Hey there Tasties, I hope things are going well.

I also hope you haven't forgotten me, and I'm only half-joking when I say that. I've been focusing on this big secret project of mine for so long now, and it's been forever since I posted a shiny new story for all to enjoy. Sorry about that.

I miss the way that people would get so happy to see a new chapter in whatever it was I was posting, the way I'd hear that other people love my characters as much as I do. And yes, of course, I miss the part where people would post extremely flattering comments complimenting my skills, that part was always fun, hehe. :B

If it helps, I really am making a lot of progress. The project is divided into ten parts, and I've finished with four of them so far, working my way through the fifth one. I know, I know, "almost halfway there" isn't a fun thing to hear after three months, but I suppose 4/10 has to happen at some point before 10/10 can happen. Progress is being made each and every night, you can believe it.

Last month's experimental 'community story' didn't really work out, each website only got a handful of responses before things tapered off. I suppose that kind of thing would really work better on a forum or a message board. I'd like to thank the few people who did post responses, since it was fun to see people build on the prompts. Maybe I'll have to take those ideas and build them into stories myself at some point.

I just wanted to post this to let you know things are moving along, but I suppose I'd better get back to it now. Mysterious projects don't finish themselves, after all (Though it would be badass if they did).

Stay cool, folks.

JOURNAL OVER.

Hey there, Tasties. How's it going?

Don't answer that, it was rhetorical. :B I've got something more fun in mind anyway. I'm still hard at work on this Mysterious Project of mine, but it would be nice to get something posted for April, so I thought I would try something new and ask you guys for help. n_n

I'm gonna post the first five lines of a story, in order to set the scene, and the first person who wants to can post the next five lines in the story, which can be whatever he or she wants, within reason (see below), and then the next person posts the five lines after that, and so on and so forth.

Just for starters, let's not go ridiculous with this, having aliens show up and grant the characters superpowers sure would be exciting, but it would kind of derail the plot to the Nth degree. So if we could try and keep things relatively sane, that would be great.

Secondly, let's keep this entirely out of the realm of fanfiction, if you don't mind. So, as entertaining as such things might be, no suddenly teleporting the characters to the land of Equestria, or having Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde suddenly kick in the door with an arrest warrant.

Please keep in mind that I reserve the right to delete your contribution if I feel it is obscene. Or, rather, that it is obscene in a way that I find distasteful. Not to put too blunt a point on it, but it's my journal, so we play by my rules. For convenient reference, please consult my commission yes/no list found here.

Other than that, I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with in this impromptu collaboration. :B

Oh, and just as a suggestion, when you've finished writing an entry out, you might want to Copy the text and F5 the page, just to make sure nobody else has slipped into that spot while you were typing, in order to avoid double-posting and confusion.

ANYWAY, without further ado, here's the beginning of this little experiment.

The Confession
By Green and the Tasties*
*not a rock band

Randall paced in his bedroom, wringing his hands together nervously. Today was the day, the chipmunk told himself, the day he was finally going to tell Angie how he really felt about her. She got him better than anyone else alive, surely she would understand when he told her how much he loved her. He'd told a girl how he felt once before, and even though it hadn't worked out in the long run, surely that should help with the nervousness he now felt. Of course, the last time he'd confessed his feelings to a girl, she hadn't been his little sister...

Incidentally, because I have a presence on three different furry sites, I've prepared three different prompts for Fur Affinity, SoFurry, and Inkbunny, in the flavours of M/F, M/M, and F/F, respectively. Feel free to check those out if you've got accounts there, too. n_n

EXPERIMENT... JUST BEGUN.

Hey guys, seems I haven't posted a journal since the Year in Review post for 2016. Oops. Feels like I do less of these every year, I should try and turn that around...

Anywho, I'm posting this because I almost have an announcement to make. What I mean by that is that for the last couple years, I've been working on something between stories and in my spare time - you may have seen me reference my "mysterious side project" in journals or on Twitter - and after all this time, it's finally, finally almost time for me to make a public announcement about it.

The problem is that this last stage to finish things up has kind of been eating up most of my focus lately. It's why the stories for January and February were short, simple one-offs, and it's why even though I've started one, it's looking like I won't finish a similar story in time for March. It doesn't help that part that I didn't come up with a concept until the 15th, admittedly.

So I'd like to ask you to bear with me for the immediate future while I put most of my attention into this other thing I'm working on. The stories I post online won't be particularly complex, and there might be issues on the scheduling, but I'm gonna keep on trying, and I think you guys are going to be very happy once I can finally share the news about my side project. n_n

I hope things are going well for you, and I thank you for your understanding.

ANNOUNCEMENT OVER.

Okay, so 2016 was a pretty awful year, all things considered. But it did have its moments of brightness, and I like to think my skills have improved from the oodles of writing I accomplished. I could have done without the habit of getting the stories up right in the nick of time for the monthly deadline, though, some wiggle room would be nice. :B

Completely by coincidence, it has been exactly one year since I looked at how I did in 2015, so I would say that means it's time to do my annual round-up, Tasties!

