I mentioned it in my recent upload, but I wanted to make sure to reach all of you lovely people when I wished you a wonder-filled Christmas and New Year. You're all fantastic! Onward to 2017!

For the most part at least. By combining PREPARATION! and a little dumb luck, I managed to while away these days relatively unscathed, though without power for quite a while. The worst part was getting devoured mosquitoes while raking branches and other debris from my yard. All things considered, from the devastation in Haiti and the ridiculous flooding in the Carolinas, I got off easy peasy. So no worries on this front, and I hope that any of you that might have been affected by the storm was as fortunate as I.

And while, because of widespread and long-lasting power outages in my area stymied my attempts at writing as much as I'd have liked, I managed to put a few thoughts onto digital (and some cases physical) paper for your later consumption. Thanks for sticking around!

Are a pain in the ass, for sure. My good friend Matthew is a few hours away from taking a hot piss all over my afternoon plans. I'm probably going to be out of touch for a few days, on the off chance some of you wanted to talk to me about one thing or another. But fret not! I'll be sure to regale you with exciting tales of sitting in the dark hoping the wind doesn't push the house off of its foundations when I return.

On a more serious note, if any of you also happen to be in the way of Matthew's temper tantrum, make sure to stay safe and take care of yourselves and your loved ones, alright? And here's hoping that he doesn't just turn around and hit us again.

...is how many years old I am as of early this morning!

Apart from that, a rather average Sunday! Did a little writing, hung out with some friends and family, both drank and ate a little too much, but it was pleasant!

It was my intention to combine this announcement with a little news, but to be honest I don't really have much about which to complain! So, until something fitting that criterion comes up, I hope everyone enjoys what little of their Sunday they might have left and takes it easy on their Labor Day!

Thanks everybody!

A couple weeks turned into a month, but at least I had a more stable connection than usual. All in all, everything went fairly well, but of course the moment I left, everything at home went to shit. While visiting my maternal grandmother in the illustrious commonwealth of Kentucky, my paternal grandmother, who had apparently been lying to her entire family about the severity of her condition, passed away in the hospital, relatively peacefully. So now we, as a family, are dealing with the aftermath, most of which consists of sorting through a billion pictures of people many of us have never seen. But it's not like this was unexpected. He had lung cancer and COPD. Her kidneys were failing. And I'd gotten to visit her in the hospital the weekend after I left. And I'm much happier knowing that she's no longer suffering while wasting away in some bed. I'm not as distraught as some members of my family certainly are.

But enough of that business! I missed Shark Week! However, I did write the piece for it, so it will probably be going up this weekend. Apart from that, hopefully everything will be back to business of usual. I trust everyone fared well in my absence? Nothing exploded? No cities destroyed? Let me know how you're doing.

Hello you lovely gentlecreatures. I just wanted to put up a journal for a few reasons, one being to push aside that utter downer of a previous entry, one was to ask a general question, and the last was to let you all know that I'm making what has quickly become a yearly pilgrimmage into the mountains of Kentucky to see to some family business.

So, first off, has anyone been having any issues with their notes recently (in the last few weeks, since the Hackening and all that nonsense)? Because it turned out that I had a handful of notes sent to me in the week-or-so following those unfortunate events that never showed up in my notifications and therefore sat unread and untouched for a distressingly long time before I caught on to the shenanigans. It's partially my fault, I know, because I could have caught it sooner if I'd been even remotely observant, but I'm more annoyed that it occured in the first place. My notes have since been getting pinged in my notification bar, so I'm hoping it was just a temporary side effect of the technical turmoil that went on, but I was curious if anyone else had experienced this issue.

And lastly, this coming Sunday I'm beginning what is likely to be another two-week trip to my family up north in the South. Since a few incidents last Autumn, my grandmother's health has been steadily failing, and a good chunk of my extended family is congregating there in the mountains in what feels unsettlingly like a "last chance" family reunion. So I imagine those weeks are going to contain a dizzying mix of emotions. Luckily, my hotel has wi-fi and my evenings should be pretty calm, so I'll hopefully be able to channel all that into something positive, or at least something creative.

What will be will be, however. Thanks to everyone for sticking around this long. We've passed thirteen thousand pageviews, and are hovering dangerously close to three-hundred fifty watchers, which is an exciting prospect. So onward to the future we march. For now, though, I'm going to bed. I have to drive my mother to a root canal in the morning.

I'm going to keep this as concise as I can, but considering my hobby of choice, I wouldn't hold too much hope. I'm also going to try to keep this journal from being too apologetic, but I still feel the need to at least offer a smidge of explanation.

