Hello everyone,

Due to translation and subtitling work picking up quite a bit, I'm going to have to close the commission slots (not that there's a huge run on them, but I'd hate to disappoint anyone if they do want to pick up a slot :)

I will finish the commission I'm already working on, but after that I'm first going to have to get through the current workload before I can open them again. Hard to say when that will be, unfortunately, but if I find the time, I will re-open!

Hi everyone! (again ;))

I decided to lower my commission price to half-a-Eurocent per word to see if I can attract more attention than nothing on these commission slots!

At that word-rate, a 2000-word story (roughly four pages of text at font-size 11) will cost 10 Euro's (or 13 USD).

As before, I will be opening five slots, but don't worry if they fill up before you have a chance to nab one - I'll be opening more when I finish these up :)
If you want a slot, please comment on this journal and we can work out a good story that matches your wishes!

The only other thing I can say is, give my gallery a look to help you decide if you want a story, and perhaps give you inspiration for a tale!

Thank you in advance, everyone!

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Commission Slots

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Let's start off with wishing everyone a happy 2013! Hope everyone had a lovely new year's celebration spent however they preferred! :D

Here's to hoping that 2013 will be a better year than 2012 was, I won't go into it into detail but let's just say it could have scarcely been worse.
But yeah, new year, new opportunities and a chance to start anew, in a way.
At the very least, I can go into the new year with the idea that things are looking up - my translation business is slowly picking up steam with a number of long-tern projects coming down the line, as well as a part-time job as a subtitler to keep me afloat during slow periods. On top of that, if all goes well I'm having my first novel published this year, so there's a lot to look forward to

And then there's this:

I've finished my promotional free commissions and want to thank everyone who got one lots; I've received a lot of positive comments on my writing and was very happy to hear that all commissioners were happy with the work they received. That's certainly reassuring since this was my first foray into 'writing to order', and many of the projects dealt with subject matter that I had no previous experience in, so receiving positive response is quite reassuring

On that note, I want to announce that I will also be taking my first foray into paid commissions, an will be opening commission slots on January 7th, 20:00 (GMT +1 time)!
For reference, I'll be using a 'pay-by-word' constuction, with $0.02 per word - this seemed the fairest way to deal with it, since the amount of words per page can vary greatly depending on (for example) how dialogue-heavy the story is (more dialogue = less text per page).
I'll be posting a more extensive journal about it on the opening date, this is just to get the announcement out there.

Greetings to all!

Hello Everyone!

Well, the response to my free commissions journal was quite overwhelming! Apologies for being late with the replies, but I I suspect I'm in a different timezone than most of you an was away last evening, so I saw most of the messages just before I had to go to bed XD

After digging through the notes (I had to limit myself to those to keep track of who sent what when - sorry if that put you out of the list!) I made a list of people who managed to snag a slot. I have to warn everyone, however - since I'm just working on a 'first come first serve' basis for now, if you're one of the last on the list it might be a while before I get to your story (especially considering I'm also juggling a few other jobs in an effort to make ends meet). Apologies for that in advance, and hope everyone can understand that.

The list is the following - although it might change if people decide they're going to pass up on their spot for whatever reason :)

Also, decided to keep a record of progress so people who are waiting for me tp start their story at least have an indication what's happening.

1  seht *DONE*
2  jambusgtx *DONE*
3  lucaslunar *DONE*
4  wyraachur *DONE*
5  tyvulpine *DONE*
6  twilightmaster *DONE*
7  rajanwolffang*DONE*
8  yurikokinai *DONE*
9  barcod *DONE*
10  bahamut-255 *DONE*
11  sf3p0x1 *DONE*
12  kasar Awaiting approval
13  eonfurioso*DONE*
14  the-shadow-of-light Awaiting approval
15  jameygamer *DONE*
16  sergalluvr1986 *DONE*
17  leons1 *DONE*
18  jackknight *DONE*

Wow! That went quick XD

I'm closing the free commissions, but due to success I'm taking more slots. Everyone who noted before this journal was posted will get a spot :)

I will contact everyone asap when I'm actually at my computer again ;)

Thanks all!

