It's Up!!!

"The Milkman," my newest story is up. You can find it over at TG Comics. As I've mentioned here before, I'm pretty fond of this one. The biggest part of that for me is because I think it's the tightest piece of writing I've put out yet. Femur gave me some feedback on the ending. After some mild grumbling on my part, I capitulated and the story is far better than it was because of that. Here's a great big THANK YOU to femur!

Hint Hint

For those of you daring enough to read my blog, here's a scoop just for you!

If you head on over to TG Comics, the same update that includes the last chapters of Sturkwurk's "WTF?!?" has a promise of a new writer and a new "official" artist. Guess who the new writer is? That's right ... lil' ole me! I even know who the artist is, because I signed off on their selection. I wish I could say more, but I don't want to steal Femur's thunder. I will say this, though: I really excited to share this one with the world.

Coming Soon

One of my projects is about to be released soon: MM. I'll have more to say here as soon as it's up. That includes sharing what "MM" stands for. I'm really excited to share this illustrated story with the community and hope it's well received.

Pins and Needles

My computer - already sputtering along due to a past malware incursion - is now in critical condition. I took it in to try and recover my personal files, which have not been backed up for ages and ages. If that fails ... most of my stories are dead. I have some "in the cloud" (Lord how I hate that term) on Google Docs, but the majority of my partial works are on that hard drive.

I'm praying for a positive outcome.

A Brand New Bag

I just read Morpheus' latest story, "Inexplicable," over at Fictionmania. It took a little effort to get into, but was a great read once I did.

What struck me most about it is that unlike many TG authors, he doesn't lean on sex as a plot crutch. In TG, you can't ever really get away from the sex 100%, but the quality writers always seem to be more about the characters and the situations than they are about the X rated stuff.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I think that we might be on the cusp of a change in the genre. Up until now, there has been a lot of focus on sex. More and more, I see the best talents in TG writing either walking away from it as unsatisfying, or writing less for the audience and more to please themselves on a less base level. I think we might be approaching the same moment Science Fiction writing reached in the mid 20th century, where a Rubicon is crossed, leaving our pulp past behind us. On the other shore is a bright future where the craft of writing and the quality of the story are more important than the necessity of including erotic content.

I think the audience is both listening and ready.

What it DOES stand for.

Because I wasn't entirely thrilled with my finished result and because I wanted to help support Joe6Pack's www.tgstorytime.com, I have published "Framed," which you can now find in my links on the right. So, yeah, "F_D" does NOT stand for that other, nasty thing.

Shame on you for thinking that it did, you naughty, naughty reader.

Project Progress

My sometimes mentioned project - ABS - has a new name, and so it gains a new moniker ... ABS:UHS. What does that gobbledy-gook stand for? That's under wraps for now.

Where to start? I guess from the beginning.

ABS has been done for a while now. Not long after I finished writing it, I finished two additional stories, F_D, which does not stand for what you think it does and MM. I'm also a few pages from finishing a fourth story, and I have an outline done for a fifth story. Outlines, by the way, are Sara Speak for, "Oh yeah, that one's getting finished for sure."

My original intention was to publish with Reluctant Press. But ... I think I've mentioned before that I'm no longer as taken with them as I once was. I then decided to self-publish through Lulu. As mentioned back in 2009, that did not go well. Around the same time, I was looking for an illustrator to do a cover image and a few interior illustrations to accompany the story.

What came next suprised me a lot: an offer to illustrate my story, to publish me, and like Lulu, to pay me per sale ... with a 50-50 split. I jumped at the offer. Also, MM - a story I had considered giving away at Fictionmania - would also get illustrated and given away as a way to drum up sales for ABS. I was really excited by the prospects, and kind of sat back and did nothing for a good long while.

Fast forward about a year and a half and here I am, still waiting. As if what had happened before wasn't great enough, the new publisher contacted me and apologized for the delay, and offered to hire an illustrator out of their own pocket to do illustrations. But, instead of the 3 - 4 that I had been thinking of originally, they want to do 100.

Yes, you read that right: 100.

So again, I jumped at the offer. An artist agreed to do the work. E-mails were traded. Illustrations were described. Baseline images were agreed upon. In genereal, progress has been made. I've even started to see actual illustrations. Right now, I'm frustrated with the process, but I've got to say, it's good to be making forward progress with my art, even if most of the work is being done for me by another person at this point.