First off, thanks to everyone who’s voted on Barren Harvest so far.  It’s doing well at Lit, although a couple of stories that just posted yesterday are likely to push it out of the winner’s circle in the end.  Always a possibility, as I know there are some low bomb-votes in there, but unlikely with the scores and vote totals the stories above me have.

Not many comments, but oh well.  You can’t have everything!

Don’t know whether it was the posting day or the synopsis, but it pretty much flatlined at SOL.  Very few views, and even fewer votes.  Again, oh well!  SOL has really dropped off in readership across the board since Laz marginalized certain types of stories ( I’m sure regular visitors there know what I’m talking about )  I really hope that most of it is a censorship protest ( as the comments claimed ) and not that there were that many readers there into that type of story.  The latter would be a bit creepy.

To each their own and all, but *shiver*  Sorry.  Everybody has their squicks.

I’m working on an impression read/world building/Americanization of a story for someone, and that’s naturally kept me from my own writing a bit.  I really feel that taking these time-outs to help other authors is well worth it, even though it slows down production.  I establish connections for when I need my own first readers, and often pick up the people I help as new readers.

I’m going to dash off one — maybe two — Halloween stories in my third name, finish that impression read, and then get back to SOTM and Lowborn.  Winter Holiday isn’t that far away, but I’m not going to worry about it for the time being.  The only contest that I truly worry about is Earth Day, because I don’t want to break such a long tradition of posting an annual outing in the Wood universe.  If I miss the other contests, I miss them.

I’m actually considering not writing for the Winter one ( except maybe in my third name ) and instead doing some reviewing.  I did this one year, and there’s entirely too little of that going on at Lit in recent years.  Too many forum trolls and cynical people destroying the atmosphere.  Trying to see if I can do something about that.

I’m also likely to begin work on a How-To document concerning category placement for stories involving my main area of expertise — other worlds, magic, paranormal, etc.  There are rather frequent questions about this, and it would be easier to be able to link to something fully fleshed out and edited than to keep typing pretty much the same thing all the time on the forum *laugh*  This would post as LesLumens.

I also have the original first two missing chapters from the A Royal Sacrifice chain in my possession.  I’ve long wanted to write replacement chapters for those that are missing now that one of the authors has left Lit.  With pretty much all the other authors from the chain absent, that pretty much leaves me =P  Having the originals means that I can ensure I don’t miss any important plot points or character development, keeping the story seamless.

Naturally, if the original author ever returns and wants to put hers back up, I’ll take mine down in a heartbeat.  It will probably take a while, but I’d really like to see this story complete on the site again.  Because my chapters posted as Dark, that’s what the replacement chapters will post as.  If I’d been thinking about it, I would have posted those, Laresa, and my LST3K stories as Les, in order to keep my Dark name reserved for just stories in Danica’s world.  Too late to go back now, though.

Anyway, that’s the update.  I’m seeing a lot of new votes and favorites, so welcome to anyone who may be dropping by for the first time!  I have a lot of plans for the website to provide background information for my worlds and characters, so pop by every once in a while!  The blog updates on a fairly regular basis, and there are already some useful resources with the newsletter, forum, and listing of my work.