Author's Note

Dear Royal Road Reader,

If you’ve gotten this far, then you probably have questions.

Is this it? Is this the end? Will there be more chapters? Is there a sequel? To give good answers, we need some backstory.

When I first wrote Dear Human (originally titled Pilgrimage to Twilight), I was 19. And yes, I know that sounds like a #humblebrag of some sort, but please don’t give this 19-year-old in question too much credit. If I’d posted his version on Royal Road, we wouldn’t be here, having this pleasant conversation more than 40 chapters later. Pilgrimage to Twilight and Dear Human are very different books.

In fact, when I finished writing Pilgrimage to Twilight, I hated it so much that I refused to look at it for 17 years.

When I eventually dusted it off in early 2021, I still hated it. But! I realized to my pleasant surprise that although the book had remained as terrible as ever, my own writing skills had not. I’d leveled up a few times in those 17 years, having written 5 more just-for-fun novels and published two serious non-fiction books.

Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I could transform this thing I hated into something I loved. I accepted the quest; but as the months went on, I discovered some good news and some bad news. The good news was that I was enjoying the new draft quite a bit. The strange conflict between morls and humans was fun to write about, as were characters like Father Ori and Nial.

The bad news, though, was that in order to go from liking the new book to loving the new book, I would need to write at least two books. I could feel it in my bones rather quickly after embarking on my quest.

This was largely because I became fascinated by the idea that Dear Human doesn’t just exist here as fiction here on Earth, but that it also exists as non-fiction in its own world. Furthermore, even in its own world, Dear Human leads a double existence: It is both a first-hand account of the beginning of the End Times; and it is a Trojan horse, an ideological weapon carefully assembled by the morls in an attempt to “get inside the minds” of the few remaining humans who live beyond their reach. Will it work? I found myself wondering.

Long before I finished Dear Human, I was already planning out a pair of books as a kind of "sparring match" between two civilizations:

Book 1: Dear Human - In which we discover that the book itself is a morlish weapon in an age-old magical conflict.

Book 2: Dear Morl - In which human civilization struggles to survive Dear Human’s impact while striking back at the Morl Nation with a book of their own, perhaps an enchanted one.

I have every reason to suspect that Dear Morl would be as fun to write as Dear Human, perhaps more so. After all, Dear Human got the mechanics of human and morlish magic out in the open, and it introduced a bunch of human characters, most of whom are conveniently sitting around in Father Ori’s mind with nothing to do. Until the next adventure.

So, that brings us full circle: will there be a next adventure? Are we at the end? Will I find the time to write Dear Morl, and if I do, will I post it on Royal Road?

Dear Reader, these are questions you can help me answer (if you care to do so).

You should know that I can usually write a first draft in about 6 months (4, if I’m particularly inspired). The problem is that I’m currently writing a different novel that I’m quite excited about. Don’t worry, though: I’m not here to plug that other book; I only mention it as a way of saying that Dear Morl is on the back burner.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it walked off the back burner onto the front burner on its own one day. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night hearing Father Ori’s voice in my head, telling me to get back to work. He can be very convincing.

Another thing I find convincing (as a computer scientist) is data. If a lot of people enjoy Dear Human, I won’t be able to resist writing Dear Morl. At the end of the day, I write for other people – not just for myself.

So for those of you who want some insight into how and when I might decide to write Dear Morl – I’ll share the three metrics I track:

Number of views on Royal Road. We have about 2,500 at the time of this writing. If I woke up one morning and saw that we’d reached 10,000, I’d be pleasantly surprised. If it got to 50,000, I’d start doing preliminary work for Dear Morl. And if we hit 100,000 views, I’d start scheduling time to write every morning, and you could expect a Dear Morl release a few months later.

Number of people who finish the book. For obvious reasons, this is even more important than number of views. One of the things I love about Royal Road, is that I know exactly how many people have finished each chapter. I’ve made a deal with myself: the moment 1000 people out there finish the book, I’ll pour myself a coffee and start writing Dear Morl on the spot.

Number of people who send me a thoughtful message. At the time of this writing, I’ve gotten 7 very heartwarming messages in the few months since I began posting Dear Human on Royal Road. Some of you have sent me direct messages through Royal Road; others have even gone through the trouble to track down my email address. These things mean a lot to me (as they do for any writer, of course). I save each of these; and you can bet that I won’t be able to resist making Dear Morl happen if I receive 100 or so messages from readers telling me that they need it to happen. What can I say; I’m a big softie.

So, if you liked it, let me know. And tell your friends. :) Oh, and if you’re ever in the greater Seattle area, let’s grab a coffee.

Sincerely, Stephen R. Foster

Jan 7, 2022