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[b]TL;DR Oops, I'm shelving the game and coming back to writing and releasing normal chapters of A Tribe Called Broken Rock, there is a couple chapters in the works right now that are on their way and some slight edits will be made to the format of the story and older chapters to make it work. But I am back and more is on its way![/b]

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So it's been a bit! Which I do sincerely apologize for, its been a pretty full on couple years for me, I've been working pretty hard on stabilizing myself financially and career wise, that takes up a lot of time, what time I did have I didn't feel the energy for Broken Rock. And bit by bit, delays, stuff falling through, its become increasingly clear to me the game has stalled and probably doesn't have any more gas in it. This story and its project has stalled completely because of a number of reasons and its about time that I start putting the elbow grease in to get it rolling again.

Firstly, I want to make this clear, this post is going to be frank discussion on why the game failed, why I am shelving it, and what issues lead to that. But I [b]promise[/b] this is not the end, I am coming back and more chapters of A Tribe Called Broken Rock is coming, very shortly actually, so please let that be the key take away.

So lets talk briefly about the game and why I am changing my mind and coming back to publishing ATCBR as a story.

I actually made a surprisingly decent level of progress on the game, a lot more than I was scared I would. There is a playable alpha version of the game on my computer but make no mistake it is extremely barebones and janky and filled with ugly placeholders. I made a lot of progress on it at first and I got to the point where it came time to settle on the artists, to start producing the assets for it graphically. Now, I've been practicing my art over the last couple months but I cannot draw to save my life so from the get go I wanted to find a good artist, come to them with a working alpha and pay and work with them to do that.

I found a pair of great artists who's styles fit what I want, but for many reasons both fell through. This is not an assignment of blame, at all. It just wasn't right, our schedules didn't line up, the price point was going to be exorbitantly expensive, it would take way too much of their time away from their personal art/commissions/income and they couldn't afford to do it, they were worried about quality, etc.

Again, I do not begrudge them at all, there is no ill will, these things happen, ideas fall through and to make it work I would've had to invest a lot more time and money into managing the project that I couldn't really afford to when am working, studying, and doing other hobbies. The game faltered because of me and only me, the artists were nothing but polite and enthusiastic and I did get some useful pieces out of it in the end.

So when the stall happened I reviewed what my plans were and what was going on and I came to the conclusion that the game, as much as I wish I could've made it work, is just not the future for *this* version of the story. The scope of this game would've been way too much and given how much I had spent already to get a vertical slice together, if I increased the scope of that to the dozens of characters and locations I had, it would've blown out far more.

And then after a few months of my being gloomy about that realization and the admitted loss of motivation that did cause, it just compounded. I missed Alfie and Kait, I missed this world and story and I wanted to work on it, but I didn't want to work on juggling the game, so I would get more upset because I couldn't work on it, etc etc. Eventually a couple months back I also realized I just plain wanted to write it again. I was tired of coding it, I wanted to *write* it.

So this is step one to getting back on track, is to just admit I made the mistake, got too ambitious, burnt myself out on ATCBR for a while, and then the guilt of not working on it and letting my readers down made that worse. I am sorry for that, I do like to think I am better then that in some capacity, I know this story does mean a lot to some of you, I've gotten plenty of touching messages from folks who've told me that actually, I let you down and I let myself down.

But, rather than dwell on it, we move on, and we get back on the horse and get back to it. This story means a lot to me and I intend to see it finished some day, goddamn it.

So, with the sad stuff out of the way, what's the plan for 2025 and the story.

Good question, its still a little in the air, I've started to write chapters again and I am putting feelers out for artists but there's a couple hiccups to address. For those of you who don't care about the meta side of writing this will be a lot of talking shop so you can skip this ramble if you like.

Firstly is the last couple chapters before my hiatus have some mediocre pacing, I was really struggling and stalling, I need to wrench the story back on track. It was going all over the place, focusing on details that don't matter etc.

