Another month gone by, and things for my personal life have gotten better. Busier too especially right now, but better. My foot pain seems to be completely gone, though it still feels a little off at times. I still haven't tried using the elliptical machine again yet, and have had to do just arm stuff for my little bit of exercise. I'm hoping to be back to using it by the end of the year, but we'll see. As for my life being busy lately, it's all holiday stuff. Last week was Thanksgiving in the U.S., and this week I am going to a special Christmas festival thing that happens around here around the start of each December, plus still having almost as much work scheduled as I usually do, so right now feels like a pretty packed time of my life.

The big picture stuff of the whole world seems just as terrible as it has throughout the rest of the year. The only silver lining I've seen this past month is that it hasn't seemed to get worse, or at least any noticeably worse from where I am. Not that I think it can get much worse without the facade dropping away entirely, but still...


Anyway, as for the erotica writing, as I fully expected in my last journal entry, the only things I uploaded this past month were short stories, which have done a bit below average for me in numbers of views and favorites. I spent a good chunk of the month doing my conversion project to get my my past stories all changed from .txt to .pdf. The only exception was my purposefully-bad April Fool's story. I also didn't convert any of the outline uploads in my scraps folder, as those aren't meant for looking pretty anyway.

How do I expect this coming month to go? Well as I mentioned, my life's pretty busy at the moment, though things might mellow out after this immediate week. I've only recently started the next long story, which will be a requested one. I'm expecting it to probably be on the shorter side of my long stories, but even so I can't confidently say whether I think I can get it done before the end of the month or not. I might be taking some time off at the end of the month after Christmas, but that's not set in stone, and it would probably be more into January than December even if it does happen.

Also, speaking of my life being busy currently, I might not be writing a short story for this week.


Alright, feels like a simpler update to me, but that's all that I can think of that I want to mention here for now. If you spent the time to read through the whole thing, then thank you. If you didn't read the whole thing, then that's okay. Either way, I hope you have a good December, and a merry Christmas or whichever holiday(s) you celebrate. =)

Here we are after another month, and as you can guess from the title, I have a legitimate complaint going on in my personal life for once. If you've read my previous journal entries you may know that normally the case with me is that the broad picture I have of the world as a whole is going downward, but that my personal life is doing fine. While the broad picture thing is still holding true, this past month there is something going on with my life that is actually a problem for me. Namely, as I had mentioned in my last journal entry, I had foot pain from dropping a pan on my foot. The problem this month is that said pain is still present, though better now. For the pain to have lasted over an entire month, I'm now more certain than ever that there probably is some kind of minor bone fracture/break in my foot, though minor since I can still walk on it alright for the most part. Well why haven't I gone to the doctor? Because I don't have health insurance anymore! I ditched my previous insurance because they kept denying or outright ghosting claims for standard things like blood tests that were in their listed places that would be covered, then when I went after them for reimbursement after the fact, they pretended that the stuff I was sending them was the wrong stuff! So I got fed up and canceled my plan, started talks with another service about getting a new plan, got to the stage of the agent saying, "okay, send me your phone number and I'll contact you to start setting up your plan," and I sent them my phone number, and then... They completely ghosted me.

Anyway, of course, OF COURSE I get some kind of fracture in my foot like a month after that all went down. Though I will say given the track record of my previous insurance, I expect they would have given me absolutely zero help with any bills relating to it. Thus I still feel like I was completely vindicated in my decision to tell them to piss off and cancel that plan. So now I'm pretty much just waiting for my foot to heal on its own, and thankfully as I mentioned it has been getting better, just annoyingly slowly. It's felt like a two steps forward then one step back kind of process with it, where at one point it actually felt completely normal and fine until I tried to use an elliptical exercise machine, which made it start hurting again after less than sixty seconds on it.


Well, my complaining about life aside, on to the erotica writing stuff. This last month I did finish and upload one long story, along with four short stories. The long story, Real Love Cares, is doing a little above average in terms of number of favorites, and it was a bit refreshing to work on a long story that was on the relatively shorter side. As for the short stories, the three that are part of the Lenny the Lucario series are a little below average, while the one entry for the John the Wolf series is a little above average.

As of the time of this writing, I am underway on a project to convert all my story uploads to .pdf instead of .txt, though I'm leaving the outline uploads in .txt. Specifically, I should have 52 left to go, as I have been going in order of my oldest uploads to my newest ones, until I catch up with the ones that are already in .pdf. I'm treating this as my current FA long story writing project, giving myself about the same amount of time to work on it and same exemptions from working on it as I would to my long stories, and I've been getting roughly 4 or 5 done a day, I would say? Probably averages closer to 4 given the days I give myself those exemptions, so I should hopefully have it done in just a couple more weeks. Since it's already been 2 weeks since I uploaded the previous long story, I'll have this project count as my personal story slot, and will thus move on to the next request in line instead of starting a personal story. While I can pretty safely say I'll be able to start working on the next requested long story before the end of the month, I can also pretty safely guess that it probably won't be finished by then either. So that means when it comes to my content uploads for November, you should only be expecting 4 short stories. (Or 5 if I don't have to work on the 30th and can get one done fast enough.)

Okay, I feel like that's all I really want to go over at this time, at least that I can remember right now. If you read through this ramble, then I thank you for your time, I hope you have a good November, and if you're also from the U.S., then I wish you a happy Thanksgiving! If you didn't read through it, then that's okay, I still hope you have a good November, and a happy Thanksgiving if you're from the U.S.! =)

Okay, before my usual rambling, I want to ask anyone willing to comment on their opinion on something. This last month has seen FA update how they display text files, and make more types available to view directly on the website, besides just .txt files. In terms of aesthetic alone, I think I kinda prefer the current way that .txt files display, however the functional options for .pdf are great in my opinion. If you use the >> options in the top right, you can set it to 'odd spreads' and then use presentation mode, and bam, full screen, two pages displayed at a time. (And I can use real, actual indents instead of four spaces! REAL INDENTS!)

So I want to know what other people think, and whether they prefer the way .txt files display, or the .pdf files display. I've been thinking of going back through all my previous story uploads to convert them to .pdf files too. Not the outline uploads though; I intend to keep those as .txt anyway. Alright, now below will be my usual ramblings for the month.


Another month gone by, and man life is feeling especially grinding lately. As usual I can't complain too much about my direct life, as I know I have it off relatively well in the grand scheme of things, but I've had some pains this month. Literal pains in this case; a pan dropped on my foot, I slipped on a mopped floor and fell on my butt despite wearing non-slip shoes, my grip slipped when I was getting up from cleaning a toilet and smacked my upper arm on the bowl, and there's some random pain happening at the bottom of my ribcage without any cause that I can recall. Yet despite that it's the stuff in the grander picture of the world that really makes me want to scream, or at this point slump down and cry at the sheer powerlessness I feel about our country slipping further into authoritarianism.

EDIT: I have come to the hypothesis that the random pain beneath my ribcage may have to do with overdoing stretches that were essentially jabbing my ribcage into my intestines.

But okay, enough about that; you're probably here about the furry erotica, not my life or my world views, so let's talk about that instead. So this past month I uploaded the completed version of A Witch Aunt's Desperation, and that has indeed proven much more popular than the unfinished part one I previously uploaded. Aside from that, I've been doing well at consistently creating my shorter stories, though they've been kind of up and down in popularity for reasons I can't fully decipher at this time. I still don't care too much whether they're popular or not, but I am also curious to try to determine the reasons why some are more popular than others.

Now, progress on the next long story is unfortunately going slower than I would like, and that's because in contrast to August, I feel like work is really kicking my butt. That thing where I was not being scheduled a lot of hours has seemed to come to an end, and it's been a scramble for me to keep up with the various things I'd like to do with my free time. Like, I have a backlog of, at time of this writing, about 55 YouTube videos I would like to watch, though thankfully the majority of them are like, 10 minutes, but a few are long... I think I may have to give up and unsubscribe from a channel or few, which bums me out to think about. That plus trying to do writing and play games with friends and other things and just, oof, there's not enough hours in the day and I'm feeling older by the day.

