If anybody missed it, Ch. 15 of SOTM is in the queue.

In the beginning of an establishment scene for my female protag that’s directly connected to that heart-string tugging ending of Heart of the Wood.  I decided to combine a scene I’d already written and one that I had planned into one, to move the story along at a quicker pace, and I think it’s going to work out just fine.

After this one, I’m going to pass a little time with a paragraph, giving the couple a chance to get to know each other better without going through every date, leading into a main plot point — and a much delayed first kiss.

From there, it should be a whirlwind to the end.  The main plot, the relationship, and the secrets both of my protags share are all going to come together, leading me right into that ending.

Damn, but it’s nice to feel good about this story after the way it’s sputtered since…  late January, I think?

About another 15 minutes until the dryer finishes, and I think I’m going to take a break to work on that story in my 3rd name for a few minutes.  I’d like to finish both Earth Day stories before jumping on to either Lowborn or the next chapter of SOTM.  Accomplishing goals is another thing that motivates me to write, which is why I tend to have spurts where I put out a lot of work back-to-back.

If I can just keep from having something get in the way and stealing my momentum, I’ll be doing good.  Lots of ideas flowing right now.

For those who don’t visit the Literotica forums ( probably most of you ) I thought I’d post the little images I’m putting in my signature there to advertise new or upcoming chapters of SOTM, since it doesn’t actually have a cover image just yet.  I’m still working on it.

The one I put up for Ch. 14 actually has a little of the imagery I’m working on for the cover, showing headshots of Danica and Celes.

This one is for Ch. 15, and it is meant to depict something specific from the chapter.  Too bad you can’t really see the glowing heiroglyphs in this small image, but they’re actually there.  Every little blue area on the skin is a different heiroglyph.

I’m going to warn you that — while tiny — this image is NSFW ( not safe for work )

I’m trying to provide a little space to hide it, should you choose to do so.

As long as you’re not using a higher screen resolution than me, this should do it.

Here it is:

I saw an email notification pop up while I was finishing this image, which tells me that Roust has finished the edit of Ch. 15.  I’ll go through his suggestions here in a little bit, and if necessary, send back the changed draft for him to give one more look through.

That’s the (almost) final step to get it ready for posting.  I actually do a lot of manual HTML formatting to the stories I post on Lit, and I’ll have to do that before it’s completely ready.

I did a read through Chapters 16 and 17 of SOTM, but those aren’t the final reads.  When I do those, I change the font, which helps me catch errors.  This was just making minor adjustments.

I also renamed the previous draft of Ch. 06 of Lowborn to “bak” in preparation to rewrite it from scratch.  Never know when something I did write might come in handy, even if I don’t use it in the story I’m working on at the moment, so I save a lot of that stuff.  Once I eventually get around to restoring the sections of the website, I’ll probably put a lot of that stuff up on a “cutting room floor” page again.

For now, I’m going to put on the Chrono Cross soundtrack ( the game was just okay, but the soundrack is pure awesomeness! ) and get back to Heart of the Wood.

Up to 4k words on Heart of the Wood now.  Just put inthe “catalyst” I’ve mentioned a couple of times, and it’s working for me.  Think it’s going to provide the right transition to pass some time and speed up the writing of the relationship.

( It actually happens over the course of around a month )

 Just need to hit one or two critical moments to get these two nice and hooked up.

Then, it’s just a matter of some revelations between the two of them, a touch of magic, and good to go.

Once I have this one wrapped up — or close to — I’ll probably jump on Lowborn, trying to get the penultimate chapter of that one done.  I’ll be sending off SOTM 15 to my editor either tonight or tomorrow as well.