Overview

This is Chapter 9.

Chapter 8.

Here's Chapter 7.

Chapter 6 is now available.

I wish to say that it takes strength of character to put oneself out there and address what was said, because not only is any public apology difficult, but especially when most others cannot bring themselves to speak a word in either direction -- that can be a daunting thing. I appreciate that you have chosen to do so, and I must add that I also appreciate that you have previously commented on my work and involved me as an author. I notice those who seem to be making a genuine effort, and I try not to forget their honest engagement. For all of this, I should thank you. Your compliments, also, are very kind. I don't want to come off as fishing for approval, but it can be very uplifting to hear, or read rather, that somebody holds what I do in high regard, with no demands nor conditions attached. Perhaps I am a vicarious soul in some ways, but it is personally fulfilling to know that a reader's emotional need, or intellectual curiosity -- or both -- has been satisfied because of something I created. After all, isn't that why art exists? To inspire feeling and thought in others? As for the ending to Spirit of Fire, this may be a bit of a tangent from your response, but it's strange -- I would have been fine with people telling me they didn't like it, over just ... not saying anything at all. I might have debated the merits of the reasoning if they couldn't fairly justify a criticism, but I can respect an honestly expressed opinion, even if it's one I disagree with. I think probably the reason was the book might have felt unsatisfying because of where it stopped -- and I get that -- but you can say exactly the same about Veil of Shadow. The plots of both are absolutely unresolved by the closing paragraph of the final chapter, and events are poised to be dramatically worse -- and in both cases that is clearly and obviously by design. Whether it's the invasion of Earth or the rebirth of a god, there HAS to be more to follow -- does anyone truly think I'm just going to drop it right there and not continue? Perhaps the only difference between the two is I said outright from earlier on that Veil was the middle part of a trilogy, whereas Spirit of Fire having a sequel wasn't mentioned until (I think?) after its completion, so people may have been taken by surprise. Still, that shouldn't have mattered, because I am playing the long game with both series. Either should ultimately be read together, as halves, or thirds, of a single greater whole. Nowhere have I stated -- or hinted -- that I'm going to leave anything unfinished. Quite the opposite, actually, because I hate when other artists do this to their audience. I just wish those who found the ending wanting considered it was never meant to be judged in a vacuum, and if they are doing that, they should reconsider investing their energy into anything at all that has multiple parts and is incomplete. That, or realise that sometimes you simply have to wait to get what you want. Okay, tangent over with. I will finish with: thank you for taking the time to say what you did. I sincerely value the sentiments expressed therein.

Dearest Stellar -- First, let me apologize for not commenting as much as I should have, given how many times I've read and reread your stories. I realize recently how important comments and reactions are from your readers, and yet I've failed you by infrequently commenting, or just not commenting at all. I for one do not feel in any way entitled to demand your next chapter. I'm selfish in that I lose myself in the worlds you create -- as escape from a life so mundane and boringly common -- and yet I can't even put my own two cents' worth to validate what you so freely provide. I am sorry. Secondly, I'll wait for however long it takes for the next chapter of Lucid Truth and whatever else you have brewing on the back burners. And if Spirit Of Fire left many unsatisfied with the ending, it is only because we want more. At least I do. If I haven't said this before, then I'll happily say it here: You're one of the best unpublished writers I've come across on this site. That right there, is lucid truth. Have a wonderful evening! 😊

Ha, nope.. On my screen it shows how much time it is between comments so I thought I would make a funny.

Thanks for commenting on your enjoyment of Spirit of Fire. Though, if you are implying something should have happened here in that two year gap since the last post, I should mention that the focus isn't on the dragon-themed sequel right now, but on the alien-themed one. You'll get the former option later, if that's what people want most after the current project is done.

2 Years Later... Spirit of Fire is an awesome story! Am sure the sequel will be too.

Chapter 5 is out.

After some delay, the fourth chapter of Lucid Truth has arrived.

