As promised, Beauty of the Wood is in the queue at Storiesonline. It should go live some time tomorrow morning.
Over halfway done with the first of those three short pre Arts Ardane #1 Devan stories, and Lowborn is still moving along. Getting closer to new Dark releases ( and quite a few of them ) slowly but surely.
Got a thumbs-up back from Mistress Lynn on the updated draft of Beauty of the Wood, so it’s going into final editing now. If all goes well, it will be going up at SOL late next week. The edit will go in at Lit at the same time, but who knows when it will actually process there.
Creeping along on Lowborn. There are a couple of scenes where I need some serious visualization to get things right, and the boy has been making that difficult *laugh* I’ll find the quiet time soon enough, I’m sure.
Probably halfway through the first of what it turns out will be three Devan stories prior to the first Arts Ardane ( aka “Devan’s Decision” ) The first one is going to be called “Devan: First Touch”, I believe.
These will be website exclusive stories, heavy on sex and light on substance. There’s not going to be any greater plot in most of these “Shorts” as I’m calling them other than getting to the naughty bits. You may very well get a look at some character evolution, though. Devan is going to be far more innocent in these stories than we’ve seen her in posted stories, for example.
Back to writing — probably on either Lowborn or the new Devan short. Not in the right mood to edit on Beauty right now. I’ll do that tomorrow when I’m fresh.
Still waiting on M.L. to get through the read of the second draft, so that’s up to her schedule. I’ll jump on it as soon as she gets it back to me, though.
I’ve written a little more on Lowborn, and I’ll get some more done tonight. Wrapping up a couple of other little things right now, so I’ll probably charge forward on it as the week rolls on. Either tomorrow or a little later, depending upon when M.L. gets back to me on Beauty.
That essay I mentioned a couple of days ago got rejected at Lit *laugh* So, I added it to the Unpublished ( Lost ) work page. You can reach that from “My Work Extras” if you want to read it.
Speaking of my unpublished work, I tweaked the style sheets on those and my ancient stories ( found in the “Genesis” section of “About” ) to increase the font size, which I hope makes them easier reading. I meant to do this long ago, but only remembered when I added the new story today.
You can probably look for the inactive “Misc” link on the main page to vanish sometime in the ( sort of ) near future. What’s going to replace it will be a link that says “Shorts”. When that happens, it will be an active link.
What that link will lead to will be some short stories exclusive to my website. Odds are that they’ll be little mostly-sex tales about the characters from my stories. The one that’s been knocking around in my head today is a Devan story taking place before the first Arts Ardane.
These aren’t going to give any real big insights into the characters, or have any major plotlines. They’re going to be short adventures ( again, mostly sexual ) Odds are that I might write little continuations of some stories that people want to read more bumping and grinding from, but I don’t think have enough substance to submit to Lit or Storiesonline. What comes to mind there is a “the next day” for Stocking Stuffer.
I’m planning to add commenting ability to these stories, and the comments will be listed after the story, in much the same fashion as at Literotica. Unlike Literotica, the comments won’t appear immediately, but will instead move into a moderation queue. I’ll likely approve them in less than 24 hours, but I’m not going to give certain trolls that like to follow me around the opportunity to post something dumb and unconstructive like “it sux0rz!” on my website *laugh*
Constructive criticism will post, as it does on my Lit comments. I only delete the most worthless of comments, as you may have noticed — and even most of the worthless ones stand. I believe in letting the story speak for itself, for the most part.
There’s a chance that I might add this same functionality to Unpublished Work and Ancient Stories, but that’s a thought for another day.
Back to writing, I have another unfinished series that’s been stewing on the back burner for quite a while that I’m likely to pick up soon, as the roadblock in my head that had stalled it is eroding in random muse thoughts. That will be probably 4-5 chapters in addition to the 9 for Lowborn that shouldn’t be too far away.
One of these days, there’s going to be a flurry of regular weekly posting from me, dagnabbit! *laugh* I have a lot of partial stories sitting around, just waiting for the right spark to get them finished.
Anyway, back to wrapping up those odds and ends so I can get some writing done on Lowborn tonight.
Finished the tweaks and cold read of Beauty this morning. They’re now off for review by M.L. for her thoughts. Once any further tweaks are done based upon her suggestions, I’ll move into final editing so I can get it posted to SOL and updated at Lit.
Going to relax for a few minutes, and then see which story is speaking to me to write on.
EDIT: ( a little later ) Almost up to 1k words on the final chapter of Lowborn. Fiddled a little with that potential summer story ( taboo ) as well. Headed back to Lowborn once I finish posting this.
Finished the last few tweaks on Beauty tonight, I think. I’m going to let it sit for a day or two for a cold read and then make final adjustments and do my first pass edit before sending it off to M.L. for her thoughts on the revisions.
In the meantime, I’ll likely get cracking on the final chapter of Lowborn. I think I may actually start it tonight, since the young one has taken a rare trip to bed early.
I’m probably going to work on a couple of how-to’s for Lit whenever I’m not feeling especially creative. It should help keep me writing and in the groove when things around here aren’t conductive to fiction. One will be a detailed document on the editing process there, which is hardly intuitive, and the other will be suggestions on how to choose categories for multi-genre stories.
Both are questions that come up frequently on the forum, so I thought I’d add something to the story file that might help.
Now, for a few minutes of downtime, and I’ll see if I’m awake enough to forge forward into the conclusion of Lowborn.
EDIT: ( a little later ) First 350 words of Lowborn 09 are done 🙂 May be more before the night’s over, but the chapter is now officially in progress on “paper”.
