Dear readers of White Death,

This does not come to me easily, but I feel I should've done it a long time.

White Death is hereby going on indefinite hiatus.

You may be asking why at this point.

This began as an experiment, nothing more. An attempt to see just how far I can push language and how much I can goof off with the subject matter, with no real planning to speak of. Now we're 5 chapters away from the end, 150k words in, and I fucking hate myself for having driven it this far.

This story has made me hate not only myself, but my job, and what it is that I do. Writing is no longer a fun thing. Its a chore. Its getting up every day, staring blankly at a notepad file, and pounding out 10k words of whatever. Literature is not weight-lifting. It isn't about making that word count, or finishing something which is proverbially destroying you every step of the way just because of a sense of obligation towards it.

I have a book, a real book, with a plot that makes sense, characters that act in accordance to some form of reason, and most importantly, a book that is actually good, as opposed to...this. And I need to finish it. All this story has done for me is ruin my style and discipline when it comes to writing and turned my way of saying things into an immature, inefficient, and borderline psychotic slew of pseudo-poetry and nonsense. As a result of White Death, the remainder of my creative life has been largely on hold because of it, and I found myself completely unable to actually write in a disciplined structured way, because with this, I didn't have to care, I could just say whatever I wanted.

And eventually that spiralled into some perverted form of fantastic racism combined with walking communist mouthpieces and two broken, contradictory characters.

So I'm done. I quit. James Harris has left the building.

I'm sorry if this has in any way disappointed you, but if I want to keep my dream of becoming an acutal, published author and turn it into a reality, I need to distance myself from stuff that has no point, no purpose, and no structure. Make of that what you will.

One last thing:

I am immensely grateful for all of you reading my work and taking the time to indulge me in my whims, but I also apologize deeply for wasting your time. I did not know that I would've taken it this far; I was too busy asking whether I could, and never really bothered to ask whether I should.

Now I can see I shouldn't have.

See you some other time, in some other place.

~ J.H.