Hello Everyone,

I've been quiet for a long time, mainly due to a completely insane year. Fortunately, things are levelling out on the health-end of things; after a number of close calls and surgeries, mom's finally on the mend. She's adapting to the loss of her leg alright even though it's naturally still quite rough on her. Where things aren't as good is on the job/income front...as in I have neither right now. Trying to run a freelance translation gig but unfortunately I haven't been as successful as I'd hoped I would, and the job market here isn't very good either.

That leads me to the next thing - I figured I might as well try to turn my hobby into something potentially profitable, and see if I can make it as a freelance writer instead of a freelance translator :)
However, due to the meaningful work I've written so far being considered for publication, I don't have anything to post, so I'm opening some free story commissions to hopefully garner interest and give my gallery some actual personal work to show.

The stories will be 2000 words (think 4 A4 pages worth of text), though it might turn out to be more if sticking to it would lead to cutting the narrative short. The stories can be focused on erotica, humour, action or a combination. If you want me to write a story based on a picture you commissioned from another artist, I'm okay with that, but if it includes characters from that artist, please ask their permission first!

Soo...If you're interested, send me a note and let's discuss some story details! :D

I'm opening three slots for now, but there'll be more!

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It's been a while since the last update, things have been busy here, but fortunately things are finally going quite well :)

Mom's recovery very well from the bypass-surgery, almost amazingly so. Since then, she's already gotten her prosthetic leg and has been practicing with it. It is going quite well. There were some worries that mom might've caught a bug that was going around the hospital around the time she was there, but fortunately she didn't and is in quite good health. The current expectation is that she'll be released from the physical rehabilitation centre in about 2 months, so it seems as though all that's finally over :D

Our house is currently undergoing some alterations to make it easier on mom as well (think handholds and stuff). The garden wall has been partially sawn off to make the door larger and allow the electric cart mom will get to make the turn and exit the garden, and at the front of the house the sidewalk has been raised to compensate for the (rather high) doorstep the house has. Most of it has been done, so the chaos from that is almost done, too.

Where personal news is concerned, I'm in the middle of setting up a small translation agency for myself to see if I can get some income from there, but I have also been looking around for other options / extra jobs I could do to increase my income. I went to a security company for an aptitude test to see if I could do security work, and fortunately got a positive result so that's another thing I could do (along with another option of getting into transportation) :)
If all goes well, I should also be officially sworn in as a translator (finally) in exactly 2 weeks, and will spend those weeks setting up a website and get other stuff done to hopefully put me on the radar.

So yeah, busy busy, but thankfully things are quite well all things considered :)

Fortunately mom's surgery this morning went well. In the end, it turned out she needed 4 bypasses instead of the 3 projected, but otherwise the surgery was performed without any complications.

She's currently recovering in the ICU, but she's pretty much been stable ever since she was brought there. No sign of any internal bleeding (other than amounts that can be expected from coronary bypass surgery), either. In an hour or so (provided she stays stable, but there's no real reason to assume she won't), the doctors are going to stop the sleeping medication. Once she becomes more awake, it'll be checked if she can breathe on her own, and if so the breathing apparatus will be removed.

We'll call the hospital again later today and ask how things are. If she's awake and aware enough, we'll visit her again this evening. If this keeps up, she'll be out of the ICU by tomorrow (regardless of how things turn out, they're keeping her at the ICU overnight to be sure). :)

UPDATE

Mom was indeed conscious, and has been taken off the breathing apparatus. She's having bouts of nausea and still significant pain, but nothing that's not to be expected after the kind of surgery she underwent this morning.

Well, after knowing this was coming for several months, mom was finally checked into the hospital, the surgery itself will be performed on Monday, first thing in the morning.

It took a while for them to plan it b/c they needed to be sure her wound from the leg-amputation had healed well, and if there weren't any complications from the intestinal surgery she had undergone, either. Damn, typing it like this and keeping in mind all this happened in about six months' time is just...blagh. Even people at the hospital are commenting on our apparent stroke of particularly bad luck.

That said, fortunately this seems to be the least risky procedure mom has to undergo, and (hopefully) finally the last. Doctors have done a ton of tests, both at an earlier date and today, and overall mom's in better shape than they had thought. Her leg healing well (and almost amazingly quickly) is a good sign, and her blood-vessels (while damaged due to lifelong diabetes) also came out of the test better than they had expected.