Due to some reader confusion in the comments of the second chapter, I'm going to offer a little clarity. The uncertainty in question was centred on the specifics of how, in the early phases of Hidden Sunlight and Veil of Shadow, the five alien personalities ended up in their new host human bodies some 200 millennia after they originally died. I responded in those comments with an explanation, but it's probably worth repeating my explanation in this thread as additional extra canon. None of what I'm going to describe is spoiler at this point, but there will be information that fills gaps, that I haven't explicitly stated before. Some of this might end up being brought up in future Lucid Truth chapters, but none of it is truly critical, and it won't be story-breaking to know it. So, if you want to have that little bit extra, feel free to have a look in the spoiler tags below: To quote myself from my own response to those chapter comments:

Lucid Truth #3!

Second chapter up.

The story is now released, and the first chapter is available. I look forward to hearing any and all reactions, and your opinions and insights into what is going on. My updates may be an uneven pace, so I will make zero promises about delivery, but I will try my best. Thank you.

The first chapter of Lucid Truth is out.

Your stories are excellent and most of are waiting for the final series. Don’t delay, please.

Many agree that 2020 will go down as the year from hell. Though tough to find the good within, we will endure what remains; and then upon reflection, I feel we will see the many outgrowths from challenges answered. I too have experienced the funk of the Covid confines but we are emerging as more is understood and as people are now demanding self determination. Hang in their mate, I suspect for many your works are too complex and intimidating to freely express comments with public confidence or without the fear of embarrassment from the many nuggets possibly missed or not yet connected; but yet the number of followers and views still confirm a level of interest far much beyond incidental. So ironically, the blueprint complexities of your works contribute to low yield of public comments, but the appreciation and respect remains.

Just an update on what's going on with this. Some of you might be wondering why literally nothing has happened regarding the third book in 2020. The only mention of it has been this status update back in August. So, I'd certainly forgive you for wanting to know what's going on. Well, to put it bluntly, I'm not very happy -- for several reasons. So, I should probably be clear about this, as it's a mixture of stuff, but ... fair warning: Because I don't want this thread to be about my personal feelings and situation, I'm going to put it in a spoiler tag below. You can read more if you so choose. If you'd rather skip all of that and just want some basic information, I'll say that I'm going to try and actually get something written in 2021. I think I can promise that much, so that's what I'm going to stick to. In the meanwhile, here's a light bit of Christmas parody in the Spirit of Fire vein to alleviate the mood. It's here in my newly created blog, because I didn't want to publish it as an individual story/fiction entry on the site. Now, more serious thoughts will follow:

It is done! Hidden Sunlight has been refined and given a fresh coat of quantum paint, and with this fairly time-consuming task completed -- subtle though the changes may be to some -- the author can rest easy without the nagging perfectionist impulses occupying his brain. With regard to the above quote, I'll make a decision on the sequel in the next day or two.

No, not for me. I had planned to reread the series when I saw you were working on book 3. This is just a good way to get reacquainted with the characters.

You might be surprised how small changes can alter the impact and tone of a scene, and the additive effect of a lot of such small things is where the difference in quality comes from. While it may not be obvious to some, from the author's standpoint, there are parts early on in Hidden Sunlight that make me cringe because of how I wrote them. Any time I went back to review the text for whatever reason I'd notice it, and immediately think 'I need to do something about this.' But really, do I need a ploy to make you get into it again?

I'm so glad: Hidden sunlight was really sub-par in terms of style... NOT !! What on Lucere do you expect to improve?? I know, I know... the author is always right but is this just a ploy to make us re-read HS again ? 😉 And really don't worry about the notifications Keep up the good work. Happy to hear that you have it all planned out.

Thank you very much for the warning, and it will be good for me too. I had decided to reread the first two books, and this way, I can read the first one again as you post the revisions.