The one upside is that I have a feeling that this current long story will not be even close to the size of A Witch Aunt's Desperation, so it should take a lot less time to write, hopefully? It's still hard to say if I'll be finished with it by the end of the month, especially with how life is currently treating me. I am taking five days off for sure closer to the end of the month, (not Halloween though, actually around the weekend before Halloween,) but I'm expecting I'll be using that time off to catch up on other interests, (including maybe that conversion project I've been considering,) not focusing on writing; though I'll make sure to get in a bit of that for each of those days, too.

Okay, I think that's enough rambling, so I'll bring this journal entry to a close. If you read through the whole thing, then thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good October and a happy Halloween! If you didn't read through it, then that's okay, I hope you have a good October and happy Halloween anyway! =)

And here we are after another month! August has felt like a mixed bag for me. On the plus side, I had my last surviving grandparent visiting from out of state for three weeks, so basically most of the month, and that was pretty nice. However that combined with work and still sort of being not fully caught up after that vacation at the end of July/start of August, has made it hard to find/justify the time for working on erotica writing.

So it's probably for those reasons that I only managed to do three shorts uploads this last month, two of which were launching a new series which is just doing okay. The other though, the latest entry in the John the Wolf series, is officially my first short story uploaded to hit double digits of favorites, so wow, that one resonated with people a fair deal. As I had alluded to in the uploads, I'm not done with the John the Wolf series, and will get back to it at some point, but for at least the next short upload and probably a few after, I'm going to focus on the new Lenny the Lucario series, so it can have some more entries to it. I don't have any set plan about like, doing X number of stories for one series then Y for the other, or going back and forth; it's just going to be whichever one I feel like writing for when I get to writing one, so completely arbitrary. I'm also still planning on just doing one short story a week at most, as I'm certain that more than that would make my long stories drag out in production... Well, even more than they already have. >_>

Speaking of the next long story though, it's actually done! I just need to find the time to write up the description and upload it. I had hoped to maybe be doing that tonight actually, but unfortunately I'm short on time and have some real life things that should take priority, so it's looking a bit unlikely. However I can just about guarantee that if I don't get it up tonight, I will get it up tomorrow. As mentioned before, it's going to be the full version of A Witch Aunt's Desperation, and I'm just gonna delete the 'part one' entry that already went up. After that and uploading the outline, the next long story should be a requested one, hopefully this time without a month-long delay from difficulty communicating with requesters... It occurs to me that possibly comes across as passive aggressive, and I want it to be known that I don't mean it that way. XD

As for how I expect this coming month to be for writing, well lately my job is being light on the amount of work I'm actually scheduled, but some weeks they've tried to get me to pick up extra shifts multiple times, and other weeks they didn't try to get me to pick up any extra shifts, so it's being kind of a crap shoot on how disruptive it is for my writing. I've been doing more hanging out and gaming with an IRL friend of mine over discord lately, which hoovers up some of the time not taken by work. However overall it's been, for the most part, getting easier to dedicate at least a little bit of my time every day to doing some writing work for here. Though admittedly it's usually just half an hour. Related to that though, I did during this last month accomplish a personal best there, when for one of those half-hour writing sessions, I wrote over 800 words; since that would be over 1,600 words an hour, (if I could keep that pace up for a full hour, granted,) that would beat my record for creative writing speed, so I felt stoked about that. Anyway the other plus side for me scheduling writing is that I don't believe there's any more special family stuff going on in September for me, so I shouldn't have to worry about that.

Alright, that's enough rambling for me this month. If you read through all of that, then I thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good September. If you didn't red it, then that's okay, and I hope you have a good September anyway. =)


EDIT: Oops, I left the silly thing in reverse- I mean, I forgot to make this journal entry the featured one, lol.

Alright, I'm making an early journal entry for August because of something that I already knew was coming when I made my last journal entry, so I'm not sure why past me decided not to mention it. Either it slipped my mind or I just decided to procrastinate on it. Anyway, the important thing is that I'm going to be gone away from home from 30th of July until the 4th of August or so; plus I'll be getting ready for the trip in the days before and then like catching up on emails and stuff after getting back, so basically after today I'm probably not going to be doing any kind of writing for FA until at least the 5th, maybe later depending on my work schedule.

Anyway, that aside I feel like there's not much for me to talk about on the IRL side of things, so how about the writing? Well, if you've kept an eye on my main page you'd probably have noticed that I haven't gotten any long story progress done this month at all, unfortunately. I will fully admit that a good chunk of the blame is on me for simply dragging my feet, though there were also delays in regards to messaging requesters about stories. Yes, plural requesters, as the first person in line ultimately had to say to skip them for now and get back to them later due to IRL hardships going on for them, and then the next two requesters after that both ended up retracting their requests for different reasons. So between that all happening and then knowing that this upcoming trip of mine was soon approaching, I decided to just hold off on working on a long story until after that. While I might change my mind by the time I get back, my current thought it to go ahead and go back to doing a personal story instead of a requested one. Specifically, finishing up the second half of A Witch Aunt's Desperation, and likely deleting the initial posting to just put up both halves together as one big version instead of two uploads.

As for short stories, I also probably won't have any going up until after I'm back either, and might just wait until the 10th to resume that. I had originally thought of trying to get one up before going on the trip for this week, but it's looking like that's less of a possibility than I thought. Speaking of the shorts, the ones I've uploaded this month are actually doing better than before, at least in terms of numbers of favorites, so that's kinda cool. I'm also thinking of changing the titles on the shorts slightly to specify that they're part of the series with John the Wolf, (just adding the letter J before their number,) so that I can start up another shorts series to also have going. Specifically I'm feeling a bit inspired to make a shorts series based on the loose setting of the artist Burgerkiss, wherein the main gimmick is that the gender ratio is about 10:1 female to male, leading to all sorts of lewd shenanigans. So it would be getting into that kind of mild femdom approach that I greatly enjoy writing in my long stories.


Okay, I think that's all I really have to say for now. Knowing me there could be something that I meant to bring up and have forgotten, only to remember when it comes time for the September journal entry. If you read through this, then I thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good August. If you didn't read through it, that's okay, I hope you have a good August anyway. =)

Here we are after another month, and I feel like a broken record but once again it seems like the grand scheme of things in real life are spiraling further downward in a way that makes me want to say, "I don't want to live on this planet anymore," while otherwise for my personal life things are just fine. None of the political issues going on currently have any direct effect on me, (yet,) but it makes me want to scream and start smacking people with historical accounts of what fascist takeovers look like, because good fucking lord, that's what's happening and I'm tired of trying to pretend otherwise.

Anyway, to reign things in before I go on a frothing at the mouth political rant, what I want to say is I really hope that everyone else is doing okay. If current events are hitting you directly in a negative way, then you have my deepest sympathies. Alas that there's nothing I can really do about it myself, other than try to provide some entertaining reading that may give you some comfort/distraction in these trying times.

So speaking of that writing, this last month I was, barely, able to finish one long story upload, though only by splitting it in half of what I had originally envisioned it being. That being part one of A Witch Aunt's Desperation, which as of the time of this writing only has a single favorite on it. Granted it's only been up for a day, but still, it does seem like splitting it in half did quite hurt it. Perhaps, when I get around to the second half after the next requested long story, I'll just delete the part one upload and upload it as one complete story instead? We'll see, I suppose. Still, in all I am glad to say that June was an improvement on my writing productivity compared to previous months, which feels pretty good for me. Even if the reception to what I managed to accomplish in said time has been below average, but hey, I've never worried too much about how many people like my writing before.

In addition to that, I've been able to mostly get back on track of doing one short story a week, ultimately only missing one week last month. That's something I'm hoping to stay on top of, and it seems like it's fitting nicely into my weekly habits already.

As for how I expect this coming month to go, presently it's not really possible for me to say. I've already messaged the next requester in line about their potential story, and I'm waiting on their response; they had an initial pitch they made to me when they got onto the request list, though I had some issues with it. So I don't know yet if we'll be modifying that idea into something I'm more okay with, going with a different idea, or ultimately not doing a request for them after all and going to the next requester in line. I would consider that last one an unfortunate outcome, and I hope we can work out something we're both on board with. Either way, as of the time of me writing this journal right now, I don't know what I'll be doing for the next long story, so I have no way of trying to guess how long it will take.