January
Eric, Milo, and Anne: Just Between Us Siblings: The year gets off to a promising start with a tale of the Thompson siblings celebrating Milo's birthday, leading to Eric and Anne indulging the gentle-natured shepherd in a particularly delicious sandwich. It's always fun revisiting the Thompsons, and this was a lovely opportunity to expand on canine culture, as well as showing Eric and Anne in a more laid-back mood, less prone to teasing Milo (which he greatly appreciated, let me tell you).

February
Satisfaction Guaranteed: A relatively short story, particularly by my ever-increasingly lengthy standards, with a straightforward premise about a horse gentleman being seduced by a female bear employee at a department store, and the fun they get up to in a changing booth. Not much to say here, this was just a fun, smutty short I thought I'd use to take a break from all the longer stories I'd been writing. I did like the mild twist, I must say... n_n

March
Services: Escape Clause: Finally a proper revisit of 2012's spectacular Services, this story sees Colton the nervous Mokaji and Kenrai the Dragon merc getting to know each other better as they plan out their strategy to free Colton from the forces conspired against him. Naturally, it isn't long before the historian's past starts catching up with him... Coming back to this particular story of Rilodell was an intimidating but ultimately rewarding task, I really enjoyed letting the personalities of such different characters play off each other and build up the steadily growing warmth between them.

April
Her Number One Fan: Inspiration: To celebrate my 1000th watcher, I wrote this sequel to the story that celebrated my 100th submission to the site, Her Number One Fan. After finally hooking up with the attractive brother who inspired her taboo tales of 'cesty fun, Sophia "CheekyWinter" Adair finds her ability to come up with new concepts severely compromised, and fears she's become too happy and satisfied to be truly creative. Writer's block is something I know all too well, so this was an interesting story to write.

May
Coming Together: A commission for  asdfjkl03 (gesundheit ), this is the third and so far final tale of Yori Hartmüt and his tribal friend Running Water, now all grown up and dealing with adult things, like Yori's fledgling boxing career... or Ran's deep-seated longing to become closer to Yori than just friends. Writing adult characters I'd previously written as children was an interesting challenge, and I find I quite enjoyed it.

June
A Spirited Night: A commission for  FriskeCrisps, this story sees his fursona Crisp dealing with a rash of public embarrassments and rather vivid wet dreams, culminating in the realization that his new toe rings are haunted... and the affable otter ghost who dwells in them finds the wolf extremely appealing. I don't really have anything clever to comment on here, sometimes a commission is just a commission. :B

July
Between the Lines: A commission for  Irreverent in which we are introduced to Mike Bridger, a human trying out an interspecies relationship for the first time, and the fun he gets up to when his new zebra girlfriend Bailey reveals that he's actually been dating both her and her identical twin Hailey, and that the two mares intend to share him. This one was especially fun to write, I must say, and was an interesting new dynamic to work with.

August
The Nighthawk: A commission for  sdsmillar in which his doe character Cara takes her fox boyfriend Jason on a flight to a small, cozy town so they can spend some much needed time together... and they don't even make it to the fancy restaurant where they've got a date set up before they find they can't keep their hands off each other. Doing character development for someone else's characters turned out to be exceedingly difficult, but fortunately I found a way to make it work in the end.

September
FAIL: Yes, that's right, for the first time since 2011, I failed to get anything released in a month at all. I look on the bright side, in that I had four solid years since the last one, and I missed five stories in 2011. Not to mention, The story I was working on really did benefit from being delayed into October instead of being rushed out to make it in September. And hey, if nothing else, it fits the mood of the rest of the year, eh? :P

October
The Road Less Travelled: This commission for  Psyphix represents the most leeway I've ever been given in a commission, in that he said he wanted a brother-sister incest story, and I could do anything as long as the brother was the one who made the first move on the sister, and the characters were red pandas named Patrick and Jill. This one took a lot of work, and it almost made me crazy in parts, but I'd say the end result is one of my better works, and I happily stand by it.

November
On the Beat: A commission for  BronsonTwist, telling the story of Australian cop Bronson and his new partner, Comet, as they go out on patrol to keep the city of Melbourne safe and crime-free. Naturally, things don't quite go according to plan... This was an interesting one, partially because I knew almost nothing about police procedures, and partially because I was writing about a foreign culture. Fortunately, Bronson was able to provide lots of handy information about both issues, and he seemed pretty pleased with the end result.

December
Curse of the Shieldfall: The Lord of the Swamp: Just like 2015, we finished the year off with a shiny new chapter in this fantasy tale of noblewoman Ariella Shieldfall and her companion, the wizard Thaniel, as they come ever closer to breaking the curse that lingers on Ari's family. This time, they discover that the evil magic on the gauntlet they seek has created a horrible creature that stalks the bogs of Milgram's Marsh... and confronting it may be the only way they'll ever find the Midnight Hand. It's always fun writing banter between the characters in this story, and it was nice to expand a little on the mysterious Ben Calhoun.

