12/30/09

Incoming ficlets, trudging with "Conflict"

So, I found an old ficlet that I wrote back in prehistory (in the Lord of the Rings fandom), and I think I'll polish it up and post it soon. No reason not to, right?

I've also been addicting to Dragon Age: Origins for the past few days, so a little ficlet in that fandom is in progress and possibly coming out soon.

Bad news: the direction I'd planned to take with "Conflict" didn't exactly work out, so I've had to scrap what I've done with the next chapter so far and do something different. Ah, the woes of chapter-based publishing!

12/16/09

An letters

The next part of "conflict" is up. It's not as good as I wanted it to be, and reading through it here, I can see one error at least, but I've had this written for a week and been mostly timeless to go over it more than a few times.

Maybe once I finish up my pre-break essays, I'll have the time to work more on this.


(Written with BlogPress.)

12/9/09

Progress update

A while back, I finished the rough draft of the next part of "Conflict of Interests." Although, it's still a bit rough and there are some obvious spots that still need some major touch-ups.

I'm not sure when it'll be up--I've been mainly working on some other stuff recently. The same stuff I mentioned in the last post. It'll all be up eventually, I hope, except one or two things that I know just won't belong on the site.

12/7/09

Editor?

I now have a volunteer editor (JyrFalcon345) who may be working with me on a few things.

In other news, I've made fairly good progress in the last few weeks on the fics I'm currently working on. My progress has been mostly scattered though, and what finished products I have are either in draft stage or in need of a lot more completion before posting. I have one fic that I plan on completely finishing before I post the first chapter, if that means anything.

(Written with BlogPress.)

11/23/09

"A Conflict of Interests"

The first chapter of the continuation of "Necessity" is up on FFN, and I've changed the name of the story to "A Conflict of Interests" with "Necessity" as its first chapter. It's only a portion of what I've been working on, but ehh, I suppose it's still pretty hefty at 2700 words.

Also, I axed the poll. I'm going to let the story just write itself. No intervention from Jaslazul.

Small update

My total for last night reached 4,649 words, making it the second-highest number I've ever done in a day (the other was on that 13,000-word original short story that I did a while back). So, in the past two days, that means I've written over 8,000 words. Maybe the whole NaNoWriMo thing is feasible after all.

Anyway... the 8000 of the past two days has been split between two fanfics. The first is the "Necessity" continuation (answer the poll on my profail, please), and the second is another fic that has a funny story to it.

I started the most recent one with only two paragraphs in my mind, one of which was one sentence. I started the fic, having no idea where it was going, and 4200 words later, I've been quite pleasantly surprised. The story has, for the most part, taken off and left me and written itself, which is normally a good thing but weird this time because of where I ended up. I'd estimate that I'm about... three quarters of the way done with it, and I anticipate a large chunk of it being cut out during the editing process.

"Necessity" has a chapter done that I could post, but I don't want to start updating and not have anywhere to go. I want to have a few chapters finished before I start posting. I also need a new name for it, and I have no idea what that's going to be.

Au revior!

11/22/09

"Necessity" and...something else.

Well, I'm 4000 words into the new "Necessity" chapter... although I've reached a crossroads. Pleaaaaase respond to the poll on my profile.

Also, I've been working on another fanfic that... I'm not really sure what to do with. It's ending up way different than anything I've done before, to say the least.

11/18/09

"Necessity" continuation

I'm 1462 words into a new chapter of "Necessity" that I started tonight as part of a challenge. The end result should be interesting, but I'm not sure if I'll post it on FFN or not.

Edit: I got about 2300 words total into it last night. I also worked a bit on the other fic I've started, which may or may not make it on to the .net.

11/1/09

New composition up

Check out my music page to see some improvements to Triumph and a new piece, "Percussive Halloween," which I did it like three hours.

Quick update: my recent writing has been this Halloween story that I'm doing for school, which I may or may not make available, and in a fic I'm working on that has around 4000-5000 words in it right now.

