#realistically if mallory & mount does well

[not-poignant]

Hi, Pia, would you mind sharing a little bit information about your current and future or maybe future projects? Like M&M, the Ef+Gary fic and Daemonos?

Only if youre ok with doing so tho. Thanks x

Hi anon!

There's actually a Mallory & Mount tag already set up so all the posts I've made about it (and there's quite a few!) can be checked out if you scroll down.

There's also an AU fic already that introduces you to the characters here, called Three Choices :D

I'm not comfortable talking in too much detail about the Ef/Gary fic until I know more about it, because I don't like locking things down until I have more, however there's already a playlist, and the title will be Underline the Black. I've said here and elsewhere that it will be omegaverse, and feature Efnisien being sent to a facility to be rehabilitated as an omega. I posted an excerpt the other day in the Discord so I'll post that here too:

Red galaxies fired beneath Efnisien’s eyelids. He was aware of pain all over and thought for a moment he was back on Crielle’s metal table, and he took a breath and held it despite the pain in his chest and his ribs, like he’d been beaten. He was no stranger to that either, and a perverse pride flowed through him, because he was alive, because he wasn’t whining like some bitch omega.

If I go ahead with Underline the Black, which is looking more and more likely, it won't start until after Falling Falling Stars has finished.

Daemonos is literally a project that's 5-10 years away (and with the cancer I have, I might not even be alive then - though here's hoping), it's coming after Mallory & Mount, so aside from a playlist, and like two posts, I'm not really comfortable saying much more than that. It'll focus on demonolatry, but if I say much more that's basically giving away a plot, and I have sadly had people steal my plots before, so I'm just...not really prepared to give much by the way of details, especially since it's so far away in the grand scheme of things that I might get interested in a new project between then and now, and it may never get written!

These days I'm a bit more wary about talking about projects in too much detail if they're like half a decade away, or alternatively, could be spoilery without me realising (i.e. a detail I decide is fine to reveal now, could end up being really handy as a spoiler later on! The Ice Plague went through huge huge changes from concept to execution as well, and me saying 'I'm going to do this' and then doing something completely different risks letting people down! So while I do like talking about future projects, we're talking about a timeline so far off into the future I'm not sure if I'll even still be writing at all, and it becomes more of an existential exercise than a fun one lol)

But hopefully that helps!

[not-poignant]

how does it feel to be done with (the main) fae tales verse as far, as far as writing goes? is mallory and mount going forward or do you have other plans? :o

It still doesn't really feel real honestly! I don't think it will until like we all get to experience the end of the canon together? Right now I kind of feel like I'm in a holding pattern. :D

I felt sort of sad that it was ending a while back, probably a year ago. And then I felt kind of relieved too, because The Ice Plague has had...a lot of teething issues re: dropping popularity and just general engagement (it's still good! But it's just...it will never be like Game Theory or The Court of Five Thrones, and book 3 will never be like book 2 and that wasn't like book 1).

I've been doing Mallory & Mount worldbuilding but I actually haven't written anything yet and I don't think I will for another couple of months, which doesn't bode well for launching M&M straight after Fae Tales. Because I'll need a buffer of chapters for that story. Realistically speaking I'll probably have to maintain the Patreon with a Gary/Efnisien omegaverse AU, while I write buffer chapters.

Some of the lag is just that the worldbuilding is much more complicated (new days of the week, new names for months, new names for currency, new values of currency, inventing an entirely new language, drawing a world map, etc.), and some if it is that I just actually think I need a break from really intense, complicated writing.

Some of it is also just fear that it will do badly. Logistically in 2022 the Patreon does increasingly worse every single month, and it's been that way for 8 months. By the time Fae Tales is finished, I think I'll be looking at a year of downward trending (after 7 years of only upward trending). It's quite a blow, even though there are understandable economic reasons for it, and it has me questioning if this is even sustainable. It can be hard to...motivate yourself to write or commit yourself to a story that will take 4+ years to write properly, or months of really intensive worldbuilding, when it might be 4 years that are better spent elsewhere, y'know?

Like I think the story and characters are good, but are they good enough? I don't know. I won't know until I write it, and I am not motivated or inspired to write it right now. Though I will say certainly part of that is simply that I am still writing big wordcounts. I wrote 38k last month, most of it on FFS, and I've written 19k this month already, most of it on FFS and Smoke in Autumn. FFS is the most word hungry story I've ever written.

Tbh I had to also take a pretty big hiatus (like a year) between Court of Five Thrones and The Ice Plague, so I'm not entirely surprised this is happening. Some of this is certainly burn out, I may actually need a break from that level of writing (I can write 5 chapters of Falling Falling Stars in the time it takes me to write one chapter of The Ice Plague - and FFS is like...3 times as popular lmao). I really enjoy writing complex narratives, characters, and politics, and original worldbuilding, but it is more effort, and Fae Tales has been going for nearly a decade. Maybe I just need some breathing room before launching straight off with another half decade commitment!! aslkfjsdaka :D I'm sure that's a big part of it.

Incidentally my worldbuilding folder for Mallory & Mount currently looks like this:

As you can see, I have been working on it pretty recently! Though I've taken a little break this month. So even if I take a break from it, I'll probably still be thinking about it and working on it in the background. I am almost certainly going to do early release re: Mallory & Mount - i.e. it goes up first on Patreon, and then it goes up on AO3 2 weeks later.

Whatever the case though, I'll still be writing something! I actually wrote 500 words of the Efnisien/Gary fic last night after busting out 4,600 words on the next FFS chapter sdslkajfsa the writing always continues, even if I don't know exactly what I'm doing with it.

As for the end of the Fae Tales canon, I think early August will be...Feelstown lmao. It's so soon!