The hospital she's in specialises in heart-surgery, and they do about 2000 - 3000 bypasses a year. Apparently, if you NEED to have heart-surgery, bypass is the 'best' since it's actually quite routine. Expectations are that mom will be back in the physical rehabilitation centre before next week is over :)

While we're still really nervous, we've spoken to a lot of people who have undergone similar surgeries. A lot (if not most) of them were both older than mom when they got the surgery done, and were in much worse shape besides - so we're quite confident that it'll go well and we can finally leave a rather crappy time in our lives behind us.

All that said though, everyone who wants to send their best wishes, feel free! They're quite welcome (you can never have enough of those) and I'll be sure to relay them. :)

Will post further journals on Monday, most likely - mom should be out of the Operating Room around noon, give or take an hour, and then we're allowed on the ICU/recovery to see her for a bit (even though she'll likely still be out at the time).

Fortunately things have been looking up lately - while the situation isn't quite peachy yet, at least there has been significant improvement. Mom's leg is healing very well, and dad is doing alright now, too. Some other changes have also had positive effects (mom had her insulin-type changed as a test b/c her blood-sugar levels were very unstable, and the change worked wonders).
The only source of worry that's still present is mom's bypass-surgery, and the fact that we still don't know when that will be. Everything else is fine, and she's in good spirits in addition to feeling quite well physically. If all goes well, we might hear more friday of next week, so we're keeping our fingers crossed. With all that we've heard the operation isn't really as major a thing as it seems to be at first glance - naturally heart-surgery isn't anything to sneeze at, but there aren't really major risks involved in the kind of bypass mom has to undergo, which is good (though we're naturally still nervous).

Where I'm concerned; I'm also off meds again (I was freaking out badly, and doc thought it was better to give me something to take the edge off a bit), and I honestly feel it helped. I'm not as wound up anymore emotionally, and can actually think rather clearly again without wild and apparently random mood-swings.

In the meantime, I also officially graduated my Master's and am now working on arranging getting sworn in as a translator, as well as setting up a website and contacts to start as a freelancer, but it's good to have stuff to look forward to :)

As for the 'kinda' in the title - the stress, worries and everything still managed to have left their mark, so I'm still a bit out of it, so I probably won't be as active for a while. That said, I'm at least regularly checking in again.

It seems like things simply won't let up.

After mom underwent more surgery to her leg to combat an infection, most of the week for her consisted of crying from pain and despairing if it'd ever stop. Needless to say, that's rather rattling (particularly because mom isn't squeamish in the slightest) and worsened by the fact that the first surgery 'didn't take' properly, leading to a burst blood-vessel and even more horrific pain.

Topping off that subject, we were informed that mom's experiencing mutliple constrictions in her coronary artery. The bad news; she'll have to undergo bypass-surgery for that. The good news; her heart's otherwise fine with nary any damage or problems with its muscles, meaning that this surgery can be postponed quite a while using medication to allow her to recover from all the surgery she already underwent in recent weeks.

Yesterday she had to undergo more surgery, although this one was planned (basically a follow-up) instead of a reaction to bad developments/complications, since the hospital wants to make sure she won't get re-infected somehow. At least things seem to have gone well and everything is decently stable at this time, and extensive steps have been undertaken to minimise the pain she's experiencing and so far these are working.

Of course, it seems like we can't have good news without a heaping of bad souring it; last friday, my father fell down the stairs while I was out getting groceries and broke his back. Fortunately he wasn't paralysed and won't be since he's being kept in a stable position, but the road to recovery is still long. Doctors are currently debating if dad is able to undergo surgery for it to speed up the process, it is still unsure if it's a good idea considering he has spent time in the Intensive Care last year following a cardiac arrest last year, and the surgery isn't exactly minor so it needs to be decided if his heart could take it. If it is decided it is safe to do the procedure, it will be performed next Wednesday.

All of the above has done it's job of getting to me, and I'm trying my best to keep everything running and keeping everything together despite falling apart mentally (or at least if feels that way). Everything is just too overwhelming for now so I'll be away indefinitely.

