Finally got a Twitter account for anyone interested. https://twitter.com/XlargeDuctTape

Also, if you are on Twitter and not checking out #macromonday, then you should be. I learned of this through Sofia Fluttertail https://twitter.com/ZakuraTech

See you there!

I'm now officially 29 as of today.

Combining two nostalgic pleasures: the TIE fighter PC game and oldstyle anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_CP4SuoTU. Definitely a must-watch for anyone who's a fan of Macross/Star Wars, although I spent half the time wondering how their anime hair fits in those helmets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOVFvcNfvE

My thoughts at 0:22, "wouldn't it be cool if the first thing that guy says is, 'I just had the craziest dream. We got beaten by a bunch of Ewoks and the Rebels won. Also, Lord Vader was a whiny teenager. Oh well, back to looking for those droids.'"


And here it is in Lego form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpfWrh1scZU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFinNxS5KN4

Can't decide if it will be terrible or awesome, but it did fulfill every fantasy of my 9-year-old self.

Probably won't be spending much time around a computer this labor day weekend, so if you ask me for a commission/update on a commission and hear nothing, it's not because I'm snubbing you.

To make a long story short, it’s Con season, I need cash, and have decided to try my hand at seeing if my craft can produce any. To that end, I am offering my writing skills up sale.

Here is what I’ll be offering:

--Commissioned stories
--Character bios
--Ghost Writing (anonymous collaboration basically)
--Anything that involves writing for money, really.

What I’ll be charging (prices not set in stone and subject to negotiation):

$0.01 a word (a penny); 500 words will run at $5 and 1000 words will run at $10 and so on.

Additional information:

Presently I have no limitations on content, theme, or length. If you’re interested and willing to pay for it, I’m willing to write it for you. Payment will be done through PayPal, consisting of me sending an invoice, you paying, and then me sending you the written product.

Obviously, I am willing to send some of it out beforehand to prove I’m actually doing the work.

If interested, contact me via PM or at DTF_96@hotmail.com.

Turned 28 today (happy birthday me). Got asked how it feels to be 28 and I said, "like I'm two years short of 30".

I was stuck for two days trying to think up a story to do that wasn't in one of the two universe I've been using all last and the first part of this year. I had a sense of having "done everything" which, after ten years writing in the macrophile community, wasn't too hard a conclusion to draw.

While it's not the worst case of writer's block I or anyone else ever had, it did feel pretty paralyzing. Fortunately, I have been told multiple times that the best cure for writer's block is to write something, anything, even an excuse letter as to why you can't write (that's worked in the past too believe it or not).

So I decided to sit down and make out a list of all the words/phrases I had learned to associate with the macro genre from all that I'd written or read. In the end, I came up with the following:

• Destroyer
• Protector
• Neutral
• Violent
• Gentle
• Predator
• Guardian
• Alien
• Weapon
• Mutant
• Magic
• Deity
• Mythological
• Mercenary
• Oppressed
• Oppressor
• Wizard
• Normal but surrounded by small
• Unaware
• Empowered
• Aloof
• Sociopathic
• Empathic
• Wild

After doing this for a few minutes I started getting scenarios in my head which I then listed out as follows. I wrote a series of blurbs containing a premise, followed by a quick conflict/resolution:

1.Warrior from giant race takes her father’s place as a weapon of conquest working for smaller beings. Has to earn gold to pay off larger tribe’s tribute threatening her own.

2.Vengeful spirit possesses/uses regular people as vessels to attack logging company. Protagonist has to reign in superpowered alter ego and stop someone who’s fully embraced it.

3.Small creatures used as war gaming toys by regular-sized one. One piece slips off the table, bonds
with person who doesn’t play the game. Has to teach them how to play so as to win his friends from cruel owner.

4.Space pirates use shrink rays to capture entire colonies for ransom/easy looting/playthings. Crew member enlists help of captive to overthrow captain of the ship.

5.Zombie apocalypse with giants. One retains free will.

6.Giants embark on annual “harvest” of planets to prevent them from growing too advanced. One gets stranded, befriends local who hides her from vengeful populace, begins to question purpose of the harvest.

7.Fury biker goddess wipes out biker bar’s evil gang bangers. Takes a “pretender”—good person—with her as a companion/plaything.

Finally, once I'd listed the ideas I went back and surveyed myself on how much interest I had in each of the above blurbs ranging from interested to very interested (I liked them all, so it never went lower) and labeling them as such.

1. Somewhat interested
2. Interested
3. Very Interested
4. Very Interested
5. Somewhat Interested.
6. Very interested.
7. Very interested.

