whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

October Update

Aaand it’s that time of the month again!

I said what I said.

Things got Intense this month, but instead of doing this newsletter in my usual update about a bunch of cryptically-named projects style, I’m going to do this a bit more personally. There’s a few things that I should probably let you all know about in a bit more detail.

First off, the general updates: I’m still going on all my side projects, though more chipping away at them than making huge headway. That means I’ve been doing a bit of video editing, plus a lot of game coding, and that’s been eating up most of my ‘free’ time for the last little while. The game is going to take a while to be public access, but the video stuff shouldn’t be too much longer in coming. The biggest challenge there is, since the video is for a series, I need to get to a spot where I can be sure that I’ll have some time regularly to dedicate to filming and uploading for a while. It’s by no means a complicated thing to produce, and it shouldn’t be too hard, I’m just working about at capacity at the moment, and I don’t want to add more deadlines to the schedule before I take a couple off it.

As a side note, I said last time that I was setting up more regular streaming. This was intended to be true, and is still my plan, but unfortunately I’m having trouble getting reliable Internet running. Hopefully I’m onto a solution and it’ll be fixed in the next couple of weeks, after which I can make good on that promise.

Speaking of, there’s a few things coming up in the calendar (I should really get this site a calendar). First off you’re in Melbourne, I’ll be playing an NPC in a LARP at Melbourne International Games Week this Sunday! Link to the info is here, promo video is here. I’ll also be playing in a couple of pre-recorded game demos for Games Week (hint hint: Sunday 6th!), so if you want to see me play a sneaky knight, check out ARC’s stream of Knight, and if you want to see me help demonstrate the TTRPG game design process, in a format where you can follow along at home, come watch the Design-A-Long stream! Schedule for when those go live can be found here.

Now, the … less-exciting but mostly necessary part.

In the last couple of updates, I think I’ve mentioned working on the sequel to Fire Witch. As I’ve been promising on and off for a while. But this is the official statement: I’m shelving that project for now.

This isn’t a decision made lightly. I’m a completionist myself, and I hate starting a story that gets left hanging. I’ve written about three outlines for the book, and I’ve actually written more than 100,000 words towards those outlines. I’ve also scrapped several drafts. The King’s City series has always been a bit of a bugbear for me, but I think it’s finally time to admit that I should set it aside.

The biggest reason is that I don’t feel like there’s any way for me to make it a good answer to the first book. The first book was finished just as COVID hit, and it was a kind of odd story in a few ways. Firstly, it was both a long time in production and extremely rushed. I had been writing the story for several years, but gave myself a harsh deadline to polish and release the first book. The result really shows: the story hangs together pretty well, but the proofreading was really not up to scratch. I also wrote myself into a lot of corners, thematically and structurally.

But most important, I took a four-year hiatus from writing anything. I won’t get into all the details right now, but suffice to say that I changed a lot in that time. The story I shaped then won’t fit into the ideas I have now. I’d have to make a lot of compromises to keep the story on the tracks I set for it, and I haven’t found a way to jump those tracks that would still result in something satisfying.

So I’m setting it aside. I think if I ever come back to this story, it’ll be a total rewrite, especially given how much the production of the first book suffered due to that self-imposed crunch. I’m not promising I will, but I’m not ruling out the possibility, either.

This changes nothing about the immediate future: I’m still mainly working on shorter stories and projects while I get my degree. I’ve got a longer project in the works (another serial for the blog) which is currently codenamed DR, which is progressing through its outline currently. I’ll update more on that as I get through it.

I’m sorry to the people who were looking forward to the sequel for Fire Witch; I know I did leave it on a cliffhanger. I’ll be putting up notices in the book page on the website and on my store page, and the store page is only going to stay up as long as I have copies in my current supply to sell. I won’t be reprinting them. And I am sorry that this blog got so long, but I figured this decision deserved as full an answer as I could give it.

I hope I can make up for this by providing many other stories in the future.

That’s it from me for now. As always, shorter thoughts go on the medias social, find them in the sidebar. Til next month, Whimsy out.

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

Blog Update January 2021

So

Uh

2020, huh?

Wow.

And call me cynical, but I’m not holding out hope for 2021 to get much less chaotic.

But I am at least holding out hope that I can be … as productive this year as I was last year, if not a little more so.

I never named the year this year, so I’m going to start with that, and then a quick update on the blog, the stories, and some of the extracurriculars.

This year is officially the Year of Backlog. This one’s a bit more of a reference to personal stuff, but it’s relevant to my writing as well. I, like everyone else, put a lot of stuff on hold last year, and I’m going to be working through it this year. I’ve also, due to changing work commitments, had to change my priorities a bit, and put some things on the back burner. So in addition to everything else, I’m going to be trying to work through some of my backlog this year, to catch up on the things that I wanted to do last year or should have organised already but didn’t have time, or that other things got in the way of.

