Hello there, friends and Firebirds. Today marks the end of Phoenix Odyssey Book XII. What a journey we have had together so far! Over 360 chapters. Over 840,000 words. Over 30 original songs. Thousands of comments and reviews, ideas and suggestions. I can say without reservation that Phoenix is one of the top five achievements in my nearly half-century on this earth, and all of you have been a direct catalyst, encouraging me when I needed it most, and just being willing to come along on this ride with Ranko, the girls, the band, and me. Thank you for having been my fans, and more importantly, my friends.

While I am immensely satisfied with Phoenix overall, there are certain things about it I am less proud of. Over the course of time, I've messed up minor details: forgot the color of Ranko and Akane's couch here, didn't acknowledge someone's birthday there, let Ranko drink a Red Bull two years before it was available in Japan, allowed an illegal kick in a judo tournament, things like that. Nothing story-breaking at all, but flaws that I as the author can't unsee. Over the last year, I have been building a massive list of these minor issues.

There's also the reality that, over the last year and a half and nearly a million words, I've gotten objectively better as a writer. Nowhere is this more evident than in books II and III. When I started writing Phoenix, I didn't plan on a story beyond book I, but once I decided to expand, I decided to go to four books right then. I was so excited to get to Rise at the end of book IV that I rushed books II and III something terribly. As a result, they are objectively weak compared to books V and beyond when I got my act together, and it's always bothered me.

I made a lot of rookie mistakes, like thinking I didn't need to set the scene at places like the bar that we had seen before, not splitting up dialogue paragraphs when the speaker changed, and not realizing I could change scenes without splitting into a new chapter.

There's also the issue of the music. As you may have heard, I am actively working on trying to get actual music composed for some of Ranko's songs. As I do, I'm finding descriptions I regret, which are pigeonholing the producers and composers I'm trying to employ - calling out a specific note that doesn't fit the key properly, or a spot where the lyrics have one too many or one too few syllables to match the beat.

Finally, I made some huge mistakes about the metadata around the story that have badly hurt its visibility and followability. Biggest among these was breaking the story up into one work per book on AO3 and one book per series (Phoenix, Ascendant, Odyssey) on other platforms like Royal Road and Scribble Hub. This makes it very difficult for readers to see the full scope of the story and to set themselves as a follower on it. It also makes it hard for me to tag it properly and write good blurbs to attract readers.

All that preface goes to say, I've made my share of mistakes and I've got a few decisions I wish I could take back and do over.

I've decided to undertake an exciting, expansive, and intimidating as hell project to do just that, which I'm calling Phoenix: Reignited. The Reignited project is a complete remastering of the Phoenix saga from chapter one on, with a few key changes. My intent is for this to become the definitive version of the Phoenix story, at which point I will consider myself to be as happy as I'm gonna get with it, and don't have to mess with any of the historical stuff anymore.

This is a daunting project, and I'm sure you have some questions. Let me try to be as transparent as possible, and of course, further questions and comments are welcomed.

What Phoenix: Reignited is and will do:

Reignited is a re-release of the entire story, starting at book I chapter 1. Every chapter will be revisited and re-edited, my list of errors referenced and corrected, and the comments consulted for any good ideas or backstory bits I mentioned that we think we want to pull into the text.

The new edition will be serialized over time as one enormous work, rather than breaking it up by book or by series. I'll adjust the blurbs and other metadata. The original versions will remain publicly available to preserve comments and interactions, as well as allow people who discover Phoenix for the first time with Reignited to not have to wait to see what happens next!

Brand-new, human-produced cover art (see above!) Thanks and credit again goes to petz5 for the *amazing* art, the full version of which has been posted previously on my Tumblr.

For disambiguation between the greater Phoenix saga and the original Phoenix series (books I through IV), the latter will be retitled Phoenix Ignited to go along with Phoenix Ascendant and Phoenix Odyssey (and the fourth series to come after book XIII.)

Entire new scenes, almost certainly including entire new chapters, will be added. These will be "deleted scenes," things I wish I'd added originally or suggestions people made in the comments.

With notable, deliberate exceptions (such as Whispers in book VII) I will set a goal (but not a hard rule) of 1500 words minimum for a chapter to ensure scenes are properly developed. This may include merging a few super short chapters, expanding scenes, and so on.

There will be minor tweaks to some of the songs to correct issues with the lyrics and the beat.

For some of the real-world cover songs performed, I will remove a line of two of the song lyrics themselves where needed. This is due to the terms of service on some platforms I would like to post on that prohibit sharing entire song lyrics for copyrighted songs.

I will try to be more consistent about the application of content warnings where they are needed.

What Phoenix: Reignited is not and will not do:

I will not retcon or undo significant events. There will be no Han shoots first moment. If you read the original Phoenix story and switch over to Reignited at any point, you will not have a "I don't understand what happened" experience.

I will not change the rating of the story, meaning there will be no additions of explicit sex or other major content warnings that were not there before.

It is not a replacement or alternative to the continued development of new story content. The two projects will continue side-by-side. I had already made the decision to cut back the release schedule on new content to give myself a little more breathing room, and this is just something that's going in the gaps that would have been there anyway.

I will not rewrite things just for the sake of rewriting them. That means some chapters may have only the most trivial of changes and others may be quite significantly changed. Based on my overall satisfaction with the original content, I suspect books I through IV will be getting 70% of the work.

So, when and how is this happening?

On Saturday, October 5, 2024, to celebrate the release of the new Ranma 1/2 anime on Netflix, I will release Phoenix Reignited chapters 1-11. (Why 11 and not 10? Readers of Phoenix know of a certain significant event that takes place in chapter 11...)
I will be simultaneously releasing Reignited on the following fiction archive platforms:

Archive of Our

Inkitt

Neobook

QuoteV

Royal Road

Scribble Hub

WattPad

WebNovel

So, wherever you prefer to read your content, it'll be there for you! Please take a moment to follow me as an author on your platforms of choice, so you can get updated when the new work drops!

Starting on Tuesday, October 8th, new chapters of Reignited will be released on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Once I finish writing it, book XIII (and beyond) new chapters will continue, releasing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I expect to need a few weeks to get a handle on book XIII, although planning is already well underway.

How can you help?
If you want to help me reach new readers with the Reignited project, first of all, let me say thank you, and I love you. Everything I'm told about this process says it's all about maximizing engagement and algorithm hits early in the process. To that end, the following would be huge to help us grow our Firebird community, if you have a few minutes to spare:

Follow/favorite the story on whatever platforms you use!

Leave a review on the Reignited story!

Share it with your friends!

So, let's do this, Firebirds.
Thank you so much for all your support over the last 17 months. It has been the honor of my life to get to tell this story for you, and I am excited to write this nearly million-word love letter to you all in order to make it as complete and as beautiful as you deserve.

We'll see you on October 5, when together... you ignite, and you RISE!