I'm alive! I know that only the most grim would assume otherwise, but considering the prolonged silence to most, I couldn't fault the assumption. Without going into an inappropriate amount of detail, life is hard, and I'm far from the best at dealing with it, especially when it comes to the health and happiness of my family. I needed to quickly reprioritize how I spent my time, and I let it get away from me. I haven't stopped writing in the past few... months, thought the volume has certainly dwindled, but I have to admit that I may have been using my troubles as an excuse to hide myself away like a frightened child. I wanted to tell myself that I was simply too busy, but that would be a savage untruth. It's not as if I couldn't have spared fifteen minutes to reply to a message I might have noticed or to simply remind the people that I profess to appreciate so much that I'm still breathing. It reeks of hypocrisy, and it's for that reason which I am most sorry. I let myself do it. I let stress and anxiety, and maybe even depression for a time, drive me into a shell from which it's taken quite a bit of mental and emotional effort to break free.

However, I'm in a better place now, for the time being, and even if that doesn't persist I don't intend on simply disappearing from the internet without explanation any more. For now, I have a story to upload--one that's sat written for nearly four months. After that, I'll be sifting through quite a few thousand neglected notifications and replying to messages that are sorely in need of attention. I need to blow the dust off a great many things. It seems I missed out some milestones, most regretfully almost forty watchers, my two-year anniversary of posting on this site, and... a whole bunch of favorites. Normally I'd offer thanks individually, but seeing as how many of them are months old I don't want to clutter up a few dozen shoutboxes with long, long overdue messages. Instead, I'll just take this opportunity to thank all of you, new and old, with all the sincerity I can muster.

And for those of you who are waiting on a reply, I've got a lot (for me, at least) to work my way through. Give me a few days and I promise I'll get in touch. Until then, I'll just go and leave something for you all to peruse at your leisure, something I wrote in mid-December just before I got hired by a company for which I no longer work. I hope you all enjoy, and can find it in yourselves to forgive. I'll keep striving to improve with renewed gusto.

As some of you might have suspected--given my recent upload--I'm back! Back to the land of a semi-stable internet connection. I don't desire to bore anyone with too many specifics, but I will say that everything is okay on that front. Grandmother is as well as she can be under her circumstances. Some unpleasantness went down while I was gone, as one would expect, but this isn't about to become a forum of me complaining about the many very unfortunate problems with my extended family's health.

My own health, however, I will complain about all I like. Almost the moment I reentered my home an infection to shake the very foundations of the world took root in my sinuses, which then proceeded to move down into my chest, so I've spent the better part of the last few days oozing all sorts of unpleasantness from my face and feeling rather miserable about the pettiness of fate. At least the fevers have subsided. Now I just feel tired and headachy all the time. Blugh...

But! Even that is ultimately irrelevant to my immediate needs and desires. Shit, as always, needs to get done. I'm back, for the most part, and I can get back to replying to all the messages that I've neglected. Admittedly, that will get done slowly, because I can barely focus enough to remain medicated let alone type more than... well... this, but it will be done within the fullness of time.

In close thank you guys and gals and others, for giving a little bit more purpose to with what I choose to fill my some of my free time. I'd be here, and I'd still write, but it wouldn't be the same without you lovely peeps. Literally. Selene and Luna wouldn't exist for one, and the story would be vastly different.

Anyway. Thanks.

Before they can, they've got to get worse.

A few days ago I learned that I was going back to the illustrious commonwealth of Kentucky, which, as some of you may remember, I had gone to earlier this year to attend a wedding. My grandmother's health is failing, rather quickly, and I've been called upon to aid in the... settling of business, I suppose you'd call it. As a direct result of this, I'm going to be away from the internet for the better part of two weeks while I and my mother take care of things.

I've been pretty busy getting things ready for my unexpected outing, so I apologize if I've been unresponsive for the past few days. I'm going to try and be available as much as I can, but the mountains of Kentucky aren't that conducive to connections of any significant sort. I just wanted to let you lovely ladies and gentlemen and other know before vanishing off the face of the Earth for a couple weeks.

On a happier note. Folders! Woo!

Well then. After a paltry three days, Side Effects has racked up almost as many views as any other story in my gallery, with almost twice as many favorites! Double! What?! I'm blown away. I can't even understand it. That's not even mentioning the rash of watches (for which I'm ever grateful, of course). Now, I'm no numerical genius, though I do have a mind for statistics, but from what I've come to understand, this particular story is a rather popular one. So much so that I'm awed by the audience reaction to it.

In fact. I suppose that this journal entry has no real purpose other than to simply acknowledge my own amazement. I suppose I'm just curious as to the sudden and mysterious jolt of attention, considering I don't really think that this is my best transformation piece. Was it the fact that it was a cow? Was it the boob-focus? Was it the pacing? I mean, I'm far from complaining. If anything I feel honored. I'm just excitedly perplexed, if that's even a viable combination of states-of-mind.

Also, and wholly unrelated to the topic of this journal, is it bad that I want to have a barracuda character for the sole purpose of having a different character call him or her a "barracutie"? I want it. I want it so bad, simply for that one, single sentence. It would complete me.

As some all-too-clever people have pointed out on Skype, I was born twenty-four years ago today, and frankly, I'm glad I have a half-decent reason to shove that crappy, downer journal down into the abyss where it belongs. So woo!

