4 Dec 2021

  Welcome to the end of Volume 2.

  As you may recall, I started writing Volume 1 to scratch an itch. And I wrote it largely by the seat of my pants. I put together a System, put together some notes on the hidden cosmology of the universe, then started dice-rolling my way through lives and stories. When I finally reached a satisfactory stopping point, I stopped and starting publishing the story, the itch having been sufficiently scratched.

  I frankly did not expect much reaction to it. And, indeed, I had very little reaction until weeks after Life 16 had been published. From there, it snowballed beyond my wildest expectations.

  So, what to do? It had been a satisfactory stopping point. But you and others enjoyed reading it. I enjoyed writing it. And I had left enough breadcrumbs and notes that I knew that if I were to finish it, I knew where to take it.

  Several months of writing later (including a cross-country move), Volume 2 started releasing.

  Wow. What a ride.

  Life 17: A pair of [Rabbitkin] in an arid civilization, grappling with local politics and the emotional fallout from the end of Volume 1. Life 18: a fun chapter with the birds and an excuse to have a world map in canon. Life 19: Now we really start to move the plot forward. A reincarnation outside the System in a species with access to divine (or true) magic and a decent sense of world history, who did a solid for the dragons and now the dragons guard their home. Life 20: We’re back. As [Otters]. A bit of fun, but a bit of grappling with further revelations. Life 21: An experimental piece for fun. Life 22: Coming to terms with the [Gobberton] situation from Life 10, but doing so by inflicting nuclear apocalypse on them. Possibly not a great move on their part, and the System felt obligated to shunt them into a life of hiding. Life 23: For causing a nuclear apocalypse and failing to act inconspicuously enough for the System, the System incarnates them as non-sentient plants then inflicts a mental apocalypse on them. This may have backfired just a tiny bit as the bleedover into their Skills causes problems for the local populace. Life 24: A fun chapter about a terrifying [Horse] and [Raven]. Life 25: The climax of this volume. A massive threat by the [Eldritch] temporarily contained. But when they’re finally powerful enough to permanently contain it, a lot of plot threads come together to cause some crazy shit.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  And yes, Volume 2 ended in the middle of a life and Volume 3 will pick up still in Life 25.

  So, on to Volume 3? I have the big ideas set out, so basically, I just need to outline the story in more detail then start writing. Without spoiling anything, I will say that Volume 3 will almost be like a regular novel, maybe? It’ll likely only be 40-50k words (Volume 2 is about 80k by reference), but it’ll only be 2 or 3 lives at most. Which, yes, I know some of you prefer the one chapter per life from Volume 1. But trying to cram an overarching plot into an anthology is a pain and actually concluding it will require a few very, very active lives. And so, onwards to Volume 3. I don’t have any idea about the timeframe, so keep following Candlelit Lives for updates and, if you’re looking for something to read, check out this .

  In any event, thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting (some of you have frighteningly good predictions). And thank you for enjoying the story and sharing it with others.

  Best,

  luda305

  7 Dec 2021. Is it a little weird I'm about to read my own fiction on Royal Road from the beginning?

  15 Dec 2021. Phew. Finished my read through. I realize I write with a lot a double entendre. If you enjoy those, great. If not, sorry.

  2 Jan 2022. Happy New Year. The holidays were a mess and didn't get much done writing wise, but did a fair bit of reading, which was fun. I did start though doing a bit of editing on volume 1, which I just finished today. Mostly more typos but there were a few parts where I added a few sentences to flesh something out. Plan is to do the same for volume 2 before really getting into actually writing volume 3. That said, expect a heavy dose of proofreading by me of volume 3 before publication because editing stuff after the fact is terrible. Also added a copyright page not too long ago due to issues.

  link) which is a Benjamin Franklin-xianxia crossover. It's cheeky. Also finally came up with a premise for the plot for a story (second entry in that link) where I'd done a lot of world and character building, but didn't want to just slice of life it. And then there was just some miscellaneous brainstorming on other stories I have.

  19 Jan 2022. Still no writing. It's been a busy new year, reading too much on Royal Road, and I have a professional exam in February I need to study for. That said, on reviewing the story, I did fuss around a bit to check whether I had been consistent with the usage of MP in the story. The answer is yes, but only because I only gave explicit values a handful of times. But, for those times, it was consistent. So, what is it? Turns out 1 MP is about 1 MJ of energy. And, given that MP can be used to create matter, it seems that the speed of light in my universe might be Mach 92. Which is fast enough that it doesn't really make a difference, but hopefully I don't piss off relativity. On a related note, tentatively I'm pegging 1 XP as being worth about 100 MJ of energy.

  22 Jan 2022. All the edits are in for Volumes 1 and 2. Thank you for everyone who commented on typos, etc. Also, for those few of you asking for the System version numbers to be added in Volume 2, that has now been done.

  Candlelit Lives.