Changes and Summer Schedule

*Note, this is a post public to ALL patrons, so keep spoilers out of the comment section*

As some patrons might have noticed the chapters have started to get longer since the final stretch of the Mystic Realm arc. The average chapter length since then has been over 2800 words per chapter, compared to the 2200 average of Act 1 of DotF.

Initially, this was just to expediently reach the conclusion of an arc that had frankly gone on a bit too long. But over the course of May I have come to the decision to swap over to this longer chapter format permanently.

I feel that I am less restricted with more room in each chapter, allowing me to progress the story further with the same word count. This is important as one of my main goals of Act 2 has been to learn from some mistakes during Act 1 and tighten up my writing, to get more done with fewer words.

Going by the comments for the chapters released in May for my $10 Tier, I feel that I am heading in the right direction in regards to pacing.

Of course, a 30% increase in chapter-length cannot come out of nowhere, at least not without compromising quality. I am therefore changing the release format of Defiance of the Fall to 5 chapters a week with daily releases Monday - Friday.

In terms of monthly word count / content, it will still be above "Classic DotF" with around 5% a month (~22 chapters @ 2850/ch vs. ~26 chapters @ 2200/ch). Hopefully, the improvement will feel even more substantial provided I manage to keep the pace higher as well.

This change will affect all Patron Tiers and releases on RoyalRoad starting June 1st. I will keep this up June-August provisionally, and make it permanent unless some unexpected side-effect of the change crops up.

-------

As for Summer Schedule. June will have a regular (as in the new regular) release schedule. I am however planning on taking a 2-week vacation in either July or August, with August being more likely. There will be no releases during this period, either on RR or Patreon.

In either case, I will inform all Patrons ahead of time so that everyone can take a stance on whether they want to support my 2-week post-quarantine bender or not.

TL;DR: Chapters getting 30% Longer but no Saturday Chappy. Full releases in June. TFD taking a vacation in July or Aug.