FA rolled out a new UI, it seems. For me at least, stories posted as .doc load in their own reader window in FA. This seems like it makes posting the entire story in the comment section redundant, but I don't know if people are having issues with this FA reader app. Is it worth continuing to format as I have been? Should I just save myself time and trouble and just let the FA ereader handle it?

We'll see how it goes. It's not fully unlocked yet, so I can't post anything to it, but we'll see how long it takes to get cleared.

https://subscribestar.adult/zielwrites

Between having to take dingus to the vet multiple times this week, needing to cover the cost of tuition out of pocket, needing to pay for textbooks, I'm very deep in the red.
I'm looking to open a few commission slots, but I want to get a feel for what the market is like. I have a price point in mind, but I don't want to just commit to a number without getting a vibe for the market.

Tryna make a playlist for my dnd dude (Lumen). I've been earmarking a buncha like, mellow/ethereal sounding things.

Some examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjJKHFwLpg4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXo3DrXHY8w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAw.....w&index=51

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG_hbocW1JU

I’ve had people ask, and I feel like I should make it easier to find, so I’m going to make a general post about it. You can find my general links to where to find me on my [Linktree]

More direct ways to help out are:

[Patreon] - There’s a $1 tip jar feature. Plus ways to support at higher tiers.

[Ko-fi] - easy way to just kick in a buck or two if you’re in the mood.

I mentioned this in passing earlier, but I feel I need to go into a bit more details especially in regards to my plans for Patreon. I have not adjusted the tier prices since I literally made that account ages ago. Even then, $1 was a bit too low, but that was when I was using it purely as a tip jar. Since then, I have started doing more patreon exclusivity but I hadn’t changed the pricing at all.

I have hit the point this past month where I have officially burned the last of my savings. I have nothing in my account now which means I either need to take yet another job or I need to focus more on monetizing my writing. The choice basically came down to “Get a third job and quit writing altogether” or “try to monetize my writing more”. This is part of what lead to me testing the waters with self publishing some short stories these past few months on sites like ‘zon.

I am going to keep trying that, but the feedback I got is that a lot of people prefer having the pdf version more than they like having the whatever format kindle or amazon uses for their ebooks.

I’m leaving the $1 base tier as is. It’s still there as a tip jar if people want to kick in and help a bit. Meanwhile, I’m going to be posting new stories for the same rate that I would expect if I self published to other sites.

I see that Patreon added a new individual purchase option as well. I’ll look into that and gauge feedback if that’s worth doing. As it is, I’m going to try to keep the 2 stories a month rate going. But I realize that a lot of people are more keen on specific topics and characters than others. And I alternate a lot on topics. I’ve been trying to stagger releases so I’ll not do two of the same series/theme in a row. I’d like to settle into a routine where it’s one ongoing series and then one standalone, but it will depend on what I get the inspiration for and what I have ready to go at any given moment. I tend to have like 6 or 7 wips open at any given moment and will just poke at whichever one calls to me when I sit down to work. I could honestly ramble a lot about my process, but I don’t know if there’s anyone who’d care to hear that.

I have zero money in the bank rn. I probably should have changed the patrone tiers ages ago. It's been sitting at $1 since I started the thing ages ago. I think I should up that a bit.
Additionally, probably gonna have to take a few coms this month just to pay bills.

I'd been trying to figure ways to make more money on the side and short of taking yet another job while also going to school for my masters while also doing the CPA course while also working two jobs is just too much. I'm at the point where I'd pretty much have to give up writing altogether unless I make a little money off of it because there's just no time otherwise.

I realized halfway through the month that it was Pride month and so I was like. I need to make a Pride themed fic with some OCs, but I didn't really have time, so I was trying to force one out quickly, and I kept not liking it, so I would stop and start over.

Given that it's the last day of the month, I don't think I'll have a pride theme fic done in time.

I wonder if I otter post the different wips side by side to sort of show some of the creative process...

