Chapter 14 of Consequences has finally been written and released. I hope you enjoy it.

I had hinted before that the possibility of me being late with a chapter or even having to miss a month entirely was always present, and yet, it only happened at a noticeable level this month. I ended up being over a week late with my submission, and that wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. I was dealing with emotional things that made it difficult, but it was ultimately still my own doing, and plus, I had developed a habit of not touching my main chapters until halfway through the month, and I seem to have paid the price for it this time.

You don’t need to know or care about the context of this lateness, but I’ll say it anyway for the record. About a week before the month ended, my boss caught wind that I was making complaints to my fellow employees about his leadership style. He fired me immediately, with some bullshit justification of “you should have just come to me immediately.” It’s bullshit not because I didn’t need to (although that could be a valid point perhaps) but instead because I did go to him first, and my concerns were handwaved away while he was making things worse for me and my fellow coworkers.

My job was the first in a long while where I actually enjoyed doing my work. I enjoyed it despite my boss instead of because of him, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it and the job had become both stable and, when the boss was absent from micromanaging us, stress-free. It hit me quite emotionally hard when I was let go, so I kind of shut off. I entered into one of my depressive spirals, and I barely got anything done, including this chapter. I realized quite quickly that I still had an obligation to you all to finish this chapter, so on the 29th, I tried to redouble my efforts and finish the chapter on time.

You don’t need me to tell you if I succeeded or not. At time of writing, it’s October 7th.

Once I realized that I would be late finishing a chapter, I considered pausing billing on Patreon and saying “oh well” to this month. Unfortunately, as good as Patreon is about some things, it has this incredibly dumb rule where if you pause your Patreon billing for existing members for a month, no new patrons can sign up for the next 30 days, even if you unpause it immediately. My Patreon has become something of an unpredictable revolving door of people coming and going as their finances and tastes dictate (and that is their right), so making me ineligible to get new patrons could have seriously hurt me. I resolved instead to just finish the chapter when I could. Moreover… I’m now out of a job. The money from this month is going to provide the difference between me eating and not in this difficult time, so thank you so very much to those who have supported me. Your kindness knows no bounds.

Speaking of that, I had said in previous comments and blog posts how people have come to expect my writing to be consistent. I predicted that if I was late for a chapter, people would quit being patrons of mine in droves. I was shocked to see that, in fact, very few patrons left me after it was clear I missed my deadline, even with my trademark lack of communication. (I’m bad at communicating because I’m scared of making empty-handed announcements, so I often just put that energy towards creating the product people want instead.)

It has genuinely humbled me that you all clearly mean it when you say you care about me focusing on myself and taking my time with these chapters. I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me, so I plan to start the next chapter more of less immediately to get back on track. This was a bad month and I’m determined not to make it a habit. Nevertheless, I am so thankful for any and all of you. Genuinely. Even if you are just a reader, you’re helping me so much by even coming to this website. You get free erotica, yes, but every reader helps boost my site’s visibility, so you are giving to me more than perhaps you know. You, dear reader, are supporting a small artist no matter what you’re doing, and you’re being very kind to me. Thank you.

According to the other employees at my now ex-job, my firing has caused a stir and the boss has had to give more than one speech on “gratitude” and how people should be more grateful he set up such a good place to work, implying my lack of gratitude is why I’m gone. There’s quite a twist of irony to that, I think. It’s clear from his attitude that the expectation of gratitude only goes one way even though it was our work that made his business possible. On the other hand, you all have proven time and time again that you’re deserving of such gratitude. You know you’re helping make a difference when a writer doesn’t have words to describe how grateful they feel for you.

In other news, a reader recently asked me to make little chapter recaps for my chapters to help them out, so I’ll make that a small project on this website in the coming month. I’m also working on another commission piece, but this one is smaller (the commissioner has been waiting for almost a year now, the poor dear; welcome to commissions with me I guess). As always, good things are coming. Let’s make this month a great one. I’ll talk to you all next week.