Alright, if you read through all that, then thank you for your time, and I hope you have a happy July. If you didn't read through it, then that's okay, I hope you have a good July anyway. =)

Another month has gone by, and we're still here. Things in the grand scheme of life seem as tumultuous as ever, with small sprinkles of good news sandwiched between larger pieces of continuing bad news. However, as has usually been the case for me, zooming the scale in to my personal life alone, things are pretty much fine. May still ended up being kind of a bad month for me in terms of getting writing done, but it was at least an improvement over the disaster that was April.

EDIT: Within 24 hours of this journal going up, the chair I've been using for years finally broke. I also found out that my insurance coverage for a blood test I did 6 weeks ago got screwed up again, the same as it did last year which I eventually had to pay out of pocket and suspect I will again this time, for like 50% more than it was last year. Oh and I found out that if I pay for my blood tests out of pocket upfront instead of trying to go through my insurance, the total I pay is almost the same as what I pay after what my insurance 'covers', so it's almost no help at all anyway. Uuuggghhh...

As I've alluded to in uploads and before, the biggest problem for me when it comes to doing writing for FA is finding the opportunity to simply sit down and do it. Life lately has metaphorically felt like I'm trying to keep several plates spinning at the same time, and the simple truth of the matter is that this writing hobby had to be pretty much the first casualty in trying to keep things afloat. There's been work, long YouTube uploads I want to keep up with, my other writing hobby of participating in forum games, video games I'd like to play, and spending time hanging out with personal friends, including lately us finally being able to pick up some TTRPG stuff after several months of not being able to. It's been hard to keep the momentum going for writing furry stuff when it's been too easy to get home after work and look at what I have going on and be like, "I won't worry about trying to do any writing tonight; I'll just pick it up tomorrow." Then next thing I know multiple days have passed without a single word of progress done on either the latest long story or another short.

Well, this month I think I might be able to turn things around a bit. One thing I sort of touched on before is that I recently picked up "Ithya: Magic Studies" on Steam. It's technically a video game, but it's really more of a productivity tool made by the same people behind a YouTube channel that I've liked to turn to for calming music that helps me focus while writing. So it's basically that in a contained package that I can use even while the internet is out, which I've otherwise had to just tough out or not write during, since it's hard for me to write in just silence. So with that I'm going to try to be a little bit more strict with myself about getting some- even if it's not a lot- of writing done for this hobby every day, rather than procrastinate and kick it down the road. Excepting only days where I have something big like a doctor's appointment or perhaps giving myself one day a week off free. I don't think I can get back to the comparatively blazing speed I could get stories done when I started here back in 2021, but I'm hoping that I can at least be faster than what I've been doing lately. Though if I can't... Then I must be honest, I may have to rethink how I approach the hobby entirely; taking over two months to finish a story that's less than 7,000 words feels like way too much for me, and at that point I don't know if I would be able to take on requests in good conscience. Telling someone that they might have to wait a whole year- or even more!- when there's less than half a dozen people waiting does not feel good to me.


Anyway, that dry stuff aside, I'll now get to stuff that's a bit more fun in topic. So this last month I finished one short story, and finally finished the long story that had technically been in the works for 10 weeks. Both of them have performed about average for my stories. I have another short that is actually pretty much done, which I just need to do the finishing touches on and write up the description stuff for, which I will probably be able to do in the next couple of days. The only reason it hasn't already gone up is that I've been trying to get my monthly important IRL stuff done first.

For my next long story I've decided I'll keep with the schedule of doing another personal story next. I've been thinking of another narrative challenge for myself like I did with the last personal long story. (The one where I challenged myself to write a story about a couple who were already in a long term, committed relationship when the story takes place.) This time the challenge is to write a story that follows the same kind of set up as I've written before, but from the opposite perspective. It occurred to me that I have a number of stories where one of the two main characters has some kind of plot/scheme going on to end up together with the other main character, much to the other character's surprise, since it's a set up I enjoy. However, in pretty much all of those stories, I've written it from the point of view of the character who is getting surprised, and the plotting/scheming is only revealed after the fact. So this time, I want to employ the same set up again, but told from the perspective of the character doing the plotting; I want to see if I can still make that change in narrative focus just as enjoyable to read.


Okay, that was a bit more rambling than usual, and I think I'm done now. If you read through that whole thing, then thank you, and I hope you have a great June. If you didn't read through it, then that's okay, and I still hope you have a great June anyway. =)

Another month and we're still here, though things feel more precarious with each day. Well, for the whole world at least; as usual, it's not so bad in my personal life, and for once it's starting to look up.

So as I had expected in my last journal entry, this last month was terrible for my writing progress, and that's why I only got my little April Fools' upload as well as a couple of shorts done. I had over a three week period where I didn't get any writing done for my current long story progress, simply from being so busy with work.

Thankfully though, it's looking like my work schedule is easing up, so I will hopefully be able to get the ball rolling again here. The bad news is it's still not really possible for me to make any guarantee about when the next long story will be done. The good news is that I do think it's at least possible that I will get it done before the end of May.

Alright, it's a simpler, shorter feeling one from me this time. As usual though, if you read through it, then thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good May. If you didn't read through it, I still hope you have a good May anyway. =)

Another month and we're hanging in there, though I do wonder for how long. This last month was fine for my direct life for the most part, though work was getting a bit harder. That was until the 28th when suddenly a coworker walked out in the middle of his shift and subsequently got fired; so now other people have to be scheduled more to pick up the slack, and at least for this week I've been scheduled for more work than I want to have. After a few months of not getting enough hours though, I'm putting up with it and just trying to think of how much the next paycheck will be. Unfortunately there's a good chance it will continue to be like that through April, which means work will be even worse on my free time for writing than it already has been, which as my current progress on the next long story shows, has not been great.

Oh, and something I can complain about that's affecting me personally for once, just not in the immediate short term: With all the stock market volatility, my roth ira lost almost a fifth of its value in just a month and a half, so that's 'fun'.

Anyway, real life aside, I actually did some uploads this last month! First was my long story, "Love After Hex," which as of the time of this writing got no comments, but a good number of favorites, which feels nice. I then did an update and re-upload of my writing requirements for requests, then I uploaded the eight short stories (and one character info thing,) that I've made so far for that little side series; as of this writing, none of the shorts have comments either, and most of them only have a few favorites, with only one of them getting about the number of favorites I would expect from my longer stories. Though, if considered as a collective series rather than individual ones, I would say they are doing well. Alternatively if seen from the perspective of how many favorites they got to how much effort I put in as a ratio, then the short stories are absolutely blowing my regular stories out of the metaphorical water. Alas, that I can't pay my bills using favorites from FurAffinity. =P

In terms of how I expect this coming month to go, well honestly, probably not great. As I mentioned above, I'm expecting my job to be pretty rough on my free time through April. I do have a week off planned starting on the 28th for my birthday, but even if that translates to me getting more writing done, that will be more of an impact on May than it will April, obviously. I want to, if I can, get a new short story written for the side series every week, but as is evident by the last one being uploaded almost three weeks ago from the time of this writing, that hasn't been going well. (And that was before me suddenly getting more hours scheduled at work than usual.) It's what I'd like to try to tackle next, but there's other things in my life outside of writing for FurAffinity that I need to see to first.

So, my apologies that my content will probably be fairly low this month. Anyway, if you read through that ramble, then thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good April. If you didn't read through it, that's okay, I hope you have a good April anyway. =)

Here we are after another month, and for once, it was actually an okay month for me personally. I mean, it kind of feels like a world war might be around the corner, which is stressing me out, but when it comes to just my personal life and things that have directly effected me, February was just fine. The biggest complaint I've got is that my part time job isn't scheduling me as many hours as I would like, but the additional free time is nice in its own way. Heck, the week off I mentioned in my last journal ended up being almost two weeks long, (12 days if I recall right,) so that was cool. I must admit, I spent a good portion of my free time last month playing Deep Rock Galactic with a friend of mine.

Anyway, so I didn't get anything uploaded last month, but I can guarantee, (barring some kind of emergency,) that I will have something uploaded this month, because my latest story is already done! I just need a time I can get the description and tags all done up, which will hopefully be this coming Tuesday. (March 4th, maybe technically 5th if I can't get to it until after midnight.)