Now — the blog. Astute readers (aka any readers at all, if I still have any) will notice that this blog kind of went on hiatus at the end of last year, about the time that I hit university commitments. I mentioned a new secondary blog then, and then proceeded to do nothing with it. The next few posts are going to be cross-posts from there, because I think they’re relevant and that gives me a little extra time to recharge the blog batteries, and then I’m going to be back on new content for this blog as much as I can with the time and energy I’m going to have available. I’ll make a decision in the next few weeks, but it’s possible I’ll decide to drop my posting goal from one blog per week to one a fortnight — or perhaps one short story and one post per month — to keep my commitments down this year.

For the writing, I have been on hiatus with that for the last couple of months. People following my Twitter will know that I’ve been working with Arcanacon recently, and I’ve been running their Game Dunk Online event and helping to run their virtual convention this January, so that ate up a lot of my time and creative energy. I’m still working on the next serial for the blog, and it might be a while before I get it done. It’ll also be a while before I can start working on the sequel to Fire Witch, because I can’t start that til I’m finished with the serial. I haven’t entirely figured out what I’m going to do for creative content in the meantime — I have some short stories lined up that I can post, and I am nearly ready to release the third Ferryman’s Apprentice hard copy/e-book, so there will be a few things coming through. However, if it’s creative content you want, it won’t entirely be mine, but it’s probably Cyborg Stories that you want to be looking at (hint hint).

On a personal note, there are a couple of Big Life Things coming up for me this year. I don’t know how much I’ll talk about them here — I do want to start having more of a personality on this blog, and do more than just talk about my Writing Opinions, but I’m still working out the balance. I’ll talk a little bit more about those as and when it becomes relevant, I suppose. For now, what you mostly need to know is that they’re probably going to throw my productivity for a loop, but I’ll keep everyone posted. I’m also looking forward to working more with Arcanacon this year, and although I can’t talk about any of their projects yet, I’ll be sure to mention on the blog when they happen.

And that’s it from me — keep an eye out here and on Cyborg Stories — there’s going to be cool things happening this year in both places, provided I can manage my time right.

whimsyandmetaphor Blog Posts

March 2020 Update

Third in a row! And hopefully I’ll start getting some other content up soon. Not too much of an update today – there’s not a lot that’s super exciting happening, but there are some things just to keep people updated on.

But before we get into that, I just want to say that I hope everyone is keeping safe and being safe – these are scary times and we have to look out for each other. If you haven’t had a thousand people telling you what to do by now, you’re probably not reading this because you aren’t on the Internet, so I won’t go over all the instructions again. I just want to say that the best tool we have is co-operation and community right now. Keep washing your hands. Be kind. Be safe.

I’ll put the soapbox away now.

And now on the updates note. Last week I put out those Patreon and Twitter polls, and some of you have spoken – the rest of you I am just going to go ahead and assume are fine with whatever happens next.

I asked what people wanted to see more of in the blog, and what people wanted to see, fiction-wise, in the story hiatus period. The results are as follows.

Answers on the blog posts topic were pretty split – some people wanted only general blog posts, but more people wanted a combination of all options. So I’ll be doing mostly just my general writing and writercraft posts, with some palate cleansers thrown in every so often about my writing process (rebooting Edit Pass Live, for example, and I’ve got some worldbuilding process posts planned, since that’s what I’m doing at the moment), and some personal, real-life stuff thrown in when something important happens.

The other part of the poll was what to do about the hiatus. Now that The Ferryman’s Apprentice is finished, I need a little time to work on the next project, due to some Technically Difficulties, by which I mean I’m both indecisive and picky when it comes to my writing projects. I have decided which project I want to work on, but unfortunately it is one of the projects I don’t have a previous draft for, so it’s going to take me a while. In the meantime, people have spoken: Overwhelmingly, people want standalone, one-shot stories, that aren’t related either to upcoming or previous stories. So I’ll whip some of those up and post them. But at least one person did also particularly request the idea of a teaser or trailer in written form, and I do want to do at least one of those, because I want to play with the format – thanks to that person for giving me Ideas.

Speaking of writing projects after The Ferryman’s Apprentice, those are still progressing. The King’s City is still on track for its first-half-2020 publishing date, but I’m expecting to announce the date and (and run a cover reveal) within the week.

As mentioned above, I have also set the next project, and while that’s still on hush for now, I’ll have more information about that as I go. I’ll probably give glimpses as I work on it – and for now the working title abbreviation is FB. If I use that abbreviation, I’m definitely talking about the New Project, not Facebook.

Liberation Industries is now also off hiatus, and we’re putting together new content for that. We’ll be cobbling together episodes via stream and voice call for a while, but we’re still playing games. In the meantime, why don’t you check out some of our backlog?

And finally, I do hate to do this, and I want you to know there’s no pressure. But I have had several contracts postponed or vanished entirely, including at least one event management contract, so my income stream is drying up a bit. If you have the means and are willing, please consider giving me a little boost by buying a copy of The Ferryman’s Apprentice Part One (links on the site page, where you can choose your distributor), supporting my Patreon, or even just spreading the word if you liked my stuff – maybe someone else you know will, too.

And that’s about it from me. Blog posts will start in earnest next week. As always, feel free to reach out on Twitter, or in the comments here. Stay safe and take care of yourselves and each other.