Greetings everyone.

Sadly this is no chapter but an update on my current situation. If you don't want to read everything here is the 'tl;dr' version:

Writer's block, life's a bitch, not abandoned.

If you are still sticking around you want to know more about my reasons and you shall have it.

First thing that delayed the posting of a new chapter was simply life being to hectic. I am in my mid-twenties and some people may know what that means; for those who are too young to know, be it in mind or body, it means having to balance work, education, family, loved ones and free time; and the time for the later three sadly becoming less and less as the day is overtaken by the first two. With lot less time on my hands came the issue that I am a writer who gets motivated by reading other peoples' work; it shows me new heights to aim for and opens up new paths in my mind for stories to shape. Also if I don't have new stuff to read in a fandom I want to write it... my mind slowly becomes a dry well, devoid of inspiration. Doesn't help that I left this story simmer at such an important point of the story with what by now I consider a cliffhanger of doom.

To make a long story short, I grew a bit tired of the WITCH universe. Not of the characters themselves or how I have shaped them in my own interpretation but the... 'setting' has become somewhat stagnant. I decided for myself I would take a couple of steps backward, examine my work over time, do some tweaking here and there and this way get my inspiration up and running again. Sadly that plan didn't work out so well. While I was able to find the bad spots so to speak and iron them out with some retcons it did nothing good to my creativity. That was about November/December last year and that ties into the next reason inspiration became a rarity.

December last year gave birth to a spawn that held me captive for a few months with nearly every waking minute of my free time. Some may have done the numbers by now but let my come straight out: I got addicted to Star Wars: The Old Republic. I had always been a great fan of the Old Republic setting and my personal favorite Star Wars character of all time is goddamned Revan so I was hoping for closure to the story started by KOTOR 1 and 2. Maybe the word 'addicted' was badly chosen since an addiction is normally something you cannot shake off alone, which I managed to do after a while. Let's used the word 'obsessed' since I tend to do that with projects or things at times.

Once I got rid of that... my mind was abuzz with ideas. Yes, they were once more for the WITCH-girls but NOT for this story. It was a new idea, a new story that had carved its hooks into my mind and wouldn't let go. Thinking that 'doing some writing was better than doing no writing' I started a new project that lasted for a week or two. Didn't produce enough to be called a story but also more to be called snippets so they are still collecting dust on my backup hard drive. After dumping that idea a new thing happened that postponed this further.

I was in a state of mind where I was simply too tired to do anything after work besides gaming and doing a bit of chatting here and there. Gaming then got replaced by watching old cartoons, animes and acquiring new ones to watch. One of those turned out to be the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series which drove its hooks into me with a vengeance. After pulling several all nighters I had watched all episodes at that time and it revitalized an idea that had lain dormant for many many months. Once more it involved the girls from WITCH as main characters but with a massive change before throwing them into the timeline of The Clone Wars series. This was a project that is still going and one I plan to see through to the very end even if it kills me. I even went out of my way and found a professional artist that does awesome work to do paid commissions for me. (Google for a guy named 'Galefire', aka Michael Rookard, if you are interested into seeing some of his work. Two of my pieces should already be up but I will not point them out.)

While all the above was happening there was this... movement on about bringing the banhammer down on M-rated stories or works that went too far. I am sure most of the 'veterans' know what I am talking about and the uproar from authors that followed the announcement. That also was a large factor to my mind and I started looking into alternatives for posting my works on the internet. What I found did not please me and I was still unsure if the banhammer would come down on me. That has not happened yet but I am still looking for new places to post my works that provide most of the same features I have grown used to over the years I have spent on . I have not kept up with the news for reason above and below but I am still hesitating to keep posting here.

On top of that I had to move thanks to work reasons. I am not going to bore you with even more long-winded explanations but let me say that I had to move from the western end of my country to the eastern end, leaving my family and loved ones behind. I have not seen any of them except one in over seven months and it has been weighting on me. Now it seems like I may not be even able to see them over the coming holidays. If it weren't for my logical side telling me to soldier on or the last two years would have been worthless, I would have told everyone to fuck themselves and left this damned city behind.

Then finally I was victim of a serious theft spree where I am currently living which meant all my electronics stolen and countless mementos gone as well. I am still in a lawsuit about getting my valuables replaced which is also cutting into my soul with a vengeance. Since I am not made of money I have yet to replace my lost electronics which means that for over three months I have had hardly any contact to my loved ones and with some no contact at all.. For someone who is normally really dependent on the support of others this is like taking away a junkies' drugs. Even now I can only type this out because I am hijacking a PC at work which could get me into a lot of trouble. One would think I would be using this chance to contact my loved ones instead of writing a wall of text to people who hardly know me but... with the security measures of my work network I cannot contact my loved ones in the usual fashion.

I guess I simply needed an outlet to vent and this was one of the very very limited routes available to me right now.

So all in all I have been having a really bad time the past half year that has been slowly chipping away at me. I said it in the past but I will say it again: I don't plan on letting this piece of work die after how much preparation I have put into it. I cannot say when it will be continued or even when the retconed chapters will come up but... as soon as life calms down and I can think straight again without wanting to murder a whole family of kittens I want to get back to writing.

I hope that I could explain my reasoning and situation to some of you. I know that many will be cross with me for posting this instead of simply shutting up and the posting a real chapter but... after over a year I felt I owed you at least something.

So with these lines I bid you farewell and goodbye for now. Hopefully I will be back soon with better news.

- Nelo Akuma