Also, while I've got you here, trapped in this maze of words, I suppose I can go ahead and voice some ideas over which I've been musing.

1.) Streams
I can be found quite often on Picarto, lurking in the chats of some of my favorite artists, and I've considered doing a little bit of it myself. Now, this is really just a feeler, to assess interest, and is by no means a guarantee that anything will come of it. I, personally, haven't ever actually watched someone write, and I've no idea if that's a thing that anyone would even be close to being interested in, but I thought I'd put it out there. Hell, I don't even know how I'd set something like that up, but I'm sure I could manage if anyone would want to watch. Hell, I might try it even if no one wants to. Maybe the possibility of an audience will help motivate me. I dunno.

And I guess I don't actually have a real point two. The stream thing was the only big one I'd been thinking about. Hmm... I swear I had some more planned. I really should write this stuff down as I think of it. I suppose the whole list thing might have been a little misleading. Oh well. I'm sure I'll remember it eventually.

Thanks for reading, and for sticking around with me for all this time. It certainly doesn't feel like its been a year and a half since I've started on this sometimes eccentric and exotic path, but such is the march of time. Here's to one more year.

My, my, my, that was fast, wasn't it? Here I sat upon my mountain of childish arrogance, thinking that I was safe and secure at last after some tumultuous months out of college. I'd been working part-time, barely making my loan payments, but had finally been taken on as a full-time employee, with a wage boost to boot. I loved doing what I did, and I was quite excited for the future, especially since I could afford both food and gas for my commute! A novel prospect, indeed.

And then, because of some fairly unfortunate events that were out of the control of most everyone working for the company for which I, too, was employed, the majority of the employees, myself included, have been laid off, through no fault of myself or anyone else, of course. Alas, here I find myself, pushed back into my parent's home, my original nest once again, embarrassed and floundering, but not quite drowning, at least not yet.

It just wasn't meant to be, I suppose. Perhaps fate has something even more fulfilling in mind for me. Time will tell in the end, as it always does. I just wish that it didn't have to be so dramatic about it.

It's a funny thing, this journal. During my drive home, I thought about what I would say, because I feel that, at the very least, I should offer some sort of explanation concerning what might be happening in the short term of my life, considering it will likely have an effect on the material that I'm able to post, but I really don't know what else to say. At any rate, I felt I owed at least a sliver of explanation to you all, to whom I owe more than I would have originally expected.

Needless to say, I've never had less of an erection than I do in this moment.

And damn, I feel like an apology should be in order toward the handful of new watchers I've gotten over the last few days. (An influx that I'm fairly certain I can trace back to a particular, commission-related event.) I'm sorry that this self-concerned whine-fest is my first communication to you, at least in any official sense, but have no worries. I'm usually a much more chipper person to interact with, I promise. (At least I try to be.)

Ah, c'est la vie, and what will be will be. Back to the job hunt I go, and while I will likely, for the time being, remain an unproductive, horrible piece of garbage, I won't completely stop writing. I can't, not anymore, so there will be more content in the future, including a piece I just finished during some idle hours a few days ago. So there's that. And hey! I get my last paycheck on September fourth, which happens to be the day I was born so many years ago! Happy birthday to me!

TL, DR: Some shit went down, yo, but it's far from the end of the world.

P.S.

After re-reading this, wow, do I sound bitter. Might be the freshness of it in my mind, but a hour can really soothe some feelings, methinks. It's upsetting, and frustrating, yes, and I do feel a little let down, but it's not all as bad as I originally make it sound. I've just suddenly got a lot of work ahead of me, work that I thought I was finished with for a couple years, at least. Naive, I know, but like I said... childish arrogance.

Sigh...

Plus, I think it's high time I shoved down that downer journal anyway.

This past week has been stupid-busy for me. Partially because I had to present to be dismissed from doing "the most important of civic duties", serving on a jury. The rest of the week was swallowed up by meetings and interviews, with a pleasant side-effect. Beginning Monday, my current job is changing rather drastically. I'll be getting a regular schedule, 40 hours a week, with reliable pay that's almost enough to pay my bills and off of which I can almost live comfortably.

Now, the downside of not having to worry about starvation or homelessness is that, naturally, the majority of my week will now be taken up by earning said wage and associated benefits. Therefore, I'm not really going to have as much time to put words onto digital paper as that to which I've grown accustomed. So for now, particularly until I get used to the new schedule, pieces will come with less than average frequency, which brings me to my second point, though it's less of a point and more of a simple observation.

The rate at which I write is slowing down. I'm sure that it was noticeable toward the end of the last year and the beginning of this one. When I get into a groove and words just come to me, I can actually write faster than I ever have. The thing is, I don't find myself in those states of frantic delirium as often as I used to. Now, don't take this admission as stemming from a dearth of ideas or inspiration. If anything, I have more ideas and seeds for stories than ever. And also don't think that this is going to wind up in a decline in drive to write. I want to write more than I ever have before, due in no small part, I'm certain, to you lovely people. I'm just slowing down.

