Aleks Kotov
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Repair work in progress. Reconstruction.
🕑 Added 2025-09-28 08:48:04 +0000 UTCAs you probably remember, before translating I also do a round of proofreading the original, trying to fix all the rough spots. Usually, that means a lot of small edits - from fixing typos to rewriting or adding individual sentences. Sometimes it’s more serious changes, like the completely rewritten fight with the tree spiders-ents in Volume One or the entirely added scene of the Third Duke’s murder in Volume Seven. (By the way, I had originally planned to end Volume Six with that scene, but in the end everything went sideways and the scene got lost somewhere in the drafts, so I had to write it again.)
Nevertheless, now the problem is probably the most serious of all, because what’s needed is a deconstruction of a drawn-out arc. I noticed this problem already during proofreading and deliberately spaced out the chapters, leaving myself a gap in the missing Chapter 17, which I planned to work on once I felt better and had extra time. Unfortunately, because of my experiment on Royal Road - there was no extra time. By the way, if anyone wants to help with the experiment - I’ll briefly summarize it below, but for now let’s return to the current problem.
The problem is simple, Len’s arc has already gone on too long. While I was writing about life inside the First Duchy - I got too carried away. I think everyone has already realized that the First is largely based on my own country, and in the end... I put in too much reflection.
Plus, the fact that the arc would be long was also an attempt to solve another problem I faced. Namely, the problem of the technology leap. I remember my idea well when I was writing this, and I deliberately distanced and put the reader together with Len in the isolation of the swamps of the First Duchy, for a greater effect of the later technology leap. If you remember, during the elf’s POV we already had prototypes of a machine gun, a zeppelin, and an internal combustion engine. So yes, by the end of the arc we’ll have Kirov and armored cars.
(Lenin on an armored car - that’s a kind of historical meme, by the way.)
So, that idea.... - is total crap, to be honest. A bad idea. I wanted to smooth it out a little with Chapter 17, but I see now that one chapter won’t be enough, it’ll take at least two.
Chapter 17 and... probably Chapter 22.
Chapter 17 will touch on the Commonwealth (where, by the way, the epidemic is raging), the elf (who is little more than completely useless, since she’s faced with a force majeure situation, and you’ve all already seen how badly elves drag their feet in such situations), and technological development (to give a smoother transition to armored cars).
And Chapter 22, I suppose, will be purely combat. In the end, I still haven’t closed the Dazig question. Yes, let’s do it that way.
As a result, we’ll still have... hm, four chapters in a row from Len’s POV?
That’s a lot.
I probably need to insert something between Chapters 19 and 20...
Hm, honestly, I don’t even know. Maybe you have ideas? Until now I’ve never asked anyone for ideas simply because the text was already finished, but overall - I’m absolutely not against involving readers in the writing process. So write, I’ll be glad to read.
In the meantime I’ll go work on Chapter 17, luckily I’ve already drafted its plan.
Oh wait, damn it! I almost forgot I wanted to talk about the Royal Road experiment.
So, here’s the story. Even though I launched an ad campaign (thanks to all of you, and especially thanks to
PVersusNP, Von Harley, Jacob, MagnitudeX, James Man, Smartfolk, MrBones, Berqa, Oth, jobamba, Xhally, Robert King, Ordnance, Invalid Entry, Iny Gendereater, Reader 11, Mark, Febey, Franmeyers, and Vuk Stefanovic).
But… well, the ads didn’t turn out to be all that effective. So I decided to run an experiment - to split off Volume Seven and post it separately on Royal Road. So far, the results of the experiment are better than they might have been, but worse than I’d hoped.
If you have some free time and would like to help - please subscribe to the new volume:
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/134079/spells-vs-shells-book-7-isekai-kingdom-building
Thank you!
Now - that’s really all.
Comments
HF3d3d HF3d3dHF3d3d
Hm. Interesting, but I’m not sure it’ll work. I can’t just grab some random character, and from those already established… Hm… In theory, I could use the old inquisitor - we haven’t returned to him in a while, but for a good scene I’m missing the proper “story rails,” so to speak. Last time I set him against Count Condor to clash their worldviews and use that contrast to show character growth. For now, unfortunately, I don’t really see much room for action here. Not to mention that, strictly speaking, this is the moment when it would make more sense to bring the protagonist back, since we’ve already had a whole wave of different POVs, heh. But even there the problem is that right at this moment he’s just stubbornly working on weapons, with nothing plot-crucial happening to him. However! Something like this was actually planned, and yes, it does involve the inquisitor, and yes, it’s the final part of his arc. A sort of full circle, since he first laid down his hammer for the sake of a peaceful life, and in the end he must raise it again to protect that very life... Hm. You know what - you just gave me a great idea. See, I originally did plan to bring the inquisitor back when the undead threat became overwhelming, but in the end the plot twisted so that the undead never attacked Reikland, but instead turned toward the Fourth Duchy (spoilers, spoilers, yep!). So that idea didn’t exactly become irrelevant… I just shelved it for the next crisis. However, I’m not promising anything, but it’s POSSIBLE, yes. Something along those lines might appear - not fully centered on that theme, more like touching it partly… but yeah, overall I like it. P.S. Sorry for the slow reply. Unfortunately, I have one bad habit you probably haven’t had the chance to notice until now - when I’m writing, I completely shut myself off from all social interaction until I finish the chapter.
FastM4k
For the content in between Chapter 19 and 20, Id simply like for us to get a commoner's POV on how the world is changing around him, focusing on the the railway (which is his job) and his increasingly more comfortable life compared to the life of a peasant he was before
HF3d3d HF3d3dHF3d3d
Thanks to you for replying. Why thank me? Personally, I’d probably be disappointed if, instead of the usual chapter, I just got a wall of author text, heh... But alas, the closer we get to the end of the ongoing, the slower new chapters will come out… :с Well, that’s more of an inside joke - originally this was written for a domestic audience, so it wasn’t a problem. Unfortunately, a lot of those little references went right past readers, simply because they weren’t in the right context. For example, the Second Duke’s march on the capital - that was literally an allusion to Prigozhin’s march on Moscow, heh. But I doubt any English-speaking readers picked up on that. >The tech leap idea is interesting I thought so too, but sadly, on reread I realized it was a mistake. So we’ll be fixing that, yeah...
Vuk Stefanovic
Thanks for the update ... i realy like the lens chapters for the same reason , and i noticed it more around my country when Len started describing it plainly like that , so maybe depends on where reader lives ? Lenin on armoured cars is probably more obscure than u think tbh. Tech leap idea is interesting and i like it , but a few peeks at the development is also fun. Elves id use as an "estrangement" tool too , how someone from the shard would see our world and its developments
