Today, January 19th 2026, formally marks the 2nd year anniversary of Somewhere Someplace which I began publishing after almost ~1,000,000+ words of relentlessly redrafting beginning in early 2023. I had written full serial volumes, in fact, which I ultimately scrapped until I’d settled for the version you’ve all been reading.
For the last 3 years of my life, I have dedicated a substantial amount of cognitive energy and time to this project; there have barely been days where I haven’t been writing. And throughout these two years of publishing on RR, I have learned a lot; I’ve changed a lot. I believe I’ve become considerably better in both my writing and craft, even if old habits still remain.
There are a lot of things I have in mind for 2026, and I may not be able to cover everything in this once announcement. First, I believe I should explain what’s being going on with me for the past two-to-three months since finishing Volume 3.
The Biggest Burn Out
I’m not going to sugarcoat this, and a few of you might’ve even already guessed this just from the vibe’s I may’ve been giving off, but I…crashed out – big time. After finishing Volume 3 and taking a break, I just could not get back into it and write this project.
Since I began it, I have essentially prioritized Somewhere Someplace at the expense of other dedications and priorities.
Although sometimes a chapter may occasionally release in…questionable quality in terms of grammar and spelling, I have put a considerable amount of effort into each of them – to the point where I can be pretty obsessive. I constantly fiddle with the wording or specific details, and I try to make sure everything in the story is consistent, accounted for, and so on – that no hole is left unplugged – down to the luminosity of the moon.
There are many authors on this site who can write a chapter and consider it done after some proofing; I’m not one of those authors. Even with Volume 3, which I began releasing after it was mostly completed, I considered the majority of the chapters as drafts or sketches – not ready to be released. In the days leading to publishing day, each chapter goes through a meticulous refiner, and sometimes I’m just never comfortable with the quality.
To be completely honest, this story can be exhausting to write – the layers to the narrative, the perfectionism with minor details, the complex style and voice which requires a lot of consistency tracking, all the while I’ve written this story incredibly fast battling with constant dissatisfaction. 700,000+ words in two years of publishing, and with only the tip of the plotberg addressed.
I’ve invested a considerable amount of time and mental energy in continuing this; I’ve aggressively done shoutouts and invested hundreds of dollars in running ad campaigns throughout these two years.
Through all of my efforts, I’ve managed to accumulate now over 770+ followers and a small, niche group of readers. I even have a few loyal fans who really love this story and are invested in its universe. This is something I am deeply proud of.
In so many ways, Somewhere Someplace has exceeded any of my initial expectations. However, as it did so, my expectations increased.
And, to summarize massively: I ended up having something of an epiphany regarding this project.
A Major Epiphany
Despite my followership slowly going up, my actual readership has both stagnated and has even seemingly experienced a decline in recent months. Views, which granted aren’t an accurate metric, haven’t been the same lately, and my active user readers (keeping up chapter by chapter) are still less than 10 – not counting those currently making their way through the older chapters and those who don’t actively keep up but are still interested.
Additionally, this story’s rating/ranking has continued a painfully slow depreciation that seems increasingly impossible to ever recover from. My goal of reaching that #2500 spot has become more untenable; I’ve given up on that prospect. This story simply does not have enough readers nor has been attracting enough new ones to recover from these hits. The trajectory has been stuck downwards, because all it takes is one very dissatisfied person.
Now, some of you might question why any of this really matters. And that would be a good question. If this was just a hobby, none of this should matter. But, as I have come to fully recognize, I haven’t been treating this as a hobby – both in my commitment, my attitude, and the things in my life I’ve actively put off or delayed to prioritize this project. For the last two years, this has basically been my jobless job.
I’ve known to varying degrees since the start that growth and developing an audience was going to be an uphill climb. My plan was to play the long game; that in the long-term trajectory, this project will eventually pay off, and I’ll reap something from it. I still believe in its long-term potential. But the problem is, that was my plan two years ago. The future is now.
And despite all of the time, energy, and money I have invested into this project, the consistent audience I do have remains too small to be reliably stable or solicit meaningful donations from (which I have so far refrained from doing). This was the situation in 2025; this was essentially the situation in 2024; this is the situation as we enter 2026.
This simple reality hasn’t meaningfully changed in the last year.
And I am now closer to my 30s than I was when I began this, yet I am still in the same position in my life as I was three years ago. Unlike 2023, I don’t have the same luxuries of time I had before. And I’ve come to realize that my mental wellbeing has progressively deteriorated (on and off, it varies).
At current Volume pacing, fully finishing the depths of what I’ve had in store for this story would probably take several many more years. I’ve come to realize that I may not even finish Somewhere Someplace until the 2030s. That would be a substantial commitment from me, for a project that has…effectively plateaued. Most series would not go that far unless they were successful.
And the issue I’ve had with Somewhere Someplace is that it did not fail but it didn’t necessarily succeed either. It’s stuck in this middling hell where I’m not writing to an empty void – I have an audience, I have fans – but not enough to actually make this something more than it currently is. My audience has kept me going, and I didn’t want to be one of those authors who abandoned their work despite being deep into it, betraying those who themselves invested their own time into reading it.