10/19/09

Livejournal test

I've created a livejournal and transferred most of the posts on this blog over to it. I'm still working out the bugs and trying to figure out how to use LJ, but I think I'll eventually come to like it. For now, this place will be my primary updating page, but if you're interesting in seeing what the LJ looks like, check it out at jaslazul.livejournal.com. Give me your opinion if you like one journal better than the other.

Reorganization and rediscovery

So, in the past few days I've been going through my documents and finding stuff that don't really remember writing.

That said, some if it is actually better than I remember it being, and a few of the snippets might work if put into a larger context. There's also been something newer that I've been working on recently, though I won't say too much in case it turns out to be another false positive.

10/12/09

Question

A quick question:

Is there anyone out there who would rather have my works posted on the blog than have to track them down on the site? Converting the documents from standard formatting to the HTML hybrid that Blogger uses takes a bit of time ("Reconstruction" does not have all the italic formating that the original document has), and I don't really want to go through and do that for everything if there won't be any interest. The way I'd planned to do it is just release original stuff here, but then I posted Sciophobia and kind of broke that idea.

I do like the idea of having all my stuff in one place, but I also like the exposure from FFN muuuuch better. Is there anyone out there who would rather have stuff posted here? If not, I'll just nuke Schiophobia and set it up for original stuff only.

10/4/09

Recontruction

Posted an old(er) original, unfinished work of mine over on jaslazulstories.blogspot.com. If you're interested, go give it a read. It's not really that much, though.

10/1/09

Posted on new blog and updated FFN

Updated my Oblivion short story "Sciophobia" and posted both chapters on my blog as an experiment to see how things work out. It's looking pretty good to me so far, and I look forward to being able to post (almost) everything there in the near future.

FFN broken, of course

I found Sciophobia on my computer again and decided that it only needed about three paragraphs to finish it off, so I added those and wanted to post it on FFN and the blog--but the bad news is that FFN is conventiently broken again when I need it the most. Greaaaaaat.

New blog

I'm now going to host some of my stories at jaslazulstories.blogspot.com. Everything on this blog will remain normal, but I'll begin posting the occasional story over there. I might get something up tonight--albeit an older story.

Anyway, I've put up a link for it in the links section. Gogogo.

9/30/09

New system

I'll be trying a new system for this place. I'm mainly tweaking stuff right now, but I've added tags to everything. Sort of. All posts prior to this one are marked with "ghetto," and all future posts will be labeled correctly.

9/28/09

Still alive

Been drifting for a bit lately, not really getting much done other than a few thousand words on that new project (which is turning out much more complex than I expected it to be).

I am again considering moving to LiveJournal so that I'll have a better posting system, but think that over the next few days I may try posting something here just to see how it would work. Be on the lookout, iSpose.

Thanks to those who continue to support me.

9/14/09

New new project

So, in light of my recent hospitalization, I've decided to scrap that last project. I've had something in my head that I've been meaning to start on for an extremely long time, something novel-length and similar story-wise to the works of Greg Howell. Whether sections of it will be posted here remains to be seen.

9/13/09

SVT--ouch

So, I went into SVT during my performance Friday and had to be taken to the ER for examinations. They didn't find anything (which I think is actually a bad thing because now I don't know what caused it), and I got out about an hour or so later. Overall, that ranks number one on my list of experiences that I never want to have happen again. At the time, I was concerned for my life.

9/7/09

Working on something new

Working on a new fic as part of the workshop. Right now, plans are for it to be a quick short story.

It centers around Fox and Wolf, but not in a romantic fashion, though it might eventually turn that way if I continue with it enough, which I probably won't.

9/4/09

New link up

I've added a link to my daily writing journal in the Apocrypha Mini-workshop, hosted on FFN. Go there if you get tired of me whining about personal stuff in my blog and just want to see what I'm doing (or want to see proof of me doing anything).

