In the re-write, I'm emphasizing the divides between the Mortal, Transcendental, Immortal, and Celestial/Divine realms more, and to cement that in my head I've been writing them as the pingfanjie (Mortal), chaoyuejie (Transcendental), xianjie (Immortal), and Tian Tang for the Divines. I keep finding myself switching between the xianxia-esque -jie names and their English equivalents, with the feel of the English equivalents as nicknames. Is it worth keeping the xianxia names?

Poll is at the bottom of this post, and closes Feb 10, 8PM PST.

(I'm cross posting this with the patreon posts, so I guess you could double vote if it matters that much to you).

Update!

Yeah, that's a pretty clear message. The leanings were heavily broadcast early on, so I've already been working the rewrite toward avoiding applying funky names for things that are easy to identify in English. What did clarify as I was working through that is that I don't know enough words in English for the way the metaphysics of the Myriad Realms works (not-really-a-spoiler: It's not the Ten Horizons anymore, but the Myriad Realms). While I did end up keeping "Jie" as a way to reference the specific containers of the tiers of realms (because there are times when talking about the realms within the "realm seas" got convoluted), I'm limiting them to more the kind of background information that I, as the author, need to know. And since it helped me to firm things up, here is a slightly spoiler-y sketch of how I'm envisioning the metaphysics of the Myriad Realms. The realms themselves are too numerous to depict (in my head cannon), and you'll have to read the rewrite to learn what the blobbies inside the realm seas are. =)

I expect that next week (2023 Feb 13-16 especially) is going to see me getting a lot of the updated, edited, and redone chapters to Patreon (where you can read them for free). When *all* of the re-written book 1 is done and I start posting book 2, I'll be releasing to Patreon as I write, and putting up a new book for the rewrite, that I'll link to here in a new post. The posting schedule on RoyalRoad will depend on the amount of backlog I build up on my Patreon.

Now, I know that I said here before that I was leery of putting up a Patreon. A lot of that is because I deal with the very common Creatives problem of imposter syndrome: feeling like what I make isn't that great, it's "just this thing". I haven't gotten over that with my painting, but I'm getting more comfortable with my writing.

I’m in a much better head space than I have been for a while. A lot of that is because back in September I signed up for a co-working space, getting out of the house and around real people again, but in that “everyone’s working” atmosphere. I was able to brush a lot of creative rust off, which primed me for diving into the writing prompt of “Uncharted Waters” the last RoyalRoad Community Magazine revolved around. That resulted in starting up Dungeon Core Vacation, which also unjammed my writers block for Divine Creatures.

Finances-wise, I’m looking for how to stay in the co-working space past the end of April. If I end up having to pick up extra part time gigs, that would cut into my writing time, but the space to work has just been such a big help, mentally and creatively, that I’m going to have to be pried out of here. Which is the big reason I opened up the Patreon page. Still, what has been free to read is going to stay free to read.