Callie's Heroes

AUTHOR’S NOTES

This story has been a long-time brewing, but I had so many problems finding my muse to start it. Things began to fall into place as I discovered the LitRPG/GameLit (used as a generic term) genre of fiction, and I realized it worked for this story. I've devoured dozens of series over the last couple years, all the while the story of Callie was slowly coming together in the back of my brain.

But, this is a bit of a different kind of story. The pacing will not be fast. In fact, it will be very, very slow. This Hero’s Journey has many side-quests to explore before Callie reaches her destination. It will be character driven to allow us the time to truly fall in love (or hate) with all the people we will meet. It’s less like Dungeon Crawler Carl, and more like The Wandering Inn. In fact, discovering TWI was the final catalyst I needed, as it showed me a way to do what it was I wanted to do, and I thank pirateaba for their accidental assistance with making this story happen. I want to say again, the story will be a very slow-burn slice-of-life narrative, but every chapter will drop little nuggets of worldbuilding, character or future plot. The action will come, but if you need a faster pace, this may not be the right journey for you.

I consider this work to be generally “PG-13”, although there will be occasional swearing, discussions about body parts within the context of the story, and most nudity will be non-sexual, but nothing detailed. Any sex scenes may use some generic terms, before doing a “fade to black” approach, or will be clearly labeled if adults-only. As this is a fantasy novel, there will obviously be combat, but descriptions of viscera and gore will be kept simple and relevant. Some adult-ish topics such as PTSD, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other issues that people contend with every day are part of what makes Callie into the person she starts as and who she becomes and will be touched on throughout the story. There are several LGBTQ+ characters occupying various places on the rainbow in the story.

I will aim for postings in the 1500-3000ish word range (averaging about 4000-6000 words per week), but there could be occasional shorter or longer posts simply due to natural breakpoints within the larger chapter, and most compete chapters will span across multiple postings. In some cases, if the sections are small, there may an extra posting that week to make up for it. I hope to post routinely, and have so far been maintaining a backlog. Hopefully I can keep up a good pace. If you comment with editing suggestions, I'll likely implement them as quickly as I am able, and then delete the comment to keep clutter down.

This story does have very light common LitRPG elements (spells, skills, levels and the like), but it isn’t for several chapters before an “event” happens that they are truly triggered. If you wish to throw the proverbial book at the wall because there isn’t a character sheet by page three, know that these elements will come eventually, in time, and I invite you to ride along until it happens. When the time comes, those character sheets will be sporadically posted as separate chapters and are largely skippable if not your thing.

Finally, in November of 2023, several early chapters were re-written and re-posted to address multiple issues with everything from unsatisfactory writing or needing a few retcons, to outright dropping some original plot elements that I have chosen to abandon. As such, many of the original reviews from that time period may refer to things that are no longer relevant. Alas, there is no mechanism for an author to respond to a review, nor is there a mechanism to get one that is no longer relevant removed.

I thank you all for joining Callie and her friends as we enter the saga of Callie’s Heroes.

RAH