December 5th, 2021
Despite what many of you might have feared, this story is very far from dead. I have had a number of people message me on any imaginable platform in the past nine or so months asking about the future of this story. I will admit, the delay was a bit longer than I had planned, but the season II release date was left vague for good reason. Between competing in professional athletics during an Olympic year, writing three epic-length fanfictions, and beginning to actually write my first novel, I knew it would be a busy year. I struggled for some time to fit this story back into the rotation, but I believe I have found a loose system that works and can officially announce the return of Fabric of Fate.
Starting on Thursday, December 16th, 2021, this story will update on Discord, FFN, and AO3 — so long as I can get some issues with that site resolved — every two weeks for at least the next three months.
Why three months, you might ask? Well, that would be due to how I’ve chosen to approach the continuation of this story.
Rick Riordan did many things well in the canon material, but there is one thing he did that I have always held a certain disdain for, and that would be the massive time skips between books. More often than not, Riordan would skip an entire year between his books. Whilst I understand this puts everything on a neat schedule that is easy to manage, it also doesn’t make cohesive sense. I enjoy telling believable stories with real characters — I just choose to set those stories in fantastical worlds and have things happen that fit the setting of the story. I am a huge proponent of psychology and think that our conventional knowledge of the subject should be at least somewhat considered when writing characters. When writing teenagers, skipping one year of their mental and emotional development makes absolutely no sense to me. Teenagers can go through drastic changes week to week or month to month. Using these long time skips between interconnected narratives always broke the immersion for me because from a psychological standpoint, the timeline of that character’s progression should be anything but cohesive.
Now, I understand the need to not have narratives back to back to back in a series like this. This isn’t A Song of Ice and Fire—or, God forbid—The Wheel of Time. Both of those series may be masterpieces, but they are sprawling narratives that stretch on for millions of words. That was not Riordan’s intention and he needed to bridge the years between his narrative’s beginning, and the fulfillment of time-oriented prophecies. I also don’t particularly want this fanfiction to be three million words long, but I desperately wanted to avoid my biggest critique surrounding Riordan’s spotty timeline.
I believe I have found the solution with the inclusion of interlude chapters. These will take place between each season and will exist to bridge the gap and show the development of some of the characters off the screen. These chapters will often be shorter than the season chapters and I will do my best to keep the number of them small. This means I won’t be touching every character and fleshing them all out during these intermissions, but it does mean that some of the main players can now have consistent progressions that are both traceable and believable.
There are six of these interludes between seasons I and II. Three of them take place from Ace’s POV and will centre around the goings-on at Camp Halfblood, as well as feature a quest he partakes in for his father in the spring. Think of it as a Demigod Diary, of sorts, since I know a number of you have mentioned how I should write those as companion pieces along the way. These chapters are designed to show a steady psychological progression that will set him up for the arc of season II and beyond, as well as to give updates on his and his friends’ progression not only as human beings, but as demigods.
The other three chapters shift in POV, but they will centre around the happenings of Camp Jupiter. Yes, you will get your first look at the camp Percy Jackson will one day attend, though I can confirm he will not appear in any of these interludes.
The two featured characters in these chapters are a pair of people you have all met before. If you will remember back all the way to the start of season I, Ace was flanked by his two best friends — Caleb and Cadmus. Their paths split at the Staples Center. You know that Ace went off with Cato, but I neglected to show exactly what happened to Caleb and Cadmus. Their story begins in these interlude chapters and it will be a large part of this story, with them being main features of the upcoming seasons set at Camp Jupiter. It was also important for me to introduce that camp as well since it is where Percy will dwell and undertake the large part of his development. I have stated before that season III will be Percy-centric and that it will take place at Camp Jupiter, so these interlude chapters provided me with a very natural opportunity to begin laying the foundations for all of that without breaking up an ongoing narrative or detracting from other POV characters.
The reason I say uploads will be consistent for the next three months is because the writing of this story, whilst ongoing once more, is sporadic. It is by far the least popular of my fanfictions by nature and therefore, it is the one that gets the least amount of attention. It is also set in a universe that I very much enjoy — that being Riordan’s world — but inspiration comes and goes far more than it does for my tales set in the Potterverse. I’m currently focusing on one fic per week for patrons and using FoF as a buffer in-between them when time presents itself and when I am not using that time to work on my own original novel.
There are also still a few logistics that need to be worked out for season II. Well, one logistic, mainly. For those of you who are fans of George Martin’s incredible series, A Song of Ice and Fire, you might have heard him talk about something called the Meereenese knot. Explaining the specifics of that to those unaware would be spoiling major parts of the series’ fifth instalment, A Dance With Dragons, so I will leave the exact details unexplained. Suffice to say that Martin had a number of his central POV characters arriving in a very important location all in quick succession and that this presented him with a number of narrative challenges. It’s the thing he credits most for the long delay in publishing A Dance With Dragons.
