Hello everyone,
Saga of the Jewels is now about halfway through Season One.
(By the way, Season Two is well into production, with about 35,000 words written so far :) )
I’ve noticed that my reading stats have taken a small dip lately, probably because everyone is super busy and exhausted as bleak November arrives (except in some cases—some people are still faithfully reading every week—I’m glad you’re enjoying it!), so I’m going to pause this Season for a little while (exact date TBC) to allow people to catch up.
This will also allow me to catch the podcast up to the currently-published written episodes, because……...I think I’ve fixed my microphone! Woohoo! It seems Zoom messed it up for a while. I won’t email every time a new podcast episode goes up, but I’ll email again when it’s caught up.
It will also also allow me to try out an idea I have shamelessly stolen from my friend, reader and writer extraordinaire, Tom Carlisle*: a substack discussion thread!
Here’s the idea:
What do you think of what you’ve read/listened to of Saga of the Jewels so far?
Please let me know in response to this email/post.
You’ll need to click the little speech bubble below at the bottom of this email/post and then write in the ‘Write a comment’ box to leave a message - I don’t think you need to create an account to do so but if I’m wrong then please let me know.
And here’s a trick I got from teaching during a national school lockdown:
If, when you click the speech bubble, you find someone has already left a comment and beaten you to being first, please phrase your own comment in reply to theirs, or to another of the comments that is already visible. Why? That way we might actually get some fun discussion going, rather than merely a bunch people saying things in response to me.
Oh, and please don’t worry about whether you’ve read just one paragraph or all the first ten episodes of Season One—I still want to know what you think, and nothing very spoiler-y has happened yet.
Please feel free to be as brief or as verbose as you like! I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts :)
-Luke
* By the way, if you don’t already know of my friend Tom’s newsletter about what he’s reading each month, you should go and check it out, especially the voracious readers among you. Tom is an author of literary horror, but his reading diet is omnivorous and he reads a superhuman amount—you will always find good recommendations in his posts. Now please click that little speech bubble you see down there and let me know your thoughts on SOTJ!
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Hi Luke. Full disclosure: I am only at the end of Episode 6, so very glad of a chance to catch up on this. I'm enjoying the saga a lot, although I was definitely surprised at discovering there are twelve jewels scattered across the world (suggesting this might be a longer ride than I thought).
I can see the influence of the Final Fantasy games in this, but that's not a limitation: your world building unfolds gradually and in sync with the core narrative, so it's rarely if ever felt like information overload.
My only concern is about the level of setup here, if there are twelve jewels to be found - each of these instalments has centred around introducing a new character, and if that continues then I wonder whether you'll keep sufficient momentum in the core narrative. It's not felt like a problem so far but with a swelling cast of characters, I start wondering about payoff and whether you can bring this all together in a satisfying fashion.
But I have faith in you based on what I've read so far!