Here we are, at the end of another Roy Harper tale. A little later than I hoped but well within the length that I predicted when I finished my outline. I am pretty satisfied with some aspects of where I am and a little disappointed with others. Late last year I had hoped to segue directly from Fire and Gold into my latest round of essays. Unfortunately I caught the Dreadful Virus in January and it put me way behind schedule on all fronts and particularly on writing projects.

So, I’m falling back on my normal format and taking a week off next week. After that we’ll be diving into the wolly world of writing and looking at whatever catches my fancy. There will be at least five weeks of essays before we dive into the next round of fiction, probably more. In addition to the usual topics, I’ll be talking about some of my own projects in the abstract. Particularly my upcoming novella Burning Bright, which, for the first time, I will not be publishing on this blog. More on that in due course.

I’ll also be discussing fiction I loved and hated in recent memory, what we can learn from the wonderful world of propaganda and taking a wider look at publishing as a whole. Hopefully at least one of those topics will interest you.

In the mean time, a recap of my thoughts on Fire and Gold after actually finishing the project. First and foremost, I feel this story is rougher than the previous Roy Harper tales because I didn’t have test readers for it. Due to some decisions I made last year I did not finish Fire and Gold a month before each chapter went live, unlike the other Harper stories I’ve done. I used that extra time to send the chapters out to two test readers who gave me useful feedback on things like tone, comprehensibility and characters. There wasn’t time for that in this story.

If I do choose to publish the Roy Harper adventures in a more permanent form I’ll have to go out and get that feedback before I publish Fire and Gold. I definitely felt its loss while writing this. I also felt less invested in this story as I wrote it because I wasn’t as invested in the characters as I was in previous installments. Hernando and Danica were nasty people who were set up to get knocked down. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But it definitely proved a barrier to digging into those characters and writing them with the same glee as I do when I write from the perspective of characters like Roy, Lang or others.

All that said, I am satisfied with the way Fire and Gold came out and I think it’s a good look at the kind of thing Roy does day by day, and why he chooses to do it the way he does. Hopefully you enjoyed it as well. See you in two weeks.