Afterword

Hullo! Light novelist Sakaki here, bringing you Volume 4 of Outbreak Company.

We’ve had Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia on the cover already, so I sort of figured Minori-san would be next, and cooked up a story meant to feature her—but before I knew it, it had turned into a Petralka story. And then there she was on the cover, again. Poor Minori-san. Maybe you really can’t get on the cover after you turn twenty? Are adult women a no-go, even if they have glasses and huge boobs and a baby face?

Then again, Yuugen-shi’s Petralka is adorable (if I may say so myself), so I guess it works out. To those who say they prefer covers with Myusel, I hope the color pages here will soothe (?) your disappointment. This is our first glimpse of her with a ponytail.

By the way, in order to make sure the story clicked along smoothly for this volume, I had to knowingly tell a number of lies, mostly about movie production. Anyone involved in independent film production was probably shouting, “The hell?! That’s not the way it works!” all throughout this volume. Please just laugh it off.

On that note, in a past life, I was involved in some independent moviemaking myself, and it so happened that I had to act in the films as well. I was an assassin one time, an arms dealer another, a father forced into thievery when his construction business hit a dead end, and so on. I often go out in public wearing sunglasses and a street-punk jacket; consider it a tradition (?) from that part of my life.

I guess that counts as a kind of cosplay, doesn’t it?

This book is scheduled to come out in September, and in November a manga version of the series is slated to begin. I’ve already seen the rough draft for Chapter 1, and I think it looks really good. It follows the novel, but scenes are arranged and presented a little differently, in a really interesting way. I think it’ll really grab people. I hear it’s going to be serialized in good! AFTERNOON magazine. If you’ve been enjoying the novels, I hope you’ll check it out.

Now, then.

With light novels, you never really know what’s going to sell until it’s actually out there. And if it doesn’t sell (especially the first volume), then no matter how emotionally invested the author may be, it can get canceled right out from under him. There was a possibility that, on that logic, this series would end after two volumes.

Thankfully, the novels have continued to sell well, and I’ve been given dispensation from my editors to continue the series for the foreseeable future.

That’s given me leeway to start thinking about character and plot development over the somewhat longer term, and in this volume along with the next couple, I’m hoping to plant some seeds that will bear fruit later on. What kind of fruit? Keep reading to find out!

Things have been pretty quiet and slice-of-life-ish for the last several volumes, so in the next book, or maybe the one after that, I’d like to do something with a bit more drama.

I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am. (Note to my editor: I promise I’ll start working on the actual plot tomorrow.)

Hope to see you again for Volume 5!

8/6/2012 Sakaki Ichirou