Meet Taipha, the star of my LitRPG series in progress. She’s a cat. She’s a girl. Will she rule the world???
Read on to learn more about her…and her world!
The Talking Cat!?!?!?!
Taipha is mischievous, impetuous, and curiosity is probably why she’s here in a magical elseworld in the first place, freshly reincarnated. While at first she may seem brainless, the learning curve of this new world hits her hard, and she soon finds her legs as a hunter again.
What she keeps are her enthusiasm, her claws, and her love of springy athletics and on-the-fly strategies.
Taipha is a cat, but the goddess sending her messages from a distant heaven has given her the power to transform into a nekomata—colloquially, a catgirl. She would rather not, since she hates humans! But this, too, is a learning curve. The new form has its uses, especially when the humans in the forest prove to be not only helpful, but…funny. And pleasant.
Her World
After a long but un-prestigious and uneventful life as a stray cat in an Earth city, Taipha is dazzled by the forest setting that many others would take for granted.
This is just a tiny pocket of a strange world known as Vencia, where raccoons can raise their DEF and wolves can charge fireblasts, which is terrifying both because Taipha is Level 1 and and because she doesn’t know what a “level” is. (If you don’t either, please read my blog post about what a LitRPG is!)
But ultimately she must come to love this wilderness dotted with human relics and ruins—and to embrace the challenge of wrestling squirrel gangs in the morning.
She may be fighting for survival, and she will find herself terrifyingly alone many times along the way, but with a little strategy and confidence, she finds there’s always solace at the end of the day. In the end this is a “cozier” story, one where the warm hug at the end should feel deserved.
So…How’s That Writing Coming?
Last month I gave myself an ultimatum. Every two weeks, I’ll post a substantial public update on my progress with Catgirl System…until I’m done. Since last update, I finished the first draft of Book 3! Now I’m drafting Book 4, starting with sketches of the entire book before I begin the actual chapter-by-chapter writing.
While I’m taking a few-day break to keep from wiping out (and mainly to manage company/low appetite/generalized demotivation in other things besides just writing), I’m not stopping. At my current pace, I may even be able to finish before 2024 starts…and then I can begin polishing it all in earnest. Only then will the world be ready.
Thank you for reading and keeping up, folks. And Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
Why don’t you come in, stay a while, and read some retrospective thoughts about Scooby-Doo, manga circa 2010, or the nature of comedy?
Alternatively, read the next part of my Catgirl-writing saga, where I fumble horribly (sorry 4 spoilerz : ( )!