Month: March 2025

In anticipation of the end of Volume 2

We’re almost at the end of Volume 2, and that means we’re also coming up on the (conceptual) midpoint of Revolving Door.

I almost can’t believe we’re here. As of the publication of Frostbite II, there are two full chapters and one epilogue left to the volume. In all likelihood, the last two chapters will be in a chapter set titled The Vanishing Act.

I’ve been channeling my excitement into sprucing up the homepage and building an improved story map generator (not ready yet but getting there). The homepage now has a columned layout featuring the covers I recently drew—check it out:

Twelve years since I began writing this story, it is truly starting to feel like I have a fighting chance at finishing this novel. I currently have ~40,000 words of unpublished buffer—this is the most buffer I have ever had.

This is all made possible by a silly but surprisingly useful lifehack I recently discovered: Writing is the only activity I can fall asleep doing. In fact, I fall asleep faster writing than lying there doing nothing. So, not only does this let me apportion a number of minutes of every day to writing; I can also do it guilt-free because there is literally nothing better I could be doing while lying in bed.

Anyway, these last two chapters were written in January 2024. Yes, it’s been more than a year since I wrote them, so to say I’m excited for them to be out at last is probably an understatement.

Update 10 November 2025: The new story map has since been finished and the link has been updated.

Revolving Door volume covers!

Now that I’ve outlined all four volumes of Revolving Door, I decided to make covers for all 4 planned volumes, each featuring a character relationship. Being a story about the way people connect, with each pair being both foils to each other and interdependent in different ways, I sought to capture a different kind of symmetry in each image.

We’re currently at the tail end of Vol. 2, so the series is about half done!

On content warnings and spoilers

Revolving Door has a lot of content warnings, and they can differ massively from chapter to chapter. (The full content warning list has “massacres” and “misgendering” side by side, which I think encapsulates the vibe).

I don’t think it’s a grimdark story by any measure, but I want to be unflinching in the portrayal of the topics that matter to me and to the themes, and the CWs are really important in letting me do that while providing a layer of safety for anyone who could stand to be negatively affected by those themes.

But often, the warnings spoil key turns in the plot. So, the question of how to present content warnings to be informative without spoiling story elements is one I approach every time I publish a chapter that needs one.

Often, obfuscating spoilers is as simple as listing them in a different order from how they appear in the chapter (spoilers for Chapter 39 on this example, but: “deadly infectious diseases, animal death, graphic injury” makes it less obvious that it’s about someone getting bitten by a rabied animal than if the list were in reverse).

Broadly, this is why the content warnings are always hidden in a collapsible element. If one’s disappointment regarding spoilers outweighs one’s need for content warnings, it’s almost certain that the experience will be improved by skipping them—but of course, do what’s best and healthiest for yourself.

If the content warnings definitely spoil a plot element, the collapsible header will note them as “(contains spoilers)” instead of “(may contain spoilers).” I might even bold this for further clarity in the future.

I’m kind of curious about how readers view the CWs. Do you read them? Have they helped anyone? Have they ever spoiled the story? How I can improve the presentation to make the experience better? I do have full control over the HTML presentation of the chapters, so I can add things like per-paragraph CW annotation.