The notes section contains short notes about the writing and publication of Neo Akihabara Meipouchou. I'll do my best to keep them brief and interesting. You can subscribe to RSS feed or follow @StewardMcOy on Twitter for updates.

Introducing my new short novel, The Cat-Eared Historian Mage on the Crumbling Planet

Humans have settled a million worlds, all led by the Council of Humankind. On Fobo 2, society is beginning to crumble under a mysterious rise in violence, and the council has sent one of their historian mages to stop the violence before it can spread to other planets.

Schedule for the Remaining Chapters

This post details the schedule for the remaining chapters and my future plans.

The Humanity of General Artificial Intelligence

This post contains minor spoilers for Book 2, Chapter 35.

Queer Representation in Meipouchou

This post contains spoilers for chapter 36 and later.

Where Does Meipouchou Sit on the Fanfiction Scale?

Being a work about fandom, it was inevitable that elements from various anime would creep into Meipouchou. After all, fan works are a large part of fandom, especially when it comes to anime and its doujinshi scene. With the amount of time and effort that fans put into things like cosplay, it only makes sense that, with the resources of a small government, anime fans would, for example, recreate working versions of their favorite mecha, but does their appearance in Meipouchou make it fanfiction?

Nuclear Angst and Self-Absorbed Anime Fandom

This post contains minor spoilers for Chapter 14. It's also more personal than other notes have been. This notes section isn't a personal blog, but it covers all aspects of writing and publishing Meipouchou, and writing is often a personal process. Because I am remaining anonymous, I won't get too personal.

Chapter Lengths and Schedule

When I first started writing fiction, I read a piece of advice that the optimal chapter length is around 2000 words, so I outlined the first book with the goal of keeping chapters to that length. As a result, the first book ended up being 48 chapters long, meaning the final chapter of book one will be posted on September 29th, 2020. I hope to begin posting the second book on the next Thursday, October 1st. I believe this should be achievable. The second book needs only some minor story revisions before another editing pass.

Japanese Vocabulary in Meipouchou

Now that the first five chapters of Meipouchou have been released, I'd like to comment on the choice of Japanese words used in the books. Most characters in the story substitute certain English words for Japanese words. The words used are mostly words that are often repeated in anime or left untranslated in fan-translated anime and manga. But even though Meipouchou is a story aimed at a niche audience who might have some familiarity with these words, I didn't want to make reading it difficult for those who didn't.

Publishing Anonymously on the Internet in 2020

Today's Internet frightens me. There was a period of time, before modern social networks, when I felt comfortable using my real name on the Internet, but the risk of abuse, especially swatting, led me to publish Meipouchou under a pseudonym. Writing is a fun hobby for me, and even if the odds are exceedingly small, I don't want my family to be harmed because of it. But staying anonymous has made it difficult for my work to find its audience.