Author’s Note: My intention was always to go back and do a full re-write of SalQuest if I ever came back to it. However, no matter how many times I turned it over in my head, I could never get things to work out. Instead, I ultimately ended up adding more chapters continuing where I left off from SalQuest: Draft One.
After trying to hack away at it for about the tenth time in the year and a half since
Draft One, I finally decided it was time to put a fork in it, even if it meant resorting to a hackneyed, screech-to-a-dead-stop of an ending. As a story helping me work through my writer’s issues, I think
SalQuest, (along with another project I wrote under another pen name), has already served its purpose. Going back to it repeatedly like this, with all the baggage it brings, and the impossible standards I keep foisting on myself with it, well, it isn’t very healthy to keep flaying myself with this whip over and over again.
So, fuck it, let’s get this done. I find it’s much easier for me to move on from a project if I am able to put at least
some level of “official closure” to it, so for what it’s worth, this story does now have an ending, pure bullshit though it may be.
I am condensing all the “continued” posts I had made previously into this one just to minimize clutter, as I am want to do on my websites. For context, the first three chapters of “Arc Two” were posted in April of 2022, and the next two after that in early January of 2023.
SalQuest: Draft One, “Arc One” was posted in August of 2021, just to give you an idea of the time gaps that can occur between my writings.
As truncated as this story ended up, I hope there was something to enjoy for those who give it a look. I am ultimately glad I tried writing it, even if it didn’t get very far. It’s ultimately for the best I move on, though. (Now let’s see if I can actually mean it this time.)