I've given it as well as the causes for this decrease in productivity a significant amount of thought in the past few months, and while the concrete cause would be almost impossible to dig out of all the heaving tides of variables that affect my life, I've considered one or two that might be the most to blame. As I write, I find myself thinking longer and longer about the piece that is under construction before me, where the narrative is going and where its been, what the characters are feeling and how they might react to certain upcoming situations. It was most obvious during the drafting of one of my recent uploads, Valorie - Resolution. Stupid thing took months to write from inception to publishing.

I might think that all this thought may come from a desire to more thoroughly analyse my own style and perhaps find ways to improve, but that might be absurdity and I could just be a babbling idiot. The rare commissioner or requester might know in more detail how this has changed over the past half-year, considering they have more solid information about when a piece is started and when it's draft is completed. My first commission I wrote in two days. My first request was done in even less time. Back then I could easily churn out a story in a day or two, and I did with gusto. And then the stories started to get longer as I experimented, and the stylistic changes stuck. Sure... it took three or four days to finish a story from first word to the submit button, but I thought that sacrifice a worthwhile one, and I still do.

But then three days turned into five, and then into a week, and then two weeks, and I don't know what the fuck happened. I have in-progress commissions that have been in that state for months, damnit! It's shameful and embarrassing to admit, but it's the truth. The worst part is, they haven't just been sitting there, I've actually been actively working at them for most of that time. But then I rethink what I wrote, change a paragraph and then have to propagate those changes through the rest of the tangled mass of semi-connected words. To be honest, it sort of makes me feel... what's the word... impotent, like I'm missing something and it takes me forever to find it before I can really get into a price and jam out a few thousand words in a couple hours. I feel pretty terrible about it overall, but I'm still trying to find a way around or through it. At least today I managed to write quite a bit, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Nnh... I feel like I got a little sidetracked. Oh! I'm going to be fiddling around with, not the way I write stories, as in actually draft them, but the way I organize their creation and the time that goes into them. I might start creating little, super-rough outlines of where I want the story to go in the hopes that a little more structure will keep my mind focused on the task at hand. The end result, if I'm successful, will hopefully be me being able to continue to upload at the rate I've been going at for the past couple months, one every one or one-and-a-half weeks, in spite of having to spend more time at work and not actively writing or staring at a half-completed draft.

Despite all this shenanigan-filled introspection, I'm actually feeling good, really good. If anything, that alone should help mah creative juices continue to flow. Something about the prospect of the security of a regular paycheck does wonders for the sanity, and I'm optimistic for the near future to hurry up and get here.

Sorry for the long-winded whining, and you really don't have to read this if you don't have to (but if you did, Hah!). I see this facet of this website for what it is, a journal, a place to lay down thoughts and observations like this for the future you to perhaps look back on. The fact that this will be shared with a couple other people on the internet, those who might give a hoot about the state of your existence, (or at least what you're capable of putting into their inbox) is just a happy side-effect, I suppose.

I might be back with some more news concerning all this at some later date. Until then, farewell!

As a fair warning, this is going to get a little verbose before it's over. I feel the need to write down some stuff.

Hooooooly Crap. That all happened. As a followup to my previous journal, I went to some distant(ish) relatives to attend a wedding and, overall, get a little time to decompress, You know, general vacation stuff. And for the first week of my trip, that's essentially what it ended up being. I had fun, managed to relax a bit. I went hiking in the Daniel Boone National Forest, even managed to dredge up a little inspiration. Something about deep, rural America is just beautiful. The grass is greener, the people are friendlier, and the food is hella tasty.

I wound up being blindsided by a proposition, at the last minute, to not only attend the wedding, but to help run it. It being the wedding of one of my favorite cousins, I of course accepted. I helped with logistics mostly, but I also got to run the music at the wedding, which was neat because it meant I got to sit in the sound booth of the church in which the ceremony was being held and pretend I was a DJ when all I was really doing was pressing the "next" button on the CD player.

Had fun. Ate too much cake. Wound up attending another wedding that was kind of a surprise, but was also fun. I got to see a lot of people whose company I enjoy, as well as a few people that I'm not a fan of, but c'est la vie.

About a week-and-a-half into the thing is when things started to fall apart.

My grandmother, who has been having increasingly dire health issues over the past few years, too a bad turn while my immediate family and I were up there. She has recovered, but it hit my mother hard. My mother, being confronted with her mother's infirmity and senility, was an inch away from a mental breakdown for the rest of the time. My younger sister is really too young to deal with the sort of pressures that being an emotional crutch entails, which meant that it fell entirely upon me, and since my mother and I were in close proximity for all hours of the day, it drained me emotionally. I'm empty. I'm mentally exhausted.