There's actually more than that, however the rest comes with a bit of a conundrum/question for my regular readers. See, I actually finished eight stories this last month; yes, you read that number right. I had a mood strike me one day and decided to try my hand at recreating short stories from a Tumblr blog that didn't survive that Tumblr porn purge of a few years back, but in Furry style. (Obscene Captions was the title, if I remember right.) So, those other seven stories are very short, all less than two pages long. They're also are all written pretty much purely as fap material, not meant to tell a full story with sex in it like my typical long stories here have been. However, those aren't the reasons I haven't uploaded them here as of the time of this writing.

No, the real reason I haven't uploaded them here yet, is because they're pretty much all NonCon content, with some NTR in there too. That's probably a bit of a surprise for those here familiar with me, and how I've made it clear in my writing requirements and discussions with requesters that I am not willing to write that kind of stuff. When it comes to my longer stories, that's still the way I feel, and the idea of writing that content in those is not appealing to me at all. For short stories just meant as fap material though? For some reason I'm not only fine with it, I think I even prefer it. I know that probably seems strange, and even I can't fully articulate why I feel that way. Maybe it says something about me psychologically, but that's not the reason I'm bringing it up.

So what I'm currently wondering is if I should go ahead and upload them here anyway? Or would my regular readers find that too much of a jarring juxtaposition when compared to the content I've been making? Part of me feels like I should make a second account to upload that stuff, so it's separate from the content on this account. Though I must be honest, the idea of having to log out and back in on another account to check comments and stuff and making sure I'm on the correct account when I upload all sounds a bit more inconvenient than I would prefer to deal with. Still, I'm willing to hear what other people think on the matter, which is why I'm bringing it up here in my journal entry.


Anyway, if you read through my whole ramble and especially if you leave a comment with your thoughts, then thank you, and I hope you have a good March. If you didn't read it all and don't leave a comment, that's okay, I hope you have a good March anyway. =)

Here we are after another month. I hope everyone else had a decent January, or at least as decent as can be given the current political climate. My January was honestly kind of terrible, and I'm going to vent about it a bit. I understand if for your own emotional reasons you don't want to read it, so if you care not to see it, you can skip down to where I'll put the ... before talking about my usual journal entry things.

It started the day after I uploaded my latest outline, with my grandma having a trip and fall outside my uncle's house in another state, and having to go to the hospital. They gave her a CT scan, and while thankfully she didn't have any broken bones, she did have some other problems revealed by the scan which are going to require some surgery and recovery. It's looking like that will more likely than not go fine, but she did have to cancel the plans she had to come visit us for a couple weeks this month for her birthday, which she shares with one of my nieces.

So then while that was going on, the current presidential administration took power. It seems our new president is doing everything he can to make the government implode from the inside, and I would be honestly, genuinely surprised if he doesn't try to install himself as a fascist dictator before the next election comes around.

Then, just about a week after my grandma had her fall, while I was driving to work and turning into the parking lot, my car went sliding on the snow and ice. It hit the opposite curb going sideways at about ~20 mph, which somehow broke both front wheel axles. We got it fixed at the dealership we bought it from, but as of now have to take it back there again because they didn't refill the fluid needed for the power steering to work. (That or there's a leak, which I hope is not the case.) I am also still waiting to find out if I'm going to be eating the costs for the repair myself, or if we'll successfully be able to get the manufacturer to cover it; because, the accident seems to have been caused or at least exacerbated by an issue that the model had a recall for. (Apparently the anti-lock mechanism for the brakes would fail to properly work if the wheels were turned at the same time, which is what happened in my case.)

EDIT: Turns out the steering pinion was broken too, but A, somehow the dealership guys completely missed that the first time around, and B, it was not broken enough to be completely undrivable. So that just drove up the repair cost even further.

The fact that all three of these issues are technically still ongoing to at least some degree is thus continuing to be a major source of stress for me, and is the main reason I'm late in making this journal entry this month.

All the anxiety and stress did in fact lead me to have a bit of a breakdown for a few days, though I'd personally label it as more of a 'collapse'. I didn't snap and freak out, and aside from one crying session, I just felt empty and hollow and was living life on autopilot while waiting for my recreational activities to refill my mental batteries. I'm not feeling that bad now, but I'm still not really feeling great. I'm back to being functional, and even happy a bit, but I'm still bracing for the possibility of things getting worse before they actually get better.

...

With the stuff I mentioned above, I had actually forgotten that I did manage to make an upload during January. "Courting Death," which as typical for my stories that are more on the dramatic side, has done a bit below average in favorites compared to my other stories. Still, I'm mostly happy with how it turned out regardless.

As for how the coming month will go for me in terms of fic writing, it's hard for me to say now, though I have to admit it doesn't seem too promising. The next story I'm working on is proving a bit complex in the outline, though honestly the bigger issue is just finding the free time and motivation to really dig into it. (I've had, I wanna say, maybe two or three hours of actually sitting and working on it, and it's already been a week since I tried to start.) I do think that the story itself actually won't be that long when it's done, so like, maybe it won't take me so long to write it, but that's a pretty iffy maybe as of now. I will have a week off of work this month, so maybe that will help, maybe not, we'll see.


Alright, if you read through my venting ramble at the top, then thank you, and I'm sorry if I caused any stress on your part. If you only read through the stuff below the venting, I understand, and thanks for a little bit of your time anyway. Whether you read any of this journal entry or none of it, I hope you have a good February. My apologies that I don't expect to have anything going up for Valentine's Day this year.

Another year has passed us by, and jeez, what a year. It's not like I can claim it was a super bad year for me, as none of my problems are like, truly huge ones; I still have a warm house to live in and a stable life, and outside of the possibilities that screw over basically everyone in the whole world, it's not likely for my personal life to get much worse either. In fact in some ways, my year has been great. If I were to look at video games in a vacuum, then it's been an awesome year. Additionally, I've gotten to spend more time with my close friends as of late. (Which has also contributed to my lower writing output.) However, in the context of everything? This year has felt like a horrible year. A few weeks before my birthday, I lost my beloved cat whom had been with me for around 15 years at that point. Throughout the latter half of the year, I got a lot of anxiety and stress from fighting to get my insurance to cover a couple of blood tests which were supposed to be covered according to my plan; eventually the mental turmoil was too much and I threw in the towel, just eating a ~850 dollar bill- again, this is in no way asking or expecting any charity for it. Thanks to budgeting, that was an expense that I could handle without it being a problem. I'm instead just hoping for... If not sympathy, at least a bit of understanding as to the frustration it put me through. On Christmas Eve, my parents' ~14 year old dog had an abrupt and sharp decline in health, and after it didn't seem any better overnight, they called a vet for a home visit to put her down on Christmas day. The vet said it seemed like she had probably suffered a stroke.

Then of course, in November I got hit with the political news that makes my outlook on the future extremely bleak. The possibility that the incoming administration might try to make this hobby of mine illegal for me to do is among the least of my worries in regards to it. After that it just gets much worse, very quickly.

So as for this last month in particular, well I spent the first part of the month mostly between family with my visiting grandma, or work. After that, I was stressed to the point of emotional breakdown from fighting with my insurance. Then just as I was starting to feel better with Christmas going on, as I mentioned my parents' dog had to be put down. I don't think I can blame myself for not getting a lot of work done on the current fic in progress.

I am as of now starting to feel more back to normal- the ever looming dread of what the next 4+ years will bring notwithstanding. Rehabilitating myself with good Netflix content and lots of Deep Rock Galactic with one of my close friends has helped a lot. So outside of when I'm busy with my job, I think I'll be able to get more done than I have this last month.



Okay, as is my yearly tradition, I'd like to take a look at how the entire last year was for me here on FA.

I uploaded 12 stories this year. (Not counting my eulogy for my cat.) An average of a story a month certainly feels slow compared to the 17 I did last year, and the ~27 I did the year before that. (Though that also includes some I wrote at the tail end of the year before, which is when I first started.) However, with how things currently are for me, it feels alright. There is certainly an inclination to feel disappointed or at least disheartened with myself, but since I'm treating it more as a hobby than a life path, I'm trying not to worry about it.

For some other stats for this last year, I went from 177 comments to 227, (50 more, just barely less than the previous year,) 557 favorites to 766, (209 more, again a bit less than the previous year,) and 76 watchers to 99. (23 more, also a little less than the previous year.)

