Why I ended Dawn of the Void early

I saw a post here recently talking about Dawn of the Void that has prompted me to explain why I ended the series the way I did. At the time I claimed that the series had grown too dark, and that I was no longer enjoying writing the tale. Only the latter part of that explanation was true.

Dawn of the Void was my first moderately successful Royal Road webnovel. I originally planned it to be a 6+ book series. At the time, I believed every commenter deserved to have their say, and that I needed to pull up my big boy pants and take my knocks on the chin. If I was choosing to share my story on a public forum, I needed to engage with everyone in good faith.

This did not turn out well.

Perhaps because the story was set in modern day NYC, I soon started receiving a lot of criticism. An ER doctor chimed in to explain how wrong my hospital scene was. A number of folks critiqued my handling of addiction, of PTSD, of my portrayal of government bureaucracy. But by far the most criticisms I received was of my depiction of the military and guns.

My early portrayal of the military received a lot of scorn. But instead of shrugging it off as I might do today, it got under my skin, and I resolved to absolutely get the military part right. So I redoubled my research, spoke with veterans, and did a deep dive on military culture, protocol, and urban tactics. In doing so, the military came to take on an outsized role that I'd not planned at the outset of my story. In my attempt to prove myself, I took Dawn of the Void in a completely different direction, and that proved to be to the detriment of the story.

The military folks went quiet. I don't think anybody praised the new accuracy, but instead I started to lose tons of regular readers who'd never asked for more military bureaucracy.

By the time I got to the end of what became Book 2, my numbers were dropping, my Patreon cratering, and my enjoyment in writing the story had disappeared. As a commercial author, I had to accept that I'd killed my own story by losing track of what had drawn me to write it in the first place. So rather than DNF and leave things hanging, I decided to wrap it up in the best way I could, a manner I'm still proud of, even if it happened faster than I'd intended.

At the time, I didn't know how to explain what had happened to my readers without risking insulting them, so I simply said the tale had grown too dark for me, and in a sense, it had. I was depressed and burned out and just couldn't go on.

This time round with Throne Hunters I'm taking a completely different approach. If someone insults me in the comments or writes a scathing review, if someone tells me I got something wrong or they're bored or my heroes are pathetic or the plot is agonizingly slow or the world building is too something or other, I simply block them so I can't read their future comments. They can still post their opinions. I just don't need to read them. This has worked wonderfully well.

I wish I'd had this approach with Dawn of the Void. Who knows where the story might have gone if so. And to be 100% clear, I take full responsibility for losing track of my own story. It was a learning process, and part of my education as a professional author. I thought I could read negative comments about my story every day for over a year without it affecting my mental health. I was wrong. Regardless, I'm incredibly grateful to all the readers who read the whole series, who shared kind words along the way, who enjoyed what I tried to do, and stuck with me despite my missteps. You guys are the best.