While celebrities were dropping in droves and the world seemed to be on the verge of tearing itself apart, at the very least I can take comfort from the fact that I got a lot of solid writing done in 2016, which surely improved my skills. I only missed one month out of twelve, I satisfied a lot of commissioners, and I got three opportunities to write combat scenes (in March, November, and December), something that's normally very rare for me, so that's good practice. All told, I'm not sorry to see 2016 go, but at least it wasn't a total wash. Now, of course, the time has come to look forward, so here's hoping I can keep writing stories that all of you Tasties can enjoy, and that we all work together to make 2017 a much better year than its predecessor!

Happy belated New Year, you lovely bunch of people. n_n

ANNUAL RITUAL OVER.

It sucked.

Just wanted to post a quick message to wish all you Tasties a Merry Christmas! n_n

Just so we're clear, that's not me excluding other holidays, that's me including you in my celebration.

But just in case, I hope you all have a happy Diwali, happy Kwanzaa, and happy Hanukkah, too! If I missed anything, have a great "that", too, hehe!

It's my favourite time of year, and with my family all around and a good story to be worked on, I feel especially blessed. Thanks for contributing to that guys, and have a happy holiday season. n_n

SEASON'S GREETINGS OVER (until New Year's :B)

Goodness me, tasties, how the time does fly.

It feels almost surreal to be sitting here writing these words, and yet, there it is: today marks my 10th FAnniversary.

Yes sir, it was on December 3rd, 2006 when I sat down at this very desk, made up a username out of nowhere that was different from the ones I usually use, and started my existence as TastesLikeGreen. n_n

At first, I was a pure lurker, just using the account so I could look at all the "sweet, delicious porns" on offer here, but eventually I started leaving comments on images I really liked, began +Watching artists who seemed consistently awesome, and in early 2008, I even made up a crappy MSPaint usericon, to make me stand out a little from all the other lurkers with their "mug full of drawing utensils" icons.

Then, on May 23rd, 2008, I made my first actual submission to the site, a document I called "Meet Vincent" with information about my fledgling fursona, his "Makoji"[sic] species, and the world he lives in, most of which is no longer entirely accurate, hehe. Fortunately, it wasn't long before my first real submission, a story most of you know very well called Nocturnal Intermission that went up that August. The rest, as they say, is history. n_n

It has been a strange and somewhat bumpy ride these last ten years, practicing and expanding my writing skills, weaving tales of love and goofiness and adventure and of course, tenderly doing The Deed, and along the way I made friends, worked my way through troubled and difficult times as well as happy and delightful times, had at least three notable bouts with writer's block, and learned things about myself and the world.

When I first signed up for this site, it was honestly just so I could look at furry smut, and yet ten years later, there are a thousand people watching me, I've posted my work to not one but three different furry sites, people say they genuinely look forward to my stories, and I've even been recognized in the occasional livestream. Life is funny that way, eh? XD

It's been an interesting, unforgettable journey since the end of 2006, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for choosing to join me on that journey. It has been, and it continues to be, my genuine honour that people enjoy my work enough to read it, to fave it, and even to leave comments on it, and I thank each and every one of you who have ever looked at one of my stories (Even if you, ah, didn't make it all the way to the end. ). I hope to still be sharing stories with you guys ten years from now, and I hope they'll only get better and more entertaining along the way. n_n

For once, let's do a less caps-locked finish to a journal!

Yours truly,
~TastesLikeGreen.

Hello all,
I feel the need to apologize to you fine readers, since it's the last week of September, and I don't think I'm going to be able to get a story published. I'm working on a story, but it's proving trickier and more complicated than expected, and since I haven't even gotten into the proofreading stage, I might as well call a spade a spade.

So with that in mind, I thought I would try and fill the gap with a specially-designed computer program that will use an advanced algorithm to generate the sexiest story in the world. Without further ado, here are the results of those efforts!



Hmmm... In retrospect, maybe I should have specified that the target audience wasn't the program itself. Oh well, better luck in October, I suppose.

_{(Disclaimer: In case it wasn't obvious, that was actually a music video by the talented Mr. Weebl, not something I magically pulled out of the aether using a computer program)}


While I have your attention, some of you may have noticed me making mention on occasion of a ~Mysterious Side Project~. Well, something has come up with that recently and I find myself in need of help, adding some lettering to a piece of art. I was wondering if one of my loyal fans might have some skill in that regard, or know someone who does that they could point me toward. Any help would be appreciated.

That being said, I hope your month has been great, and I hope we can enjoy next month together. n_n

JOURNAL OVER.

I just wanted to make a quick post to say that although most of them haven't been finalized, I am actually in discussions with six commissioners.

Since I opened up talks with the sixth one without realizing it, I thought it would be fair to add an extra slot under the circumstances, but I just wanted to announce that for the time being, I won't be able to accept any more pitches. If some of these negotiations don't work out, I may re-open those slots, but right now, I'm full up.

Now if you'll excuse me, oh my GOD do I need sleep. z_z

-JOURNAL OVER

Hey guys! I realized I never posted a journal to mark the occasion that the 8th was my 31st birthday. Whoops! :B

I had a pretty good day, spent some time with my family and went to see the new Captain America movie. Wasn't as mind-blowing as I hoped it might be, but it was still pretty rad.

