Category Archives: Website

Shorts getting back on track

The “Shorts” section got back on track a little today.

First, I finished the first draft of “Devan: First Taste”.

Second, I finished coding the story comment section for the short stories.  It now properly stores the comments, alerts me via email that a comment has been made, queues it for approval, deletes it if I decide not to keep it, approves it to appear on the page and updates to display the count/comment in the appropriate place.

What’s left to do before launch of the Shorts section:

Have “Devan: First Touch” edited by Roust.

Give “Devan: First Taste” some time to simmer, do my first pass edit, and send it off to Roust for editing.

Finish coding two background utilities that let me manage the listing order of the shorts on the main page and edit existing shorts listings.

Finish the covers for First Touch and First Taste.

( Maybe ) Get “Devan: Deflowered” written, edited, and the cover finished.

The “Maybe” is because I may decide to launch with just the first two stories, if I finish all the coding beforehand.

Once the coding is done, all I have to do is write the story, save it in the proper format, add it to the database via my handy-dandy background utilities, and it will display immediately.

New exclusive shorts could appear at any time — and possibly frequently.  Even when my brain is mush, I may be able to write a hot little encounter between characters you already know.  It will be something that can keep me feeling productive, and spark creativity when I’m feeling blah.

All the routines I need for list order I’ve already figured out and coded for the utility that lets me manage the same thing for series listings on “My Work”.    Ditto for editing existing listings, which I use in multiple places within the background utilities.  So, no breaking new ground there.  It’s just modifying existing code.

I might just be able to get this launched while I’m on vacation this week 🙂

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New Genre added to My Work

I added a new genre to the series listing on My Work for Les Lumens:  “Poly/Group Sex”.

With this inclusion, I’ve moved “Thricegiving” and “Center Piece” to the new genre from “Other Les”

As I add new stories that have a similar genre to existing ones, I’ll create these groupings and move them out of the catch-all that is “other”.

The long work hours are still kicking my ass.  It gets a little better as time goes on, but it takes some adjusting to.  I’m not as young as I used to be.

I’m on vacation this week, though.  With any luck, I’ll get some rest and relaxation, which will let me take advantage of the quiet time to finally get some writing done.

I’m sure as hell not going outside much.  It’s bloody freezing!  *laugh*

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Another 500 on Laresa

Almost done with the setup that will get to the heart of the story in the new Laresa Christmas tale.  This one is going to be a little different from the others, because Laresa isn’t going to be the sexual focus of the story.

Mind you, there’s going to be plenty of hot, sweet sex in it, though 😉

Also did a little work on Center Piece, and a lot of musing on Lowborn.  I’m so close to finishing Lowborn I can taste it, but this little section I’m working on is SO critical.

I’m thinking about moving on and writing on the ending, to see if that helps inspire me a little.  If nothing else, it will crank up the word count and help me feel a little better about myself.

I have trouble making myself do that, though.  It’s one of the reasons stories sit completely idle, and then suddenly spring to finished in a short period of time.  I work out a little problem section, and all I have to do is type out the rest of the story, which as been sitting all but complete in my head for ages.

Hoping to get back to working on the Shorts page as well.  I’d like to have that done before Christmas, because there’s a themed story I’d like to add to that page.  It’s a much requested continuation that I don’t feel has enough meat on the bones to post on the story sites, but which I think the readers of the original will enjoy for the pure sexual heat.

Not much really left to do on that from the backend standpoint.  I’ll have to double-check where I left off because it’s been so long.  Should have kept notes somewhere other than in these blog posts 😛

I hate to launch it with only the first of the Devan trilogy, but maybe I can finish a second or that Christmas continuation before I do it.  With a lot of scheduled days off coming up soon, I’m going to have a lot of quiet time to get things done while the young one is off at school.

That is, provided I can manage to convince my body not to use every moment of it to catch up on all the sleep I miss.

From Thanksgiving to after Christmas, I don’t work 5 full days any week.  Just waiting on someone to miss a day or two who has a full week vacation scheduled that week so I can pop a day or two into Christmas week *laugh*  If I can get Monday, I’ll have a five day weekend that covers Christmas and Christmas Eve.

My plan is to take a week of vacation very early ( hopefully the first week ) of January as well.

Enough bloggin’.  Back to writing.

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Quick blog security things

Just did a few blog security updates.  From my end, everything looks and functions properly after the changes.  I was getting almost daily brute force attacks, so I did some additional security tightening, even though none of the attempts had managed to get through the measures already in place.

Make sure you remember your password, if you do have a username for the blog for some reason

( No real need for it, just post using your email and you don’t need to sign up.  Website login doesn’t carry over to the blog — it’s separate )

Reason being that I’ve locked down login attempts to 1 retry before a fifteen minute lockout.  A second lockout results in a 24 hour lockout.

If they want to keep trying what they’ve been up to, they’re going to have to do it very, very, slowly ( and I’ll probably ban their IP after a couple of attempts anyway )

Still struggling to find the energy to write.  I’m just in one of those slumps again.  There’s not really much I can do about it when one hits other than muse on stories and wait for one to grab hold of me so hard that it jump-starts me.

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And, we’re valid

Well, all of my pages are valid, anyway.

The forum and blog still won’t validate, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to modify distribution files on such a large package to make the fuckers validate.  Considering they’re widespread packages, I should imagine they work fine in all browsers and Google ignores the common validation errors anyway.

Screwed up something and had to create a new version of the Latest Releases page, but oh well.  Only required changing links in a couple of places.

Also nuked the “Social Connection” and “Latest Releases” blocks from the forum.  Screwed one of them up somehow ( I think it may be the 3rd party utility that creates them having issues working in the new version of the base software ) and they were creating a bunch of white space below the forum listings anyway.

With the website finally back up to speed, I can take a breather and try to get back to writing on Lowborn.

I should really get started on that new version of “Flesh” for the Halloween contest, but I’m going to concentrate on Lowborn for a while anyway.  If I don’t make Halloween, oh well.  I think I may have enough time, though.

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