I have a PSA for any readers who follow my science fiction series. So, as a part of the preparation for Lucid Truth, I want the first two books of the trilogy to be presented at a standard of the highest quality. My readership, on seeing such a statement, might very well pose the question: are these books not already of sufficient excellence for your liking, Stellar? Well, yes, but also ... no. Though Veil of Shadow is, generally speaking, a book that I am mostly satisfied with, the same cannot be said of the first. In a nutshell, my style had matured a lot by the time I started writing the sequel, and as a result, Veil was a much more consistently polished work. By contrast, Hidden Sunlight is particularly amateur, moreso the further back one goes, and this is something that has bothered me. To be clear, I am not talking about the plot nor the characters. The difference comes down to a swathe of little things; grammatical redundancies, spelling errors, formatting blips, and a number of very weird phrasings and badly expressed segments. I love my works and I am proud of them, but I am a perfectionist and leaving my original book in such a state has weighed on my mind for long time. In 2017, right after I completed Veil, I wanted to return to Hidden Sunlight to address the problems in the text. The thing was, in order to do so, I would have to edit the already-existing copy on GA chapter by chapter, which would send out a wave of notifications to everybody following the book. Therefore, I decided not to do it, because I didn't want to be the guy spamming his subscribers like that. My hope was that with the site upgrades, there would be, in the future, a safe way to make that happen without bothering everybody. Now, in mid 2020, I am at a place where I am strongly motivated to act on it because the trilogy ending will be coming soon(ish), and I want the first and second books to be the best versions of what they are, for new readers and old ones revisiting. Recently, I approached Myr to ask if there was a solution for what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, there isn't, but he advised me to go ahead anyhow, and simply let followers know what is going on, publicly. Therefore, here I am. Now, what exactly does this mean? Well, a couple of things. The entirety of Hidden Sunlight will be re-uploaded to GA chapter by chapter, so if you have notifications switched on for author edits, you will receive one every time I do this. I don't want to annoy my readers but there is no other way around this. I am *SORRY* for any inconvenience and irritation caused, but I assure you all I will only be doing this once -- after it's done, it will stay done, and won't need to be repeated! The book should be a cleaner and more seamless read when it is finished, and up to the standard I desire it to be. I'm just going to repeat the first point down here, so people can't say they weren't warned. Once more, for the record: IF YOU'RE SUBBED TO HIDDEN SUNLIGHT, YOU'RE GOING TO GET A LOT OF NOTIFICATIONS WHEN I UPDATE IT. I APOLOGISE IN ADVANCE FOR ANY IRRITATION THIS MAY CAUSE. Another question you might have is: how major are the changes going to be? The answer is 'not very' for the greatest part, but the effect of all of this will be cumulative, and not individually significant. In fact, the 'change-log' in a summary form would look something like this: overuse and misuse of ellipses; fixed or removed many of these instances misuse of hyphens/dashes; fixed where applicable a smattering of spelling errors, duplicate words, and grammatical mistakes that had eluded repeated revisions were fixed removal of asterisks used for emphasis and replaced with boldface and italics, a particularly grievous sin present in just a couple of the earliest chapters fixed a variety of sentence fragments scattered throughout the text, though these were concentrated earlier on; mostly representing poorly curated 'stream of consciousness' perceptions of the protagonist. chapter 12: the largest single rework. A significant chunk of it was rephrased and reworded. From the author's perspective, the stylistic choice of the language in this chapter had aged badly and needed the awkward pretentiousness cut away and Mira's elegance reinforced, without losing what made his character unique smaller but similar changes around other scenes in which Mira's perspective was used, specifically in chapters 9 and 16 changed the dead map links in chapter 17 to active ones; the images of Aurum and the Capital Arm will now be properly hosted and (hopefully) permanently accessible added mention of Prasada to the epilogue; a lore omission meant that only twelve of the thirteen colonies were described, with Prasada's fate being left out completely. Ironic, given that it is one of the few colonies that is mentioned multiple times in the sequel. To be clear, the plot of the book has not changed and the vast majority of the text will remain the same -- but as a whole, it will be better when I'm done! If you were thinking of re-reading Hidden Sunlight before the trilogy ending gets underway in earnest, I'd recommend you try it right after I'm done with this. It's also possible I may do a smaller round of editing on Veil of Shadow too, but as mentioned earlier, it barely needs it, outside of some minor housekeeping issues that might not be enough to merit the same treatment. Watch this space; I'll post something here before I go any further with that idea, if I decide to at all. So, finally, out of fairness, I will leave this post up for a little while before I start actually getting into it, and doing the above. For the moment it will stand as nothing more than a notice, but ... you have now been warned! I'll also post again in this topic when the refined version of Hidden Sunlight is fully done, so make sure to follow here if you are interested.