I wanted to continue this story, and I still want to continue this story to its very end. I’m very proud of what I’ve made. I love what I am doing, and I get a massive thrill from it. Despite the burn out, I have the energy, I have the will, I have the commitment. I still am willing to put substantial energy into my craft and writing.
However, over these last two-to-three months, I’ve come to recognize that…there are other directions I could be pointing my powers to. I’ve come to realize that this project shouldn’t be my top priority anymore.
And after much consideration, I’ve made the painful decision to…
Continue The Project but Toss It in The Backseat
HA! Okay, sorry to pull the rug like that. I ain’t abandoning this project. After ending Volume 3 on a cliff hanger? Yeah, no. That would be a total dick move.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
That said, what I believe I do need is a 'break' from this project – which is to say: slow this down, take a step back, and focus on other things. I think this is for the best – for this project, for my own sanity. This is the healthiest thing I can do. It is honestly miraculous that I even managed to get this far without completely burning myself out earlier.
Somewhere Someplace is and will always remain my main baby. For so long, starting from when I was literally eight, I’ve had this massive internal universe that has been built, refined, and expanded which was just sitting in my head, and I am so happy that I have finally made something out of it.
But Somewhere Someplace is just that: a debut for what is ultimately a large, large…verse – a template for potential stories. This project was originally envisioned to be just an introduction.
So, I’ve decided that 2026 will be the year that I start branching out and begin writing other projects that may potentially do better.
And in fact… I…already have done that.
Yeah, I ALREADY WROTE A WHOLE OTHER BOOK IN THE MEANTIME.
So… When I said that I crashed out, that didn’t mean I couldn’t write. Since 2024, I’ve had another story which I’d been working on very periodically. To try to get my gears turning again, I decided to work on it just a little…
And, two months later, come December, I had completed the whole entire thing. A whopping 205k words, 58 chapters – a chunky, chunky boy.
This book, Between Broken Worlds, is now slated to be released…probably sometime in February. This book from the get-go was supposed to be more…palatable to the Royal Road reader and was supposed to be relatively ‘low-effort’ on my part. This is not to say it is low-quality; it just means that the writing and style is significantly simpler, more digestible, and I did not exert nearly as much as brain juices as I have with Somewhere Someplace.
To be clear: Between Broken Worlds is not meant to be a replacement for Somewhere Someplace. If anything, it was intended to be ancillary and an independent spin-off. It takes place in the same…general verse but focuses on a very different aspect of it. The idea was that Somewhere Someplace would remain the ultimate (or primary) domain of understanding the overall, greater universe.
But, suffice it to say, readers of Somewhere Someplace may potentially go into Between Broken Worlds with a greater understanding of things. My original plan was to keep Between Broken Worlds in reserve until Somewhere Someplace was at the appropriate point in its story to avoid early spoilers, however as that may take who knows how many more years, I’ve decided to release it this year now that I’ve a full book written.
I will be announcing more details about Between Broken Worlds in the coming weeks, and I may potentially release the first three chapters of it early on Somewhere Someplace as 'previews' to gauge reader interest and whatnot.
Overall, I’m very excited for this and honestly writing this new book was a needed reprieve.
I’m hopeful you will find it interesting.
Other Projects
Beyond Between Broken Worlds, I have also been experimenting with another story – a semi-surrealist meta-fiction loosely connected to the same verse. It’s a bit…personal and on-the-nose, so not sure if I’ll release it; but it is something I’ve found fun and almost therapeutic to write.
I’ve also begun experimenting with a…reboot of Somewhere Someplace.
Wait, WHAT?!
Hang on! Don’t panic!
To be make this immediately clear: it is only in an early experimental phase, and I haven’t committed to it.
Now, to explain: a reboot was always on the table, and it’s been something lingering in my head for the last year. The question was simply when. My original assumption was after finishing this version, but things have kind of changed.
I already said Somewhere Someplace is my baby, but it is precisely because this story is my main project – my top baby – that I want it to be in the best shape and form it can feasibly be. Take it as a sign that I treat this project seriously. I’ve learned so much in my time publishing here; I’ve become much better in my abilities, and my feelings towards my earlier volumes have changed. Volume 3, in my personal opinion, was the best of the three post-Prologue volumes I’ve written so far.
But most people haven’t read Volume 3; they’ve read Volume N and only the first chapter at that. And Volume N was written with very different assumptions from what I have now, with a very different attitude, and understanding of how the audience was even going to…actually read the dang thing.
I didn’t know this at the time, but what I originally wrote was essentially a genre of literary science fiction, with an emphasis on the ‘art’ and the hidden meta-fiction (the puzzle of the meta-narrator and whatnot) – something that hasn’t exactly been palatable to the audience of this website. It was essentially supposed to be an almost textbook world introductory with a plot, something that made logical sense but ultimately didn’t really work.
The Prologue Rewrite did improve Volume N by cleaning up the writing and style, but it did not go far enough in addressing the underlying problem with how it was written.