I can thankfully say that my dilemma is much simpler than Martin’s as I am juggling far fewer subplots and working with far fewer characters and logistics. I am extremely confident it will take days or, at worst, weeks to puzzle out as opposed to years, but it is the last real obstacle I have in terms of writing season II.
Elsewise, I have only to work out the specific details I don’t confine myself to in an outline. Those sorts of things are worked out as the writing process moves along. By the time you’re all reading this, I will have two more interlude chapters left to write — though the first of these will be finished in the next few hours. I will then puzzle out my own iteration of the Meereenese knot and then begin work on season II when opportunities present themselves.
My hope is that I won’t need a delay in posting between the interludes’ conclusion and the start of season II, but I am making no promises on that front. The chapters will be written when the time to write them is ripe and not before. That means they will come when they come and that, at worst, there may be a short delay between the interludes and the proper beginning of season II. If this delay does come to pass, I can safely assure you all it won’t be anything like the long wait you’ve just experienced waiting for the interlude chapters after months and months of virtual radio silence.
I’ve spoken a lot about difficulties and logistics surrounding season II but very little about the story it will tell. Seeing as I imagine that is far more interesting for the vast majority of you, I will give some brief teasers for it here, though I will, of course, avoid any real spoilers.
I have stated this at the end of season I already, but the second season of Fabric of Fate will be titled ‘The Precipice of Peril’. This title is in reference to how, at the beginning of the season, the world is teetering on the verge of war between some of the most powerful members of the Olympian Council. As I’m sure you can all infer from that description, season II will follow the general arc set in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, just with my own set of original characters. I can assure you all right now that though some scenes will play out similarly to how they did in the book, others will be very different. For example, I have no plans of anyone fighting Echidna or her Chimaera. The members of the team sent to resolve the peace aren’t even currently slated to stop in St. Louis at all. I can confirm there will be some fun in places like Utah along the way, but also that this story, unlike Lightning Thief, will not follow a singular narrative.
Whilst Ace and others are off on what many might consider the primary quest, a second journey will be unfolding. Three other demigods will have a mission of their own filled with just as much intrigue and even more peril. These demigods arguably have the harder of the two missions seeing as they are subject to, shall we say, a deadly curveball that none of them are expecting.
This season will follow both teams and their journeys, as they are both equally important in different ways. Without spoiling exactly who comprises each team, I can confirm that all of the favourites from season I will feature prominently in season II, and that their arcs will resolve some loose ends I deliberately left hanging in the first season. There is one in particular that I am quite excited to resolve, especially as it plays directly into the season’s climax and should be a fun little twist to spice things up.
If anyone can figure out what it is I am referring to, all the props to them. I do hope this little tease inspires a certain amount of chatter in the Discord channel dedicated to the discussion of this story. If anyone reading this is not yet a Discord member and would like to talk about this work with other readers, the Discord server is the place to do it. There is a direct link on the homepage of this website that will be the easiest way for you to join.
I do apologize one final time for the long delay between uploads of this story, but it was necessary. I won’t claim it will be the only extended delay this story ever experiences because that will likely prove to be untrue. What I will say right now is that I have no plans of abandoning this story. I have far too much planned and it is so refreshingly different from anything else I write that it is never not interesting to sit down and write a Fabric of Fate chapter. Granted, trying to write Cato’s accent after taking the better part of a year off from doing so was a right pain in the ass, but I think I’ve got it down again. I didn’t really figure that one out until a bit more than halfway through season I, anyway. If I ever go back to clean up the early prose — which is something I have contemplated since, for this story, that process would be relatively simple — I will definitely take care to clean up my early failures in writing Cato’s accent.
That is really all I have to say. The goal of this blog was to inform you all of what is happening going forward as well as to raise the interest levels for this story’s return. My hope is that this blog serves as a palate cleanser, of sorts, and that anyone reading it is now once more excited to dive back into the world featured in Fabric of Fate. I do also hope this stops the semi-frequent stream of messages asking whether or not I will be continuing this story. I appreciate the interest and, given the lengthy break, the questions are somewhat justified, but it does become a touch exasperating after a certain number of them.
Happy holidays to you all! It’s crazy to me that this season is already upon us, but here we are. I will be posting a year in review blog on the final day of 2021, so stay tuned for that as well as the return of this story.
Stay safe and enjoy the holidays!
Cheers,
Ace