Maidens of the Fall, chapters 1 + 2

Launch post!!! New story! Story story story!

Ahem.

I have no idea what to say here. I've been so incredibly excited to finally reveal this story to everybody, and now it's actually happening. I hope you all enjoy these first two chapters just as much as I have enjoyed writing them! Of course, I can't say anything about the story itself just yet, not until you've actually started reading the thing.

So, without further ado, here are the first two chapters, available to all readers, public and patrons!

https://hungryshedgerow.net/motf-disarticulation-1-1/

https://hungryshedgerow.net/motf-disarticulation-1-2/

(These are also attached to this post as epubs!)
(If you read directly from the epubs, please be aware of the content warnings posted on the site itself. There is some heavy stuff even in these first two chapters. Please do take a moment to check the content warnings if you need to.)

For patrons, there is an additional post with three more chapters, which I'm going to post 0.5 seconds after I hit the button for this one.

Phew. Well. There we go! It's live!

So, now that's out of the way, I can mention some of the additional stuff.

Firstly, here's a link to the Table of Contents / Upcoming Chapters page, with dates for the next couple of months of chapters. Maidens is going to follow the same 3-weeks-on-1-week-off schedule as Katalepsis. These are early days right now, and Maidens is a very new story; it demands the overwhelming bulk of my attention, effort, and care, and I am absolutely giving it all that I can, and more. While I hope the 3-1 schedule will not be interrupted, if the story does demand a little more time one week, I'll do my best to keep a buffer to avoid interruptions.

Arc length and structure! If you check out the table of contents, you'll probably notice that the first two arcs are very short by my usual standards: 4 chapters each (though arc 2 might grow to 5 chapters.) The third arc (currently unlisted) is probably also going to be only 4-5 chapters.

This is because the entire opening was originally going to be one arc of about 7 chapters, but then the tale grew in the telling, as it so often does, and I decided to split things up into three separate arcs. As the story gets past the opening, I have planned for arcs to be more Katalepsis-sized, but I'm keeping my options open to vary things a lot.

Speaking of size, a word on chapter size! The first chapter of Maidens is very short; the second chapter is very long. This is entirely on purpose; this time I've decided to allow chapters to conform much more smoothly to their own narrative demands, as long or short as they need to be. If, however, I end up writing several short chapters in a row somehow, I'll post multiple at once, so readers won't get short-changed. That's all for the future though!

For those who prefer to read on Royal Road or Scribblehub, those mirrors of the story will be up shortly; they have to be manually approved by the respective sites, so it's out of my hands, for at least a few hours, maybe over the weekend.

For readers who don't frequent the Discord server, there is already a memes page! People started making memes before the story even began, the moment I previewed the cover art. I am in awe; my audience is amazing, you're all great! Go check it out if you like that sort of thing and want to have a giggle.

There's also actual fanart, posted in the Discord server this very morning, so I've come back to edit this line into the post. I cannot believe there's fanart before the story even starts. Anyway! Here's this one fan's speculation on how the story is going to go, based on the blurb and cover art, (by Galactic!)

And finally, most importantly, thank you.

Thank you all so much; there is simply no way that I could be doing all this without your support. Being able to take over two months of prep and drafting and editing time is honestly just incredible. That time, created via your support, has enabled me to elevate this story far beyond what it would have been otherwise, if I had simply published the first chapter and then tried to get my feet under me in real-time. You have given me that time in which to work, and I am grateful beyond my ability to express.

It's been three years since I last launched a new project, and, well, Necroepilogos has always been kind of a side-project (no matter how much I love it!) When I started writing Katalepsis about 7 years ago, I had no audience at all, and no idea if my fiction would be at all popular, so I was just flinging it into the void, to whatever audience might happen to see it.

But now, here I am, starting a new main project, with an audience already out there, for the first time.

Thank you all. I couldn't do this without you. My storytelling would not exist without you, the readers and patrons.

Here's to another 7 years! Here's to the Maidens! I hope you like them.