Tag Archives: new website content

Looking good

So far, my brainstorm on Lowborn seems to be working.  I just took a quick break from writing on it, in preparation for writing a critical reveal.  If this one works, then it’s a matter of whether the next scene plays out correctly once I start writing it.

If that works, I’ll have the first draft done very soon.

I also added “Kindled in Fiction” as Les Lumens to the downloads section.  Like other multi-chapter works, both chapters are included in each download.  In addition, I added “Summer’s Heat” as Reject Reality when I discovered that it had been awarded as a recommended read at Lushstories.

More to come, of course.

With regards to Lushstories, I’m speaking with the mods there, and may be releasing more of my stories — including some of the longer ones — there as well.  It appears their content restrictions have eased recently, and the sword-swinging might just be possible.  Odds are that Merchant Princess will go up first if it’s within bounds.

Behind the scenes, the “My Worlds” section is getting close to gold.  I’m going to finish the rough placeholders I have for the current character listings, and add a few more before launch.  I’ll also add a couple more of the cleaned-up maps, and probably a few more documents.  The only section that is bare-bones is the miscellaneous section, which will only have one audio file on it for the time being.  Just need to get new ink cartridges for my printer in order to finish the main page image, and I can crank that out pretty quickly.

May look into embedded plug-ins to have that play directly on the page.

Even further behind the scenes, there’s going to be something special and useful for me in the “characters” section.  I’m going to add several fields that only I can see, which will give me access to information I might need while writing that I’ve been having to dig back through manuscripts to find when I forget it.

What is Danica’s father’s name?  Did I give Brandon an eye color? ( that will be public, actually )  I’ll be posting descriptions and information from previous stories to these hidden fields, in order to speed up the writing process.

It will be especially useful for characters in Danica, because that’s half a million words I have to scan through when I need to dig up some information.  Bringing up a character sheet on my website will make that a lot quicker, and my background tools will let me add new stuff that I’ve had to dig up the old way quite easily, so I never have to do it again.

I’m going to add a public/private toggle field as well, so I can put some peripheral characters in the database that don’t really need a public entry, but who might be useful to me in writing.

I’m still working on “Friend of the Wood” as well, but right now, Lowborn has priority while it’s moving.  I want to finish it, dammit!  The new wood story will be horribly late, but I still want to post it if I finish it in the relatively near future.

That’s enough for now.  Back to writing on Lowborn.

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Maybe a Lowborn breakthrough

Had a flash of inspiration this morning right after putting the young one on the bus.  Jumped on the computer and typed out the notes while it was all still fresh in my mind, before I had to run off to work.

I won’t know for sure until I start writing it, but this may be that final piece that gets me over the hump of the final big scene and gets the first draft of this DONE.

Can’t remember whether I mentioned it, but Missionary Impossible went into the downloads section yesterday, and Kindled in Fiction ( both chapters in one download ) today.

Also still working on Friend of the Wood.  That one clears up in my head a little more all the time as well.

EDIT ( a little later ) Cut out about 600 words from the final chapter of Lowborn where I’d ground to a halt, went back and added a new scene that sets up my flash of inspiration.  So far, it’s going well.  I’m liking the exchange of dialogue, and I think it’s going to lead me where I need to go.  More as soon as I’ve written some more.

Don’t know if that will be tonight, because the noise level just went up around here =P  We’ll see.

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Forward

Work is still being an incredible pain in the ass.  I did manage to get a notification bar put on the downloads section that either says you need to sign up and login, or tells you what the current download limitations are.  Kind of surprised they don’t have those kind of things built into the software already.

Now I’ve got two template edits I’ve got to remember any time I upgrade.  I’d been trying to avoid that, but oh well.  They’re single lines calling blocks of code, and shouldn’t be difficult to deal with.

Also uploaded “Missionary Impossible” to the downloads section.  Can’t remember whether I mentioned it here or not, but “King Thakkorias” and “Queen Alicia” also went up.  Odds are that “Kindled in Fiction” will go up day after tomorrow.  I’m using the release of stories at Lushstories ( as RR ) as a good time to convert everything over since it’s already open.