The Reboot is not intended to be a simple rewrite, but full-on re-execution applying everything I’ve learned and all of the ideas I have now (regarding structure, characters, et cetera). It’ll be the same premise, same world, same information, but a divergent story written in a somewhat different manner – not identical.
My logic is simply that, if I am really going to go all the way out for this project, I might as well make a more refined, professional version and then go from there. Something that readers from Between Broken Worlds could more easily get into.
But this Version Will Still be Continued.
Ideally, both this current version and the Reboot would initially co-exist.
The Reboot, if I do commit to it, would be a gigantic risk; I'd risk losing everything I’ve built so far predicated under the assumption that the new version may do modestly better, even though that is not a guarantee. In some ways, it could even be considered inferior by my existing readers.
Consequently, the Reboot is something I intend to work on gradually and over time. It is not something you should expect to be done anytime soon, and I may not even go forward with it.
In the meantime, I will be continuing on as expected with Twelve Day War, and I will continue working on Volume 4. At the very least I want to wrap up the whole ‘Blossom Saga’ arc and resolve everything appropriately before I make any further decisions. This version will probably continue being where I throw ideas onto the wall, whereafter I’ll refine them later.
So… What About Volume 4, Then?
Volume 4 is going to be a herculean task.
A lot of the difficulties I’m having are coming from with…just how I began the post-Prologue volumes. Volume 1’s pacing was botched, I got overly ambitious and did not handle the pacing properly or balancing between Blossom and Antica’s stories. Volume 2 ended up being halfway Volume 1.5, basically. Volume 3 ended up being where the whole thing escalated and really moved, and now Volume 4 has to resolve everything.
Volume 4 needs to resolve the Grandberry stuff, the Blossom stuff, the Fallen stuff, and resolve this whole arc and lay the road for the next stage of this story. To be honest, I’m not even sure if I can pull this off but I’ll try.
I will be taking my time, though; as I said, I want to take a ‘break’ with Somewhere Someplace, which means that while I’ll be working on it, it is no longer my absolute priority. I’ll be doing other stuff, and my priority right now is with launching Between Broken Worlds.
Volume 4’s ETA is uncertain and could very much later this year, potentially mid-2026 – so, well after Twelve Day War has concluded. As always, I will keep you all informed and updated.
The Future Ahead
I know this announcement has been very lengthy. And if you read this far into it, I appreciate it.
I understand if some of this comes as a disappointment, and I understand if your confidence in this story’s future no longer has any certainty.
I don’t mean to get political or anything, but I currently live in a very unprecedented time where I really have no idea where things are going or what may even happen. I don’t know what my future is looking like. What I do know is that by 2027, I may potentially to lose my healthcare (Medicaid) because of work requirements.
So, if I don’t do what I can to turn what I’ve been doing into something that I feel more secured by, something that feels worth the expenses, something that I can construe as a ‘job’, I may not even be able to continue doing what I’ve grown to really love, which is creative writing.
I don’t know how 2026 is going to go. But I’ve been so engrossed in this project’s future that I have neglected much, and I need to start thinking about my future too. My current plan for 2026, thus, is to grow both as a writer and as a person, to do what I’ve neglected, and branch out beyond just this one project alone.
I am very thankful to everyone who has supported Somewhere Someplace, either by rating or your simple act of reading. I remain committed, and my passion remains strong. I just wish I had infinite time, infinite funds, and no material woes about which to worry.
Thank you for listening to my Ted-Talk.
See you again Wednesday,
Nemo Omniaque.
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2nd anniversary of Somewhere Someplace, ~700,000+ published words following ~1,000,000 words of redrafting prior to publication starting in early 2023.
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significant creative burnout after completing Volume 3.
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full-time unpaid commitment, impacting other life priorities and mental wellbeing.
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770+, with a small but dedicated core readership.
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very small (<10).
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slowly declined and are unlikely to recover meaningfully.
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not materially changed over the past year despite heavy effort, ads, and promotion.
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neither failed nor succeeded, existing in a stagnated middle ground.
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2030s, an unsustainable commitment without returns.
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Somewhere Someplace can no longer remain the top priority, despite continued passion for the project.
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will not be abandoned.
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moved to the “backseat” to allow space for other projects and personal stability.
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205,000-word novel (58 chapters) written between October–December.
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more accessible and digestible for Royal Road readers.
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independent spin-off.
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February 2026 (tentative).
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Somewhere Someplace.
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semi-surrealist meta-fiction project is in progress; release uncertain.
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therapeutic and energizing.
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full re-execution reboot of Somewhere Someplace is being explored.
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restructured and re-executed using current skills and lessons learned.
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Not guaranteed to happen.
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co-exist initially.
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will continue regardless.
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high-difficulty and structurally demanding.
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Mid-to-late 2026 (tentative).
- Twelve Day War will conclude as planned
- But main priority right now is readying Between Broken Worlds for launch.
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diversify projects, grow professionally and personally, and stabilize long-term sustainability.
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