Journal

A week to go, over a hundred of you already have an early copy of Pantheon, and the first reviews are coming in.

Why Pantheon has no footnotes, and the one small rule I kept instead.

Every chapter of Pantheon ends on a hook, and I made myself a rule that no chapter may end the way the last two did. Some scenes have not forgiven me yet.

A spy story and a love story want the same thing from their characters, and that is why neither one gets to lean on the other.

One long video puts every piece of Perpetūra's music end to end, including the pieces that were only ever meant to sit under the words.

Book One is three stories that each stand alone, Book Two is two that answer each other, and the fifth is where all five begin to fit together.

Today was the release date I set for Pantheon, the book is not out, and this is the reason, arriving later than it should have.

The portrait on the about page changed on 25 September, to an illustration painted by Rinchii, an artist I commissioned.

Pantheon has its first song, built on a phrase from chapter four and on the rule the book already lives by: she acts, he wants, and nobody is named.

Lupe Farkas has written the first review of Perpetūra, and she noticed the small things I put down without knowing whether anyone would.

Perpetūra's five stories are complete again, six weeks after the first time, and the second finishing feels nothing like the first.

Three of the album's eight titles say the same thing in three languages, and not one of them says it in English.

Otome games taught me that being made to wait for someone can be a pleasure in itself, and that lesson shaped this book more than any thriller did.

One stranger's editing method runs through all sixty-three chapters of a finished novel, and they will never know it.

Why Pantheon's cast was built so a reader decides about people from what is on the page, and what that discipline cost me while writing it.

Assembling Perpetūra's first ebook meant choosing a single route through each woman's story, after the interactive version never had to.

Building a diligence file for Pantheon meant cutting the two lines I invented and keeping only what a chapter had already said.

A rule I wrote on 28 July 2026 after a chapter withheld its own central fact, and a second rule five weeks later about how that cost adds up across chapters rather than within one.

Since I called the book finished the chapters have changed two hundred and eighteen times, and here is what filled that gap and what I am doing differently for the second book.

Four rounds of measuring the repeated numbers in the manuscript found the wrong fault before I finally found the right one.

I gave up on a hundred and fifty thousand word target in the middle of August, because the length I needed to lose was not sitting in any one place. It was spread evenly across all sixty-three chapters.

What happens between finishing a novel and publishing it, from advance readers and content warnings to the one deadline that has a real penalty attached.

A novel written alone has nobody reading over its shoulder, so I built one out of small programs, and learned exactly where it stops being useful.

A completionist achievement in the game turned out to be mathematically impossible to earn, and how it got fixed.

This update makes the reading screen and its menus easier to see and tap, and carries saved progress over automatically after the move to Perpetūra's new address.

Pantheon reached its last chapter, went through five editing passes, and the pre-order is open ahead of publication on 1 November.

How the two leads of Pantheon were built to sound like different people from the inside, and why their chemistry had to be assembled rather than described.

How a tool that checks every he in a chapter against its nearest name caught a pronoun pointing at the wrong man.

Pantheon now has a website and a free opening sample, and the story of how a branching game became a novel instead.

The fifth and final story is live, alongside fixes that make the codex fully completable and the map's chapter names match the story again.

Ten chapter titles were giving away their own endings, and several choices asked readers to decide something the page had already shown happening.

Rebuilding the menus turned up a settings screen small phones could not reach and codex entries with no way to open them, both now fixed.

The interactive map that shows where each story's world connects, and why parts of it are still dark.

A behind the scenes editing pass tightens quiet scenes, pays off a forgotten plot thread, and gives two side characters the ending they were missing.

Why the game's menus and map were rebuilt twice, and what made the first finished version not worth keeping.

Why the feeling at the centre of the game is never named on the page, in any story or ending.

Why every choice in the game is written as a concrete action in her voice rather than a labelled route.

Why Liuyan's story is set on the trade roads of Tang dynasty China, and how that world tested her discipline.

Why Reine's story is set in the spectacle of 1893 Paris, and how that city's performance culture shaped her character.

The menus and the codex atlas are rebuilt from scratch, alongside the longest editorial pass the project has had.

A full editing pass strips an overused phrase from the first story and tightens a handful of repeated images across the third.

Why Hyunjae's story is set in the Joseon court of 1742, and how that setting became the pressure her story needed.

A phrasing habit found in the first story turns out to run through all four, and gets reworked everywhere at once.

A season of small fixes, from a prose polish pass to codex timing and choices that finally match the scenes they promise.

Why every Perpetūra story includes a fully written path where the woman chooses no one at all.

The fourth story arrives on the shelf, unlockable only once three others are finished, alongside a full rewrite of Liuyan's story.

Reine's story is rewritten from the first line to the last, with her three roads finally growing properly apart.

Each Perpetūra story gets its own theme, written for its era and the woman it belongs to.

Hyunjae's story is rewritten from the first line to the last, with room to breathe and three roads that finally read as her own.

An honest account of how one person writes several branching novels, and where craft decisions sit against tool assistance.

Why the writing process now measures each chapter against a numeric voice baseline instead of trusting the ear alone.

Each finished story earns its own sung song and a handful of new illustrations for the scenes that most wanted one.

An introduction to Liuyan, the Perpetūra story set in Tang Dynasty China around 750.

A line by line rhythm pass on Hyunjae's story, with a lighter touch on the other two finished stories.

An introduction to Reine, the Perpetūra story set in Paris in 1893.

The third story arrives on the roads of Tang Dynasty China, alongside a full soundtrack for every path in the game.

A tidying update moves settings into the title screen's orrery and fixes Resume forgetting which route you were on.

An introduction to Hyunjae, the first Perpetūra story, set in Joseon Korea in 1742.

The core idea behind Perpetūra, one unnamed feeling handed to five different women across five different eras.

The whole way of moving through the game was rebuilt around a clockwork theme, with real improvements for reading on a phone and an optional way to carry saves between devices.

The second story goes live, following a celebrated painter in Belle Époque Paris and the two people who will not stop looking beneath her surface.

The character gallery starts filling in properly as you play, new portraits are added, and a character's codex entry updates once a story reveals who they really are.

The codex gains a characters tab with portraits and every screen gets its own backdrop.

A prose pass loosens an overused sentence habit in Hyunjae's story, rebuilds a quieter ending moment, and adds a short honest note about privacy.

A supporting character in Hyunjae's story gets something personally at stake, alongside a couple of small continuity fixes.

A run of quiet fixes covers reliable updates, easier ways to follow along, steadier bug report screenshots, and a lighter touch on one ending.

Hyunjae's three endings were rewritten so each one now carries its own distinct mood instead of landing the same way.

A small update makes menus and choices settle in gently, respects reduce motion settings, and makes the game easier to navigate without a mouse.

A tidy up pass through Hyunjae's story smooths the writing, fixes small continuity snags, and adds a few quiet extra character moments.