Greetings to all.

Well, we got the results for the lab tests they did on mom, and unfortunately it turns out that the growth on her large intestine was indeed cancer. :(

To check if the cancer has undergone metastasis / has spread, mom will have to undergo more tests (specialised scan/blood tests) - the doctors decided double-checking was best because they found a few small spots directly next to the main growth that might indicate spread, but at this point it is uncertain. We'll have to wait for the doctors to inform us when these tests will take place.

Also, apparently the form of cancer the doctors found is extremely rare; it's called carcinoid, but unlike 'normal' cancer it has a much less rapid growth and is more indolent. While difficult to treat with chemo/radiation (removing carcinoids almost always requires surgery), it's fortunately also rather less dangerous overall and even if it has spread the survivability / life expectancy can still be quite good.

We're all hoping that it hasn't spread, keeping our fingers crossed that this was all there is to it so that we can put it behind us.

Well, mom's undergone the surgery for the anomalous swelling in her intestines.

The good news
Surgery went well - mom didn't require a colostomy or anything else, and she isn't in a lot of pain or anything.

The bad news
While the tissues are still being analysed (we expect more news in 5 days/sometime during next week), we were already warned about the very high probability that it's cancer.

We're hoping mom will finally luck out, beat the odds and get news that it wasn't cancer, or at least that they caught it before it became a problem and she doesn't require extensive further treatment/chemo/whatnot. It's becoming increasingly hard to keep hopes up with how things are going.

Additionally, there seems to be a problem with the healing of the wound from the amputation - there seems to be an infection going on, and the vascular surgeon will look into it tomorrow. Hoping that won't complicate things.

Will post further updates as we learn more

Well, turns out mom still isn't allotted to a break, since we once again received bad news yesterday.

It turns out that whatever swelling was in her abdomen is still there, and in all likelihood needs to be removed. The doctors are unable to say what it is (and if it's benign or malign - it's even unsure if it's a tumour or some other form of swelling). Thankfully mom took it reasonably well and doesn't seem to give up hope.

What does suck badly is that this might reset all the progress she made at the physical rehabilitation centre, especially if it means she has to stay at the hospital for a longer period of time. All we can do is hope for the best (despite that it rarely seems that's what we get) since it's all we can do apart from giving up at this point.

First hospital check-up for that is the 21st of January, so expect more news then.

 lycanscar Is holding an art raffle concerning a male gay orgy - give it a shot and see if you're lucky :)

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2994430/

Well, much to our (pleasant) surprise, the physical rehabilitation centre actually allowed mom to go home during the weekend :D

Granted, she had to spend the night at the centre, but in all honesty sleeping at home would be a problem due to the stairs before she's taught how to deal with those. Otherwise however, it actually went better then we hoped :)
While our house isn't small as such, Dutch buildings tend to be very compactly built, and we were worried about the entrance hall being to small, mom not being able to make the turn from living room to kitchen - but it was actually all possible, and she was able to do it herself if she took her time. Only real problem downstairs is the threshold to the outside being much to high, but that can be solved by raising the pavement outside - something that's covered by med-insurance.

It was a quite good weekend, we made a point of doing the stuff we usually did; doing groceries downtown, taking a walk around the neighbourhood, trivial stuff but it cheered mom up a lot to actually see and experience that she can still do that despite the wheelchair. Same thing with household stuff (cutting vegestables, helping with doing the dishes) and being active in general really reassured her that she isn't confined to one spot doing nothing even if in a worst case a prosthetic doesn't work out.

So yeah, had quite a pleasant weekend after all the worry :)

Well, mom had taken a turn for the worse end of last week, though fortunately she's mostly recovered.

Last friday she'd been taken to the hospital with really bad chest pains, and although it was clear early on that it wasn't anything with her heart, the exact cause wasn't clear. Turns out it had to do with an intestinal problem, a problem, turns out, is something the doctors had literally never seen before. It's some kind of swelling, but the cause is a mystery (although they were fortunately quite sure it isn't cancer-related).

However, since mom is apparently perfectly well otherwise, she has been released from the hospital and is back in the physical rehabilitation centre. Now all that can be done is wait until the results come back of the tissue samples that the doctors took, and hope they don't show anything major.

