Alright, there’s no way to say this politely.
I fucked up. I made some mistakes at the university (or rather, with the online application for exams), and I also got slapped with a term paper that I have to hand in earlier than expected (on the order of two months earlier), and… Brennus and the Dreaming fell by the wayside. I’ve made little progress at either.
I’m currently trying to finish the Monkey Family chapter (I expect it to be around 10.000 words long, of which I have finished about half), followed by a Dreaming chapter, followed by three interludes for Brennus. I can’t promise anything, because I also have to arrange for a stay in ye good olde britain, and I’m honestly just tired and out of energy most of the time, and it’s hard to write good story when I’m like that.
Sincerely, and with heartfelt apologies,
Tieshaunn
Tieshaunn 
I’ve caught up on all the comments.
To all who were concerned for my health: Thank you very much, you guys (and gals) are great, but there was no need for concern, unless you include my mental health.
To all who thought I died: Nope
To all who wanted to know my will: I leave everything to my younger brothers
To all who thought I died in Frankfurt: I don’t live even near Frankfurt. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that
To all who would summon me from beyond the veil: Sweets should prove a sufficient sacrifice, if it ever came to that. I am partial to strawberries and milk chocolate myself. With some vanille pudding.
To all who think I was trolling you: I’m not THAT bad.
WELCOME BACK! It’s been anarchic! No problemo!
WELCOME BACK! It’s been anarchic!! So happy that I can finally take you out of my prayers, and cut with the bullshit investigation.
Why did I doublepost?
hmm, I am thinking us readers should invest in zombie insurance for you.
I posted this as a reply to an earlier comment, but I feel the need to repeat it here, so everyone will read it:
I am sorry about my absence, that’s on me despite all my issues, and I fully understand it if you stop following my blog over it. But never, EVER accuse me of simply losing interest in my serial and dropping it!
I am not a very good writer, nor a very diligent one, nor do I have the boundless inspiration some writers seem to have that lets them keep writing regardless of the state of their life affairs, but I will never, EVER abandon my work like that, not without telling people, or without providing my outlines and snippets, so as to give resolution to the story!
And I am just sick and TIRED of people accusing me I lost interest in Brennus or only writing side characters – this is a BIG PROJECT playing in a BIG WORLD where there are LOTS of things going on and I can’t possible show everything that affects the main plot just with the main characters, so I take detours and side paths to show YOU what is going on, so it won’t just be deus ex machina when, say, Aap comes to the rescue in the main plot, or the Matriarch provides a crucial bit of information at the right time! I have made it clear, REPEATEDLY, that this is no mere side story and just like every interlude you’ve seen so far, it will ALL play a crucial part in the main plot!
For the love of God, stop assuming things about a story whose entirety you don’t KNOW! We’re barely through the second third of the FIRST BOOK OF THREE. How about you wait until at least the first book is complete, before you pass judgement like that?
And if that’s still not enough to make my point, I challenge anyone complaining about my writing habits to please, please try and write a continuing storyline over months and years, while also dealing with private life, work and studies! Unless you’re a writer yourself, you have NO IDEA what goes into a work like this, the raw, draining WORK it takes to write even a SHORT chapter, nevertheless a major arc-end! I’m not just writing this out of nothing, I’m putting my heart and mind into this story, trying to deliver the best I am capable of – and failing, often, because that’s how it works, you stumble and you FAIL and you get up and you keep going!
I am proud of what I have made so far, and I’ll be damned if I abandon it just because of temporarily fleeting interest – something which DOES happen, no human can constantly, at all times, be continuously interested in one thing! But that’s the point, the same as the writing itself, you lose your interest, you do something else, you regain it, you go back and you KEEP GOING.
To all who would still accuse me of losing interest and dropping Basil, or the work itself, or just vanishing without a trace-
Shut up and be quiet.
Brennus will update when I finish a chapter I can be proud of, it will update when I have written something which won’t be an insult to the work and the stress and, yes, the pain I’ve put into this work so far! I’m doing this for free, so you’ll have to take what you get!
Well said. I admit, I was worried when I discovered you’d vanished, but my worry was for that of your health. A car crash can happen to the best of us, and there are many other ways to go.
You put too much heart into this story to just let it go, and I know the feeling. I lament I can’t support you in doing so. I just hope my encouragement helps.
Oh, while I remember, I’ve been looking into potentially running a game based on the Brennus RPG, with randomly generated powers modified by the Brennus system. It looks good. Had some interesting powers come up. Done hundreds, nearly a thousand rolls so far. Still haven’t rolled a white hole (wanted to roll it to see what it says). The whole thing has made for a couple of strange and entertaining powers, which have provoked many character ideas.
I’ve also ran some rolls with people gauge interest. As part of it, they get to reroll as many times as they want (but I keep the discarded characters to use against them later). For your amusement, I shall relate some of the funnier lines of the exchange.
“Your last power is eidetic memory, so you can remember all the people you’ve accidentally killed.”
“Ummm… you’re a bum. Why are you a bum? Cause people giving you stuff makes you physically stronger. Some day, you shall be a threat. But today? Today you do a little dance for some change.”
“…You may experience technical difficulties getting people to take you seriously.”
