Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin

EDITORIAL UPDATE AS OF 3/23/13 AT 11:51PM: IF YOU'RE READING THIS POST, YOU SHOULD READ MY MOST RECENT POST, "YOU KNOW." JUST SO, UM, YOU KNOW. WHICH YOU WILL IF YOU READ THAT POST.

It's up! Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin is now for sale for $9.95 on the TG Comics website. It's my second story to be illustrated and published there, but the first to be a Premium. In fact, it's the first premium illustrated story to be put up for sale on that website. I'm excited and a little scared to see how it will be received. If it doesn't do well for Femur - the webmaster, publisher and all around guru at TG Comics - it may close a door for other authors. I hope that doesn't happen.

TG Comics is virtually unique on the Internet, and that is a damn hard thing to do. I don't think the average visitor to the site really gets how much time, effort and money Femur spends on the site. The process of getting my story published there has given me a glimpse behind that curtain.

I think everybody knows the site is Femur's love song to the genre. I don't think everybody gets the depth of that commitment. The TG fiction community owes him a huge Thank You. Like Mindy Rich with Fictionmania (for stories), or Mako and Ray with the now defunct "Siren Song" website (for video), Femur's TG Comics website is the gold standard for sequential and illustrated TG fiction. I could not be more proud to have my work for sale there.

On a less profound, more whimsical note, can you see now why I am so coy about titles? If I had told people that ABS stood for Alien Body Suit, the content and direction of the story would have been too obvious, to the point of being a spoiler. Clearly the sequels - ABS:IM and ABS:WLW - are stories in the Alien Body Suit trilogy. (As a side note, it's "body suit" and not "bodysuit" due specifically to how the device is first seen / precieved in the story. You can read that part of the story for free in the preview that's up at TG Comics.) Those titles are guess-able if you know my writing well enough. Even so, I don't like to show my cards until I lay down my hand. Like the plot of those sequels ... well, read and see.

But start by reading Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin. The test readers all loved it. I think you will too.

The End Is In Sight

I have a tentative release date!!! That date is this Tuesday, 3/19/13. If everything goes as planned, I'll be able to reveal the full title of ABS:UHS, which will tell a lot about the nature of the story itself. Then I can also talk more openly about the planned sequels: ABS:IM and ABS:WLW. Obviously, the "ABS" part of those titles will be clear to all after Tuesday's release.

If anyone is following this blog, I have to confess that I'm very excited and hopeful for this project. I hope it leads to good things for both myself and my publisher. They are taking a very big risk on this project. I want it to succeed. If it does, I'm hoping that it opens up possibilities for other authors of TG fiction.

... And Closer

I got ABS:UHS back from my publisher with the edits applied last night. VERY close now to being done, with publication not far behind. At least, that was the impression I got from the E-mail I received. I'm 110 pages into my final pass through the story out of approximately 225 pages including illustrations. (Illustrations have been done since early summer of 2011.) The remaining revisions are few and minor ("they" instead of "the," some discrepancies between illustrations and captions and so forth). I should be done tonight, with the rest of the work in my publisher's hands.

This will be the first major story I've put out that wasn't with Reluctant Press. I was so close to self-publishing. I was ready to take that on, but with so little money of my own to invest in illustrations, the offer from this publisher to do 100+ illustrations just kind of blew me away. At the time, I thought my chain was getting yanked, but it was a serious offer. And the quality? Light years beyond the illustrations I have had coupled with my work before this. Now 3 1/2 years later, it's coming out. "I can't wait to share this with you," well, those words just don't seem adequate to express how I feel.

I'm getting nervous. Scared, even. I know some people are going to hate it and dump on me. There's always a few people that seem to enjoy going negative. I hope there are more that love it. And buy it. I'm pretty certain that a bad financial outcome will close the door on anyone that wants to follow in my footsteps. I think that would crush my spirits.

I can't stop rereading this story, though. I don't seem to get tired of it. I hope other people feel the same way.

Closer

After spending a month and a half putting off doing revisions for ABS:UHS, I finished final revisions and passed it back to my new publisher for the edits to be applied. I'm now waiting on them to finish so that I can finally talk about this project. I'm looking forward to that!

Excited to share this illustrated story (100+ illustrations!) with the world. Check here for details and updates.

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.