I'm happy to confirm that I'm going to be able to attend Furnal Equinox 2014 this year for certain. There was a lot of hemming/hawing/waffling/worrying due to a number of things going on in life that had to be juggled, but I'll be there for Saturday and Sunday, hitting up con panels and going to artist alley for commissions. If you're going and you want to meet a new person, I am very new. This will be my second furry con in as many years. Still working out which one is going to be the other I hit this year.

Soooo, Open Seasons' next chapter is being put together. I had to do editorial work on two projects that will be announced here shortly and am awaiting instructions on a third so Lyrise has had to spend several weeks in mortal danger. That's not changing of course, and when this next chapter comes you should enjoy how she handles things.

One month and a week till FE '14!

Hope your resolutions and party goals are achievable. Or otherwise legendary enough that the attempt was grand.

I had a great year as a writer, and will have some great memories of 2013. The bar gets raised for next year, with some large projects on the horizon. I also want to get a variety of submissions put online for the giggles and the feels.

As for what's in store before the ball drops, well, we're dropping a rabbit! Don't spend your New Years doing what Lyrise is doing, even if you do have the equipment sitting around. She's a professional after all.

The series has had life breathed into it care of the wonderful  Rokemi who completed the work you see to your left in her weekly streaming sketch commission cue. I'd been wanting to commission her work for some time as her dynamic poses and expressive characterization tell stories that stretch past the skin of the digital canvas. I'm honored to have her create the first artwork for one of my favorite scenes in the ongoing Open Seasons series.

Bit of a learning curve getting the image integrated, never having linked an illustration to a story chapter before. I thought I could simply replace the existing thumbnail, but it packed the image into a sexy postage stamp-sized blip at the top of the screen which made resubmission of the chapter necessary. Its no concern that chapters are out of order in the gallery. The links all work and take people where they need to go.

The next chapter in the story will be out some time before Christmas and will feature Lyrise returning to old haunts, both ones she wants to visit, and ones she'd rather not. I'll be shortening the chapter excerpts from here on out to make the story easier to digest for busy readers and to minimize time between chapters.

Happy Holidays!

So much to do...I'm now deciding quite carefully which cons I'm going to go to in 2014, and so far Furnal Equinox and Camp Feral look to be the biggest contenders, with Anthrocon being an iffy (but much desired) third. I'm at that stage in my life where work/family/fun balancing requires logistical planning well in advance. There are lots of people I socialize with on FA and Twitter who I'd love to meet in person, so there will most certainly be road-trips in my future.

I've finally bitten the bullet and commissioned my first large art piece, which will be featured here soon. If you follow the writing I put in here you can guess it's related:)

And speaking of which...I feel I may have put a lot of behind-the-scenes machinations into the last chapter of Open Seasons, but the blue line around the icon confirms there was not a lot of 'action' in it. I'm cooking up a little side story to make up for that to be released soon.
Just to tease, Job interviews for some people can be somewhat personal and, let's face it, invasive.

So after extended hiatus the latest chapter of Open Seasons is up. Secrets have been building up in this story for a while and it's time to start shedding some light on things, both the leads Lyrise is chasing and the ones she seems determined to ignore.

Heading to Washington DC on Sunday for the start of a week-long vacation now that the government shutdown is over. I leave both invogarated and excited, not just for the vacation itself, but because of amazing news on the writing front that I probably won't get to reveal until several months into the new year.

Secrets everywhere...

I've literally been wall-to-wall on a large project that will be going out before the end of the week, ducking just under the editorial deadline, so my FA page has been a ghost town for the last little while. Won't be for long.
Next chapter of Open Seasons is being finished and will be the start of slightly shorter (story elements depending) morsels that will come more frequently as Lyrise' plot thickens.
Big news on the horizon! For details, please see the horizon:). I promise that as quiet as this page has been, there will be less teasing and more pleasing in the near future.
-Slip

Wow, it's been a long layover since my last post. I'm racing to finish a story with a submission deadline in three days and have to get certain personal things taken care of before the fall. Then back to the big project, and two other stories with deadlines approaching. So business as usual really.

Oh, and: The next instalment of Open Seasons will see Lyrise growing suspicious at certain secrets being kept within the agency while her inquiries into the past affairs of Donovan Filst get her deeper into trouble.

Enjoy the last few days of summer.

Lyrise will be returning within the next day or so. Her plate is full with another job even though she has problems to work through. Did you guess that she doesn't sleep well? You could guess why, but you wouldn't be entirely right.

Outside of the turmoil that Lyrise faces, new developments are...developing. Im very pleased to say that I have great news that I'm quite proud of! Watch this space for details in the next month or so for details.

Happy Sunday:)

That is the single instance in which I will use all-caps.