9/2/09

Not sure what's going on

Having some stomach issues at the moment. Not sure if it's an ulcer, gastroenteritis, or possibly gallbladder/appendix issues. Hoping it's not the later. Surgery is generally unpleasant.

8/31/09

"Bed of Lies"/contest results up

I said a while back that I had completed a semi-rewrite of"Retribution." It's on FFN now for anyone who's interested, going by the name of "Bed of Lies." It took second in the Krystal's Forum oneshot challenge that ended a while back, judged by my accomplice FoxKong and bested by the FFN writer/apocrypha-goer Swiper's "Anthem."

'Grats to him, me, and Kookameter for top three!

Feeling even more accomplished

Last night, after that last post, I went on to write for another 2475 words, putting my total for that day at 4475 words. The short story is 12000 words, and it is now finished, though I doubt it will ever see the light of day. I do happen to like it quite a bit, though.


In other news, I am sick. Somewhat. I'm fairly certain it's gallbladder-related, as I'm getting all kinds of ridiculous digestion issues and some sharp pain from the gallbladder area.

I'm sure that if I complained to any medical professional, they'd have my gallbladder out within the week. I've had surgery one too many times this year, though, and I can't stand to be incapacitated for an entire week during band season. (That, and I think doctors hand out surgery far too often; people fail to realize that one half of what doctors do is to avoid lawsuits, and the other half is for money.)

At any rate, I'm hoping this clears up soon. Today, I'm hoping to get the challenges for the Apocrypha workshop written up and edit over the printed version of the short story. For those of you who are interested, I'm trying to keep a daily writing journal here:

http://www.fanfiction.net/topic/65237/18267572/1/

Whereas this blog is a place mainly for news and excuses and personal stuff, it will be an actual log of what I do every night, and I might be posting some challenges and fic segments somewhere in the forum eventually.

8/30/09

Feeling accomplished

So, that 6,000-word original short story I was working on is now a 10,000-word original short story. I hit 2,000 words both today and yesterday, and am feeling kind of proud about it.

If only I could match this kind of conviction with fan fiction... or at least, do it more regularly.


In other news, I'm starting a mini writing workshop. Information can be found in my FFN forums.

8/26/09

A note on original works

Just want to let everyone know that I have been writing these last few weeks. Given, most of it has been in original works. I want to take a few minutes to say a few things about them:

I have two major ones in the works at the moment. One of them is 6000 words, the other 11000. The former is close to being finished, while the latter has about another 40,000 words or so to go.

For the moment, at least, these works are on a "you ask, I send" basis. They're not heavily edited and one of them is definitely not something that I will be able to send to everyone. I wouldn't feel comfortable posting these to a site where other people have it splayed out in front of them, but I feel that it couldn't to send them if someone asked for them.


In other news, my computer (somehow) fixed itself, but I'm having to rearrange a lot of my priorities this year. School is... demanding, to say the least. I try to spend most of my free time writing, but the actual amount of free time I get is variable. I've hit the 1000-a-day mark for two weeks straight now (except those times when I was away from home), and I think that's about to come to an end.

8/19/09

Update

Still no news on the computer front. I've been ninjaing a laptop and using it every once in a while, but it's not a permanent solution or something that I can do for ridiculously long periods of time.

I did manage to do something semi-productive while on it, though. I wrote around 3000 words of an Oblivion fanfic, realized that it was going to be much longer than I'd originally thought it was, and decided to publish the first 1000 words as a flashfic. It's up on FFN for anyone who's interested.

8/18/09

Computer explosion

Okay, welllllll. I've been having some computer issues, possible hardware-related. I can have my computer on for all of two minutes before it crashes, then it won't boot for about thirty minutes or so.

Which means that I don't have access to any of my writing, fanfiction or not. Greaaaaaaaaaat. I'm hoping to have this fixed soon, but... we'll see.

Computer explosion

Okay, welllllll. I've been having some computer issues, possible hardware-related. I can have my computer on for all of two minutes before it crashes, then it won't boot for about thirty minutes or so.

