Writing on Queen right now, and up to about 2k words.  The setup is done, and I’m on the verge of completing the action scene that puts Thakkor and Alicia in my true setting from the story.  A little transition, some hot and steamy fun, and the conclusion wrapping everything up after that.

I spent most of the day musing “of the wood” at work, running various words for the title through my head, and testing them out against the basic framework I have established.  I had a few okay ideas, one or two that lit up, but didn’t really pan out, and a lot of “that won’t work” *laugh*  I do think that I’m getting somewhere, though.  I think the title is the key to this one.  Once I come up with the right word to put in there, the story will write itself.

I’ve had quite a few thoughts about the sequel to Blackhawk Hall as well.  I shifted away from the original premise, which was mostly based upon an image that I thought would be good for the cover, and I’m heading another direction.  It seems to be congealing a bit more now, but it’s still back-burner for the time being.

I’m still musing SOTM as well.  The current scene is still proving a problem, but I’ve come up with some neat paths to explore for shortly afterward.  It should lead to some intense action, including a major battle of significant importance to the story that I actually hadn’t planned on doing just yet.  The more I think about it, the more right it seems to do it now.

I’m thinking that this one is going to come to a head more quickly than I’d originally anticipated.  As I work over the story in my head, I feel that it needs to move at a faster pace — unlike Danica — which was far more day-in-the-life by design.  This was originally going to be a tale nearly as long as Danica, but I’m not going to let an arbitrary length dictate the story.  If the characters are ready to move toward a conclusion, it’s going to happen.

Enough for now.  I’m going to write for at least as long as it takes this load of clothes to go through the first dryer cycle *laugh*  Let’s see if I can get Queen up to the heat before I crash 🙂

I tried tinkering with Lowborn, SOTM, and a couple of stories in my third pen name, but I just wasn’t feeling anything.  Plot, humor, sex… nothing was flowing.

Just one of those nights, I guess.

I’m going to take one more peek at Lowborn and see if I can get it going, as it’s my top priority for the moment.  Guess we’ll see what happens.  It was early this evening when I last opened it, and sometimes that’s all it takes is a few hours.

Think I know why I was having so much trouble with that transition in Lowborn.  I’m doing what I do quite often, and scrapping the whole scene I just wrote *laugh*

I like it — don’t get me wrong — but it just doesn’t advance the plot quickly enough, introduces characters that have just enough detail to make people wonder what happened to them when they drift out of the story shortly thereafter, and the aforementioned transition issue.

When I write, I just let my characters go.  Sometimes, they wander down roads of the trivial.  They always seem to meet and say interesting things along the way, but it just doesn’t take them toward a destination.

I’m working the rewrite now, hoping it will provide a smooth segue into the conclusion of this chapter so I can put it to bed and take a look at some of the other stalled stories/chapters of recent days.

Meanwhile, a couple of other things are steadily building in my head.  One, I believe I’ve mentioned before.  It’s a Halloween story inspired by Ghostbusters, going with my own mythos on ghosts and the business of paranormal investigation and elimination.  No proton packs, I’m afraid 😉

Another has been kicking around for a long time, but I’ve never really had a solid grasp on it until recently.  It’s a fembot story — but then again, it isn’t.  #1, it won’t be following the “rules” I’ve seen reference to quite often to this genre — mainly because I don’t know them *laugh*  Saying much more about this one would spoil too much ( assuming I get around to writing it )

I’ve had a lot of (pseudo) Science Fantasy kicking around in my head lately.  That may very well herald some multi-part stories as Les Lumens in the genre.  I’ve even had a couple of actual Science Fiction tales sparking.  I may very well have to take some time exploring some of these to get them out of my head.  I’ve had that problem before, too.  If I try to concentrate on something while my muse is poking me with something else, nothing gets done.

The more I think about it, the more likely it is that there will be an off-season “of the woods” story coming out.  First, there are some plot bunnies that don’t really fit the Earth Day theme, but still fit into the building story of the series.  Second, it’s a defiance of the Triad of Ultimate Ego and their rantings.  That bunch of numbskulls needs someone to flip them the bird, and I have every intention of doing so.

Could be a story in the Summer Lovin’ contest at Lit, though I’ve had more ideas for Winter Holiday.  If I have a really good spark for Summer, I’ll write it, but otherwise, I’m letting that Christmas idea percolate.  It will be interesting to explore the wood in Winter ( though the climate of the undisclosed location isn’t exactly prone to a “Winter Wonderland” )  If both ideas work, I’ll probably post them both.

The winter one, if it happens, would almost certainly be titled “Gift of the Wood”, and star Xanbrina ( Daughter of the Wood ) again.  Any stories in the series that I write between then and now will build up to this one, as it has a climax that I’ve been musing for quite some time now to reveal another bit of magic inherent to the family.

It’s possible that this one may even skip ahead, leaving a couple of stories between Secret and Gift that I’ll eventually write.  After all, I have Glen, Xanmara, and Xannera to explore.  I purposely inserted Daniel’s birth to narrow the timeline necessary to have new 18 yr. old characters to less than 18 years *laugh*  I would have had to start inserting Jetson cars in a couple of years at the pace I was moving through time.  Now, I can cut that in half.

Just a bit muse reporting, to show that all the missing days in the blog haven’t been completely unproductive.  Even when I don’t feel like writing, I’m often mulling over stories.

I think that what I’m going to do to get SOTM moving again is to actually combine the scene I’m writing now with one I had planned for later.  I’m going to introduce a minor chracter who will have an important place in the short run, and some cameo appearances later ( much like Heather and Carolyn ) and I think moving that introduction into the same scene with the one I’m writing now may be just the punch that is missing and leaving me stalled there.

The one thing I probably won’t be doing is entering the Nude Day contest.  That one is just completely uninspiring to me.  In order to be on theme, you almost must have public nudity and have it centered on Nude Day.  There’s simply very few ways to write anything believable within those boundaries — at least for me.

Okay, back to the Lowborn rewrite.  Just thought I’d put on “paper” some of the stuff that’s been going on behind the scenes with all the gaps in the blog.

Just didn’t feel like writing, but I felt like I needed to be doing something, and this is what I came up with.

Every once in a while, someone wanders into the forum at Literotica and asks about vote/view/comment stats.  I always thought that I should compile mine and have it ready for when that question came up.  Finally got around to it today.

These are my stats from Literotica for all three pen names.  The third pen name omits a lot of information, because it’s supposed to be a secret, and there’s not much point in a secret if you give too many clues *laugh*

I at least feel like I accomplished something now, and the itch to write is starting to overcome my headache my child has given me today, so maybe I’ll feel good enough to write here in a little while.

My Literotica Stats

As expected, I’m still trying to get back out of the funk of a very long week.  I have a bit of an itch to write, but the young one is having none of it.

Lowborn will probably be the first place I go, as I have that rewrite more or less together.  I’ve been musing something for Halloween as Les that’s a bit of an expansion on the theme I used in R.I.P., but heavily influenced by Ghostbusters.  I’ve been building a mythos about ghosts seeing where it takes me.  I may post some of the musings later if I can’t manage to find the time to write on actual stories today.

Probably going to read back through the current chapter of SOTM and see if I can find the “off” part there, as well as the story in my third pen name that’s suffering the same problem.

All a matter of what the young one will cooperate with, more than anything.