Why changes?

This novel was began here on Royal Road almost 2.5 years ago with almost nothing, and since then I've kinda just kept going, kept making it, having fun on the way, until now today it is ~280 000 words long, and according to Royal Road would fit neatly inside a 1000+ pages paperback 😅

So, the problem, or situation more like it, is that this book has become too big, and I've figured out that instead of just making one book bigger and bigger, I want to split the book up. Therefore I've been thinking a lot lately about the structure of New Magic Brothers. And I've discovered that if I am to split it up into multiple books (though each new chapter will keep being posted here along with the others) then I'll have to move some content around.

Okay, but what changes?

Soon, I will be moving the previously published "interludes" a little earlier into the novel, which means that you should keep watch out for any interludes that are suddenly moved behind where your latest reading progress was set. I've also renamed the interludes a little to indicate that these first interludes follow the life of one particular character, Evenin of Redratall, in title referred to as the "State-Builder". This name change is also because I plan soon to move away from interludes about just Evenin, to interludes instead concerning another character, to be revealed.

Alright, so what plans do you have?

New Magic Brothers in its current form will be split into 2 books:

New Magic Brothers 1: A scholar and a tattoo artist walks into a tavern… New Magic Brothers 2: Greatest Gayest Crime

The first book is finished, more or less. It will end at the cliffhanger around chapter 53, and will be followed by the last interlude (or, in this case called an "epilogue"), which I'm in the process of making, and which concludes the side-story told about Evenin of Redratall, and also concludes the first book. Book number 2 ("Greatest Gayest Crime") is the story we're inside now with chapter 64. By my rough estimates, this book is about 1/3 or 1/4 finished, and also, it will include another series of interludes prefixed "Empire-Killer", which is about this other character different from Evenin.

Beyond these first 2 books, I've also future plans for 2 more books.

New Magic Brothers 3: Enemies of The Closet Lord, which will include a third series of interludes about a third different character, at this moment given the title "Farmer's Clown" and New Magic Brothers 4, which I've yet to land on a good title for but currently have a set of quite good ideas and scenes, so this will also likely be a good book.

So to kinda generalize, I wish to focus on dividing the work into smaller, more normal-sized books that each focus on some "phase" you could say for the overall story of the series, and for each such story, to also tell a series of interludes about one extra character per novel, that allow us to better explore parts of the world and history of Aclima which do not fit so well into the regular chapters about Rum and Amez. Phase 1, or New Magic Brothers 1, focus on establishing the central characters and the world, with Rum, Amez, introducing the City of Ermos etc. (although this city has much more complexity to be explored), while phase 2, or New Magic Brothers 2, will be somewhat escalatory... you will see what I mean 😉 but you get it, there's a pattern to it.

Did anyone mention a world-map?

Okay so this is only a sneak-peak at a sketch I've made. The final world-map will be made by an actual artist and contain a lot more detail than this (and some changes probably), and perhaps even have a completely different style to it. But perhaps you'll enjoy this nevertheless.

It is worth noting that this is in fact not so much a "world-map" as a regional map focused around Ermos. Because the world of Aclima is much bigger than this, and there will be places in the novel which I'll refer to (and have in fact already been referred to), but which will not be found on this map. Still, as you can see, around Ermos and The Desolate Lands there are a lot of land to be explored and which I've not touched on yet. North of Ermos, for instance, you'll see a lot of settlements wherein live "Snow-Gnomes", a type of gnome I've not referred to yet but will be discussed in future stories. And you can also see that goblins and trolls have lands of great size that haven't really been talked about, so look forward to that as well 😊

There is so much to come, people!

(btw, pro-tip, the map is a little too large to show all the details, so you might want to right-click it and show it in a new tab, so you can properly zoom in to see the details)