Obviously I didn't separate one out from the others, but it did narrow down the clutter considerably allowing me to decide that #7 was the one I wanted to do. #7, by the way, wasn't added to the list until the following morning, which I was fine with because the whole point of brainstorming is to throw stuff out without a commitment.

In conclusion, it was a very fun exercise and a great way for me to clear my head. While everyone has their own unique style of writing, I would encourage others to try something like this at least once if they get writer's block as the best way to overcome the inability to write is to write.

TL;DR had writer's block, made a bunch of lists for stories and then ranked them by how much I wanted to write each story out.

Can be found here http://irc.bigfurs.com/ . Type /join #writing to get to the room. Basically we're running it as a brainstorm/workshop/editing. If you're a writer, into writing, curious about writing or want to talk to somebody who does writing in the macrofurry scene, swing on by and say hello.

With an hour to go, I guess I figured I'd post a few.

1)Transfer the rest of my Rick and Silvia stories here to scraps.

2) Rewrite and update said stories.

3) Finish my big novel project by April 1st (so I can call April Fools when it falls short)

4) Finish at least one of my unfinished stories rotting away in the Archives section.

And the big one:

5) Post something that's typo-free!

That's all for now, Happy New Year!

So, yeah, I'm still working on that long story, but after having had some time to look it over and revise the chapters I've written so far, I've decided to go back and do some serious revision. Obviously, I missed my own deadline, although Write-a-Novel-in-a-Month is only half over.

Having a lot of writing projects underway, including some that are non-furry, I'm trying to budget my writing projects to only work on certain pieces on certain days will still getting something up every Sunday to stay active. Right now my schedule runs as follows:

Mon-Thur: Regular writing

Friday-Sun: Debauchery and Sin

Expect a new addition to These Messages up by Sunday, unless I don't finish it :P

Had a blast at the convention, passed Peter Beagle on an escalator. He's the guy who wrote the novel, The Last Unicorn and between that and the 1982 cartoon movie is probably one of the inadvertant Founding Fathers of Bronyism. Also saw Jason David Frank, i.e. Tommy the Green Ranger, wore a cheap costume I bought from Party City which turned out to be a good thing as it got pooped on by pigeon (seriously, why do animals seem to have it in for me this summer?).

Also got to meet a number of sci-fi/fantasy authors, which led to some very awkward moments when I blurted out that I wrote and asked me what it was. I told them I wrote online for gallery-style sites like Deviantart, more or less the truth (except I haven't put anything on DA) minus a few specific details.

Even talked to Bill Holbrook, the creator of Kevin and Kell, giving me the weirdest urge to mention that I'd been inspired by his comic a decade ago to write a story about a human and a giant anthropomorphic fox falling in love online. Thankfully, I kept in check.

Sad as I am to see that it's over, I'm eager to get back to writing as I've been doing it for so long that going for more than a day or so (and it's been about four so far) without doing so gets me antsy. I'll get back to work on Upstaged now and hopefully have it done in a couple of weeks to make way for the novel-length story I'm working on that I want to end by November (because it's write-a-novel-in-a-month month even though I'll be technically be cheating by starting early).

I'll be heading to DragonCon in Atlanta, basically a big Sci-Fi and Fantasy Geekathon. Won't be doing much writing, so Upstaged will probably be pushed back some. However, I won't be letting this weekend pass empty handed so I've put up a new short-story/teaser that I was planning to post later but thought needed to go up now. Now, off to pack and plan.

I've been doing so for the past couple of months, my goal is to have it finished by at least October. It will be set in the "Spoils and Seasons" and "Proving" universe I've dabbled in but never really explored or fleshed out the way I've wanted to, hopefully this will correct that. I'm doing this because I want to see if I can do a complete long story rather than my current situation of adding one written chapter at a time.

I've done complete short stories, flash fiction but never a big story all at once. Sometimes under my current methods I'm able to finish these stories, but many times I lose interest or my place in them and they go forever unfinished. My goal with this is hopefully a shift in writing style to producing better quality stories that will be finished and give me an idea how to break into getting published as a serious author.

If it goes well, I might even start putting out ebooks, since I've been interested in that form of self-publishing for some time and every author I've talked to IRL has mentioned that the traditional publishing industry is circling the drain (ever notice how you local bookstore started selling things besides books and coffee? Mine has toys and video games now!)

Basically, it's what's happened to the music industry a few years ago when everyone went digital. Replace Ipod with Kindle/Nook.

Upstaged will continue and one of the conditions I've set for myself is to finish it first, but I felt I needed to explain what I've been up to as this is the second week without an update.

