TLDR: I will be taking a break as my school term is starting and will resume posting chapters on 28th May 2018. Once I return, chapter release will follow a daily release schedule with Sundays being a cheat day where I release 2-4 chapters. So expect around 8-10 chapters weekly.

Hi guys! If you are reading this, thank you for supporting Spirit Immortal until now! It has been nearly a month since I began writing this fiction and we have come to the end of Book One! I’m not sure if RoyalRoadL has an announcement section for authors but for now, I will be posting this as a chapter. So those expecting a chapter here, I apologise. In this author’s thoughts section, I will be covering my inspiration for writing Spirit Immortal, issues I’ve had in writing book one and the future of the novel.

Background about myself and inspirations for writing Spirit Immortal

Currently, I am a university undergraduate, and I have been reading fiction for years. I first got into reading fiction because of anime. Initially, I was a pure anime/manga fan. But I then found out about the existence of light novels. Light novels were far ahead from the existing anime, so I started to binge read translated volumes on Baka-Tsuki. It became somewhat of a drug to me. I kept reading and eventually, fictions had become part of my daily life. However, everything changed when the Yen Press attacked… Suddenly, many of my favourite novels disappeared, and less and less light novel translations surfaced.

Finding myself in a severe deficit of fictions to read, I found something called Novelupdates. Every few minutes, there was a new novel chapter being released. I was overjoyed. Finally, I was able to satisfy my daily fiction needs. That was how I got into wuxia/xianxia novels. Being ethnically Chinese and fluent in both English and Chinese, there was a great allure for me in these stories. When I was younger, I would frequently watch The Legend of the Condor Heroes and many what we call “wuxia xiaoshuo.” So seeing that the traditional stories blend with modern themes was somewhat shocking to me. To think that such a part of the internet existed!

So I started reading a lot of wuxia/xianxia stories. I remember the early days of Coiling Dragon and Stellar Transformations. The friendly competition between Gravitytales and Wuxiaworld. But one day, I encountered Doulou Dalu. For those who have not noticed, Spirit Immortal’s cultivation system is inspired by this very novel. The reason being, it was the only cultivation system that I could actually follow. It’s a very simplistic system, rank 1-100. The other Wuxia novels cultivation systems confused the heck out of me. However, worry not, Spirit Immortal is not a fanfiction of Doulou Dalu. In fact, other than the cultivation levels, they are nothing alike.

For a while, Doulou Dalu was my favourite novel. To a certain extent, it still is my favourite translated wuxia/xianxia novel. But I started feeling bored. Every single book that I read followed the same format. And after many disappointing stories, I thought to myself… Hey, I could just write something I like!

Thus, the idea of Spirit Immortal started germinating in my mind. It took me over five months to finish plotting the major arcs, characters and finally the ending before I started typing my first word. Majority of the reason why it took so long for me to start writing this story is because of my procrastination and school. Additionally, I didn’t know if the story was going to be well received. But eventually, I steeled my mind and said: “Whatever, as long as I am satisfied with the story, who cares?”

So yeah, currently the number one fan of Spirit Immortal is myself, and I can’t wait to put the entire story I have in my head into words for all of you to read. It will take time though, so do stick around!

Issues I have had when writing Book One

Although English is my first language, I do not claim to be a master in it. So there will be grammar and sentence structure mistakes that I cannot identify. What? An author whose English isn’t perfect? How can that be?! Yeah yeah, I’m trying to work on it too…

All chapters are put through a grammar checking software called Grammarly. But one user pointed out that even sometimes, Grammarly is not perfect. So it’s kind of frustrating as I do not know if my grammar is wrong or if Grammarly is just trolling me. Maybe one day, when I have a full-time income, I might hire someone to proofread and edit my work but that day will not come anytime soon. So for now, please put up with any mistakes in language that I have made or will make in the future.

Future of Spirit Immortal

Currently, I have finished Book One. There is still a long way to go until the end of my story though. I’m unsure of the number of books required to finish the story, but rest assured it would be more than a mere ten books. So I’m in it for the long haul. Will it take one year, two years or even more to finish the story? I’m not sure. Who knows what the future holds?

If you have followed me from the day I started posting, you would know that my release schedule is slightly irregular, some days I do not post at all. Some I post four to five chapters. This is because every time I finish typing a chapter, I run it through Grammarly and do a final proofread before posting it straight to RoyalRoadL. Essentially, I am releasing my chapters as soon as I finish writing them.

But this is only possible because I am on semester break. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and my classes begin next week. So, I will be taking a one week break to prepare myself for class. And once I come back, I will start posting one chapter daily with Sunday being a “cheat day” if you will where I will post two to four chapters.

So yeah. That’s all for my author’s thoughts. If you like Spirit Immortal, please make sure to leave a five-star rating! Your continued support means the world to me and gives me the drive to continue writing!

PS: Can someone please explain RoyalRoadL UI to me? I have a few questions.

Q1) How do I hide spoiler titles? I know you can put spoiler tags in chapter content but not the title.

Q2) Why do some of my chapters have bigger spacings between lines than others even though I’ve been writing in the same format?