My job is asking me to make one since I'm "the guy who knows tech". Which is ... It's not Wrong but it's also I only know tech compared to the other people I work with who are fully technically illiterate. I've been sinking tons of hours into this project just reading publications and trying to figure out what I'm doing. I don't suppose anyone here is better versed in these things and can help.

story idea:

That Time I Got Isekaid into a Fantasy Game Universe But I Didn't Understand the Difference Between VIT and VIR and I So I Put All my Points in the Wrong Stat and Now Have a Giant Cock and insatiable Libido

So, I'm trying to alternate subjects I post to keep things fresh and so that it's not like I'm only doing one thing all the time. So, I'll do like 1 macro/micro thing, then I'll do a hyper or something, then back to macro/micro etc. Trying to find a good posting schedule to keep things fun for everyone.

I've also been considering doing some tidying up when I have free time. I know a few people have said that the Trevor stuff is daunting since it's up to 27 chapters now. I kind of set it up so that there's enough context clues in the intro of each chapter that you shouldn't need to read the whole thing to enjoy the current chapter (although it helps). I was wondering if I should go back and break it up into like "books". 4-5 chapter mini collections. Since there are a few sort of narrative arcs. The first 3-4 chapters are mostly setting the basic lore. Then there's the 4 chapter Devon arc. Then there's the like 5 chapter Noah arc. Etc.

Someone asked what troys last name is, and the first thing that came to mind was Oyama.
Dunno if there's an actual Troy Oyama that's like famous or whatnot. The name was probably fresh in my mind from binging Hot Boy Summer, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not mad at the idea of Troy being at least partially if asian descent.

It'd have to be on his dad's side since thats typically how surnames work.

At this point he's probably more fluent in Portuguese than whatever his ancestral language is.

So there's a high probability the firm I work for is losing its main client which means I'll be effectively out of the job.

I'm so tired of this shit.
I got my PC back from geek squad.
I was about to take the defective motherboard back to the manufacturer but just to be safe I tested it again. Plugged something into the same slot. The PC crashed.
They didn't change out the motherboard like I asked. They kept it on their shelf for like a week and said they did diagnostics on all the components and I don't think they even did that.

So, it stopped turning on for me. I was downloading some updates and left it alone, and when I came back it had turned off. At first I thought it had just gone into sleep mode, but hitting buttons didn't wake it up. So I tried the power switch to see if it had turned off. Couldn't turn it on.

This is the problem I took it into the shop for in the first place. It's now in worse shape than when I dropped it off. I spent $400 for them to not fix anything orz.

Got my PC back but it no longer recognizes any of the internal adapters. So no wifi. No Bluetooth.
Also none of the lights work (which is what it was doing before I took it in)
I spent so much money just to get it back in a worse state than it was 3 weeks ago.

Edit - it's back to not turning on at all. The same thing I took It to the shop for. Taking it to the shop cost me $400 and they didn't even fix the original problem

Got an alert on a site I post on that one of my old fics was removed and a strike against my account for including an underage character. I was like ...???

Anyway, I went line by line through to fic to try and figure it out. It's 11k words, and I read it repeatedly to figure out what the problem was. I messaged the admin, and all he said was "remove all mention of toddlers from you work." so I went and did a ctrl + f to find the word, and here's what I found.

Context. This was a giant/tiny fic. This was a sfw scene. Devon got shrunk and was having a mild to moderate freak out about it. Text as follows:

"Devon was a good deal shorter than a Barbie! He was shorter than a Coke bottle. He was only a little taller than a Coke can! He could easily be picked up by a toddler. He could ride in the palm of his friend’s hand. Even now, he was riding shotgun on his friend’s shoulder like a pirate’s parrot!"

Apparently this constitutes including a minor in a sexual situation. orz.

