Hey all! Just wanted to give you a heads up. I’m at a point in the most recent editing pass that I wanted to update some of that here, so I’ll be working on some post revisions in the next couple weeks. Apologies for any confusion if y’all are in the process of reading!

Without getting too spoiler-y here’s a summary of the main changes:

Changes include (1) updates in character names/designs (including a gender bend or two), (2) a big update in circumstances surrounding The Transfer–one big aspect of it especially has been bugging me for a long time, but I was hesitant to make it what it demanded to be, because it would add much more weight to the event than I had wanted to explore in previous drafts, (3) alteration in some key conversations and internal monologues. The bottom lines are the same, but the goals I had for tone, agency, and a better sense of grounding weren’t being met by the old versions, (4) I’m heavily re-writing the post-climax phase of the story–I feel I didn’t manage to bring the themes home as well as I could have, and once I started honing in on that, the needs of the denouement changed.

A 5th set of changes that won’t be reflected much here–trimming POV’s. One of the big goals of this pass is getting the manuscript closer to industry standard length, so I stuck mostly to Heather’s/James’ POV, with Richard’s POV mostly coming in post-separation, and cutting most of the rest (including Erika’s). In the spirit of self-publication in blog form, however, (and because I have the space here), I’ve left in Erika’s arc, and any others I liked enough to keep that probably won’t make it to the final draft.

NAME/DESIGN CHANGES I SHOULD MENTION – (Variety! Character design! Arbitrary preferences!)

Brophy –> Knight

Susan Brophy –> Su-wei Knight

Evangeline Louis (Eve)–> Evangeline Fabienne Pérez Delva

Erika Davenport –> Erika Hodgson

Henry Benson –> Alice Benson (gender-swapped, there were too many men on the Empetrum side lol)

EVENTS WITH KEY CHANGES I SHOULD MENTION

The Transfer (chapters 25 and 26)

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I’ll update this post when I’ve finished my planned round of updates. Thanks for bearing with me!

(3/3/25 All edits uploaded!)