I think it's not too surprising, given that I had fewer stories done in 2024 than in 2023. However, with a difference of 12 stories to 17, the other numbers are not proportionally smaller; if I were to count based on a ratio of comments/favorites/watchers per story, then 2024 got more than 2023. That actually makes me feel good, suggesting that perhaps while my output has gotten slower, my quality has gone up? Well, maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part, but I'm trying to have a more positive outlook.

This year I don't have any grand plans for what to do with my writing. Admittedly it's a little hard to think about big things I want to do when I know I may end up having to drop this hobby this year. I did have some thoughts of maybe doing something related to NNN, but I have yet to come up with a concrete idea that I'm sure I want to do there. Part of me wants to do a writing trade again; something that's been sounding at least interesting enough to try is the two of us writing a story from an outline that the other person creates, though I can foresee ways that could end up more difficult than it sounds initially. Plus of course, it relies on there being another furry erotica writer who wants to do that, and I can't force anyone else to go along with my idea, so I'm probably not going to worry about it.

One thing I can say to expect from me this year, so long as I can continue this hobby, is more stories with witches. I'm getting more ideas that involve them, and I'm realizing that I think I have a thing for them. I'll also mention something for one story in particular, probably my next after the current one I'm working on. I've noticed looking back that most of my stories involve characters just starting their relationships, whether starting as strangers or as platonic friends. I think it's understandable though; there's an old piece of advice about fictional writing, "is the story you're writing about the most interesting time in the characters' lives? If not, why aren't you writing that?" For characters who go on to have healthy, functional relationships, (which is standard for my stories since I don't do unhappy endings,) typically the most interesting thing about their relationship is how it started. Well, recently I've finally had an idea for a story with a pair of characters who are already in a long-term, committed relationship with each other at the time the story takes place. I know it won't be the only story like that I've written, but it's still something I wanted to specifically try to do. (And yes, it involves a witch.)


Okay, I think that's enough from me this month. If you read through this whole thing, then thank you, and have a belated happy new year! If you didn't read through it, that's okay, I hope you have a belated happy new year anyway! Good luck to us all in 2025. =)

November has been a turbulent month for me, as you likely know if you've read my last journal entry. The existential dread hanging over my life like a cloud has dulled somewhat since, and though it has not and probably will not go away completely, I have been able to push ahead regardless. Even outside of that situation in particular, my life has had two separate anxiety inducing problems in my life regarding issues with medical bills and health insurance this past month. Thankfully, the one that was more simply frustrating seems to have been dealt with, but the one that might land me with almost $1,000 in medical bills is still pending. No, again, this is not me asking for any financial aid or charity; I can pay that much and still be fine. I'm only mentioning it to better explain where my current headspace is. Now, the month wasn't all bad thankfully; we finally got some good family holiday stuff with Thanksgiving, and I still have my grandma visiting now too. (EDIT: It ended up being more like $850 instead of around $1,000, but I still had to pay for it myself without insurance helping me because of some technicality crap.)

So despite how the month started off, I managed to pull through and actually finish and upload the story I had been working on, "The Challenge, part two". As of the time of this writing, it has I think a little below average in views, and certainly below average in favorites and comments for my stories. It's a bit disappointing given how much I had planned that storyline, but it's alright; I can't expect people to like something if they simply don't, and I certainly can't try to force them to.

Now, a more important topic for this journal entry is that I think things will be a bit different for me going forward. Rather, the practical side of the change has already been happening, with my writing output for this website slowing down over the course of months now. The thing happening now is that I'm trying to shift my perspective and outlook on both the change itself and my hobby of writing here in general. I want to be, even more than I already have been, rather casual and un-worried about it. I want it to feel less like an obligation in any way, and more like another hobby for me to pick away at when I feel like it. So I'm going to stop trying to set up goals for myself to meet each month; getting an upload done will be something that's nice when it happens, but not bother me if it doesn't happen. I do not want to abandon this hobby entirely, (unless the coming administration does actually try to make creating porn illegal,) however it is for numerous reasons becoming less of a priority for me. No, my stories getting less views and favorites doesn't have anything to do with; well, not consciously, at least. I can't entirely control if it's having any subconscious effect on me. Anyway, the biggest thing is my other hobbies taking more of my time as of late.

... Oh also, as mentioned my grandma is still visiting, and of course it's December, so I've got more holiday stuff to get ready for and such. I'm not sure how much time that will eat up directly this month, but I do expect it to be a drain on my mental energy as I have to do planning and shopping and whatnot. So quite honestly, I kind of think I won't be getting a story uploaded this month. Not that I won't try to work on it here and there, but I can't really make it a priority. As of the time of this writing the outline and planning for it are both done, but I have yet to write even a single word of the draft, and I can't be sure when I will have time to start it, either.

Alright, while that felt important to get out there, I should probably wrap up my rambling for this month's journal entry here. If you read through the whole thing, thanks for taking some time out of your day, and I hope you have a great December and whichever holiday(s) you personally choose to celebrate. If you didn't read it, that's okay, I wish you the same regardless. I hope you all have a good end of the year. =)

Well the election that I was stressed about is over, but since it seems Trump has won my stress has now increased about a hundredfold. I'm sure you're probably already sick of hearing about all the bad stuff he might do so I won't get into it. Just gonna say two things.

One, my expectation for my writing output this month may have just gone to zero. I'm not sure when I'll be feeling up to continuing to work on my next story.

Two, since some of the Project 2025 people he's going to put into power want to make creating pornography illegal, it might be that in a few months time I won't be able to continue doing this hobby anymore at all. At least, not in this form.

I can only hope things will not turn out as bad as it seems like they're going to, but seriously, it's hard to overstate how bad the current outlook is.

Stay safe out there people. I hope you're having a better November than I am.

Here we are after another month, and since it's officially after Halloween, you all know what that means! The seals keeping Mariah Carey at bay are now weak and she will descend upon us once again. Joking, but anyway, it's been a mostly decent month for me on the real life side of things. Family holiday plans ended up being kinda canceled unfortunately, but we still got to do a few nice things with those of us who were here. Work's been kind of up and down for me, but at least life hasn't been very stressful for me aside from the current election... Which I'm going to choose to not to get into right now.

I ended up being partially right and partially wrong in my last journal entry. For how my writing went this past month, I was right about only getting one story uploaded, "Star Struck"; I was also right that my week off was not any better for my free time for writing, and if anything was possibly worse for it. At the time of this writing, "Star Struck" has about average in number of favorites and comments for my stories, and I think a bit above average in number of views. I feel decent about it, though at this particular moment I find myself especially not having much weight of importance on that. Of course I've always cared more about just getting to tell these stories than I do about how well the stories are received. It's just that right now I'm feeling especially... I don't want to say, 'apathetic' about it, though I'm struggling to think of a word that describes my current emotion with more nuance. It probably has to do with my priorities in life shifting, and my story writing here on FA taking more of a backseat for my other interests. I've been spending most of my free time this last month watching YouTube, playing video games, and even spent some time making a simple tabletop wargame ruleset to play with a couple of my friends play-by-post style since one of them has limited ability to chat online... Though we've yet to actually get said game started, alas.

Anyway, for how I expect this coming month to go, that gets into what I was wrong about in my last journal entry. In that one I mentioned how the next story up is part two of "The Challenge", which is still the case, but it is actually turning out to not be as long as I initially thought it was going to be. It may even end up being shorter than part one. This is mainly because while I was in the outline stage of it, I ended up deciding to cut out a couple of scenes I was originally thinking of doing. My thought was that they might not be all that interesting for the reader, and it might make for a better reading experience if they were just left out and have the important bits just quickly explained. It makes me think philosophically about the balance of fully showing scenes in detail versus just telling the reader what bits of information they need to know. I'm going to hold that thought for the upload of the story itself and/or the outline, as this journal entry is already rambling on a bit much.

So to wrap it up quickly, I'm confident about getting the second part of "The Challenge" done and uploaded this month, but it's hard for me to say if I'll get another one uploaded after that, as it will be a requested story, and I haven't had any discussion yet with the requester about what it will be, so I don't know what to expect. I kinda have a feeling though that even if it isn't a very long story, I might still not be able to finish it before the end of this month anyway. Just given the overall slower pace that my story writing has taken as of late.

