Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter Aft

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Afterword

You have my deepest thanks for picking up this book, the fifth volume of “Cooking with Wild Game.”

It feels like it’s been no time at all, but we’re already here at the fifth volume. It’s been roughly three months since the last book was published, but it really did pass in a flash. The focus this time around is a continuation of last time, with the business in the post town taking center stage.

I know some folks like to read the afterword first, so I won’t touch on the details, but I hope you look forward to Asuta’s and everyone’s continued struggle!

I believe I already mentioned this in one of the previous afterwords, but this work was originally serialized on a novel posting site, so I ended up quite conflicted on how to break things up when turning it into a series of novels.

Or to put it another way, when you find a good breaking point in the story, it can end up far too short on characters or even go significantly over, so how to revise things has been a significant concern. With this volume in particular, I had to shave off several tens of thousands of characters. Or talking in terms of pages, it was around 46 pages worth that I cut.

Of course, when doing the web version I just wrote what came to mind, so my descriptions ended up being overly verbose. I especially hated that part of my writing, so I feel like cutting that down certainly had a positive effect.

But with the number of characters I needed to cut, that obviously wasn’t enough, so I had to cut a certain conversation entirely. It wasn’t absolutely necessary for the volume, but if I get the opportunity, I would like to try to insert it next time. I also tweaked a number of other passages, until finally arriving at the current slimmed down version.

Still, cutting the enjoyment brought by the book along with the number of words would be a real shame, and an example of misplaced priorities, so this made for a rather tricky job. I believe I did my best to ensure the folks reading the novel version for the first time and those who already read the web version get the same amount of joy from the story, but how would you say I did?

If you could see even a bit of the fruits of my effort, then I would feel truly blessed.

And as for the bonus short story, as you may have guessed it stars the character referred to by its title. She had already been introduced in the past, but this time around she was brought to life through a color illustration for the first time, which brought me a great deal of satisfaction.

I had no idea when I was first planning things out that that character would end up so thoroughly entwined in the story. She may not be as flashy as the four daughters of the main Ruu house, but I still hope that she’s earned your favor.

I’ll also use this opportunity to inform you that the concept behind the covers will be changing from this volume on. It will still be like taking a snapshot of a single scene like before, but from now on the plan is to bring the scene even further to life.

Up till last time the idea was to craft a scene that could have appeared in the volume, but I’ve decided to become less fixated on that restriction. Or to be more precise, a scene like the one on this volume’s cover doesn’t happen this time around.

It may be possible in the future, but at the very least it doesn’t appear in the book itself. That was how we made the cover.

From here on out, I also intend to try to produce even stronger imagery by not being so fixated on the contents of the book itself.

For example, the first volume had Asuta and Ai Fa. The reason Asuta doesn’t have the towel wrapped around his head is to make it clear what sort of face he’s making, and they’re both wearing shoes indoors in order to emphasize the sort of clothing they wear.

A book’s cover is like its face, so I think it’s always very important to keep in mind the sort of image you’re presenting.

And so this time around, we went with a scene of Rimee and Lala Ruu from the forest’s edge enjoying a meal together with Tara, who is from the town.

Please, keep on watching over them to see whether or not such a peaceful future ends up arriving.

Now then... As always, let me finish by giving thanks to my editor at Hobby Japan, my illustrator Kochimo, everyone else involved with the production of this book, and of course all of you who purchased it.