So far I'm up to 25,000 words. Once I finish, I'll release it one chapter at a time every week to compare it to my current style. I'd release it all at once, but I figure this will give everyone an easier time reading it and will give me time to work on other projects without worrying about not putting anything up.

One final detail...the story will be adult themed with multiple sex scenes....but I'm not writing a straight up porn fic.

I'm a macrophile and it's a game about big, stompy robots so how could I resist? Currently only using a light mech, though it still feels pretty huge when you go through a forest or city.

Happy to report that the swelling is down, though not gone. I'm starting on the next Upstaged chapter tonight, hoping to have it up by Sunday.

My sister's that I'm taking care of while she's away, an adolescent who even when playing can't differentiate between soft human flesh and what they make scratching posts out of. Long story short, I didn't clean the wound well enough and apparently Kitty has a mouthful of dirty hypodermic needles which lead to an infection, so I'm going to be on antibiotics for a while (took a shot in the right hip tonight, no not the buttock, the hip).

Good news is I'm still typing with both hands even though the left is puffy to the point where I can't feel most of my knuckles. Bad news is I'll have to go back to get it looked at again. Between that and work there may be some more delays.

If I suddenly drop off the webs and don't come back, it's probably because I died from this, although I might possibly be put in a coma until the zombie apocalypse happens (or possibly even patient zero). Just have to see where it goes from here.

Zip-drive ate the file so I'm going to have retype it. No big deal, I still have the outline and chapter notes I was using, this is more of an annoyance than anything. I'll try to get up mid-to-late week.

I've posted more journals this week than I have for a couple of years. Anyway, this is just a heads-up for any vore-followers I have that I recently got approved for a gallery over there where I'll be posting a few decidedly nom-themed works and a couple of existing ones edited for more, ahem, detail. Here's the link: http://aryion.com/g4/gallery/Littledude

Yes it's under a different name, I joined there back before I really had an "identity" in the fetishscape (even Duct Tape Fanatic was originally just a placeholder on macrophile.com

Still on course with my main projects here, no worries.

As I mentioned in my previous journal, I've got a lot of time write at the moment so I've decided to try learning an advanced author technique for long stories to try to reduce the chance I'll get bored with finishing my longer stories: outlining. I find that I have a very analytical/structured way to doing things and so far it's been a big relief knowing where I'm going with a story before I try to crank.

Upstaged will still be finished, but for now I'm going to try this out and see if I can fully flesh something out before I start posting it. I want to be published some day which requires fully finished works not the hodgepodge I'm accustomed to doing. I'll try to release some quick-and-dirty flash fiction to remind everyone I'm not dead.

Finally, for those of you who are curious about what method of outline I'm going with, I'm trying out the Walter Dean Myers Six-box method which I learned from reading here: http://www.amazon.com/Just-Write-Wa.....ers+just+write

The book is a good read and I recommend it to anyone trying to write themselves. The six-box outline it talks about breaks down a story into the follow segments with scenes expanding each box:

1) Character and Problem

2) Obvious Solutions

3)Insight and Inner Conflict

4) Growth and Change

5) Taking Actions

6) Resolution

I'll release the outline with the story, too (but only after it's fully uploaded).

I've got a job that involves sitting in a small shack alone by myself for 8 hours on the graveyard shift and they'll let me have my laptop with me, so that means I suddenly have way more writing time ahead. Things I hope to get done:

1) Continuation of "Upstaged".

2) More quick and dirty flash fiction in the same style (and possibly universe) of The Rule.

3) A Revision of "The Proving" as I've always liked my giant Viking she-wolves but have never given them the attention they deserved.

Saw this on VGcats and had to link it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur.....;v=4XAJEDJJ_Bo

WHY THE HELL WASN'T THE 3DS REMAKE LIKE THIS?

Also, I've got a bit of good news and bad news. Bad news is I'm working on real life projects and don't have time to really start much new stuff for a while (as if you haven't noticed). Good news is, I've decided I'm going to go ahead and continue revamping and relaunching my Rick & Silvia series, so it's not like I'm dropping of the radar for half a year (again). Though it might take a while before any of those come out as I try to piece my early ramblings into coherent prose.

I'm just being a lazy attention whore, totally different.

First reworked story's up. No promises yet but I plan to rework the rest of my series like this, then maybe add on to it in the future. I always liked this universe and its characters the most so I'm much more motivated than usual.

Of my first macro series. I've always sort of wanted to go back and clean up my first few scribblings and rework some of the characters/setting more, especially now that I've improved some and this might be a good way to get back into the writing scene. Good idea or bad idea?