Goodinine! I know I’m late on this one, so sorry in advance.  I’ve been busy with life stuff (life update to come soon), but I’m still trying to keep up with updating the book and blog as I promised.

I may have been ambitious to promise two posts a month (I know, a pretty low bar as is), but I appreciate those of you who still read and like the content I post.

All right, enough pussyfooting around! Here are the current stats of the stories:

Current Chapter (Unity’s Edge):  20 (Foundations and Stilts)

Pages: 377

Total Word Count: 131,653

Current Chapter (New World): 4

Pages: 46

Total Word Count: 18,226

More than I expected, less than I’d have liked.  Part of the problem is that I’m now writing another thing in addition to these two (something unrelated to H/D, and something I can’t currently type up), so a lot of my spare time has been going to that.  However, I’m still doing as much as I can to finish Unity’s Edge, since we’ve gotten so close to the finale.

I’ll admit, going back and reading the first few chapters, I’m not entirely happy with how I went about introducing the world and main characters.  It feels… not quite “rushed”, but definitely forced.

By the midpoint of the story, I feel like I got the hang of writing like this, but there are still some parts that come off as… hard to read?  I don’t know, I still have problems coming off how I mean to in stories, so I just hope it’s entertaining for anyone reading it.

…

…So.  Did anyone enjoy the Interlude chapter I posted the other day?

Rinkyu has been one of my favorite characters since Hell/Dolls first popped out of my mind.  Because she’s still so unknown in the story, I wanted to flesh out why she acts the way she does – being put into slavery for years definitely affected her worldview that people can be horrible, cruel, selfish beings, but losing everyone you’ve ever come to love or care about is also something that hardens your heart quickly.

Thankfully, Rinkyu is a smart, strong-willed person who won’t give up even with the powerful hardships she’s endured.  The loss of Caul is a devastating blow to her morale early on in her life, but building her life back up with the help of Regnah and the Crush Squad is an important self-goal I have set for her.

This chapter went through a lot of revisions, just trying to get the tone right without coming off too sadistic or violent (though the final scene was pretty gruesome, or at least that’s how it felt writing it).

When I started writing stories, I originally wanted to do more horror or violent ones, but what I ended up releasing more often than not was softer-toned stories, or stuff with a hint of violence and fear.  I’ll talk more about that sort of thing in the Life Update, but the point is this: Hell/Dolls was originally supposed to have lots of gore, horror, and sadness, and the way I’ve been writing it doesn’t quite live up to what I had in mind.

I still have a couple of scenes that I’d like to get to that have more of the dark moments, but for now, there may only be a prominent death here or there.  Where I’m at right now, the main cast may need a peaceful interlude before heading into the second book’s big threat… though I’m not quite done with the finale of the first book.

We’ll get there.

If anyone reading these posts has questions about the story, or if you’re looking for more information on the world of Hell/Dolls, please feel free to comment on the post!  I’ll answer to the best of my abilities, and I’ll try to avoid spoilers.  Ive got three documents and thirty-plus notes just on the current stories, plus my backlog of data from the original idea and the tabletop versions I’ve been working on.

Thanks for reading~!

-Marcosias Isif.