Alright, that's enough from me for this month I think. If you've read through this ramble of random things on my mind, then thank you, and I hope you have a great November. Even if you didn't read through it, I hope you have a great November anyway. =)

It's officially the spooky season! Personally, growing up I was always more fond of the vibes of Christmas over Halloween, and while I think I still prefer Christmas, I certainly do appreciate Halloween more than I did in my youth. Alas, I don't have any special holiday themed stories planned like I had last year. Anyway, this last month distracted me a lot from my writing hobby. At least I can say some of the distractions were welcome; I got multiple opportunities to directly interact with a personal friend of mine that it's been months since I was last able to. Plus, that unfortunately possibly might be the last I will be able to interact with him again for some time, so I was keen on taking advantage of the opportunity, which caused something like five days in a row that I got no writing done.

So, how did writing go for me this past month? Unfortunately, not well. This last month proved difficult for me while I had work, and the time off I had was hardly any better, at least in terms of being productive for writing. Thus I missed my prediction, and only got one story uploaded, "The Challenge, part one," which as of the time of this writing has fewer views and favorites than my stories usually do, though it does have more comments. I've seen that same pattern before; I wonder if perhaps the more 'niche' some content generally is, the more those who do enjoy it feel compelled to speak up about their enjoyment of it. Maybe it's from a subconscious desire to see more, if I had to theorize.

Looking forward, how do I expect this coming month to go for me? Being totally honest, I'm not sure it will be any better. Now, the good news is I can guarantee one story will be uploaded, because it's already done. The requester of the story has given their approval of it, too. All I have to do is actually get the description and tags all done, and it will go up, though with my current work schedule I'm not sure how soon that will be. The problem after that is twofold. First is the story I'm doing next, which will be part two of, "The Challenge." I already know it's going to be on the longer side, probably a fair bit longer than part one, which was already not small. Second is that my work schedule, as mentioned, is kind of hectic right now, and it's making finding time for doing hobby writing difficult. I am actually going to be taking a week off starting on the 21st... But it's because of plans with family, so I can't guarantee that will be any better for writing productivity; it might actually be worse. At least it should be relaxing and refreshing, so there's that. All of which to say that I will not be surprised if by the start of next month, I'm still not finished with it.

Alright, I'm still busy now so I'll keep this short here. As always, if you read through this whole ramble, then thank you for your time, and I wish you a happy October and Halloween. If you didn't read through it, that's okay, I still wish you a happy October and Halloween anyway. =)

It has been another month, and it's time once again for me to reflect and take stock on how my writing hobby has been going. While this month started out easy and light for me, the last week and especially a couple of days recently have been particularly exhausting. Now as usual I feel the need to temper myself; I know that, objectively speaking, my life is actually pretty easy, and I know there's a lot of people who work a lot harder than I do and are still worse off. Also I didn't have anything emotionally difficult happen to me, or get stressed about world events in the news either; it's just been a few work shifts that kinda sucked.

So how did my writing go for me this past month? For once I had a correct prediction, though I did technically predict two possibilities so it was kind of a given that one of them would probably land. I finished one story, and I'm very close to finishing another. Like literally I think one, maybe two more decent writing sessions and then a day to do edits is all it needs, so yeah people should be able to look forward to reading it before the end of this coming week. As for the one I did finish, "Sibling Ties", it's done very well, with an above average number of favorites. I suspect there's a good chance it's because of the bondage content, which is like dang, almost kind of a shame that I'm not really that into it personally. XD Brings to mind the thought that if I were more willing to cater to the more 'extreme' kinks, that would probably do wonders for my popularity. I'm well aware that in contrast to other furry erotica writers, that is certainly an area where I fall short by comparison. That I am, relatively speaking, more 'tame' and vanilla. Alas, I'm not sure I have the mental fortitude for it. So unless I become financially desperate and need to start trying to monetize this hobby, I intend to stay in my metaphorical lane.

Alright, so how do I expect this coming month to go, writing wise? Well as I said, I'm very close to being done on the next story. Unfortunately I don't have a full plan on the request story that will be up after that. (I've already gone over the general idea of the story with the requester, but my brain has yet to come up with all of the sequencing and fleshing it out.) So while I don't think it will likely be a large story, it's very difficult at this time for me to estimate how long it will take for me to write it. I will have eight days off work this month to once again house and dogsit for my folks, so hopefully I will be a bit more productive in writing during that time, but even that I can't be sure of at this time. Of course, I hope that I will be able to finish the requested story before the end of the month too, and I think it certainly could be possible. So my optimistic estimate is that I get two stories uploaded this month.

I think that's been enough rambling from me for this month. As always, if you read through this whole thing, then thank you for your time, and I hope you have a great September. If you didn't read it, I still hope you have a great September anyway. =)

Another month gone by, and here we are, still on our little blue and green marble spinning through space. Unfortunately it's been another kind of difficult month for me, though unlike last month I don't have one specific thing I can point at and say was a major cause for my hardships in creative writing. I mean I did get sick at one point, but even that only put me out of writing for two, maybe three days. Instead it's just been a busy schedule in general keeping me away from good opportunities to write; work had me doing more hours and in day configurations that weren't to my liking, and keeping up with other hobbies consumed more of my free time than usual this last month. Even when I do get some time to write for the next story, I barely seem to get any time, sometimes less than fifteen minutes; I think for the entirety of last month, I was able to sit down and write for an entire hour only two or three times.

There is one good thing that removed some of my free time though; I got to reconnect and start hanging out with one of my IRL friends again, after what I think has been a few months since we were regularly chatting with each other. That is one thing I do sincerely hope continues to take some of my free time going forward.


Anyway, so how did this last month go for me writing wise? Unfortunately once again, just a single story was uploaded, "Best Laid Pranks". At the time of this writing, it's a bit below average in number of favorites compared to my other stories of late. However on the flip side, it actually has a lot more views, and more comments from viewers than my other recent story uploads. It's curious to me how those numbers don't always correlate to each other... I think answering comments might be the thing I like best in terms of viewer engagement statistics, so it was nice. =)

How do I think this coming month will go? I almost feel like a broken record of wanting to say that things should be better, and damn if I haven't been wrong multiple times in a row this year, ugh. Kind of makes me want to not even make a prediction, so I won't jinx it... But no, I won't hang my head in defeat yet; I want to be honest with anyone who reads this about what they might be able to expect from me this coming month. I haven't given up hope yet, but I will try to be a bit more realistic. I think it will be one of two possibilities. The first being that I only get one story uploaded, and am partway through a second, similar to this last month. The second being that I get two stories uploaded and will be either about to start or have just started on the next story after those two. As usual it should largely depend on my work schedule, which, at least for the moment, looks like it might be very light.

I think I can be confident about the one upload for sure because, well, I'm already a good way through it. Now yes, it has been going awfully slow even for me, (it's already been over three weeks, jeesh, ಠ_ಠ) but that's not from a lack of desire to finish it. It's just been because of the difficulty in finding good writing session opportunities. The next upload after that I already have planned; it's going to be the first entry in a two part series, and while I expect the second entry to be pretty long, I think the first entry won't actually be super long. Granted, that's kind of hard for me to accurately predict at this stage where all I have for it is brainstorming and not even an outline, so I could be off. Hence why I estimated possibility that I might not actually be done with it by the end of the month.

Okay, I think I rambled on more than usual in this one than my other recent journal entries, and I should wrap it up here. As always, if you took the time out of your life to read through this whole thing, then thank you, and I hope you have a great August. If you didn't read through it all, then that's okay, you don't owe me your time, and I hope you have a great August anyway. =)

Here we are after another month, though like last month I don't really know who 'we' is aside from myself, but that doesn't matter. I've had a bit of a turbulent month, or rather, specifically one very turbulent period followed by a thankfully quiet and relaxing last week of the month.

So how did things go for me in writing this past month? Unfortunately, not well. I only got one story uploaded, part two of "A Gladiator's Honor", which at the time of this writing has a below average number of favorites for my stories. It does have more favorites than the first part, but fewer views, which I do find a little interesting.

