He’s staying with my brother! My little brother and I adopted the cat together, since we were roommates. It had been an ambition of mine to go traveling as a digital nomad for a few years now, so it’s something we discussed when we first adopted Notfish! I definitely miss that fluffy little jerk a lot, and by all accounts he misses me too ⏤ spent a lot of time confusedly looking for me in my old room and my usual haunts, and being very perplexed when my brother fed him instead of me doing it. The new roommate gets along with him great, though, so that’s good!

Oh, glad to hear that, that’s definitely something I’m aiming for! I’m highly concerned with questions regarding how the world affects characters, and how they respond organically in return. I think my writing style also helps with that ⏤ I know the beginning and ending, but I figure out the path along the way, save for a few setpieces. Because of that, I have to rely on my characters to route their way through pretty organically.

Hrm. That’s a fair question. Some stuff I don’t want to mention because spoils? Having read a significant amount of fantasy, much of which is coming-of-age type heroes journey stories (which the ME series definitely qualifies as thus far), I guess the primary driving force I pick up is plot-because-world, rather than plot-because-plot. Your plot arcs feel driven by character interaction and interaction of forces upon those characters, I never feel any sort of authorial directive.
That’s also the brilliance of the third book, you throw a ton of bigger picture topics and forces into the narrative and it never feels like “where’d that come from”, more of “oh, our main character is learning so much and so are we and everyone is three-dimensional”.

I have the series planned at six books plus a short story collection! It’s possible the plan could change, but it’s unlikely.

I’m really glad you enjoyed my books! Out of curiosity ⏤ unusual how? (I definitely take unusual as a compliment, I’m just curious what you mean in specific!)