Chapter 53: The announcement you didn’t want to hear – I’m dropping this story. Sorry.

Hey all, so this is probably not the news you wanted to hear.

As of today, I’ll be dropping this story.

I apologise for how sudden this is, but it’s something I’ve spent the last week really mulling over. I feel that this is the right decision, given the current state of Fungeoneer.

What do I mean by that? Well, to put it bluntly, Fungeoneer has failed. Yep.

I’ve been posting it for nearly three months now and have over 50 chapters up across three different platforms. Despite this, I’m struggling to get any eyes on it. Now, I wasn’t expecting this to be some breakout success that people would rant and rave over, but for the amount of work I’ve put in and the amount of exposure it’s already received, it should have been doing a lot better by now.

What that basically means is that there’s not enough interest in this sort of story.

Could I have done some other stuff to promote it? Sure. I could have marketed it better, I could have used a better cover, I could have done all sorts of stuff. However, the more likely reason that it hasn’t succeeded is that it’s just too different.

See, I like to write weird and different stuff. I don’t believe in repetition in art and believe that experimentation is what makes any genre/trope/medium grow. Without experimentation, there’s no fun in life.

However, it’s entirely possible for that experimentation to go a little awry and for the product to be too different. That’s what has happened here. Fungeoneer is both off market and written in a way that is odd. Maybe that could have worked, but when you’re trying to do something that’s very different, you’re walking a thin line. The slightest breeze can cause you to fall and whatever works you’re carrying will fall with you. It can work, but it’s tricky, and risky.

In this case, I feel the risk hasn’t gathered enough reward.

I know this is incredibly selfish of me to do since there are many of you who really liked this story but, at the end of the day, I need to do what’s best for me. There’s no point spending years working on this story when there’s no chance of it succeeding to any degree. And I’m dead serious about the “years” part.

You’re probably wondering why I’m cancelling the book suddenly instead of finishing it off. Well, it’s because we’re a long, long way from finishing it. Firstly, the Ortho arc is about 20 chapters from complete. I’ve got about 12 drafted and far less in a publishable state. Secondly, the entire premise of the story was that Wip finds a party. He’s got two members (well, one and another that’s still shaky). We still need two more, and with how the story is told, that’s going to take a while.

You are reading story Fungeoneer at novel35.com

Given everything I’ve state above, I can’t justify spending this time to get to a decent ending. Nor can I justify finishing the extra 20 chapters to complete Ortho’s arc. This is time I could be spending on the next book. This is time I could be spending on a project that hasn’t already failed.

I know that I gave plenty of signals showing that I fully intended to keep writing this story. In fact, I was originally planning to put Fungeoneer on hiatus and come back at a later time, thinking I was just getting burnt out on the story and needed a break. Well, when I took the last week off and spent it away from the story, it just became more apparent to me that I needed to drop it entirely.

No, I’m perfectly fine. I know I’ve spoken about my mental health in the past. That’s not the issue here. I’ve been very careful about making this decision and my reasoning is as clear and rational as can be. I can’t keep spending my time on a story with so little chance for success. That’s it.

There are some parts of the story which I’m not too happy about. However, if that were the problem here, I would have just taken the time to fix those parts and then got back to posting new chapters. Again, I don’t think fixing those parts would make much of a dent here. There simply isn’t enough interest for this story to justify continued work on it.

Now you’re probably asking, what happens next?

I’ve already got a new book in the works. However, it’s going to take a bit. In fact, I’m not too sure if I’m going to go the serialisation route for it since I want to nail down some of the more difficult parts of this story. Like with my other works, there’s going to be some experimentation in this next book, but this time I’m going to try take my time with it before publishing. I want to see how that goes.

In other words, I can’t give you any information about it because I’m still in the tinkering and planning phase. It could be one month before I start serialising again. It could be six. It might not be serialised at all. When it’s ready, it’s ready. That’s the only promise I can make.

Anyway, there’s only one last thing I have to say.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading this crazy, nonsense story up until now! You guys have been wonderful and I’ve had nothing but fun writing this story, talking to you all, and hearing what you have to say about Fungeoneer. It’s been amazing. I’m sad to have to make this decision, and hopefully things go better in the future.

Until the next time I see you, take care of yourselves!

If you have any questions, ask away. I’ll answer anything, anytime—unless I can’t, in which case I’ll tell you that. Go ahead. I only bite sometimes.

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