Why was I not able to get a second story uploaded, even though I was so certain in my last month's journal entry? Well, it's that turbulent period I mentioned before, which I'll go into further detail now. Right as I was getting properly started on the story I'm going to upload next, two things happened at pretty much the same time. There was a four day trip my dad was going on, and the original plan was that my mother wouldn't go with him. She ended up changing her mind though, and that decision came down when it was already too late for me to ask for time off work, so I had to spend those days doing the additional housesitting while also still having to do my part time job for all but one of those days, which severely cut my free time down. The second thing that happened was I broke my phone, literally the night before they left, which added stress to me on top of that and disrupted my ability to do my normal routine. I have a new phone now, but it was still a number of days after my parents got back that I could finally get back to my usual routine. By then, I had gone a whole 11 days without getting any writing done for my next upload.

Curiously, I do find myself in a similar position as when I made last month's journal entry. Once again, the story to upload is actually finished! I just need to do the actual uploading and writing the description and tags and stuff, though I'm not sure if I will do that tonight or another night soon. So, as I had thought would be the case last month, I find myself saying that I should be able to get two uploads done this month... Assuming nothing crazy like my phone breaking happens. Again. Obviously, I hope that will not be the case. Three uploads though? I'm doubtful of; it does look like my work schedule is going to be picking back up this coming month, at least if this coming week is anything to go by. So I don't think I'll have as much time for writing as I did in June, and especially not another week like this last week where I got to do more writing than I usually would.

I feel like keeping my rambling a bit shorter this time, so I'm going to leave it there. As always, if you read through this whole thing, then thank you for your time, and I hope you have a good July. If you didn't read it, then I hope you have a good July anyway. =) (Also, preemptive happy 4th to my fellow Americans!)

Another month gone by, and time for another journal update to keep people posted on what I've got currently going on. Well, not sure how many people actually read these, but in a way just writing them for myself feels like a way to help me ground myself. Anyway, I took most of May fairly easy; between the time I took off for my birthday at the end of April, the other week I had off, and not being scheduled much work even in the time I didn't request off, I've had a lot of free time this last month. Of course, that didn't reflect much in my fic writing speed, as I made a conscious effort to spend more of that free time doing stuff for myself, like picking away at my huge YouTube watch later backlog that I use like a podcast... Sometimes I really lament that I unfortunately cannot focus on creative writing and listening to anyone talk at the same time.

Anyway, so in terms of what I did get done in writing this past month, how did things go for me? Well, I only got one story uploaded, "Radiant Luck," which at the time of this writing has what I feel is about my average for number of favorites, and maybe a little above average for number of views. Now that I'm through the series of pre-written holiday themed stories, it feels a bit refreshing to be back on my more relatively 'normal' stories.

How do I expect this coming month to go? Well, I can just about guarantee two stories will be uploaded, and if I'm lucky/diligent enough, maybe even three. As I suspected might end up being the case in last month's journal entry, I was just barely unable to upload two stories last month; and for emphasis of how 'just barely' it is, the next story is actually already done! It just so happened that I finished it right before a few days of work in a row for me, so I haven't quite been able to scrounge together the free time to write up its description and do the actual uploading. I almost certainly will tomorrow night, as of the time of this writing. To be clear, this will be the part two of, "A Gladitor's Honor."

So after I get that upload actually complete, I just need to write one story to hit that goal of two uploaded stories, which is why I can just about guarantee it will happen. Plus I already know what the next story will be, though I still need to plot it out and then actually write it, and I think it might possibly be a long one. Plus, I actually already know I'm going to have the last month of June off of work, as I will be once again house and pet-sitting for my parents as they're out of town. I don't know for sure yet how the second and third weeks of June will be for me, but if the first week is any indication, I'll continue having more free time than usual, as my job is actually currently scheduling me too few hours. Oh once again, make no mistake, this is by no means me trying to fish for sympathy or charity; I'm still more than well enough off in life, and the worst that some short work weeks will do to me right now is hurt my disposable income. If you're feeling like being generous, find an actual charity organization to donate to. Anyway, if I do continue having so much extra free time, I will see about trying to dedicate more time of it to this hobby writing; though I'm also not going to make any guarantee about it.

Okay, I think that's my rambling for the month done. If you read through the whole thing, then thank you, and I hope you have a good June. If you didn't read through it, that's okay, I hope you have a good June anyway. =)

Here we are, after another month! Well, technically it is still April for me as of the time of this writing, but I wanted to go ahead and get this done and out of the way. This last month has been not good for me, as I unfortunately had to go through the loss of my pet. =( I won't go too into it here; you can check my uploads and read, "Ode to Persephone" if you want more of the details on that. Aside from that, things haven't been too bad I suppose, and I am currently in my week off for my birthday, so things are kind of looking up.

Anyway, how did this last month go for me writing wise? Also below average it would seem. Aside from the memorial for my cat, I did two uploads this month, and as of the time of this writing, both of them are below average for my uploads in terms of views and favorites. On the first of the month I uploaded my pre-written story, "A witch's April Fools' Scheme," which also serves as the unofficial last entry (for now) in the witch holiday series. Given that it's an April Fools' story and is obviously a spoof on my usual writing, I shouldn't be too surprised that it hasn't garnered as much favor as usual. It was still amusing for me to write it, so I'm still happy with it. The second story I uploaded was, "A Gladiator's Honor, part one," which I fear may have taken a hit to its quality due to losing my cat right in the middle of working on it; in addition to that, it's also kind of a deviation from what my stories usually do, so that could also be contributing to why it hasn't done as well.

Despite how this last month has gone, I'm not feeling too disheartened yet. So how do I expect this coming month to go? Of course, I hope that it goes better. It should be easier on me in real life if nothing else, since as mentioned I'm already at the start of a week off of work, and I actually am taking another seven days off of work in the middle of the month so that I can house and pet-sit for my parents as they're out of town. In terms of writing, unfortunately I am not close to finishing another story as I was hoping I would be at this time when I made last month's journal entry. In fact, I'm not even done with the outline for my next story yet. (Though I will probably get the outline finished tonight, I think.) Still, I would like to think that I could get two stories done this month, given how much time off work I'll have. Though with how my writing pace overall has become this year, I unfortunately would not be surprised if I'm not quite finished with the second story by the time June comes around. For the current writing schedule I am doing a personal standalone story next, then after that will be the part two entry for "A Gladiator's Honor." With any luck, both of those will be done before June!

Alright, I'm going to stop my rambling for this month there. If you read through this, then thank you, and I hope you have a good May. If you didn't read through it, I hope you have a good May anyway. =)

And here we are, after another month. My work has continued to be kinda rough on me this last month, but there are signs it will maybe be better this coming month. At the very least, I already have some time off scheduled right at the end of this month/start of next month for my birthday, so that will be nice.

As I expected might unfortunately be the case, I didn't have any stories uploaded this last month. Well, technically I have one upload between this journal entry and the last one, but if I didn't count a story specifically released on April first as part of April's uploads, then that would feel weird to me. So I'll talk about it more in depth in next month's journal entry. =P

I am a bit disappointed in myself that I'm not farther along in the other story I've been working on this last month, but again, work was rough, so I'm not going to be hard on myself about it.

So how do I expect this coming month to go? Well I've already got the one story uploaded, though it is an April Fools' story uploaded for a joke, thus I expect maybe it won't be so popular. Regardless, I would be very surprised if I didn't get at least one more story uploaded, given that I'm already partway through the latest requested story now. Do I expect to get another one done before May for technically three uploads this month? I wouldn't rule it out, but at least presently I kind of don't think so. I would not be surprised if I'm close to done with another story by the end of the month, without actually being able to finish it before then.

Anyway, bit of a shorter journal this month. As always, if you read through this, then thank you, and I hope you have a good April. If you didn't read through it, I hope you have a good April anyway. =)

And here we are again, at the start of another month. Did I jinx things with my journal from last month? Well, for my personal life I would say that things have been pretty alright. There's nothing I can really complain about aside from having more work than before and that giving me less free time, especially on certain days depending on the exact schedule. For stuff outside my personal life though? Man, the news lately makes me want to scream until I have an aneurysm; there's been some good mixed with the bad, but the bad news usually is like, 'hey remember that good news we just told you about? Yeah turns out it is not happening actually,' so yeah... Given that it's an election year here in the U.S., I kind of expect the news to just get progressively more crazy as the year goes on.

