We're coming up on August, when I'm going to be inconsistently here and writing. My first obligation runs from the 1st to the 4th, so either next week there will be no update blog or should sufficient things happen between now and then, I'll make a post on Tuesday to get us all back up to speed.

Then I'll be back, and presumably writing, until the weekend of the 15th, which I'll be gone for.

I'm the kind of person who hates disruption to my life's rhythm, so even though I'll only be gone for, oh, seven days total, I made August a bye month just in case I'm thrown out of sorts and have trouble getting back to my writing headspace.

Bodyslyde 9 is going along as it should. A reminder that you can peak at WIPs in Discord if that's your thing (I like uploading them as an accountability thing, "look I AM writing!"). I may not finish the chapter before my trip this weekend, which would be annoying, but whatever happens, happens.

After Bodyslyde 9 is White Stained Black 2, and after that—after that I'm going to be a little bit selfish.

I've been doing some prewriting for another project on the side (and testing out Obsidian as an organizational tool; I loathe Markdown as a formatting language but it is very nice to have pages and folders and organizational tiers to manipulate as opposed to a simple design document) and after White Stained Black 2, I'd like to write the pilot chapter for that project.

The working title (everything deeply TBC) is The Woman Made of Monsters and the Royal Brat, and the premise involves two outcasts: a mercenary whose body was experimented upon and strange organs implanted in her to make her preternaturally strong and fierce, and a prince born under inauspicious circumstances that disqualify him from most of the privileges a royal heir would be expected to enjoy. The idea is they don't treat each other very well.

Shorter post today because I'm tired without good reason to be tired. LMLD 5 will get posted right after this, then I'm going to take a few days off (a few = until Wednesday) before starting on Bodyslyde 9.

Thank you as always for reading and supporting my work. It really does mean a lot.

LMLD ch5 status: 5k words out of a 10k word target, which tentatively sets its release at next Monday, or thereabouts. Making good progress, having a lot of fun, we are moving.

After LMLD is Bodyslyde, as voted for. I'll have to think hard about how close we are to an ending for Bodyslyde—I'd consider last chapter the beginning of the third act, so a conclusion looms, but how quickly we get there?

Many variables on that. Either before or after Bodyslyde I may take a few days to bang out that "Story So Far" for Heroine Will Not Lose—only a few days, because it's not meant to be a particularly long piece. Essentially a synopsis of the chapters and a quick rundown on the setting and characters, to remind old readers and speed new readers into the next segment of the story.

Which segues into my next point! I wouldn't feel right locking the CYOA aspect of HWNL behind a paywall when it originated as a free story, and that presents a conundrum:

How do I hold a Choose Your Own Adventure vote on something that releases to one audience a month ahead of another? If, when HWNL is eligible for supporter voting, it should win twice in a row in under a month, what do I do?

I don't have an answer to that yet. I know that the CYOA poll will be available to both $0 supporters (a tier I'll make specifically for HWNL as well as for people who just want to hang around I guess) and that $5 supporters will have more voting power (likely 2x) because at the end of the day the people paying me money get to call the shots.

If you have any thoughts about how to run HWNL, please do share them either as a reply here or in the discord—I welcome your ideas! (Speaking of which, I'll bring back the HWNL idea farms as posts here on Substar where all members will be able to leave comments.)

Thanks as always for reading my work, for supporting me, and for taking care.

Well, kind of. I spent the weekend getting Heroine Will Not Lose! to sit pretty in MS Word and I'll be uploading that in a separate post—it's a lot, as you might expect of something I spent two years writing on and off, which brings me to the next step of my master plan:

I don't expect the people who haven't read HWNL to read 505 pages of context going into the the next phase of the project. So the next step for Heroine before it can join my stable of original ongoing works (now tracked in the trello! wow!) for supporter voting is to write a recap and primer, so that entirely new readers can get a quick and dirty synopsis of what I keep calling the old testament to myself, which is annoying because A Certain Magical Index already did that, so I can't actually go calling the Heroine split the new/old testament or I'm creatively bankrupt.

Anyway, with the most manual and boring part of the Recompile complete, it's back to writing! Like Mother Like Daughter 5 is up next, and I'll put up a supporter poll for what original project comes after.

Thanks as always for reading my work, supporting me, and taking care! 

I just finished the rough draft for Bodyslyde Ch8, and at 14k words I should be able to have it proofread by the end of tomorrow, heat permitting. The draft is up on Discord if you just can't wait, but you're so close to having the polished thing I suggest just one more day's patience.

Juggling Bodyslyde and the Heroine Recompile didn't work out—I'm poor at multitasking when I'm writing, all I can think about is the thing itself—so I'll take a few days after publishing Bodyslyde 8 to get that sorted before I move onto Like Mother Like Daughter 5.

Lastly—there will be no charges for the month of August, because I have IRL stuff that's going to be dragging me around the country that doesn't fit into a nice single block of time lost. I will be writing in August as normally as I can, but I'm expecting to lose at least ten days, possibly more, to the IRL stuff, and I'd rather not have to worry about making up that writing, or on stiffing you all out of your money's worth. My actual vacation in late October will be one continuous stretch, which Substar can let me plot, but I think I'll also just give October for free, too, since who knows what kind of mental state I'll be in leading up to a big trip.

Stay hydrated, stay cool, stay taking care of yourself, and thank you so much for reading.

It's sweltering hot, I don't have AC, Bodyslyde is getting written but Heroine Recompile is on hold until this infernal heat breaks.

Thank you and drink lots of water.