Weekly Update - 5/18/22 (Patreon)

Had fun putting out QT: Phil's Tale 7 yesterday, revisiting Phil's second appearance from the mainline QT story with a bunch more information and perspective. It's always nice to show how two characters in the same scene see things quite differently.

I also started work last night on Mr. Magpie 2, which I'm aiming for Friday, but might be Saturday. It's going to be very much in the other direction from the first one. which I hope would be obvious since one was for sorrow and two is for joy. I've always wanted to write a scene like the one in MM2, but I never found a good place for it. Before now, anyway.

For 5/24, we'll be back to Brewster's Brood and that'll heat things back up again, as we get to the chosen spotlight character for the month, one I certainly didn't anticipate winning the poll! That's good! That means sometimes things I'm throwing out there are taking purchase without me keeping too firm a guiding hand on the story. I like it when they can surprise me.

It's looking like, barring a last-minute upset, that 5/27 will be another portion of IIH 10, and we'll see if that'll be the last part of that chapter, or if it needs to get broken into a fourth part.

Speaking of polls, this is an open question to everyone - two of the recurring things that have been getting regular votes in my What Am I Writing polls have been spy fiction and space opera. If spy fiction ever wins that poll, I know what I'll be doing for that (probably a riff on the "Three Days of the Condor" conceit, but we'll see), so no worries on that front, but I want to talk about the other option for a brief minute - space opera.

For those of you who don't know, space opera basically refers to a throughline of specific sci-fi, like Star Wars or Flash Gordon, with larger-than-life characters and somewhat exaggerated plots. I haven't written any public fanfic for a long time, because I'm always nervous about playing with other people's toys, or getting continuity just spot on. That said, I might be interested in taking a crack at writing some Star Wars erotic fanfic, set in the universe but not really featuring any of the characters people might be familiar with. Playing around with the set pieces and societal structures could be a lot of fun, and I'm a big (but not obsessive) Star Wars fan, so I have some ideas about how I could use the universe without touching existing characters, but if you folks wouldn't be interested in that, I can just as easily dream up my own galaxy whenever space opera wins a turn at the cycle. And if it doesn't take, that's okay. 

Part of the way I'm doing this is very much structuring it so I can try ideas out, and if after a few chapters, people aren't interested, I can let them sit for a bit, trying to figure out what about the story isn't connecting with the audience. As a prime example, I thought that the Silversmith story (A Trick's Treat) I did last fall would resonate better than it did, but that's okay, because I certainly didn't expect Mr. Magpie to connect with the audience as immediately as it did, especially considering how much of it was written in the angry post-wreckage of the damage to my car. But that story generated a lot of feedback, and that usually tells me when I'm doing things right. Hopefully I've set everyone's expectations with that so the tonal shift between Magpie 1 and 2 doesn't throw anyone too much.

What are your thoughts on the whole original/fanfic paths when I do eventually take a stab at space opera? Would you rather I create something from whole cloth, or does the idea of me taking a shot at a Star Wars-set fanfic (featuring next to none or even none of the characters you're familiar with) sound like something you want to see?

Anyway, that's probably enough of my yammering for the time being, although two final things. One, there's likely to be a week or so break in August, although I'll try and do my best to get ahead of schedule to mitigate that. That said, I'll be travelling internationally during that month, and so I'm probably going to blanket a week's vacation sometime around there, which just means 2 less chapters for the month of August, although maybe I'll be ahead enough by that point that I can just schedule posts while I'm gone. That's three months out, so consider it plenty of advance notice that a light month is coming. The final thing is music of the week to leave you with. This is one of the stranger things we came across in my youth, and so, of course, we loved it... The lead singer died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 57, way too young.

Ian Dury and The Blockheads – Reasons To Be Cheerful, Pt. 3 (Official HD Video) - YouTube