I also wanted to mention that I noticed a curious mistake with the versions of Worlds Apart and Going Home posted here on Fur Affinity. For some insane reason, in a bunch of places where the letter E follows the letter U in a word, the E was removed, so tongue becomes tongu, unique becomes uniqu, and true becomes tru, among other embarrassing examples. This is the first I'd realized it in eight and six months, respectively, and I'm almost certain it has to do with the protagonist's name.

The main character's name is Yori Hartmüt, but the FA text display doesn't handle umlauts well (the ü in Hartmüt), just renders them as the ugly question-marks-within-diamonds that are the bane of every writer on FA's existence. So when I posted those stories here, I used find-and-replace to swap every ü with a regular u, and I think that must have somehow interpreted "ue" as "ü", because the mistake is so regular and so common it's the only thing I can think of, not to mention that the versions I posted on SoFurry and Inkbunny don't have that error.

So I wanted to sincerely apologize, both to  asdfjkl03, the commissioner of those stories, and to everyone who's read them here on Fur Affinity, since that's below my usual level of professionalism. I went and fixed all the examples I personally found the other night, but there might be more mangled 'ue' words hiding in the text that I didn't find.

Finally, wanting to end on a more positive note, I'll just mention that I've started working on commissions (funnily enough, the first one on the list is also for asdfjkl03), and that aside from stressing myself out as I contemplate some of the pitches I've received, things are actually going pretty well so far, knock on wood. Speaking of which, I'd better get back to it, since those words won't write themselves (even if it would be kinda rad if they did :B).

JOURNAL OVER.

Just like it says in the subject line, I just wanted to make it official: I'm open for story commissions again.

(Most of this stuff was in the previous announcement, but I want it here so I can link to it for convenience's sake)

The way this works is that you get in touch with me by sending me a PM on my accounts at Fur Affinity, SoFurry, or Inkbunny, and you give me the basic gist of the story. Maybe you've got all the details worked out, maybe you've just got an idea you want me to run with, I've worked with both kinds of concepts.

This is not first-come-first-served: I take offers on a case-by-case basis, and I'll have to hear your idea before I know whether or not I can take you on as a customer. Unlike the last time I did this, I finally worked out a list of things I will and will not write about, which you can find in this new journal here: The Do's and Don'ts. However, I will be writing commissions in the order in which I confirm things to the commissioner.

I charge $40 Canadian (CDN) for a 10,000 word story, though I will not hold that number as an absolute deadline, and will give some wiggle room slightly above or below if the story requires it. No asking for gigantic epics, though, unless you're planning on breaking it down into one 10K word chapter at a time and paying for them separately. Cetacean Vacation (Warning: contains M/F incest) is a good example of the length you're looking at.

This time, to keep myself sane, I'll be running five slots, perhaps more if there's a lot of interest.

Here's hoping we can do business.

This has been a long time coming, so I'll keep it simple: these are for the sake of potential commissioners, to know if I'll work with them or not. Don't be afraid to ask about something that isn't on the list, I take every offer on a case-by-case basis anyway. I reserve the right to edit and update these lists at any time without notice.

The No List - Things I will not write for commission under any circumstances

-Nonconsensual Concepts (rape, slavery, forced transformation, aggressive mind control, etc.)
-Death with a sadistic focus (I will write people dying of illness or in action scenes as part of a story, but I will not write "snuff" porn, where someone dies so someone else can get off to it)
-Vore (any orifice, any level of "hardness")
-Cub/Underage (Not judging, just prefer not to write it myself)
-Fanfiction (If I'm gonna do it, I'd rather it be for me)
-Parent/Child Incest
-Bondage/BDSM/Aggressive domination
-Watersports/Scat
-Macro/Micro stuff or Hyper elements
-Cheating/Cuckolding
-Torture

The Yes List - Things I will most likely be very happy to write
(Note that I don't require any of these things to be in a story, I just really like them. :B)

-Incest (except parent/child)
-Cuddling
-Romantic angles (I'm a sucker for confessions of love :B)
-Light-hearted teasing
-Underwear play
-Pegging (a male character receiving anal sex from a female character wearing a strap-on dildo)
-"That Milo Thompson thing where someone is embarrassed by what's happening but secretly loves it, and their partner knows it." n_n

Additionally, I am comfortable writing about straight, gay, and lesbian couples, and will also write hermaphrodite characters, but for the time being, I'll pass on "cuntboi" and "futanari" characters. Also, because it is a real-life concept I understand very little about, and I wouldn't want to offend anyone, I'm not yet comfortable writing about transgendered characters.