I don't think Lumen has a max size in mind. At a certain point it becomes less about the size and more about the weight and feel. He loves straddling that line between heavy and immobile. Whenever it starts to get easy to fly, he'll get the itch to grow some more.

It's a bit of a feedback loop in that way. He gets bigger. He feels heavy. He gets better at flight. He feels lighter. He gets bigger.

I don't think it'll ever dawn on him that his wind magic is getting much more potent as he goes. He's devoting so much energy to remaining airborne that he's always feeling a bit tapped out.

Can't say if I'm in a hyper mood or a micro mood, but sometimes a boy just wants to be pressed face first into a bulge that's bigger than he is.

So my Amazon page got shut down because I tried to log in on a new computer and it got flagged as "suspicious". I tried to contact customer support, but they said I need either the credit card on file with the account or the last 3 purchases from said account in order to unlock it, but since it was purely a vendor page, I never used a credit card on it, nor did I purchase any items on it.
Trying to decide if I should just make a new account, or if I keep fighting it, but I have no idea how to fight it

I'm seriously considering it since I have had a pretty consecutive string of bad luck. Between medical bills and my PC dying, I'm several hundo in the red. I'm already a little in the red each month due to my old car dying and having to buy a new one, and the car/insurance payments are A Lot.

Currently looking at a flat rate of $250 for a story, but I'll keep a fair amount of control/right to refuse.

Here's the thought behind this:

The rate I was charging before was far, far too low for the amount of work I was doing. So I thought to kick the price up to $50 per 1k words, but I also did not like the price per word format since it felt like it put too much constraints on what I could do. It also didn't really change the amount of work that went into a piece all that much. Like, a huge percentage of the work was the planning/drafting/outlining phase, and another massive chunk of the work was the edits and revisions. I feel like a good short story typically runs 4-6k words. So this is that middle spot of roughly $50/1k.

Setting the price high-ish because I don't want to have to devote every waking moment to writing just to keep the lights on. I feel like I super undersold myself before. I'm still working out some of the details. Thinking maybe I'd take a few at a time since I'll often do a rough draft for a fic, then a rough draft for another, and then I'll bounce between a few fics as I edit and polish. So I could submit one fic for perusal. Then work on another while I await feedback.

Then again, I may decide I don't want to do this after I get caught up on my bills. Comms last time made me miserable the entire time I did them. so... /shrug.

I did a questions meme for lumen on Bsky. It was fun although the questions got a bit redundant by the end. I should keep an eye out for some more interesting ones.

Youse guise can read it over in that site
link to the thread

I might do other OCs soon. It's a fun way to flesh out ideas. I'm also down to answer questions about my characters as well.

So I am hoping to start making actual covers for my stories, but I don't have much in the way of funds. I have a decent background in graphic design, but my skill at actually drawing is very limited.
Does anyone know of any sites that have like royalty free/free use pictures? I'm hoping for something simplistic like, clip art style that I can resize and move around as needed. Fairly simplistic shapes that don't look low quality,
Also, should go without saying that I am avoiding anything generative
It doesn't even have to be "free" per se. If there are like reasonably priced asset packs that I can use in perpetuity once I buy the rights to work with, that'd be fine too.
I'm not going to be making any money off of this so I can't justify sinking a lot of money into each cover

It's the big day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUQ.....qgJOc&t=4s

if you want to do something for me, I have the links from earlier, but there's no expectation.

[Kofi]
[Paypal]
[Wishlist]

Now that that's over I can go back to not talking about it for another 363 days

(I get stressed out this time of year, so it's like, I feel if I talk about it people get annoyed, if I don't talk about it, people get annoyed, so I have adopted a comically over the top, Bart Simpson banging the pots style persona to get me through the build up.)

It's this thursday (dec 5th), and I'm gonna be mild to moderately insufferable about it.

Joking, mostly. I do tend to have people ask about it, though, so for those who are interested, here are the associated links.

[Kofi]
[Paypal]
[Wishlist]