how does it feel to be done with (the main) fae tales verse as far, as far as writing goes? is mallory and mount going forward or do you have other plans? :o

It still doesn't really feel real honestly! I don't think it will until like we all get to experience the end of the canon together? Right now I kind of feel like I'm in a holding pattern. :D

I felt sort of sad that it was ending a while back, probably a year ago. And then I felt kind of relieved too, because The Ice Plague has had...a lot of teething issues re: dropping popularity and just general engagement (it's still good! But it's just...it will never be like Game Theory or The Court of Five Thrones, and book 3 will never be like book 2 and that wasn't like book 1).

I've been doing Mallory & Mount worldbuilding but I actually haven't written anything yet and I don't think I will for another couple of months, which doesn't bode well for launching M&M straight after Fae Tales. Because I'll need a buffer of chapters for that story. Realistically speaking I'll probably have to maintain the Patreon with a Gary/Efnisien omegaverse AU, while I write buffer chapters.

Some of the lag is just that the worldbuilding is much more complicated (new days of the week, new names for months, new names for currency, new values of currency, inventing an entirely new language, drawing a world map, etc.), and some if it is that I just actually think I need a break from really intense, complicated writing.

Some of it is also just fear that it will do badly. Logistically in 2022 the Patreon does increasingly worse every single month, and it's been that way for 8 months. By the time Fae Tales is finished, I think I'll be looking at a year of downward trending (after 7 years of only upward trending). It's quite a blow, even though there are understandable economic reasons for it, and it has me questioning if this is even sustainable. It can be hard to...motivate yourself to write or commit yourself to a story that will take 4+ years to write properly, or months of really intensive worldbuilding, when it might be 4 years that are better spent elsewhere, y'know?

Like I think the story and characters are good, but are they good enough? I don't know. I won't know until I write it, and I am not motivated or inspired to write it right now. Though I will say certainly part of that is simply that I am still writing big wordcounts. I wrote 38k last month, most of it on FFS, and I've written 19k this month already, most of it on FFS and Smoke in Autumn. FFS is the most word hungry story I've ever written.

Tbh I had to also take a pretty big hiatus (like a year) between Court of Five Thrones and The Ice Plague, so I'm not entirely surprised this is happening. Some of this is certainly burn out, I may actually need a break from that level of writing (I can write 5 chapters of Falling Falling Stars in the time it takes me to write one chapter of The Ice Plague - and FFS is like...3 times as popular lmao). I really enjoy writing complex narratives, characters, and politics, and original worldbuilding, but it is more effort, and Fae Tales has been going for nearly a decade. Maybe I just need some breathing room before launching straight off with another half decade commitment!! aslkfjsdaka :D I'm sure that's a big part of it.

Incidentally my worldbuilding folder for Mallory & Mount currently looks like this:

As you can see, I have been working on it pretty recently! Though I've taken a little break this month. So even if I take a break from it, I'll probably still be thinking about it and working on it in the background. I am almost certainly going to do early release re: Mallory & Mount - i.e. it goes up first on Patreon, and then it goes up on AO3 2 weeks later.

Whatever the case though, I'll still be writing something! I actually wrote 500 words of the Efnisien/Gary fic last night after busting out 4,600 words on the next FFS chapter sdslkajfsa the writing always continues, even if I don't know exactly what I'm doing with it.

As for the end of the Fae Tales canon, I think early August will be...Feelstown lmao. It's so soon!

Hi Pia. I've been a fan of your work for a long time now and was wondering if you'd ever write an original sci-fi story or an original contemporary

Altho I know FFS probably classifies as contemporary 🤔 But I just saw that as a human au loosely based off Fae Tales

Fae Tales is an original series with my own original characters, and Falling Falling Stars is an entirely original contemporary story that features only some of those original characters, so technically, it is an original contemporary story. I'm not using someone else's IP, so it's not really fanfic. Something being an AU doesn't make it fanfic, for example, if an artist who draws a superhero character decides to draw them as a merman for Mermay, they're not doing 'fanfiction' of someone else's character - they're doing original art of one of their original characters, y'know? It's just another way of looking at them. Plenty of authors have re-used their characters in other things, this is especially common in comics, but it also happens in fantasy writing a lot too. Also doesn't mean those things become fanfic! Still all original, just has an AU component. :D

But AUs aside...

Otherwise, like, sure I'd consider it! My next works are likely to both be original fantasy worlds, but I like science fiction and I like writing contemporary. I've written original omegaverse in a contemporary setting with the Perth Shifters series, but straight up contemporary is definitely something I've thought up scenarios for.

Science fiction generally doesn't interest me quite as much as fantasy does, but all speculative fiction is interesting/enjoyable to me. That being said, all the next original worlds I've thought up - Daemonos, Glamour Gods, Vexteria, Mallory & Mount etc. are all respectively medieval-style science fiction (but really more like a fantasy, it's just interplanetary), paranormal science-fiction romance, high/epic/secondary world fantasy, high/epic/secondary world fantasy/psychological thriller.

It's more fun for me to sandbox in specfic, because like... I don't get to write characters who have naturally violet eyes, or shapeshifting demons, or fairy-human hybrids who are used by criminals and governments for their glamour as enslaved propaganda machines, or characters who are actually just pretty human but where magic is illegal and serial killers are super common actually.

Contemporary is easy for me to write, but it's not as appealing overall unless it's in situations like Falling Falling Stars, or Smoke in Autumn, or As Green as the Ragged Grass, or Spoils of the Spoiled, or...

Actually you know I've written a fair bit of original contemporary!

I've actually finished a contemporary novel in the past, which a few folks have read bits of through the Patreon over time, called Every Day Awake. The playlists for the characters (Allie, Brad and Jacob) are still on Spotify, as character playlists. I still plan on rewriting that book one day, but it's definitely not high on my priority list.