Acknowledgements
I'm a little surprised myself to finally be at this point. It's just three months shy of two full years since I started — that's nine months longer than my original projections for how long I wanted to take at this. Not so bad, all considered.
I'm extremely grateful to all of my readers, both the ones who have stuck it out over the long term, and the relative newcomers who worked their way through what eventually became a fairly massive backlog. I've greatly enjoyed seeing all of you react to my work update to update, and I think that I've learned a lot about this format and grown as a writer. The quest doesn't happen without all of you. I know that this hasn't always been the most uplifting of journeys, but I hope most can at least be satisfied in the end.
In particular, I would like to give a special thanks to
@Kei. Without your encouragement, support, and willingness to be a sounding board for all my ideas — good or terrible — I definitely would not all be here, wrapping this thing up. Certain parts of the quest definitely would be far worse without you pointing me in the right direction. The two of us have been writing together for a very long time now, and I'm so lucky to have you.
I also need to thank
@VagueZ and
@Donn for being so willing to help me sift through typo-ridden final drafts... which I will then edit again, and promptly make new typos in. Vague in particular has been extremely helpful whenever I need help figuring out something like "how big is Saturn when viewed from Titan".
Anyone who has told me that they enjoyed my work or expanded on their thoughts about it has helped keep me motivated more than I can say.
I hope you enjoy what I do next.
Future Plans
Petals of Carbon Steel: As announced at the end of the epilogue, early in the new year, I will be starting a new quest continuing the larger story where it left off in Petals of Titanium. I'll be spending the coming months getting some additional things finalised and planned. Some early details of that are:
- Told from the perspective of a new protagonist, an ordinary pilot operating a mass produced mecha.
- ... meaning another round of character generation, which I have some ideas for how to handle a bit better than I have in the past.
- Takes place largely in the Jupiter System
- Will feature a number of returning characters
Discord Server: I've been waffling on the idea for a while, but I've got enough people following my quest(s) that it's worth having a shot at, at least. If no one wants to use it, then there's no actual loss there. There are some things where it's just useful to have one over just a forum thread.
Patreon for Carbon Steel: This I've been waffling on even harder, and it's kind of embarrassing to have to broach the topic at all. At the end of the day, though, my financial situation has been getting progressively worse, and at some point I'll have to make some drastic changes, like getting an additional job which would necessarily eat into a lot of the time I spend writing, or cutting back on expenses that help me work on things like quests. I'd definitely never
expect anyone to contribute to something like that, but if it worked out, even a few tens of dollars a month would be a pretty substantial help. It's definitely something where I'd have to very carefully consider how I handled it, I'd never want to let something like that make the experience worse for anyone who is just reading/voting.
Interim Projects
Between now and getting a topic up for Carbon Steel, I've got a few things I'm going to be working on, less seriously than I pursue main Petals updates.
- Petals of Titanium "what if" side stories — these are more or less what they sound like. Essentially short stories that explore how things could have looked with different protagonist backgrounds, decisions along the way, and romantic interests. I've got two in mind, at present.
- I've started a short, casual Star Wars fan quest called
Fallen Empires. Just for fun, to keep me writing between now and Carbon Steel. Just plugging it here in case it sounds interesting to anyone.