Hey guys, I'm just working feverishly on proofreading the latest story to try and beat my self-imposed deadline, and I thought I'd take this time to let y'all know:

I'm going to re-open for commissions after I get this story posted.
Just to refresh your memory, I take offers on a case-by-case basis, and I'll have to hear your idea before I know whether or not I can take you on as a customer, but a look through my gallery should tell you the kinds of things I'm most comfortable writing. :B

I charge $40 Canadian (I believe PayPal has an auto-conversion tool for convenience's sake) for a 10,000 word story, and although I don't exactly have oodles of past commissioners, I'm pleased to note that I've got a pretty good track record of satisfied customers. I've done commissions where someone lays out, beat by beat, exactly what they want to see in their story, and commissions where someone gives me a basic idea and tells me to go nuts with it (though these have always been topics I was always personally interested in). I've even had cases where someone paid me money to push one of my own series to the top of the production list, because they couldn't wait for the next chapter. n_n

So if we've already talked about getting a commission going once I re-open, give me a shout, and if you've been waiting for this so you could get a story from me, get your ideas in order so you're ready when I officially re-open.

I didn't mean to stay closed for so long, to be honest, I just kept coming up with ideas for my own stories I wanted to pursue, but it's good to be getting back to business, get some spare dollaridoos in my pocket.

ANNOUNCEMENT OVER.

Hey guys, no real 'point' to this one, it's just been a while since I addressed you fine readers (really need to come up with a better term to address you with >_>) and I thought I'd check in.

I'm in the midst of working on a story, as usual, but I thought I'd break from my usual tradition of mystery and surprise, mostly because I already told you as much on that April Fool's joke I posted, and outright tell you guys that it's called "Her Number One Fan: Inspiration". It's coming along nicely so far, and I hope to have it ready for you well before the cows come home, knock on wood.

Fun fact: Whenever I say or write the words "knock on wood", I actually rap my knuckles against my desk. I'm not even sure if it's real wood, but it's got a wood texture on it, and hopefully that's close enough. :B

I saw Batman vs. Superman on Sunday, and I finally saw Zootopia on Tuesday, so I'm all caught up with movie references in my social circles. The former wasn't actually as bad as I was lead to believe by the reviews. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, not even amazing, but it was pretty good. The latter, on the other hand, was just as awesometastic as I had heard, and I had hoped. I'm just sorry it took me so long, since it's all I can think about today and the enthusiasm everyone else holds for it seems to be dying down. Alas.

No, seriously, Try Everything has been stuck in my head all day, and I keep imagining what my boy Vinnie would look like in the Zootopia style. I guess like a white, fluffier Nick Wilde with "dyed" patterns in his fur and a green tongue, really. Though going by the trends I saw in the motion picture, I guess he wouldn't be called Vincent Linus since it's not some kind of "animal kingdom" pun. :B Probably something more along the lines of "Vincent Vulpin". No points for guessing which district the arctic fox would live in, though. n_n

My vague, mysterious side project is still coming along nicely, and I can't wait for the day when I can discuss it publicly, but I guess for now I'll just have to settle for teasing you with these unsatisfying roundabout references.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge that yes, I really should re-open for commissions soon, since I've got people ever-so-politely waiting in line for it (no really, there are offers), but I'm afraid I can't put a precise date on that just yet. My bad. ._.;

Other than that, I hope you're all doing well, and that you have a great day/night/whatever after reading this!

JOURNAL OVER.

Hey guys, remember how I said I was working on a story for February that got pushed into this month, and how I hoped it would be done soon? Whoops. :B

As it happens, with more time to work on it, I ended up realizing that the story could stand to be revamped a bit, so I took a few days to go back and trim out a lot of fluff while replacing it with stuff that worked better, and added more worldbuilding and storytelling to go with the character focus and lovings. As fun as they are, those aren't the entire focus of this particular story, after all.

Just wanted to let you know that I haven't been sitting on my hands this whole time, and while I apologize for the delay, I really am closing in on the end now, and I believe the end product will be worth the wait. n_n

JOURNAL OVER.

Soooo I kinda screwed up, guys.

I was working on a nice, long, juicy story, and it's one that I've been putting off for far too long, but I got so fixated on finishing it for February that I made a mistake. I got tunnel visioned on whether or not I could finish writing the story by the end of the month, and forgot all about the additional days I'll have to spend proofreading it. "Whoops" doesn't exactly seem to cover it.

So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to (reluctantly) set this story aside for the moment, even though it's so close to the end, and I'm gonna write something short and (let's be honest here) shallow that I can get up for February, and then I'm gonna go back to working on the story I wanted to share with you guys for this month. Check out Employee Benefits or Of Descent and Debauchery for an idea of what I'm aiming for.

The good news is that assuming this goes according to plan (and admittedly that's usually asking for trouble), I should have the big story finished relatively early into March, so you'll have that to look forward to.

I just wanted to have this up to explain why the story isn't going up until so close to the end of the month (again) and yet probably won't feel like my best work, and to apologize for messing up. I know it isn't a big thing, and I probably could have just kept my mouth shut, but I like that all you guys appreciate my work, and I wanted to be upfront and honest about this.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a story to write. <_<;

ANNOUNCEMENT OVER.

I wasn't planning on doing a Valentine's Day journal, but I thought I would wish you a happy one anyway, since I still had the 2015-in-review journal on my userpage. Whether you're half of a happy couple or still looking for that special somebody, I hope you had a great day today, and I wish you all the best. n_n

I also thought I'd do this because it turns out, to my astonishment, that I never shared this little gem from 2014 with you guys.



