Dear lonesome traveler, come in out of the fog, sit by the fire, and have a cup of tea. We need to talk. 

There will be no joke this time. 

As you may have noticed, I'm occasionally given to throwing words around like they grow on trees and treating written works like their virtue is measured by the degree of complexity. This has understandably made enjoying The Remainder a bit difficult for a few readers out there. I'd like to change that because making you suffer is not my goal, dear reader! Don't believe the propaganda!

We're building a mystery story in a world that is quite sideways from our own, and perhaps sideways compared to many fictional worlds. So it can definitely be a little thick to parse in many places, even if we do everything right. 

On top of that, I'm toying with the idea that it would be fitting to liberally deploy obscure words, nay, MADE UP words, and complicated phrasings so that the form serves the function. (One could argue that all words are made up, but that is another can of herring altogether.)

Those are two factors that have unarguably added to the difficulty of reading The Remainder.

A third factor, which is the prime culprit, in my view, is I simply don't know what I'm going. I've never written something like this before, nothing in the same sphere of existence. I'm groping along like a blind man trying to grok an elephant and relay it to an audience behind a screen. 

So, in this update, we've aimed to make The Remainder Act 1 easier to read but without compromising the vision we have of it.
The number one focus is sloppy writing. There are a lot of words that don't relay any information, or are arranged awkwardly, but not in a way that adds to the mystery. We've edited most of the text that falls into these categories for clarity.

We're on the fence about obscure words and invented words for our world. They can work in some works and for some readers. They can make a world all the more unique and flavorful, but they can be used poorly and irk readers who don't feel like taking on the burden of expanding their vocabulary just to understand a story. They're a proverbial double-edged sword. We've decided to keep most of these for now, but seek opportunities to make their meaning apparent without it seeming like exposition dumps.

What we're not changing is the purposeful obscurity of information, the atmosphere of doubt, and the feeling of being an amnesiac visitor in a bizarre world where the rules are different and you are not in control. 

We don't think The Remainder will ever be a mainstream story - a good, ol' action-adventure, noir detective mystery, supernatural high-school romance, or anything so easy to pin down in terms of tropes, at least we hope not. But we will do our best not to make it difficult in ways that don't help the theme and flavor of the story.

We would highly, HIGHLY appreciate it, if you would read this version, and let us know how you like it.

1. Did you find the words understandable?

2. Did you enjoy the experience of reading the words?

3. What is something that jumped out at you as you read it, whether good or bad?

That's it for today. Thanks for supporting us and being part of this journey. We appreciate all of you.

Take care of yourself out there,

Ze