Rhythm of the Heat - A status report · 6:41pm Sep 10th, 2018
For those of you who've been patiently waiting for the next arc of RotH, I have some bad news, as of this week, RotH is going on Hiatus. The reasons behind this decision are many, but they boil down to the origins of this story.
How we got here. Rhythm of the Heat started out in late 2014 as a flight of fancy, a little prompt to keep the creative juices flowing, only to grow beyond our wildest expectations into a positive monster of a story, with somewhere in the ballpark of 600 pages of rough content. Not counting a slew of smaller side stories exploring other stories on the Savannah. While it was a lot of fun to write, the act of polishing the story into a publishable state has taken us more time than writing the original material, revealed a lot of ugly truths about our 'plot' and exhumed a few points of heated disagreement.
Spoilers ahead, read at your own risk!
The two largest obstacles are: the Kuchomwa tribe and their fall, and a the portrayal of the spirit world.
In the original material, we avoided bloodshed in writing the confrontation of the Kuchomwa, as the tribe found itself outnumbered by the militia of Aura, the warriors of the Mwezi Wafuasi and (the as of yet unintroduced) friendly Springbok tribe, all arrayed before them with no practical chance of either escape or victory. Thus Abidemi surrendered - to the shock and outrage of many present. While this seemed a reasonable way to prevent having to actually write out a campaign against them, it felt somewhat anticlimactic, and when it came time to publish, we wanted to take a different approach and actually make Abidemi into a proper villain. However, while ideas abounded, we struggled with the fact that in the published version, significant characters in the form of Idir the Gerenuk and his herd had not yet made their introduction; and thus, his friend Chieftain Itri's Springbok tribe being introduced seemed a little out of the blue...furthermore we were walking the knife-edge between narrating the preparations and having an entertaining story...
The second was the spirit world, and their involvement in what was to come. While we knew early on we needed to get them involved, their presence in the original material was lackluster (in my opinion) and contentious. Particularly one character, an unnamed, self-proclaimed 'demon' that Compass Rose was supposed to interact with. A significant portion of her original material was omitted, as it was mutually agreed that some of the things the possessed Rose was forced into doing would have to be cut for a public version of the story. This process brought an old point of contention back to the fore: just how much power and influence do the spirits have over the Savannah, and by extension, the mortals living there? This ended up being a good news, bad news scenario. On one hand, we opted to delay the introduction of said character. On the other, we decided to make her introduction an arc all its own, and really flesh out one of the most important new characters to be added to the story.
TL;DR: RotH is going on hiatus while we take a break to come back at this with fresh eyes. With luck, there will be more Rhythm in 2019!
Well, when this story is fully ready to Continue being published. I will be waiting to read it with great excitement!😉