If you’re downloading them, let me know what you think about leaving the white space between paragraphs.  Also, if you’d like any other digital formats for download, and whether you’d like to see Kindle versions without the covers.  I thought about that after I started posting them.  My covers almost all have nudity, so there may very well be some who would rather not have such a strong advertisement that they’re reading erotica on the library screen of their Kindle *laugh*

I got a little writing done on “Friend of the Wood” tonight, and I’ve been musing on Lowborn.  I just can’t get everything right in the conclusion to wrap things up.  It’s frustrating.  I’m close — so close — but just not there.

At the very least, despite work’s pain in the assiness lately, I’m still getting some things done, and my creativity is still flowing.

More to come soon, I hope.

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Downloads section open.

Don’t forget to check out the new Devan shorts, if you missed them ( see previous blog post )

I just opened up the downloads section on the forum, and I’ve uploaded three titles.

What’s in that section right now are Kindle .prc files of “Casting off Convention”, “King Thakkorias”, and “Blackhawk Hall” as well as RTF ( Real Text Format ) versions of all three stories.

Provided I’ve done everything correctly ( *laugh* ) you can download the Kindle versions to your Kindle and carry them with you wherever you go to read at your leisure.  Blackhawk Hall includes all 6 chapters in a single file.  Casting has all three of the chapters from SOL ( It was a single submission at Lit )  Thakkor is a new edit with a couple of updated style changes that I just did last night.

SOL readers already had these options, but I’ve had many Lit readers request portable and offline versions of my stories.  Plus, the cover images are attached to my kindle versions, where the SOL versions don’t have it.

The RTF versions are the same full stories, but in a cross-platform document format that should be readable on just about any computer.  It’s a way you can download the stories and read them at your leisure.

As time moves on, I’ll add more of my stories to this section, until they’re all up there.  New stories won’t appear in the download section for at least a month after release, in order to give them time to perform and draw feedback on the websites where I post.

For the time being, it’s set for a maximum of two downloads at once, and five downloads per day.  I’ll adjust that as necessary for bandwidth/convenience.

Odds are that the really long stories ( Danica, especially ) will be in multiple volumes.  When each part of Danica is around 20k words, that would be one bloody HUGE file.  The whole story will still be downloadable, but it just won’t be a single file.

Eventually, this new section will also provide another means to audition or donate for my LST3Ks.  RejectReality stories will also be added to the download section.

If you have a Kindle reader and don’t mind downloading a couple, grab Casting and Thakkor to compare them, please.  Casting keeps the white space for posting online, while Thakkor eliminates it.  Looking at them, I can’t decide which looks better, and I don’t have an actual device to test them on ( using the download version for PC )  So let me know which you prefer, for future reference.

As mentioned earlier, Thakkor has a new edit with some stylistic changes.  It still has the head-hopping of the original, to maintain that early story flavor *laugh*  This is already up at SOL, has been submitted to Lushstories ( as RR ), and is in the queue at Literotica.

I also edited a seriously embarrassing mistake in Danica 18 where I used a modern turn of phrase “like a broken record” that had to GO!  Thanks to the reader who pointed it out after all these years *laugh*  This edit is already live at SOL, and in the queue at Lit.

I finally got around to putting up a new edit at Lit for Documentary:Cougar as well.  All this does is put in blockquote for the documentary sections, now that blockquote renders correctly on Lit again.

More to come as I finally get over a few bad months and get back to work.  Despite the lateness, I’m still writing on “Friend of the Wood”, which was to be my Earth Day story for this year.  If I can finish it before it gets much later, I’ll post it up despite having missed the contest and Earth Day itself.

Still fighting the last chapter of Lowborn, and struggling for the right opening to SOTM 19, but I am working on them.

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Laresa’s World Covers Updated

Still sick and doped up on cold meds.  I just can’t visualize when I’m like this, because as soon as I close my eyes, I start nodding off.  It’s about the same as when I’m too tired.

Anyway, I went ahead and updated some more covers, so I at least felt productive.  Those old covers have been bugging me for a long time.  I’d been putting it off, thinking it would be a pain in the ass.  Now that I’ve actually started working on them, it’s proving to be a pretty quick and easy process.

Covers updated include: Fear of Freedom, The Blinding White, Genie Valentine, Deified, Marked for Vengeance, and Finding the Key.

Probably be the VR : DQ covers next.  Hoping I’ll be well enough to write instead, though.

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