In simple terms Alfie's house is taking way too long to build lmfao and it stalled a lot of the progress and realistically speaking a lot of that detail is superfluous and boring, I should really just time skip that kind of stuff.

So that's the first step to do a time skip, not anything long, probably just a couple in universe weeks just to settle the story back on the rails again so we can have chapters where fun and horny and interesting stuff is happening again.

So I will probably have to release a "wrap up chapter" to tie the first act up as comfortably as I can, so I can do my little time skip to close the first act and then start back again. Think of it as "Season 1" and "Season 2" I guess.

And that brings me to my next points which is the framing device, somebody on Knockout.chat once gave me some constructive feedback when I posted there that the framing device, quite frankly falls apart after a few chapters. The story is meant to be a day by day journal that Alfie is keeping but after a while the limitations of that framing device got very hard to deal with. A lot of the story needs to be about introspection, and or Alfie's internal monologue; As I focused on that, the framing device started to slowly become a massive pain in the butt. Which feeds into that first issue, houses aren't built in a day, they take weeks, especially in a place like Broken Rock, and if I keep this framing device I was going to have to juggle Alfie's hut every chapter for dozens of chapters. And it wouldn't just be Alfie's hut, not to spoil things obviously but there's a lot of stuff coming up in my planning documents that I was realizing with horror. [i]"Oh gosh, this would take a month in real time..." or even smaller details like "Wait that is like a two week distance to cross, that character is going to be gone for like 40 chapters if I do that..."[/i] etc.

Let me put it this way, there's a reason why in real books by much better authors than me that doesn't happen, take "A Song of Ice and Fire" George RR Martin neatly handwaves that sort of thing to the chapter gaps, If a character goes from Kings Landing to Pentos for instance, in the reality of that world that's at best a week at sea. Nobody wants to see 7 chapters of X character on a boat tapping their foot until they get to Essos and you as a reader don't need to see that, you get it, [i]they sailed on a boat to the place.[/i]

So in "Season 2" or "Act 2" or whatever we want to call it, I need to find a way to [i]"neatly and lovingly"[/i] throw my framing device out and then go back and edit the earlier chapters to sand down the emphasis I put on that framing device so that it feels a little more natural and coherent through the entire story because the pace was starting to balloon alarmingly out of control. For the future pace of A Tribe Called Broken Rock it's just not possible to keep it up without this story bloating hideously out of control. I have de-emphasize that framing device as neatly and smoothly as I can so I can utilize the first person perspective to do more effective storytelling.

Plus it just is a little more pleasant to read and more realistic, If anybody reading this keeps a journal for themselves, you absolutely know for sure some days are just. [i]"I have nothing to report I just worked and did hobbies".[/i] Alfie having to do something interesting every day is just not believable and to be blunt for a minute, maintaining erotic tension is already hard enough without having to also deal with finding some way for Alfie to do something erotic every day just to keep the framing device relevant.

So in conclusion my gut was pulling me away from that framing device, because the story gradually just became more traditionally first person. Which it's far more suited for and really I should've just done that from the start to save myself the headache.

I want to leave this off with thanking everybody who's still here, or who's seen this notification and come back because they've been waiting on my dork ass to get it together for months. I can't express how much I appreciate the love and attention the story gets, and has gotten and still gets.

The real heart and soul of this story is, fundamentally wish fulfillment, it's smut and erotica obviously, it's porn. But I want it to be a more...satisfying and healthy pornography. When I think about what people want from life, it's to be accepted and loved for who you are, to wake up in a safe community that genuinely cares and wants to help you, and finally but certainly not least, to be fucked so good you cum hard enough that it solves your problems.

At the risk of sounding saccharine, I think now more than ever people need that wish fulfillment.

Thanks for being here, no matter who or where you are. You'll hear from me and Alfie again [b]very soon.[/b]

[i][b]~"Alfie" Broke[/b][/i]