Hope everybody has a raucous and wild 1st of July. And if you aren't Canadian then I do beseech you to have a drink and a rumpus of some kind anyway as Independence Day or whatever major national holiday you have before you would benefit from a dress-rehearsal celebration, which Canada Day affords quite handily.

Stay tuned to this space for the next instalment of Opens Seasons, coming in a week or so. Lyrise tries to lose herself in her work to get things that are haunting her off her chest. But that puts even stranger things...on her chest.

Make it a memorable CD!
-Slip

I'll be working on a project tonight while releasing one chapter after another of Open Seasons, roughly an hour apart. All available chapters should be fully up by 10:00 Eastern.

Lyrise looks forward to making you comfortable, providing you give her what she wants...

---

All constructive criticism is highly appreciated. This ongoing, serialized story contains explicit sex, bondage, power games, role-reversal, high tech-espionage, supressed memory, 'un'supressed urges and occasional violence.

So I think I know what started the fire last night. Apparantly changing the file name in a resubmission doesn't change the original URL link, so I have to delete the entry and re-submit. I'll be doing that tonight as a full relaunch, with the unweildly long (but exciting!) first chapter divided into Chapter's 1 and 2. Chapter 3 is joining the party.

Also, having bandied titles around for some time, I'm going with OPEN SEASONS as the series title (which doesn't mean exactly what you think it does...)
The new title thus uncrowns OBLIGATIONS, which did not lean towards suggesting an erotic espianage thriller but rather hinted at house-chores that had to be done so as to make you learn some level of responsibility.
To time things right, I'll be grand re-releasing the series this evening.

Well, I wanted to submit the third Chapter in the Obligations series, but I seem to be having trouble with that. Ticket sent to fix it, but in the mean time, chapter two is a broken link and three is tapping its foot in the press-room.

As things are, I'm going to probably re-launch the whole thing, break the excerpts down and give this a less cumbersome, clumsy title. "Obligations" is technically a theme carrying through this story, but that was originally meant to be just the prologue capper, and I think I'll need something better, something sexier.

As for portioning, who the hell is reading 6000 words of this in one go anyways?

In a day or two...

It's been three stories since I've posted here, as in three seperate projects that have been fully drafted and either reached completion or come pretty close. A lot of my stuff needs extra eyes, and I hope to solicit some help in a few forums where writers are searching for second opinions of the critical variety.

Just got back from a couple days in Niagara falls where I decided to fight a high-tide of writers block with some Saturnalian abandon. I don't write drunk, but sometimes a week off the rails helps reboot the system. Now my first draft for a story with two possible destinations is completed and its finally time to look in on Lyrise, a bunny who is stirring up trouble for herself in ample proportions. There will no doubt be some edits to the first two instalments online in the next coming months as the tale unfolds.

Lyrise stopped by the apartment and showered. Wolf musk rose on the steam and she kept her mind as blank as the tiles around her. Despite her recovered calm sleep wouldn't find her, not for awhile. She really shouldn't be alone...

You have to let go of the life you planned so as to live the life waiting for you, so they say like they know anything. This year has been dicey so far with unavoidable obligations that are creating large gravity wells, both personal and financial. Writing is like an ocean of glass-like calm in the middle of it all; you write, you send and either an editor accepts or constructively declines and you sail on. I'm pretty sure that if I didn't have writing to fall back on, I'd be addicted to something bad for me (assuming writing isn't bad for me-don't all addicts tell themselves that the object of their obsession isn't the problem, that its the world that is misaligned around it?) I just know that with at least three editorial inboxes touched at all times as a minimum, I feel fulfilled. Its the safest addiction to have, really.
There's a theme to explore there...

I have another deadline to hit, then I'm going to check in on Lyrise. She has some nagging worries that followed her out of her last assignment, and will have to delve in office politics to get what she needs.
Office politics? How boring is that...
Well, when your office is a spy agency fronted by an escort service, not so much: )

Its annoying but strangely exciting when a story idea is beckoning for your attention from the wings while the one you're still working on is teetering around the page, trying to find itself. Inspiration follows no schedules. In a couple days another anthology submission straps on its pack and helmet before leaping out of the plane and pulling the cord. Hope I managed to give it an emergency chute to compensate for any major flaws. Preferably one not made out of bullshit growing up/danger seeking metaphors.

Coming soon, Lyrise the seductive and sultry rabbit does a little legwork, some of it investigative...

Eat some chocolate, feel no guilt. Just don't get too frisky with the bunny...