I came to understand a long time ago that I don't process emotions the same way that some people do. I'm a deeply introverted, introspective person. When I feel something, I need to know why, and I do a lot--some say too much--deep-thinking. Perhaps it's callous of me, but I suppose that I've already come to terms with the mortality of my grandmother, which causes even more strain between my mother and I. Unless I'm pulled out of my shell, (not a hard thing to do, by all counts) I'm not very outwardly emotional, which makes a lot of people, especially those that don't know me very well, assume that I'm not very emotional at all. Which is ridiculous. I smile often, and I laugh even more. I get angry, and I sure as hell feel sorrow. It just doesn't always show, and my mother, who is the exact opposite, has trouble understanding that aspect of my personality, which leads to a lot of questions like, "She's your grandmother, aren't you worried?" and others like, "Why don't you smile more? Are you angry? Oh well you must just hate me, I know you must." Not a question, I know, but easily the most hurtful of all. It's frustrating, not being understood by the people who are closest to me, those who, without hesitation, I would sacrifice everything for.

That didn't help the tension inherent to the situation.

But I eventually had to leave, especially after staying almost a week longer than expected. I got home. I'm here once more, being greeted by the tender arms of the southern Florida summer in its height. 90+ temps and 100% humidity all day, err' day. My house got swarmed with termites. My sister got mauled by fleas on our last day in Kentucky, and today, during my family's weekly ritual of attending my sister's horse riding lessons, I was jumped by a brown widow spider that was the size of my thumb. Nothing like home, I guess.

Oh, also, the Rogue Trader game I'm in had today's session was canceled because of a few no-shows, so there's that. I was really looking forward to it... Damn...

But I guess I'm reaching for excuses to complain now. I'm just tired and cranky. I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to, and I'm all off-schedule when it comes to work and writing both, something that will be remedied as soon as I can feel my feels again.

But hey! It's still Shark Week for a day, right? That means a little something something I fiddled with on the way home. Just gimme a minute to get it up for you guys.

Man... I need a vacation.

(* physically, at least. The rest of me is still catatonic.)

I thought I'd go ahead and let some people know that I'm going to be out for a while. (Away from home, out of town, not necessarily AWOL, but pretty close.) A family member of mine is getting married, and a different family member decided to get married at approximately the same time. I will be attending both of said weddings. Now, normally, this would cause little issue when it comes to the online profile I try to present--being available most of the time, through notes at the very least--but the catch is that this half of my family currently resides within the ass-end of nowhere, Kentucky. I'm talking the "over the river, through the woods, between the mountains and buried so far in the past that I wouldn't really have to look too hard to find someone who thinks that people of a certain shade should still have their own personal restrooms and drinking fountains" sort of nowhere. Needless to say, my access to amenities such as a stable internet connection will be tenuous at best, nonexistent at the (most probable) worst. Now, this doesn't mean I'll be unproductive. I don't need the internet to keep my fingers busy, and there will be plenty of nights that I should be able to write in some musty, questionably clean motel room. In fact, I rather looking forward to taking a little leave from my normal life to visit with my family and devote a little more of my mental fortitude to working on commissions between socializations with the more... rustic half of my family tree,

Now, I don't really receive enough communication to warrant an explanation of what might be my apparent tardiness or refusal to answer your hails, I just thought that those of you who do like staying in touch for whatever reason deserve to know that I'm not ignoring you. Just know that I'm not going to be very reliably available for a couple weeks, for those of you who might wish to speak to me. I don't hate you, I promise. I'm just going to be indisposed for a while. I will, however, when I get the chance, do my best to get on and check up.

Farewell, and do try not to burn anything down in my absence.

Because I'm fairly certain that at least a few people will be noticing it, I suppose I'll go ahead and offer explanation for those of you who might be curious about a few subtle changes to the appearance of some of the stories I've previously uploaded.

In essence, nothing will really change. I'm only doing a few updates to the titles as they are shown in my gallery. (As well as how they are organized in my archive behind the scenes, because when I started this, I didn't anticipate, for whatever reason, actually having so many things to keep track of: my own pieces, references, commissions, requests, (which I haven't forgotten, only put on hold for the time being while I get things caught up and figured out time-wise) and the like.)

Also, I've received more than a couple comments and questions concerning the storyline that has swollen to consume the majority of minor characters that I have created. At first, I used the template of "Character Name - Story Title" to denote a story that concerns the main ongoing plot, hence why the first dozen-or-so stories of mine are all titled with "Valorie - This" or "Daryn - That", because all of my stories from that time were concerned with only a single plot. However, when I finished the collection of stories that I have come to call "Demon's Fall", from Valorie's Procedure to Dawn's Graduation, I branched out a little, trying my first werewolf story as well as another unrelated piece. I fell in love with Venata and her little tale, and I devoted the next couple weeks writing her mini-saga, but at the time, it wasn't really connected with the plight of Valorie and friends... Yet.