For the record, because I know someone out there will be wondering, here is the full itemized list:

Fish, Furby, kettle, fork, hammer, Game Boy, toy robot, eight ball, rubber ducky, a Sharpie, ice cream cone, squid, shoe, traffic pylon, magnifying glass, basketball, sailboat, cup of coffee, owl, another Sharpie, muffin, actor Telly Savalas(?), moped, wrapped piece of candy, teddy bear, garden gnome (with fishing rod and fish), fire extinguisher, lamp, electric guitar, military tank, piggy bank, slice of pizza, lit candle, flying saucer, Poké Ball, mug, and a third Sharpie.

And hey, while I've got you guys here, I hope the Americans amongst you have a happy President's Day tomorrow, while I hope my fellow Canadians and I all have a happy Family Day on the same date! n_n

WELL-WISHING OVER _{for now}

Welcome, friends! It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since I summarized 2014, yet here we are! I distinctly remember a whole lot of people celebrating that 2014 had ended, since apparently it was a bad year for a lot of people, but in general, I notice people seeming pretty positive about their memories of 2015. It's a nice change. :3

I did a whooooole lot of writing in 2015, and I was glad to share it with you all, so let's see how I did, shall we?

January
Eric and Milo: What Goes Around: I started things off with an amusing reversal of the very first story about the Thompson brothers, with a surprised Milo discovering Eric "getting in touch with himself" in the former's bedroom. I think Milo had that one coming...

February
I Love You Twice: Getting in Touch: With a quick turnaround time after December's ILYT entry, Attention, this was a relatively straightforward story released in the last hours of February, about Kelly enjoying a little 'me time' with a dirty story, and then getting her big brother Dave involved when he catches her in the act. I never really thought about how similar the premises of the first two stories of 2015 were before... XD

March
The Shape of Things: My Evening With Tai: In which our boy Vincent Linus asks his besotted niara Tai on a date in order to work out his feelings for her, and when things take an unexpected turn, he realizes he has his answer!

April
The Games We Play: A gift for my friend  OliverStormsong, and a follow-up to the 2014 commission Through Thick and Thin, this one catches up with a happily couple'd up Hannah and Walter as they enjoy a little strip Smash Bros., and naturally, find a way to increase the stakes even more.

May
Experimentation: A commission for  Dracosson, this one is a cute-and-fuzzy-yet-kind-of-smutty tale of two alien Experiments inspired by the movie Lilo & Stitch growing a bit closer in their relationship. If you'd prefer something I wrote for me, I also posted Into the Dark, the next chapter in the Curse of the Shieldfall series, but I actually wrote that back in December, I just forgot to post it. :B

June
To the Victor...: A commission for long-time reader  BlazingFoxSpirit, this one follows rookie hockey player Jacob just after winning the Stanley Cup for the Seattle Yetis. His biggest fan is waiting for him after the game, finally ready to show him exactly how much she loves him... and wants him. Unfortunately for Jacob, his biggest fan is his little sister Minty!

July
Bear With Me: A commission for  Darkkoon, this one was about a bisexual bear named Tom taking his first boyfriend, a badger named Brian, on a date. Things are going swell until they reach the movies, and Tom belatedly realizes that PTSD might make it hard to watch gunfights in action movies. Can Brian convince him he's not damaged goods? Spoiler: of course he can, it's a Green story! :D
EDIT: Since I listed all the other alternates, I also wrote Out of Flight, Out of Mind for  SDSMillar, a bit of backstory for his character, Cara Middleton.

August
Worlds Apart: A commission for  asdfjkl03 which depicted the first meeting of curious young boys from very different backgrounds, and how they learn to become friends. Awww. This was a big challenge, being someone else's world entirely, but I liked the end product. n_n August also saw the return of my old write-something-smutty-in-one-sitting challenge, which resulted in Employee Benefits, a somewhat less heartwarming but much naughtier story of a gay rabbit and his new raccoon friend fooling around half-dressed after work. XD

September
I Love You Twice: Greener Pastures: A story I'd been planning in my head for years, this somewhat silly entry sees our favourite kitty siblings experimenting with a mind-expanding drug. Namely, the endlessly amusing yet thankfully harmless catnip. Given the way they feel about each other, what follows is only natural. n_n

October
Going Home: The commissioned follow-up to August's Worlds Apart, this story follows Running Water, "Ran", as he returns to his village and the Wyvram tribe. Has his time outside changed the young goat-dragon, as the others fear, or has it only helped to realize a truth that was in his heart all along?

November
A Blue's Jealousy: The first update to A Blue's Tale in four long years, this return to the humble town of Basil's Crossing sees Jack and Yajondra quite happy with their relationship (even if they can't bring themselves to say The Words), and almost as happy to celebrate the re-opening of the town tavern, renamed in Yajondra's honour. On the other hand, the dragoness is decidedly less happy when the former love of Jack's life comes back to town and starts batting her eyes at him...
Special thanks to  RoninDrake for helping me out with this one.