Furnal Equinox '13 was a blast! Got to meet some amazing people, buy some wonderful books from the fledgling Canadian outlet Bookshelf Bear (which means the Texas mail hub won't be holding onto my FurPlanet and Sofawolf orders for the lifetime of some small pets anymore) and meet the incredible artist Rukis in person, who I would have loved to buy more from had I not blown my wad on buying Kyell Gold and Kevin Frane stuff from the afore-mentioned Bears. I did grab a copy of Heretic from Rukis though, and look forward to reading that after I hurtle through the Out Of Position series.

Merch'ing aside, I was also privileged to meet  thadiuseffingham who ran two amazing panels, one on the writing process and a storytelling session in which he read two tales from his formidable arsenal.

I also had a con badge done for me by  amoryllis which you'll see a scan of in my gallery. Check her work out.

All in all, I look forward to hitting FE again next year, when they will have a circus theme, and hopefully not running into any clowns. They are evil and difficult to kill without the proper tools.

P.S. Part two of Lyrise' tale of intrigue, espionage and exploration (self and otherwise!) is now up.

Be wonderful to someone tonight.

I'm really excited about going to FE this year. Due to a couple work commitments I can only get down for the Saturday, but most of the panels I want to attend are running that day, so it should be quite the experience.
Its ironic that I've been a furry for most of my life, but never had the opportunity to attend a furry con before. I've done a couple writer's cons, and a handful of 'Treks, but the furry cons always fell on a weekend I couldn't free up for one reason or another.
I'm gonna be the only greenhorn in the Greymuzzle room. It's gonna be interesting...

Hope to see you there; Mississauga represent!

Oohh Gawd, what a week! Two birthdays and a full family day. Fun will keep you occupied, not that I'd ever complain.

Back to fighting blank pages. I know that I don't exactly have anyone tapping their foot for Obligations part 2, but that's to be expected as two pages can only entice someone if there are actual stakes involved, which there aren't yet. I'm gonna split the next chapter into two parts so anybody moseying on by won't have to wait a month to see something

---

Today's fun fact. If cows laugh hard enough, milk does in fact come out of their noses.

Finished one story and I'm on to the next one. Looking forward to seeing where my current project takes me, both the short that's due in under two months and the story that's building out of the snippet I've posted here, which is lonely, lets be honest. I promise the wait will be worth it though...

I wrote the Obligations bit as a little writing experiment between editing sessions on larger stuff I've been working on, but some things jumped out for me in regards to this seemingly vulnerable bunny who is anything but. Of course there are alot of ways in which one can be vulnerable, inwardly and outwardly. The distinctions will be fun to play with.
I'm going ahead with that one and will be working on the first chapter of her story over the next week. Looking forward to seeing where I can go with this one...

Like many writers, I have lots of ideas and a poor filtration system for deciding what to run with and what to shelve. I had an idea for a rabbit among wolves a little while ago and wanted to figure out exactly what level of ruthlessness would be required for a herbivore to survive in a world of intrigue and danger. Her weapons are wits and wiles. Need she anything else? A short introductory snippet is up for appraisal by your critical eye...

Today I'm doing final read-through on a story that I've been polishing with a bloody rag for two weeks. I've broken its neck and massaged it back to life twice. I don't think I'll serve it any better to keep it at my side, so I'm sending it out ahead of the deadline provided this final pass doesn't show a crack somewhere, in either it or me.
I'm hopeful for this one. I case a magazine like I'm going to rob it before I ever send a thing, and I can pretty much recite the anthology requirements from memory at this point.

From there its deep into the big project, a serial work that will turn up in monthly instalments on FA, probably starting later this month. I've already written a third of the first chapter and I'm excited by the possibilities. The outline is about halfway done. Sooner than that, I'll have an apertif or two poured. Watch this space!

I'm working on a little thing that could be big thing to put on here in serial form. Just as soon as I get my current project under wraps I'll be starting hard work on it. Right now just putting together characters, hashing out the plot. Should be fun! I've been editing now for three straight weeks and it feels great to change gears again...

Im Working on something I'm sending to an anthology, and wouldn't you know it, i just couldn't put this thing in an envelope. I've been editing for over a week and something has sat very sternly on my brow whenever I get into the last act. It took until this morning for me to realize what it is. The ending is complete crap!

For one character it makes sense. The heroine goes through a lot that makes a fatalistic hubris-loaded destiny acceptable and understandable. It was preferable to the one that beckoned her, and somewhat of a victory. (Gender politics of ancient times are involved). But the other protagonist has absolutely no call to accept the same fate. His acceptance of "it" was so out of character that he was basically following stage directions, becoming a passive actor. He got away from me, and demands more, for both of them.

I've scrapped the entire final act and have to rewrite it, and I'm actually excited about this. The ending I have now actually makes me feel I've been true to both characters, and its just a better finale in general. A character left the page and rescued me. It's a great feeling when that happens.