So yeah, now it's the waiting game again, though fortunately mom can continue her exercises at the centre and regain lost progress.

Well, fortunately checking mom into the physical rehab centre went smoother then expected. It's a nice place, helpful personnell and the rooms seem cozy despite having 4 people per in them. It's rather a relief really, since a fellow patient in the hospital absolutely savaged the centre (without exaggerating way he talked about it, it sounded like Mengele ran the place), but based on our experiences today we don't feel bad about about having to leave mom there - she really is in the best place she can be to learn to walk with prosthetics, deal with wheelchairs and crutches and whatnot.

Had both lunch and dinner there, and mom was doing well overall, still lots of phantom pains but apparently Reiki can really help against that. Fortunately, I have a local friend who's actually certified Reiki-practitioner. We've tried it before, and it certainly helped against pain then, so we might as well try it with this :)

After today all three of us are pretty exhausted, but fortunately things are going well.

Well, unexpectedly the date of my mom being discharged from the hospital was moved up by a day, so we have to be up early tomorrow-morning to pick her up, and then take her to the physical rehabilitation centre.

We don't know anything else yet (how long it will take, the technicalities of prosthetics, if our current house can be adapted so we don't have to move), but at least it's another step ahead :)

The recent times have been eventful to say the least, and unfortunately mostly in a negative way. Thankfully things are hopeful for the future.

The biggest thing that happened (and is still going on is my mom being hospitalised again. What whas supposed to be a routine-proceture uncovered a crapload of problems with my mom's leg (mostly due to negligence by an 'expert' resulting in tissue having gone necrotic), finally leading to her left leg being amputated above the knee.

Fortunately mom's really giving it her best to get through it, and after the initial shock she's remaining quite hopeful of regaining most of her mobility via prosthetics. Also, the pain she was in from her leg should lessen now (at the time it's still hurting, from both the procedure and phantom-pains) so she at least won't have to deal with that anymore.

Of course, now a lot of stuff suddenly needs to be dealt with (house being less-then-ideal, among other things), but a lot of it also can't really be dealt with either b/c we simply don't know enough yet

Fortunately things are well, now (as well as they can be, considering) and mom is making a lot of progress (already being able to get in and out of bed and into a wheelchair, and diligently doing the exercises to build up strength in her arms and right leg.

Will give updates if there's significant developments.

 kaylii is open for Iron Artist commissions - go have a look and grab a slot while you can! (I sure did! ;D)

Check out her Journal, and here's an example for the curious :)

WOOHOOO!!! :D

Of course, the teacher winds up being on vacation for the n-th time this year.

In any case, I definitely owe  kadath a truckload of thanks for his help on this. Thank you! ;D

Well, the time spent at that cabin for my thesis certainly didn't go to waste :D

Got about half of it done volume-wise, though it needs to be refined and naturally expanded upon. Basically used the time to hammer together a 'frame' to work in, and I'm really back into a 'thesis-work' mindset that I found hard to catch after the thesis getting sidetracked for a year.

So yeah, I'm feeling rather more confident that I can finish it before the Uni closes for this academic year, or at least get it nearly so :D

I'll be away for the next week, busy working on my master-thesis on the Dutch translations of Darwin's Origin of Species :D

I got rather annoyed that the thing has been delayed for like a year due to circumstances (job, parents in hospital, whole bunch of other stuff), so I'm getting together with a study-mate who has been suffering the same problem with her thesis, and retreat to a log-cabin and get some REAL work done on the only thing standing between us and our Master's degree :)

Fortunately, my mom has been released from the hospital with a clean bill of health :)

Despite it not going well initially, thanks to the hospital catching on quickly on what the infection was and adapting the treatment accordingly, my mom's condition improved by leaps and bounds, and now she's back home. She indeed seems a lot better now, despite being groggy and feeling rather weak from having to lie around all day with an IV-drip. Right now it's more a problem of making sure she doesn't overreach (she's the kind of person that can't stay still and start running around on the slightest chance :P) and gives herself some time to regain strength.

But yeah, all is good again, and thanks to all for the well-wishes!