Hello comrades! I just wanted to write a quick post to link in The Solstice War main page, because I just realized that there was no mention of the hiatus there for those who just arrived at the page. It was not my intention to give anyone the wrong idea. I don’t want folks to end up disappointed.
The Solstice War is on indefinite hiatus.
TL,DR: Please Read Unjust Depths Instead, It’s New, Active and Better Than The Solstice War.
Any plans to return to the Solstice War someday? These ideas and this story are a collection of things I think about all the time. I definitely want to make a semi-realistic historical warfare story again, and I want to revisit those characters. In fact, readers of Unjust Depths can already see me reimagining a lot of it there. I want to tell more stories like it. There is no plan, however. Unjust Depths is my new project.
Why stop after all these years? For me, I write for fun, and because I want to bring into existence the kind of fiction that I love and see myself in. Over the years, I lost sight of what I wanted from The Solstice War. It became a chore that I was maintaining rather than something that brought me joy. It grew too big because my ambitions were out of scope with the way my life changed. I went from being basically a NEET who had nothing else to do, to having a lot of responsibilities and a lot less free time. My life changed, my priorities have changed, and the stories I want to tell have kind of changed.
Why should I read Unjust Depths? It’s a continuation of all the themes in The Solstice War. Dealing with trauma, with LGBTQ+ love and identity, believing in Marxist revolution and economics against overwhelming odds, making difficult choices in which human lives are at stake. I chose a sci-fi setting so that I could also talk about more current things than I can in The Solstice War, such as early network culture and climate change. However, I feel like I’ve improved my character writing a lot since The Solstice War! And there’s even more cool nerd shit like mecha and “spaceships”, with my signature hardware nerd touch.
How will I know that Unjust Depths will actually end? You don’t! I could drop dead any minute too, nothing is guaranteed! But right now I’m very motivated and energized, and Unjust Depths is a muuuch better organized project than The Solstice War. Even as a “chore” it’d be WAY easier to write.
People paid you money to write this! Indeed, and I told my Patreon patrons over and over: I make this for the joy of it, but my time is also really valuable, and the existence of this patreon keeps me motivated in a way, when I lose other motivations. If you feel like my work is worth money to you, then donate to it. If you do not, please do not give me a cent. I lost 2/3 of my Patreon donations over the past few years, and I hope anybody who expresses this feeling will also rescind their pledge. I thank everybody who donated and they really helped me change my life. Many of my donors are friends and long-time fans who understand me.