Afterwords I wrote a few more stories that definitely took place within spitting distance of the Sanctum Arcanum. I introduced Kathryn and Sage, and I staged Ivy's rescue by Calian. All of these people I intended to be fairly mundane side-characters, each having little really to do with the story as a whole. My problem, you see, begins when I also fell in love with these characters. As I expanded upon their personalities and motivations, I fleshed out their little slices of the world more and more, and as I did, I couldn't help but link their stories to others, even the main strand, via little hints at the happenings behind the scenes, such as they are.

This was my mistake. I've received comments asking what stories to read in order to get a grasp of the story, where to begin and how far to travel, and for a time, the answer was simple: read everything that starts with a character's name in the order that it was posted. Now however, that question isn't so simple, especially given how popular certain characters have become in relation to others. (Luna and Selene, anyone?) I can no longer give the same answer. None of Luna's or Selene's pieces are titled with the name of their operative perspective-carrying character. Neither are Venata, Lily, or Henna's. It's all become frustratingly complicated, especially as more and more characters that I intended to be minor and non-important wind up taking important places in the story, even if it doesn't seem so at first. It's all a tangled snarl as it is, and I'm determined to do something, even a little thing, about it.

Therefore, over the course of the next few days, maybe a week-or-so, I'm going to be overhauling the titles of stories that I have posted. Henceforth, every story that takes place in the universe of the Silver Lance will be labeled by the name of the character that features most extensively in that story's plot. (Usually by carrying the reader on their shoulders via point-of-view.) So now you lovely people can just look for any stories titled by the name of a character you'd like to read about, or perhaps have missed due to my foolishness. So now any random, miscellaneous pieces of mine, such as "Movie Night" or "The Commute" will be separated from the others that may actually weigh in on a more far-reaching plot.

Now, this might be less of a problem than I've made it out to be, because I tag each story with the names of the characters in it. So it's not like it's impossible to find other related stories, though perhaps unreliable and annoying. This is for my own sanity as much as for the reader's convenience. Now if someone reads the name "Ivy" that person can go back and find "Ivy - Occupational Hazards" to read her "origin", or at least her first piece, such as it is.

I suppose this won't be of much use for stories that contain more than a single primary character, but... it's a start.

I'm on a roll with hitting all these landmarks at the same time! Two hundred watchers and seven thousand pageviews on the same day, and Star Wars day to boot! I'm feeling great, aside from allergies driving me up a wall and making it really hard to focus on anything, but not even that's enough to dampen my mood!

All you wonderful people are fabulous! Don't stop being amazing! Squee!

I just didn't want to give it away in the title.

Through some miraculous twist of happenstance, I had the opportunity to attend Megacon today in wonderful Orlando, Florida. I must say, having never attended a con before, that I have never experienced a more delightfully wonderful cross-section of humanity before in my life. It was incredibly short-notice, but I still had a hell of a time. Some of my family went, and it was my father's first con as well. I got a kick out of spending the first chunk of the day trying to explain the concept of "cosplay" to him.

Attended a few panels. Bought some stuff I thought was cool. Ran across a few friends from college I hadn't expected to see, and drank entirely too little water. I am, indeed, hella tired, so Imma maybe sleep a little, then get back to writing and what not. Sorry I've been a little sparse recently. I've been a little busy. However, to avoid ending on a pathetic apology, have one of these.

I learned something today that surprised and made me wonder what mother nature was on when evolution designed a particular animal that I ran across.

But, before I tell you my revelation, allow me to enlighten you as to the process by which I happened upon it. I was doing a little pondering for an upcoming story, the one mentioned in this journal, with the taur, and I was doing some thinking about the species of the characters in question. I'm fairly certain I know what species I want the taur to be based off of, but the second character is kind of a blank slate as far as that's concerned. Usually, when I pick out species from the endless panoply that nature has granted us, I take into account the environment in which the story is set, and the animals that people would be most used to seeing around.

This led me to muse briefly on the demographics of furdom in general. Setting aside the odd hybrid characters and creatures that have no real analogue to anything that belongs in the natural world, one would have to be utterly, completely blind to fail to see the massive, massive favoritism toward four or five species over all the others, the hundreds and thousands that the buffet of life has give us to interact with. Canines, felines (specifically the big cats), equines, (I'll lump bovines into this category because I can, but I don't include the smaller even toed ungulates like sheep and deer of various kinds), and the ever-illustrious dragons. There's a sort of hierarchy that spreads out from this majority into the less commonly seen but still far from rare species, such as the deer and goats and various reptilians and countless others that I don't care to try to list. (Rodents, Insects, Mustelids, even Plants!)

Now, by pointing this out, it is absolutely not my intention to try to detract from the validity of anyone's animal of choice just because tiger #4284 has an extra stripe on his left leg when compared to tiger #7825. Hell, if anything I think it makes a character even better. I feel an idea, even a person or a slice of someone's persona, becomes even stronger if made to stand under the merits of its own soul, what gives it depth, rather than a flashy or initially interesting appearance. This being mentioned, I also don't mean to imply that German Shepard #8453 is any less creative or worthy of thought for the sole reason that it has purple fur because purple resonates with its creator. I'm just saying that appearances aren't everything, and each aspect of something should be considered before passing even the slightest form of judgment.

