The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

It's May Day! And Beltaine! How cool! It's also Mental Health Awareness Month! DOUBLE COOL!

I won't really be celebrating anything today, though -- especially looking at the state of the ranch right now. I won't go into a big long thing about everything that's been going on. If you follow my Twitter feed or read my blog you already have an inkling of what I've been dealing with. Here I wanted to talk a little bit about why I'm even doing this and why I haven't hung up my spurs already.

I still have this crazy belief that the Jackalope Serial Company can work. What I wanted to do was push myself into a consistent practice by having an obligation to you lovely folks to produce content on a regular basis; learning how to create stories on a deadline is an incredibly useful skill, and in a relatively low-stakes environment like this I might be able to cut my teeth on silly little bits of story that are effectively practice runs for learning the tools of the trade. I wanted to use the serials here to get better with pacing, and scene construction, characterization and dialogue, learning what my voice sounds like and how I can use it to maximum effect.

The problem is that my ambition for projects really have outstripped my capabilities. I'm not just talking about my ability to write -- though that's part of the problem, too -- but my ability to write consistently. Between issues with the day job, the ongoing family saga, my mental health problems, and being a busy jackalope with all kind of adult responsibilities, it's been a lot harder to sit down and write stuff that forces me to stretch out in real, difficult ways day after day, week after week. 

There have been an awful lot of you sticking with me through this and I thoroughly appreciate it. I will find some way to make it up to you personally, one and all. :) For now, though, I think what I'll do is present a more reasonably-sized snippet of four different scenarios this month; at the end of it, you can vote for the one I should continue with next month. Since I'm aiming for consistency over quality (though they'll be good as I can make them), the snippets will likely be anywhere from 1000 - 2500 words or so. 

"Boundaries" will go back to the drawing board for now. I'm still really excited about the story and idea, but it's clearly more than I can chew at the moment. I want to go back and really work on the characters, then rewrite "Verneshot" so it's leaner, more dynamic, and hits the mark a bit closer. I'll release character histories, short scenes and -- eventually -- edited chapters of the first episode for patrons as they're done. 

So that's the plan for May! Simpler, shorter stories that come a bit more consistently than before, with the more complicated and ambitious stories released as they're done. 

See you next week, buckaroos. Thanks for your patience!