to talk about what's been done on the Patreon this last month, and what you have to look forward to in the month ahead.

First of all, in last month's post, I said that my plans were to make this month's drop both a new chapter of The Gaia Machine, and a related side story from that world. Unfortunately, as of today, the only piece in this drop was the new chapter. I'm sorry I wasn't able to fully deliver on that. There was a combination of issues, mainly the fact that neither of my drafts for side stories ended up being long enough to quantify a piece of their own, so they both got folded into the fourth chapter, which I had planned to just finish ahead of schedule and do a double-chapter drop for April. As it turns out, worldbuilding two chapters independently of each other while also maintaining consistency is a lot of work. In the future, I won't try to do multiple chapters of one story in a single drop (barring some specific circumstances that may call for it). I am technically ahead of schedule on this chapter however, so now my plan is for Chapter 4 to be a bonus drop about a week from now! This won't conflict with the end of the month, I'll still have a new chapter for the end of May, but this bonus drop will replace whatever second piece may have been slotted for May. I'll be putting together materials and prepping drafts so that when June rolls around, I'll be able to start releasing another work alongside The Gaia Machine. I appreciate your patience and understanding while I learn to manage all of the intricacies of scheduling.

On the note of this month's drop though, Chapter 3 of The Gaia Machine is out now! I have it on good word from my beta readers that this one is pretty good, I felt mixed about it when writing but the response from them definitely bolstered my opinion of it. Hopefully it gives it a bit of a sneak peek into the kinds of antics that may be explored later on as we join Amelia and Jody on more adventures. On the supporter-only May Bonus Content post, I'll be sharing concept art of this chapter's mechanized enemy, The Sentry, and talking about my process when designing machines in the world of The Gaia Machine.

I already mentioned that May is going to have a bonus drop earlier in the month, putting Chapter 4 out there into the world, but I will also have Chapter 5 out by the end of the month, as per usual. I already have the entirety of Chapter 4 outlined, it just needs to be drafted out, which is the longest step. Then I can pass it onto my beta readers while I move on to outlining Chapter 5, and hopefully that will have some strong progress down before I even have to start implementing reader feedback for Chapter 4. Given this strange back-and-forth of scheduling between April and May, it'll be just updates for The Gaia Machine until June, where I'll add in another work to publish a new chapter of each month! Like I've mentioned in the past, it won't be a serialization in the same open-ended way that The Gaia Machine is; it'll be a predefined story with a path and an ending entirely planned out beforehand, and each month will simply be a pre-release chapter drop leading up to the story's finished state, where it'll be available to purchase on the shop and by-the-chapter for supporters. These types of releases on the shop are planned to include both PDF and epub formats, for the convenience of the reader and choosing your own method to read. That's obviously a good ways in the future, though! Just look forward to more of The Gaia Machine over the next few months, and other works coming in the next few months!

Other than that, it's business as usual! The Gaia Machine is coming along smoothly, I've been making more lore documents for myself to help keep track of everything, like a map for new locations and a note giving a brief anecdote about each. As I mentioned, Chapter 4 is outlined, I'm selecting an idea for Chapter 5, and some of the behind-the-scenes worldbuilding that I'm putting together is informing ideas for later adventures that may not appear for a while. We're starting small, but there's a lot of world out there, way more than you could guess. We’ll never see all of it, but I want to share as much as I possibly can, so I hope you're along for the ride!

With that, I'll close out this month's update. Thank you so much for sticking around through the mild confusion of getting this whole thing rolling. I'm looking forward to sharing more writing with all of you over the coming months and years!

Thanks for reading!
~ Alex Amelia Pine