Which means that I don't have access to any of my writing, fanfiction or not. Greaaaaaaaaaat. I'm hoping to have this fixed soon, but... we'll see.

8/12/09

Echoes bug fixed

Okay, so apparently FFN wasn't as screwy as I thought it was.

I saw lots of updates today so I decided to reupload the chapter of Echoes, and this time I actually got the alert that it had been updated and can see it in the front page, so... I don't know? Maybe I broke it.

Anyway, it's up. Go check it out.

8/10/09

Redemption Chapter up

This is something I forgot to mention earlier.

The new chapter of Redemption is up (big shocker considering the title, loooool).

Star Fox section messed up?

Okay, so, I'm getting in reviews for Redemption and I got the little alert thingy that said I'd published a new chapter.

Problem is, I've gotten neither for Echoes. (If you have left a review for it, please tell me so I can confirm my theory.) I've also noticed that there haven't been any updates in the section for the past little bit and no reviews I'm making are showing up.

So, something must be wrong with the Star Fox section. : /

8/9/09

I cheated

Well, since submission didn't work, what I did was copypasta the contents of the Echoes chapter into an existing document and add that to the story. It gave me error messages like crap, but, for some reason, it worked. I think.

Anyway, go read. obai

ahhhhhh

And FFN is still broken today. I can log in now, but I can't submit the chapter. : /

ahhhhhh

And FFN is still broken today. I can log in now, but I can't submit the chapter. : /

8/8/09

FFN is broke, QQ

Okay, so maybe I won't be able to get the next chapter up tonight, meh. Still can't log in.

(Of course, I post this in hopes that FFN will fix itself as soon as I complain about it like it usually does. Makes me look like an idiot, but eh.)

Echoes chapter ready

The next Echoes chapter is ready to go, but FFN's bugged right now and I can't log in (and I have to go out of town for a bit... bah, how convenient). As soon as I get back, given that FFN is fixed, I'll have it up.

Echoes chapter ready

The next Echoes chapter is ready to go, but FFN's bugged right now and I can't log in (and I have to go out of town for a bit... bah, how convenient). As soon as I get back, given that FFN is fixed, I'll have it up.

8/4/09

Echoes

I have 13 pages of a new chapter for Echoes ready. I think it's enough to stand on its own as a chapter, but it needs a bit of time to cool so I can look at it objectively.

Also, band camp is murdering me. Muscles are burning that I didn't even know I had. The effort it takes for me just to sit down is ridiculous.

And I still have eight more days to go. O lawd.

8/2/09

More Redemption stuff

Okay, so, I finally got an ending I like... I just gotta go back through and edit some inconsistencies.

To clarify things: Redemption is a story told in two parts. This chapter will mark the end of Part I. Part II... I'll probably start on at a later time.

Edit:

Other news: I've been working on parts of Echoes recently... hurrah (as well as on this off-the-wall fic I'm doing, and original stuff). But band camp's tomorrow, and after a council meeting, I get the feeling that the new director is going to rip me apart.

8/1/09

Redemption news (II)

So, I've been through about three different endings for Redemption and don't like any of them.

I'm working on fixing that... but I can't promise that it'll be up by Monday. Speaking of which, I leave for two-week band camp Monday, which means I'll have very little time to do this stuff.

7/29/09

Redemption VI completed, not up

I finished the first draft of Redemption VI last night, but it's still got some bugs to work out before I post it.

7/25/09

Retribution rewrite completed

I finished the rewrite of Retribution a little while ago, and now it goes under the name Bed of Lies. I haven't uploaded the changes to FFN yet, though, I'd rather wait for the contest thing to be over.

Redemption V up

Redemption, chapter V is up. It's a bit shorter than the others, but from now on I think I'm going to be keeping chapters that way. I've already started work on the next one, but I can't make any promises on when it's going to be up.

7/22/09

Redemption

Been making a little bit of progress with Redemption recently. I have the first draft of what could pose as a new chapter done, but I want to go a little farther before I release it.