Ahem... I may have gotten a little off-topic there. What I was trying to say was that I understand why it seems like every other furry is a wolf, or a cat, or a draft horse with big poofy fetlocks. These animals have aspects that can easily be admired, be they loyalty, or strength, or dependability, and this is easy to see for some animals more than others because humanity has spent thousands of years domesticating and training these very same creatures. When you spend a decent amount of ones life around domesticated animals, it gets easier and easier to relate to them, be they pets or livestock, or even the more savage cousins of those animals. (Wolves, Big Cats, and the like.) It becomes a simple task to ascribe to them traits that many people reserve for humans, to anthropomorphize them, if I might drop that word.

This being said, I also try to keep things within the realm of sense. I've got reasons that everyone in most of my stories seems to adhere to the prime majorities listed above. (Foxes! I forgot to mention foxes! There's a shit load of foxes, too. My bad, all you vulpine enthusiasts!) For this point, I bring up location again. Southcliff is nestled smack-dab in the middle of the heartland of Arvandor, on the cliffs that separate the upper plains from the lower plains. The land is mostly flat and relatively featureless, broken by the occasional stretch of woodland. Environments like this lend themselves to: Small herbivores (rodents and such.), the carnivores that feed on them (Cats, mustelids), large herbivores (Deer, Horses, and cattle), and the pursuit predators that feed on them (mostly canines like dogs and their wilder family members). Even with this in mind, I try to keep the diversity up at least a little. There are a lot of horses in and around Southcliff, but there are only a few in my cast. There are even more dogs and wolves, and there are fewer of those in the cast than horses (though that might change). Hell even one of the dogs, Ivy, is a husky. Huskies were not built for temperate plains hunting. Their bodies, especially their distinctly thick, hot fur, are for tundra and taiga biomes, like many of the wolves from which they stemmed. Ivy is a husky because her family hails from north of the Ordis mountains, from the colder regions that would likely be more hospitable for her. Just a little bit of the thought that usually goes into the consideration of a species before i decide on one over another. There needs to be a reason in my head, otherwise I can't deal with it.

Now, that aside, I was trying to figure out what species to make the character that will accompany the taur, and my first instinct was wolf, because it would be an ironic contrast for an ungulate. I like predator/prey, uh... "relations", and I like to play off of that exchange, but there are plenty of wolves in the community as it is, and I've already got a different wolf planned, so I wanted to steer away from wolves. That led me to dogs, and I cycled through several breeds before discarding that idea. Dogs are also something that I already have in abundance. So I dropped further down the food chain, trying to keep it a predator, but just sliding down the ranks of superiority. I went to mustelids. I know I already have one of those as well, in Calian. But I feel like the differential between a giant river otter and, say, a black-footed ferret is enough distance to warrant consideration.

Which brings me to the real point of this entire journal. I dug through a few species of mustelids. I looked at minks and weasels and ferrets, and I eventually decided to take an even greater step and cemented his species as a wolverine, which is technically a mustelid, but looks more like a pint-sized bear than any ferret. Their bulky and stocky, strong for their size and known for taking down prey far in excess of their size. It was the perfect pair for a taur, who will be bigger than him by virtue of having the back end of a purely larger animal.

However, before I settled on the wolverine, I hovered my consideration over the stoat, or ermine, another large mustelid. The reason I disregarded it, and the purpose of this journal, is this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for stoats, under the section for reproduction and development, a reasonable research topic, I imagined, "Prior to the age of five to seven weeks, kits have poor thermoregulation, so they huddle for warmth when the mother is absent. Males become sexually mature at 10–11 months, while females are sexually mature at the age of 2–3 weeks whilst still blind, deaf and hairless, and are usually mated with adult males before being weaned."

Nope.

All kinds of nope.

Damn, stoats, you nasty. Just... Damn, nature, you got issues. At least let them open their eyes first...

Anywho... I'm exhausted, and far too tired to dig through this thing for errors right now. Have my unfiltered thoughts, many of which I likely could have worded better. I'm going to sleep, and I might give this a proofread later. Bon soir.

A bout of curiosity overwhelmed me, and I decided to take a peek around my archive to get a few numbers I'd been wondering at for a little bit.

Here is what I discovered:

Total number of words written (including commissions, requests, and a few things I haven't actually posted.): 826,125 words!

Almost a million! Awesome!

Average story length: 8980 words!

Number of pieces: 92 stories!

Maybe later I'll do a Story Length vs. Time to show how my writing has been getting longer on average since I started. It's a trend I think I'd like to take a peek at outside of a piece-by-piece basis. But that's a task for a later time, I suppose. I'm just gonna go back to writing and keeping my head above the ocean of paranoid fear-mongering that seems to be drowning a lot of people.