“You see people’s thoughts. See, not read. It’s like a mental monologue which appears above their head, in full 3d, non-transparent colour.”
“You reincarnate. A limited number of times per day. As a side effect of your power, the murderers feel really guilty about it.”
-Enjoy! 😀
Yeah I was worried Ties had a heart attack or something unavoidable as well. I knew he wouldn’t just abandon us after writing for this long.
Huh, a Brennus RPG sounds pretty fun actually. I’ve seen the link up top, but I’ve never really looked into it. I’ll have to roll up a couple of character and test it out.
@Wyrm Seconded. @Ties I had a bad source about the Frankfurt stuff, I had a friend that was complaining about some of the train stuff there. I’m happy to see that you’ve returned to the world of the living! Innocent human life is by far the most precious thing that we hold onto.
Please don’t take any of my prior comments personally, I’ve just seen some writers ditch Webserials because of the sheer stress that it takes on you.
In all seriousness, if your schedule is too busy I won’t be offended if you drop Brennus for a while as you have a career/education to care for. Again, I’m very happy that you’re in good health. Best of luck with whatever accommodations you make towards Britain.
(I’m really really jet lagged, after a stay in Russia, this comment is really choppy so please excuse any errors, I’m probably going to cringe in a few days after reading this but I really don’t feel like waiting for my filter to come back in).
As Greenhelm said, don’t take any of my prior comment seriously either. They were born of boredom and the most unlikely possibilities I could think of. If you makes you feel better, your rant made me feel a little guilty about some of my comments.
Now about the Brennus RPG. I glanced at it once and I think it iss time I looked into it in greater detail.
I must admit that I did consider the possibility that you abandoned it without explanation, but that is more due to having encountered other people on the internet doing that. I will say will say that you really didn’t seem like the type to do that as shown by the fact we all considered serious injury more likely than you giving. Heck, we even consider death more likely than you abandoning Brennus.
As for chapters, I understand that you want to make your work good and that you do this for free. I personally would be willing to wait another month at the least if need be (while checking twice everyday) because as you said, we’ll have to take what we get.
Good to hear from you and have you back Tieshaunn.
Yay! Glad you’re okay, I hope the Uni stuff went well. Honestly I don’t think you need to apologise here, you’re writing your story with your time, with no real obligation towards us readers; we’re just along for the ride. Enjoy Britain!
Thanks for the status update!
I don’t usually comment much generally, but I want to add a bit of perspective here if I can. My wife’s a novelist; her first novel (from early ideas to published internationally) took about 9 years.
The stresses around writing serial fiction online aren’t all the same, but there’s overlap — in particular, you have to face an “eternal September” effect where some percentage of the readers/commenters will be clueless about the work involved, and you can’t ever catch up.
It’d be bad if you caught up, actually, since that would mean you stopped picking up new readers. 🙂
So from your perspective you’ll keep educating commenters who don’t get it; but you’ll keep seeing them around, forever. From their perspective… well, how could they have known? They just started reading a story online, got invested in where things were going, and tried to express their feelings about it (including maybe “hey, where’s my update?!” Or “what about my favorite character?!”).
From my view: I’ll get an email when you update, so if life pulls you away for a year, no worries, I’ll be here. Try to let the random negative reactions vanish into background noise (since that’s all they are), hang onto the good stuff, and best of luck with everything.
Yeah I was worried Ties had a heart attack or something unavoidable as well. I knew he wouldn’t just abandon us after writing for this long.
Huh, a Brennus RPG sounds pretty fun actually. I’ve seen the link up top, but I’ve never really looked into it. I’ll have to roll up a couple of character and test it out.
Oh and this is supposed to be a reply to Wyrmfall further up. I don’t know why it’s not there, but whatever.
You know what? I’m just going to copy it and put it up there. Please ignore this Reply Chain because I can’t delete it.
You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive
And not horribly injured either
only thing that’s injured is my pride
That heals my friend, Pride is very resilient and has regenerative properties
Is that injured pride because of not updating in so long or because of all the wild theories and accusations in the comments? Don’t worry about the former as the real life stuff is more important and has much longer lasting consequences. We’re willing to wait, but university won’t be. As for the latter, don’t worry about that either. We just needed something to amuse ourselves with in the comments sections and the more outrageous stuff only originated from sheer boredom than anything on your part.
Given how the Brennus RPG has been mentioned a few times, how plausible would it to run an online game of it. You know, a group of us arranging to meet at a certain time and playing via online text? If we can find some people, does anybody know any good places on the web to do. Such as a forum or chat site?place?. Because I think its an interesting idea.
I’ve often had trouble organising a game online, but its possible. IRC is always a good option – provided the players live in similar timezones. Otherwise, a messageboard would be perferable. Speaking of which, there’s a messageboard for Brennus, you can find it under http://tieshaunn.boards.net
It hasn’t been active in a while, but it’s free to use and contains instructions for character creation, too. All set up by the lovely maddison rose 😉
If anybody else is interested in a game, I started a thread (http://tieshaunn.boards.net/thread/36/anybody-interested-online-brennus-game), I live in England so you know my timezone and I would be willing to GM is needed to even though I have already got a character.