I'm A Big Tease

Finished my first first draft of a new story. Let's call it HG. As always, I hate sharing titles and synopsises before I publish. This one joins TPF as a story that's finished but not published. As for ABS:UHS, I really need to get busy with final revisions so the darn thing can get published.

Author Down

I'm in the hospital ... again. For those that care about the details, I have blood clots in my lungs. I went to the ER on an unrelated matter and they found this instead. For the time being, they're talking about me being able to go home in a "few days." Ah, the wonders of specificity.

So much for my plans for the weekend. OTOH, with so much free time opening up, maybe some time to write? We'll see how I feel.

Receeding Horizon

My publisher for ABS:UHS has given me feedback from three test readers. Those people know who they are, so I won't embarrass them by naming them here. The feedback has been very positive. In my opinion, even the negative feedback was because the reader was so invested in the characters, the outcome bummed them out. (I think the term "a real downer" was used.) The two others had really nice, wonderful things to say, so it looks like we're one step closer to publication.

Me? I'm past ready for it. I've been procrastinating on starting the sequels. Seeing ABS:UHS up online will, I think, give me the nudge I need so at least start writing the 2nd and 3rd parts. Scary to think that will put the story as a whole around 300 pages. (With illustrations, that might make it 600+ pages.) Wow. That's dangerously close to novel length. I'm running out of excuses to write an actual novel.

Speaking of procrastinating, I've been working on MCN. I'm past the transformation scene and into the guts of the story, which is all about dealing with the fallout for both of the main characters. Let's hope I can keep it up. Often, I find it difficult to write once I'm past that point. I lose interest and the story languishes half-formed on my hard drive.

In other procrastination news, I've finished another story that I haven't mentioned here yet. It's short and it's very sexual, so I may put it up on Fictionmania or TG Storytime soon. Still not sure on that one. Like the ABS series, this one has more than one part. They're short enough that I may put off releasing them until at least the next one is done. As always, I don't like spoilers, but I will say that this series deals a little bit with a Man Into Object theme, which is new for me. Fun, but new.

Well, at least the object is new. I did make my script for The Bra public over at the TG Comics forum.

Avocation

I'm at my day job (customer service for the local cable company) and wishing I was at home writing. I can't write at work. 1) My employer wants me to focus on the customers, which is as it should be. 2) If I break that rule and write anyway, it goes at something like a sentence or two an hour. 3) The end result suffers from being written in micro-chunks.

The story that I'm currently (trying) to work on  - let's call it MNC - is on the verge of becoming a much longer work. It started as a TG idea, but I had an idea to make it a more serious work. It will still have those TG elements, but it may become the launching point for the story, rather than the reason for its existence.

Untitled

I don't think I've mentioned this before, so let me tell you now: I hate ... HATE ... using titles that other authors have used before. So, I have a story that I play with now and again that has a working title of "Busted!"

Not anymore, though. I just did a Fictionmania search and discovered a bunch of stories that use some variant of "Busted" as a title. Now I have to search my brain and come up with a new title that's clever  enough to suit me and still matches the narrative of the story.

Damn it.

ABS:UHS Update

I got an E-mail from my publisher with the final version of the cover for my upcoming story, ABS:UHS. The illustration - a fun cover that includes all of the main characters in a non-story setting - looks fantastic! I can't wait to share it with the world. This one has been a lot longer coming than I have wanted. Still, I think the wait is going to be worth it. If for no other reason, having something I wrote illustrated with nearly 100 beautiful images by an artist that is known and respected in the community is going to be worth the price of admission.

Yes, you read that right; this one won't be free. Even so, I think that those that choose to pay for the story won't be disappointed. I don't have a price point yet, but I would guess it will be well under the price of my Reluctant Press stories, yet having far more value. I can't rave about the illustrations enough. Some of them will be worth the price of admission all by themselves. Thank you, my artist friend! You know who you are. ;-)

Computer Update

I'm still limping along with a PC that is ... well, let's call it "a gimme." It works, but it's kind of like driving around in a Yugo; it's gets me where I need to go, but that's about it. As an example, the hard drive is only 30 GB. Amazing how fast that fills up with modern applications.

The good news, though, is that I was able to upload the backup copies of my writing from disc a few weeks ago. My recently finished project is one that was on hold because of that repair issue.

My grand hope now is to purchase a laptop and migrate my files to that. I also intend to back-up to flash drive regularly. My writing takes up almost no file space as .doc files are so small. Never again to be caught flat footed. (Yeah, I know. Famous last words.)

Another One Bites The Dust

I finished another story. Now what?

I had a week off this last week. As I often do, I used some of my extra free time to write. I banged out 28 pages to finish it off. Writing at an average pace of about one (1) page an hour or less, that's more than three days of full time work. The time flew by. I could do it again easily, because it's just too much fun to write. "T_ P_ F_" (TPF, from now on) is now sitting on my hard drive, needing revision, waiting to be polished to a gleaming shine before being published at ... I don't know where.

Like my other unpublished work (ABS:UHS), I will not be submitting it to Reluctant Press. I think I've outgrown them. It's less about them than it is about me wanting more control over the content I create. If I write something and it bombs, I want to know. If it succeeds wildly, I want to know. Most of all, I want to succeed or fail based on the merits (or lack thereof) of my own work.

To that end, ABS:UHS has been extensively illustrated (paid for by a third party) and will be published at some point in the future at a website that won't suprise anyone that follows my writing. As great as that is, I'm looking to publish independently for my next story. I have Lulu and Createspace (Amazon) accounts set up, but I'm not sure which I'll use. I'm leaning towards Createspace, as I think it will get more exposure if I use them. A friend of mine uses them with great personal success.

For now, I've got a several stories with finished outlines and enough pages to know I want to finish them. (C_ O_ T_, MAU:S_ E_ , T_ B_, TotTC:M_ V_) Before I worry about publishing, that's were I'm going to put my focus, starting with COT. Besides, TPF makes reference to a licensed character that needs to be edited out if I'm going to sell it.