December
Curse of the Shieldfall: The Shadow Below: The final story of 2015 depicted Ari, Jerroth, and Mister Crow cautiously making their way into the heart of a revenant-infested mine, in search of the source of the evil that consumes it. Will they find the gauntlet that curses Ari's family? Or will they die a most atrocious death at the claws and fangs of the unliving? Either way, will Thaniel the wizard be able to forgive himself for not being able to come with them?

Also, I didn't have anything to do with it personally, but I'd like to give Honourable Mention to A Blue's Stroll Through Basil's Crossing, a wonderful piece of gift art that  Irreverent commissioned from  Jardenon in order to surprise me with. I'm not going to say all the credit for me finally getting my butt in gear and getting back to A Blue's Tale last year came from this present in June, but I'd be lying if I said it had nothing to do with it. I also received a thoughtful image of Kelly Parrish post-pleasure, which I uploaded under the title The Moments After, from the thoughtful  Zeratidus. As it had been years since I'd gotten gift art, getting two pieces in the same year filled my heart with joy. Once again, thank you to everyone involved. n_n

And there you go! Once again, not a single FAIL to be found, and some months have more than one entry! Yessir, I feel pretty good about last year, even if I did have to turn 30 and get my wisdom teeth out. :B

Also once again, there was a bunch of writing on the side I can't yet tell you guys about, as much as it pains me, so I'm gonna try my hardest to hurry up and get this side project thing into a state where I can finally spill the beans.

I hope that this time next year, when I'm writing my Year in Review for 2016, there are even grander accomplishments for me to be proud of. But until then, I still feel pretty damned good about where I am. Thank you all for continuing to watch me and read my work. I'll try not to let you down this year. n_n

ANNUAL RITUAL OVER.

I know, I know, everybody's posting one of these, but I wanted to say it all the same. It really means a lot to me that you guys read and enjoy my work, so I wanted to wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you and yours choose to celebrate at this time of year. (and if you don't choose to celebrate anything, then... TGIF? :B)

I've got a story that's just about ready for prime time, should be up by the end of the night. It isn't terribly Christmas-y, and it's clean so there's a near-total lack of romance or cuddles, but I hope you guys enjoy it nonetheless.

Have a good one, guys. n_n

SEASON'S GREETINGS OVER.

Just realized that once again, I have failed to celebrate my FAnniversary on the proper day, given that I signed up for this account on December 3rd, 2006 (even though I was a near-invisible lurker until May 2008, when I started posting stuff). I'd better get it next year, given that it'll mark a decade since TastesLikeGreen came into the world, hehe.

But yes! Nine years (and a week) since I took my first real step into all this furry madness, aside from just furtively looking at it on dirty websites, and I have to say, I kinda wish I'd made more forward movement, maybe gotten a book published, but all in all I feel pretty good about things. It helps that I got most of the introspection/"Oh God what am I doing with my life" thinking done back in August when I celebrated the seventh anniversary of the posting of my first real story here. n_n

I'm glad to be here, I'm delighted to have you guys on board, and as ever, I'm proud of what I've accomplished here almost as much as I'm looking forward to what I'm going to accomplish in the future.

Cheers, everybody, unless something unexpected comes up, I'll see you in the Christmas journal. n_n
(On that note, I know it started on Sunday, but hey, Happy Hanukkah if you celebrate that!)

JOURNAL OVER

Okay! After a surprising amount of trouble early on, I'm making good progress with my latest story, which is...

...about a dragon. I'm not going to tell you which one I decided to do first, you silly geese. n_n

Big shout out to  RoninDrake for helping me not go insane with self-generated stress while trying to fill in the embarrassing blanks in my story plan that gave me such a problem.

So hopefully, that'll be out soon (knock on wood) and we can all enjoy that.

As for next month, I'll be frank: I had originally planned to do an Eric and Milo story, and then whichever dragon story I didn't pick would most likely end up in January - no promises, though, don't want to let anyone down. <_<;

See, I have kept up a really poor track record of one E&M story a year for the past three years, and the reason for that is that I was hesitant to move the timeline very far forward before covering the events that I was planning on covering in this next story, the one that I was planning on doing for December. I didn't just do those events three years ago because it's kind of a big deal, and it's taken a while to plan. :B

Buuuut, my mother has been "hinting" not very subtly that she would really like to see another chapter of Curse of the Shieldfall for Christmas this year, and fair enough, since the last one was out at Christmas 2014 and ended on a cliffhanger... but if I'm gonna do that, I'm almost certainly gonna need to put the Thompsons on a delay to 2016, unfortunately, and keep up the embarrassing track record.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do yet, to be honest, right now I'm just focusing on finishing the current dragon story, but I'm gonna try and keep you guys updated. Speaking of which, it's not much fun being silent and working behind the scenes all the time, especially as I used to write silly journals all the time just for the hell of it, so maybe for a 2016 resolution, I'll try and create more communication between myself and you guys.

This has been a bit of a ramble, and I don't really know how to end this journal properly, so here's some total nonsense to distract you from that.


JOURNAL OVER.

Hello friends, I'm in the proofing stages of this last commission, and I wanted to ask you a question!

