Someone asked why I'm publishing this as serial fiction instead of waiting until it's complete.
The honest answer: I don't know if I would finish it otherwise.
This is my first novel. I have no idea where this will go or how people will take it. That's terrifying. That's also the point.
I'm here for the feedback—even the painful kind. Especially the painful kind. We learn through failure, not through rigidity. Through being wrong in public and adjusting. Through the discomfort of showing unfinished work to strangers.
The Ashens wouldn't understand this. They cling to tradition, to the way things have always been done. They mistake preservation for wisdom. But stories—like people—only grow through risk.
There's something honest about publishing as you write. The story exists in its becoming, not just its completion. Readers see the seams. They witness the process.
Traditional publishing hides the mess. You see only the final form, polished and complete, as if it emerged whole. Serial fiction shows you the scaffolding. Some readers don't want that. They want the finished artefact, edges smoothed, contradictions resolved. That's valid. But I've always been drawn to process. To the studio visit rather than the gallery show.
The risk is obvious. What if I write myself into a corner? What if early choices become constraints? What if the story changes direction and contradicts what came before?
Then I revise. Or I don't. Or I acknowledge the contradiction and let it stand. Stories change as you write them. Characters reveal themselves to be different than you planned. Themes emerge that you didn't intend. The ending you imagined becomes impossible—or too easy. Serial fiction makes that visible. The story grows in public, with all the awkwardness that implies.
Maybe this is why serial fiction suits this particular story. Between Fire and Bone is about anticipatory grief—about living with loss before it arrives. About things becoming what they are in the process of happening. The form mirrors the content. We're all waiting to see what this becomes.
This won't last forever. At some point—I don't know when—the public chapters will stop, and the rest of the story will move to a finished book. Self-published, by necessity now—traditional publishers want first rights, and this story will have already found its first readers here. The serial becomes the draft becomes the novel.
But for now, we're in the becoming together. That feels right.