Regardless, putting that aside, how did things go for me in writing this last month? I did indeed get two stories uploaded, but only just. The first was my special Valentine's story, A Witch's Valentine's Seduction, which as of the time of this writing is doing fairly well. Looking back a few months, it almost seems like my average favorites on stories is going up overall; it used to be around 5, but the last four months or so it's been more like 10. Then there's the second story I uploaded this month, Meant To Be, which as of the time of this writing only has 5 favorites, and less than half the views. Of course, it has only been three days since I uploaded it, so there may still be some room for it to go up before it tapers off? Anyway, even if it doesn't get many more, I still enjoyed making it. EDIT: Now just a day later, it's up to 9 favorites, so that's cool. =)

Now, how do I expect this coming month to go? Well, I'll probably only upload just one story actually, or maybe even none at all. First is that I'll be working on another pre-write, which won't be uploaded until April. Yes yes, yet another pre-write, but this should be the last one, at least for a while. I can't think of anything after April that I would want to pre-write for, until Halloween or Christmas again; at the time of this writing, I don't have any more special holiday-themed story ideas, but of course that may change by that time of year. I am hoping that the pre-write will actually not take very long, as I think it will be on the shorter side of my stories, which will then hopefully mean that I can finish the next requested story before the end of the month, even if it takes me 2-3 weeks again.

Alright, I don't feel like rambling on any more, except to share an odd cure for hiccups I happened upon this month. I got the idea from one of those YouTube videos where they read off Reddit stories, though I'm not sure which exactly; I think it was about the weirdest thing they overheard someone else say. In the story a guy started hiccuping, and was overheard muttering by the person telling the story, "I am not a fish." A few days later it occurred to me as I got hiccups, so I tried it, and bizarrely enough, it worked! I've shared it at work, and at least two of my coworkers have experienced it working for them as well. So yeah, if you have hiccups, I suggest giving it a try. I have no idea if it works in other languages though; I'm not sure if the effect is psychological, from reminding yourself that you aren't a fish, or has something to do with the way our vocal cords move when making those sounds. If it's the latter, I would guess that it might not work as well in other languages, if at all.

Anyway, that's it for me this month. If you read this whole thing, I hope you have a good March; maybe let me know if the hiccup cure works for you, if you get a chance to try it. (And if you remember to come back and comment.) If you didn't read this whole thing, I hope you have a good March anyway. =)

Heya folks, another month, and here we are in February! If I had to choose one word to describe last month for me, it would probably be, 'scuffed'. It was kind of a mess of a month for me, though without anything especially bad happening; just a number of inconveniences happening around the same time that made them feel more overwhelming together than they would have felt individually. Anyway, things do now seem to be on an upward trend, and hopefully I'm not jinxing it by saying that here... It also occurs to me after double checking that this is the third month in a row that I've said something similar in these journal updates. Man, the transition into 2024 has not been a smooth one. I also know that it being an election year here in the U.S. is probably going to make things feel especially topsy turvy later, but it shouldn't be so bad in February.

Anyway, so how did things go for me in writing this past month? Well just as I predicted in my last journal entry, I only got one story uploaded this month, 'Snowed Into Brother's Arms.' At the time of this writing, it is doing above average for my stories here, so that feels good. I wonder what made it do well, and though I have little concrete evidence to go off of, I suspect it may have something to do with the, shall we say, familial relations content. Now, I knew that even if I finished the story after that, it wouldn't be uploaded last month, as I'm pre-writing it to upload around Valentine's Day. I had hoped that I would be done with it by now, but unfortunately from real life delays, (mostly work schedule related) that ended up not happening.

Now, the silver lining is that for this coming month, I can guess that I might get two stories uploaded. I'm not really that far from finishing the Valentine's Day story, so I give it at least a 90% chance that it'll be done before the holiday, and most certainly done before the end of the month if not. After that will be another requested story, though of course at this time I can't be certain how big it'll be and therefore how long it'll take to write. I think though, that even if I don't have it done by the end of the month, I should have a good chunk of it done by then. My current plan is to actually then do yet another pre-write story to be uploaded at a later date, so I can already predict now that I will probably only have one story uploaded in March.

Alright, if you've read through this whole ramble of mine, thank you. I hope you have a good February, and a happy Valentine's Day! If you'll be single for it like I will, then I hope it at least won't be sad, and you can be content with your life. If you haven't read through this whole thing, then that's okay, I still wish the same for you anyway. =)

Another month, and this time as well, another year gone by! First I'll talk about the usual monthly stuff, then after a larger line break I'll talk about the year as a whole.

This last month has felt hectic for me, like I've been constantly having to juggle at least two things at once. I then ended up coming down with a flu (not Covid, I checked,) on Christmas day itself, and couldn't really fully enjoy the time off I had taken to spend with family because of that. Still, I am cognizant of the fact that my issues are still pretty first world issues, and I have almost fully recovered from that illness as of now.

So how did this last month go for me in writing? Just as I expected, I only uploaded one story, and that story also took me a bit longer to write than I would have liked. As for the story itself, A witch's Christmas treat, I am happy with it, and it's doing about average as of the time of this writing in terms of views and favorites. I find it a little curious that it's not doing as well as its Halloween counterpart, but I think maybe that Halloween is generally a little more popular in this community, and also I know that sequels that rely on knowledge from a previous story just kind of automatically not do as well.

How do I expect this coming month to go? I can just about guarantee at this point that only one story will be uploaded, which will be a requested story for my long time returning requester, destiny667. The reason for this isn't that I think it'll take too long for me to both finish it and write another; in fact it would be really nice if I could manage that. It's because for my next personal story after this request, I want to pre-write the next entry for the witch holiday series, Valentine's Day, to release just before that holiday in February. So even if I have that story finished before the end of January, I won't be uploading it yet. Therefore to actually upload two stories this month, I would basically have to finish three stories, which I don't think I'll be capable of doing.



Alright, now let's talk 2023 as a whole for a bit here. In total, I've uploaded 17 regular stories, and 1 CYOA. The CYOA ended up being way behind schedule from where I expected it to be this same time last year. My estimate was it being done in May or June, but instead it was not finished and uploaded until all the way to October. Partially I ended up a bit behind on the big story project I wanted to finish before the CYOA, and partially I had a few turbulent months in the middle of this year that were just plain not good for me in terms of getting writing work done.

For some other numbers for this year, I have gone from 125 comments to 177, (52 more) 321 favorites to 557, (236 more) and 49 watchers to 76. (27 more)

I feel especially thankful at this time in light of everything that this writing is just a hobby for me. I think if I had the pressure of needing this writing to also be a source of income, on top of everything else that happened this year, then I would be a lot more stressed about the state of it. The idea that this year was worse than last year would be more disheartening, whereas instead for me it just feels kind of interesting and curious. Am I disappointed in myself for not doing as well? Well yeah, kind of, but I went into this last year with a different priority for myself than I did the year before. I've been wanting to have more time for myself and other things I want to do than just writing, to keep the writing as something I continue to enjoy doing, instead of burning myself out on it.

The only thing I currently feel more disappointed about is my current request list, or rather, lack thereof. However I am tempering that disappointment because, well, I can't control other people, and I most certainly can't force them to care about my online furry writing. I also know that the worst case scenario is I end up having to write more of my own personal story ideas instead and like, 'wow what a horrible prospect,' the writer said with complete sarcasm in his tone. In seriousness though, it is (usually) nice to write up stories for other people. It makes me get exposed to ideas that I probably never would've thought of on my own, and when the requesters are kind and pleasant to work with, it's a real treat to see them be excited for and enjoy the finished product.

As I said once long ago, yes of course it would be kind of nice if I could make enough money from doing this to have it be my job. However, I know that if it was, I would have to treat it differently than I currently do, take it a lot more seriously, and I would probably start enjoying it less. So in a way, it's also nice that it isn't my job. Here's to a new year, and more fun and enticing furry stories, which I still do not plan on stopping any time soon.

If you read through this whole ramble of mine, then thank you, and I hope you have a good January and a good 2024. If you didn't read through it, then that's okay, I still hope you have a good January and a good 2024. =)