Thanks!

Happy Pi Day! While it's still Pi day at least!

Another number related joy: 6000 page views! Cool!

Also... For the time being, I've given 666 comments! Neat!

In other news... I've been feeling pretty good about my writing lately. I sort of wrote myself into a corner with Emma, because I didn't want to write any of her peeps during her... vacation, so I had to just write Emma for a while, which was a little stifling. The good news: That part of the story is nearly complete, which means personal horizons are broadening as far as that storyline is concerned. Woo! I can go back to her friends, and I've got a lot of stories lined up for all kinds of people, lots of development, almost as much gratuitous sex, and some ongoing craziness coming to the beginnings of a head. *Ominous Music*

And to close, some musing:

Should a Naga be considered a taur? Torso of a humanoid, back-end of a legless creature?

How do tauric creatures of bipedal animals work? The first thing to come to mind is a pelican-taur. I laughed for a while, but I imagined a whole lot of imbalanced flailing.

A few people have been rumbling that they'd like to see some taurs from me, either TFs or just there. Would any of you guys like to see some characters of intriguing anatomy pop up. I'm kind of half-planning a tauric character for a short series of side stories who is part of the Southcliff City Guard. (Because I thought through their eyes would be a good opportunity to see Southcliff proper without the lens of magic or draconic arrogance, while throwing in a little something new into the works.)

Just some musing! I'm going to go back to writing. (I actually finished the next of Emma's pieces, but I went to the County Fair today - Yay - and I'm beat, so I'm going to wait to edit and proofread it in favor of some writing and some sleep.) Keep on bein' awesome!

I uploaded my first story a year ago yesterday! Since then, I've gotten more than a hundred fifty watchers and five thousand page views! How exciting! I'm honored to have been allowed to come this far, and it is thanks to you that I was able to continue this madness! I owe you all a debt of gratitude, and only hope beyond hope that I can continue along this path upon which I have set myself! Thank you, from the depths of my heart and with every ounce of dragonfire I am able to muster, thank you. I pray I can continue following the journeys of the characters that have captured my soul, and I hope some of yours.

Thank you.

So much.

Nothing big this time around. I finally manages to set my my Skype account, and I'm trying to be online a little more frequently, so I'm available. If you'd like to ask a question unsuitable for a note, or if you'd just like to chat sometimes, I'm going to see what I can do about being a little more sociable.

I just ask that, before you add me, you fist send me a note so I know whom to expect. Thanks, and hit me up if you see me online and feel like talking! Username's Skabaard, as it is almost everywhere else on the Internet.

So I'm sitting here planning out an equine TF, and I find my brain lingering on hooves. One of the characters has a thing for feet, not quite to fetishistic levels, but certainly an erotic appreciation of them, and I started comparing that to hooves. Would that carry over through a TF? How comparable are hooves to traditional, plantigrade, five-toed feet? I'm as familiar with the structure of an odd-toed unguligrade hoof as I am with the structure of the rest of a horse's body, which is a fair amount, I like to think, but I still find myself musing on the subject. Are hoof-fetishists a thing? I mean... I know this is the Internet, and it would be difficult to find a more appropriate place for such a casual question directed toward people who get off on the foot of an ungulate, and I know that everything is a fetish for someone, but how prevalent is it? I tried googling "Hoof Fetish", but just got a mountain-and-a-half of My Little Pony smut, which, not to knock anyone's kinks, I feel isn't the best method for coming to a reasoned answer to my question. (Question is really too strong a word. It more of just an idle thought, really.)

Now, the feetses aren't my thing when it comes to erotic gratification, and you shouldn't really expect any foot-play from me more hardcore than that little bit between Valorie and Dawn from a while back, but I can't help but admit that I'm curious about the concept. So, to my handful of watchers, I ask innocently: What's up with horse feet? Are they alluring as part of a horse as a whole? Do they, alone, have their own appeal? I imagine a hoofjob would be at the least uncomfortable and at the worst, horrifically painful, but maybe I'm just plain wrong? I dunno, guys. This is just me wondering aloud, I guess. Just some stray thoughts I figured I'd go ahead and give voice to. I suppose that I don't even really expect any answers, so don't feel pressured to respond or anything.

I'm going to go back to writing horse-on-maybe-horse action.

Heck, for some of you, surely, it's already come! Let me know what it's like, alright? I need to know if I have to brace myself or if I can get away with just sliding into it without a fuss.

Resolutons, resolutions... write faster, refine my style. Practice with different persepectives. Meet people, make friends, enjoy being alive. Try new things, be a better person. All the usual, really. The kinds of things that I usually try to do normally, anyway.

That being said, I'm going to take a little break from writing and everything, eat and drink and be with my family. I hope all of you enjoy yourselves with equal or greater enthusiasm and launch into a new year with unrestrained vigor!