Bytown Episode 5 Postmortem

Bytown episode 5 is finally out, and as a warning, this will probably be my last postmortem for a while. Partially because I'm seriously underwater on things, but also because the stats aren't changing enough to warrant a monthly breakdown. In a good way! Let's see what we've got...

Numbers Numbers Numbers

Remember how I said I was afraid that the change in schedule would turn people off? Apparently I was wrong, because we just broke 3,000 monthly readers (that is to say: unique visitors who have read Episode 5 in particular). It's kinda shocking, but also kinda great. I assume there's a site somewhere linking people to Bytown, but I haven't found out where it is yet, and I'm honestly a bit too panicked to investigate further.

At this rate (and given the lack of a business model) I'm pretty comfortable just cruising along until the end. People seem to be enjoying themselves (based on feedback) and really truly honestly, that's all I really want anyway. Happy and/or tormented readers.

Chapter Sizes

Episode 5 comes in at a whopping 35,594 words, making it the longest chapter yet. It's kinda surprising to me, honestly, because it's an episode centred around Liam of all people — everyone hates Liam. Or so I hear. Regularly.

From where I'm sitting now, it seems very likely that Volume II is going to juuuuuust miss the 95,000 word mark I was predicting, meaning it will be a lot more manageable in terms of book length, especially if I distribute the B-Sides between the two volumes in a strategic way. That said, Volume III might blow all my strategies out of the water, because it already looking like it'll be a mammoth of a compilation.

Writing Pace

The cruel fact of the matter is that I'm contractually obligated to deliver my ghostwriting materials on a certain schedule, and that schedule is ironclad. But given my limited number of coherent hours in a day, and my general wooziness when starving myself (to prevent gallbladder attacks) I am definitely going to miss my next delivery, and possibly the one after that, too. My ghostwriting duties locked in until early next year, so there's no chance I'll get a reprieve before Bytown concludes — or worse yet, I'll actually get the surgery I need, and things will get delayed because of that instead.

Regardless, expect delays, and I'll do my best to not need them.

Conclusions

I mean, despite the general doom and gloom of these postmortems, I am really quite enjoying this story, and I think the readers are too. The characters are all coming alive, the plot is nice and twisty, and you all still have no idea where I'm going next, which is really all I ever wanted out of life :)

I will go on blog-posting hiatus for a little bit, but when I come back, I promise to have better news. And/or a huge cliffhanger to laugh about.