sf02 draws the old maid

We’re not using the zed word.

In response to the last thread, I think I’m going to stick with LiveJournal for the duration of the anachronauts project. It’s clunky, it’s sometimes being DDOSed by the Russian mafia, but it’s where a lot of my longstanding readers are. For future writing projects after anachronauts, I might change it up. As an online writer I HAVE to pay attention to the explosive growth of social networks, and the potential new readers that come with it; technology moves and changes. By the time I’m ready to launch a new project, we’ll see what the landscape looks like. For now, this’ll do.

This chapter is being a serious pain in the butt. I know GENERALLY what I need to accomplish with it, I know the major plot points. But the nuts and bolts (how do they get there? how do they get that? where will Maria be going? do I need two new characters here, or three?) are not coming easily. Plus, I’m trying to push through a bit of a City of Heroes addiction; I just got my favorite character to 50, and that’s the end of the road (sort of), so I think I can win that part of my life back now.

Story troubles plus low hanging game fruit slow things down. I think I’ve got a plan of action for the rest of sf02, though.

Enjoy the new scenes. More to come; MAYBE Thursday, but this one came pretty late on Monday and I’m gonna have a ridiculously packed Wednesday in my RL, so we’ll see.

change is good?

I’d like to run a proposal by y’all.

LiveJournal is annoying me on several levels. I’ve been using it for ten years now, and the quality of service has been steadily dropping. Can’t embed media I want to embed. Can’t stick a comment thread right into my story page itself. Have to use a fairly crazy javascript hack just to get my blog in general on the anachronauts page. And above all… it’s being constantly DDOSed by the russian mafia or whoever dislikes it today on an international level.

What I’m considering is a migration to Tumblr and Disqus, tied together.

Advantages:
* Tumblr is a hot social network right now, and Disquis is a common forum system. People can share my Tumblr blog posts easily, and plenty of readers probably also have Tumblr or Disqus accounts.
* Both are easily embeddable; I can stick a discussion thread right on the story page, and have the SAME thread be shared with the relevant Tumblr post. Folks can easily comment without leaving the site, or they can comment from Tumblr itself.
* On top of all that, I don’t HAVE to dump Livejournal; I just mirror my posts over here, for my fans who prefer it, with a link off to the Tumblr page for comments.
* Finally… I might get more feedback this way. I have way more hits to the site than I have posts in the LiveJournal and I’m wondering if LJ’s format, technical problems, and lack of embedded commenting is the culprit.

Disadvantages:
* You couldn’t post with your LiveJournal account. You’d have to post anonymously — although you can put your name in, which you can’t do when anonymously posting here. You’d still have an identity. I’d know Jen is my sister, etc.
* It’s kind of a pain to crosspost to LiveJournal each time I update. But I crosspost to Twitter and Facebook already, so what’s one more if it means my LJ based fans can still track me?
* It might not get me any more comments than I’m already getting. Maybe the silent masses aren’t silent because they hate LiveJournal, they’re just silent because they’re silent.

So… I’m not sure. Since the folks who read this blog are my most diehard readers, I toss it open to you. Would you be amicable to this change? Would you dislike it? Am I overlooking something important? I’m open to any and all feedback. Thanks.

New story content monday, I think.

sf02 steps up and gets to work

We’re 75k in and JUST got the mission out the door. I think this one’s gonna be long.

Having kind of a weird week. I think finally getting this extended “Let’s explain everything” scenario finished is going to help; I can get to the action now, the infiltration and exploration. I can start working on the bits I planned out to explore the Orbitals more, and show the depth of the Ascendancy. It took awhile, but we’re there. I dunno if I’ll have that next bit ready for Thursday, mind, but I’ll give it a go.

I am in need of a vacation. It’s not that I’m overly busy; I’m alternatively overly taxed and overly idle in response to being overly taxed. Can’t get anything done when your copious downtime is way more down than usual. I’ve got some coming soon, and I’ve got a GameFly subscription so I can expose myself to games I may-or-may-not have bought; new stimulus, new experiences, that’s what I need.

Enough babble. Here’s the second half of the Quantum Mermaid scenes. Let me know what you think. TL;DR there is hawt lesbian sex at the end which is apparently all Nel is good for according to some random troper, so hey, there’s that!

sf02 levels with you

Let’s get things out on the table and confess our sins over a cup of java.

Two scenes. I wanted to do more, but I was rushing to get this in; I’ve been busy poking at the London’s Fog book. The cover needs to be redone a bit and new edits keep popping up for grammar errors that didn’t get caught the first time. But mostly, I’ve been gaming, and trying to enjoy my life. Not sure I’m succeeding there. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

This update should answer a lot of questions for some of you, and confirm what you already suspected for others. A lot of it is redundant for folks who have been paying close attention and put the clues together, but I need to make sure everybody is along for the ride at this point — no reader left behind. After here, it’s all roller coaster ride insanity.

Feedback and reactions always welcome.

sf02 has a word from our sponsors

I’m not sure what the post-television, fully-internet based equivalent of CNN is, but trust me, it’s rolling over and taking it just as much as Fox News is for the Ascendancy.

I had half of this written awhile back, but wanted to wait until I have sf02 more plotted out before posting it. I still don’t have a complete outline, so updates are still not back on hardline schedule, but I thought I’d offer up what I had so far anyway. Plus, I was inspired to write the post-titlecard scenes tonight, and wanted to get ’em all up together. And an hour early! Boffo!

Meanwhile, the London’s Fog book is going great. Edits are done; edits to the edits are done. Cover’s coming along. We’ll be having a big launch for this thing… Forsaken Shores going on sale (since it’s been a few months since it was posted) and the new book launching alongside. Plus, after all that’s done, I’ll be updating the Kindle versions of the other books to read better and fix some typos.

I’ve shown the London’s Fog bonus chapter to a select few prereaders. They were blown away by them. Seriously, like, blasted through a few walls, flying plaster and shrapnel everywhere. You’re really missing out if you don’t invest in the books — they tell a parallel story, you don’t NEED them to enjoy the series, but you’ll be enjoying it even more if you know the secrets being told in here. For instance, why did I put Unreal Estate in the timeline? You’ll see.

But let’s stay focused. This is Stars Fall 02. I can’t promise a timely followup with more scenes, there’s still a TON going on in my life right now, but I wanted to give y’all something in thanks for your patience. I look forward to your feedback and reactions.

ye update

Some quick notes, for folks who don’t follow the twitterings:

London’s Fog is now 100% proofed and edited and reposted. That paves the way for the LF book, which I did want to get out the door before I’m mostly into Stars Fall. This weekend I’ll be working on the LF bonus chapter and Jen will be doing the cover art.

I’ve got some updates to make to the kindle version of First Age, to fix some typos and formatting problems. I’ll post when they’re done; all you have to do is re-download the book to get the fixes.

Regular updates will resume once I’ve got various things squared away.