When I first set out to write You Tried, I didn’t want to create a static artifact—a final, unchanging object sealed in amber. Instead, I wanted the book to be a living reflection of me: messy, neurodivergent, and always evolving.
You might notice subtle changes in the text over time—a sentence reworded here, a tiny addition there, a joke sharpened or a thought deepened. These tweaks aren’t bugs or mistakes; they’re part of the journey. They’re like emotional software updates, silent and slow, sometimes imperceptible if you were to compare versions published weeks apart, but unmistakable once you look back over months or years.
This approach is very different from how I work on my open-source Basic Fantasy RPG books, which use numbered releases and forum posts acting as changelogs. But this book is personal, and I want its changes to mirror me—gradual, quiet, and organic.
After making many tweaks during the book's first few weeks of life, I added this paragraph to Appendix J:
Stealth Update Advisory
Please be aware that the author cannot be trusted not to tweak, revise,
or impulsively expand this manuscript during routine proofreading.
This is not a bug. It’s a compulsion.
Every time a typo gets fixed, new content sneaks in. The book now
exists in multiple parallel versions, all equally canonical, none officially
numbered. Like emotional software updates, you won’t notice what
changed—only that you feel slightly different afterward.
This advisory was added during one such update.
I trust my readers enough to come along for this ride—to embrace the imperfections, the slips, the expansions, and even the small mysteries of “Did that line sound different before?” Because the truth is, none of us are fixed or finished. We’re all works in progress.
So if you’re reading this book now, or years from now, know that you’re holding something that will be alive so long as I am. And that, to me, is exactly how it should be.