I'm in the mood for writing about dragons, you see, but I can't decide which story series to continue right now.

So, simply put, would you rather hear more of A Blue's Tale, and find out what Jack and Yajondra are up to? Or would you prefer some more of Services, to see how Colton and Kenrai are doing?

This isn't a simple poll, where the one with the most votes wins, I really wanna hear from you guys as to which you'd prefer, which characters you're more interested in learning about. n_n

JOURNAL OVER.

First, I'd like to sincerely thank everyone who replied to the last journal. It's really nice to know that I've got such a caring group of people in my corner. n_n

Secondly, I'd just like to clarify something: I'm gonna be posting a new story in the immediate future, but it was actually written before my bout with writer's block, not since. It's just a quick, extremely smutty tale, one of those stories I do all in one sitting, like Of Descent and Debauchery most recently. This one happened to be written on the night of Sunday the 23rd, after I posted Worlds Apart, my most recent commission. I just left it for a while because I felt it would be rude to the commissioner to post a story immediately after his.

So this story does not indicate anything one way or the other regarding the writer's block, but I would like to report that things are looking promising there so far, I've somewhat reluctantly set aside the concept I was stuck on and started working on something else with Dave and Kelly, so with any luck we'll be seeing that before long, knock on wood.

Once again, thanks to everyone who offered sympathy or advice, know that I read each and every one of your comments even if I didn't reply to any of them, and I hope to be back in business soon.

JOURNAL OVER.

It's kind of a bummer to post this journal to follow my seven year celebration, but... my gears are grinding and they're not getting anywhere. I was trying to work on a story about Dave and Kelly, something to flesh out Kelly's friends more and give Dave's social life some well-overdue screen time (so to speak), but all I had was a concept, and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't shape it into the structure of a story I could flesh out. I'm quite stuck. :c

It's driving me a little crazy, to be honest, to various extremes of the emotional spectrum. Close to flipping out in anger one night, close to tears the next. Frustration is weird that way. I've got ideas and maybe settings, and even a couple of potential themes, but I don't have a story, I don't have a series of events that has a What and a Why. The more I try to make it work, the more I realize that I can't just force a story to happen. This wouldn't be the first time it's happened, but in the past, I'd abandoned those plot concepts and not come back to them.

I don't know what I'm even really asking for here, maybe advice on dealing with writer's block, or for expanding on a basic idea, or maybe even just a little hope in a dark time. I mean, there's almost a thousand of you on this site alone, maybe somebody out there's been in the same situation or at least can empathize with it.

Don't worry, folks, I'm not gonna give up. Okay, maybe this one story concept isn't going to work out, but definitely not in general. Writing is what I was meant to do. I can feel it in my bones.

This is normally the part where I go "SOMETHING" OVER, but the fact that this isn't over is kind of the entire problem, no?

Seven years is a pretty big chunk of time, all things considered. It's how long you're supposed to get bad luck when you break a mirror. It's what separates the Young Link and Adult Link sections of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. There's even a famous historical conflict that was called "the Seven Years War" even though it actually lasted for nine years. For whatever reason, it's a length of time that seems to have a fair amount of significance to it.

Which is why I'm at least as pleased as I am stunned to inform you that it has been seven years since I posted my first furry story online, under the title "Nocturnal Intermission", in August 2008.

It was also the first time I ever wrote about Dave and Kelly Parrish, a pair of characters who remain very important to me to this very day, even if a fair chunk of time does tend to pass between chapters, and the first time I'd ever attempted to write anything erotic in nature. It was a lot of firsts, important ones, and while it wasn't the first thing I ever posted on this account, it might as well have been, as the ones that preceded it were filler material best left forgotten these days.

Eventually, when I realized it was going to be a full series of stories and not just a self-contained three part piece, the name changed to "Dave and Kelly: Nocturnal Intermission", and then later still, I changed the name of the series from the blandly self-descriptive "Dave and Kelly" to the more flavourful "I Love You Twice", but the actual story has pretty much remained the same for all this time, despite the way my writing style has changed and evolved over the years.

It's hard for me to believe I've been doing this for seven years now, and I wanted to share this date with you guys because I feel it's been a privilege and a personal honour to share my body of work with so many people, to even reach the stage where I start selling commissions for real cash money (Well, PayPal digital money, but it's still legal tender ). I wanted to thank each and every one of you that's ever read one of my stories, whether or not you watched me, commented, faved something, or even finished the story you started reading. Just the fact that there are apparently people out there who genuinely look forward to my submissions is something that's helped keep me sane while I've been more or less spinning my wheels without finding traction in the real world, and I am grateful for every minute of it.

I just wish I'd been more accurate; I wrote it down on my calendar towards the end of July because I wanted to mark the occasion, but I misread the date at the time and got it wrong. The seventh anniversary of Nocturnal Intermission's original posting was on August 6th, 2015, not August 8th.

Ah well, the sentiment is the same. From the bottom of my heart, I thank every last one of you for joining me on this journey for the last seven years, and I hope you'll stick around to see what the future has in store for my characters, and for all of us. n_n

ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION OVER.
GRATEFULNESS = VERY YES.