Pandelirium: Chapter 1 · 12:49am Dec 16th, 2013
Work has commenced on the final chapter of Pandelirium, and I'm not going to lie: it's intimidating. I've been thinking about these scenes for more than a year now, and the thought of trying to make the words on my computer screen as effective as the ideas in my head gives me a twisting feeling in my stomach... oh, wait, I recognize this feeling now. It's stage fright. Now that I'm at the very end, I'm legitimately worried that I'll pull a Mass Effect 3 and screw up the finale. Of course, my prereaders have given me plenty of reasons why I don't have to worry about that, but let's be honest: if emotions could be easily assuaged by reason, this would be a very different world.
And to answer the question that seems to keep coming up over and over... I'm not doing any Chapter Zeroes or Negative Chapters. It's Chapter 1, then a Prologue, and then whatever my readers want to do with my ideas. (By the way, the Petriculture Cycle group recently added its first proper spinoff, which takes place in an alternate version of the Petriverse.)
Really whatever you wrote so far has no disappointment what so ever in my opinion. But I really hope chapter 1 won't turn out anywhere near as bad as ME3. If that's even possible...
Keep up the good work
1612404
Sure he can. All he has to be is betray the core concepts of the series while leaving the heroes with a Pyrrhic victory at the best. Of course that would require Kwakerjak trying to screw the story up.
Indeed.
Despite my (and other pre-readers) impassioned arguments for chapters i, π and e, Kwakerjak has stuck to his guns on chapter numbering. le sigh.
On the plus side, despite any authorial misgivings, from the pre-reader perspective, things are shaping up in fine form so far.
Seriously looking forward to reading this on my Kindle. Thanks for the heads-up!
ME3's disaster of an ending came because they abandoned the original ending they spent two games (and several) novels building up towards. Unless you've discarded everything you've built up to this point, I think you're going to be OK :-)