7/18/09

Description guide up

I posted that description guide. The original can be found here:

http://www.fanfiction.net/topic/57210/16946536/1/

But FFN forums are retarded, so the prettier version is here:

http://z6.invisionfree.com/Krystals_Forum/index.php?showtopic=1792&st=

7/17/09

Vacation and some fan fiction news

So... yeah, I'm on vacation. Will only be for about two days, though... I have a laptop that I can use every once in a while, but most of my time I'm spending with it has been rereading some of my old favorite (non-fanfiction) stories and catching up on my beta-reading projects. I've also been making notes of their style and have some new things that I want to try.

Anyway, I'm not going to be releasing any new content or new chapters anytime soon I don't think, but I'm going back through Retribution and am hoping to get up an edited version of it sometime soon (for a oneshot contest over in Krystal's forum).

7/14/09

Short story up

Posted--check it up.

7/9/09

Anyone for original works?

So, I mentioned like, two seconds ago that I'd started on some original crap. At first I was unsure about where I was going to post it, but then I remembered that Atlas told me just to post stuff on my blog.

So, I figured... why not? But I'm not going to start flooding this page with all my original works if there's no interest in them.

The thing I'm working on now is a furry story (that just means it has anthropomorphic characters and all that jazz), so it's pretty much exactly like Star Fox only without Star Fox and with a modern setting. It contains strong themes of both homosexuality and heterosexuality, but nothing graphic... maybe just a little worse than Retribution, so if you can live through it, you'll be fine. It's centered around a group of band nerds who attend a school of the arts. I figured I'd write about something I knew, and there's nothing I know more than music.

If it sounds like something you'd be interested in reading, drop me a comment and let me know. Should only take a few seconds. If anyone's interested, I'll post the first... uhh, chapter, I guess, here.

In other news, I've been considering getting a LJ recently so that it would be easier for me to post my stories. My computer blocks LJ, though, so I'd have to proxy it and I'm not sure how that would work... :x

Edit: Forgot to mention that I installed a statcounter. It's not retroactive so I have no idea how many people have been here up until this point, so I picked 80 as a starting number... I'm interested to see how many people actually come here.

News

Sorry for the lack of posts about my writing recently. I've been going through some pretty difficult times in my personal life, and most of the time that I'd normally spend writing I've been reading/reviewing/editing others' fics.

I'm still not back in my room yet, but I've moved my computer to my temporary location.

I've been writing for the past few days, but it's been on an original work I've been thinking of for a while which might turn into a full-length novel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to kill my fan fiction or anything, but I think I need a little bit of a break. Nothing I'm writing on any of my stories seems to satisfy me anymore, so, I figured, I might as well try something new to get my mind of fan fiction so I can have an objective view.

7/4/09

obai

I've moved out of my room and don't have ready access to my own computer... may be a while before I get back.

6/26/09

I'm free!

As of yesterday, I officially resigned from a project I've been working on for over four years.

It was a warcraft game (or "map") that I have been producing. The stress and intensity of managing a competitive game has become too much for me and I have dropped it. Hopefully, this means that I will have more time to spend with FFN.

6/24/09

Ummmmmmm...........

So, uhh... I found out about this yesterday:

My band director quit.

Okay, to be fair, he quit to go get his masters. He's recently married and is moving in with his wife's parents. So it's all good for him. I can understand and accept that. Our program's going to suffer and I highly doubt our jazz program will be nearly as good, but... things happen, I guess. Have to move on.

What really makes me mad is apparently I'm one of the last few to find out about this. Nobody told me. Everyone else knew. And I'm a section leader. Was a section leader for last year. I'm by far the most dedicated member of the band and I'm the only one to make the all-state bands. It gets a little frustrating when I'm overlooked after all the work I've put into the program.

And what really sucks for me is: I don't have a band class first semester. I'm taking an AP course that hogs up all my space. So, not only does that mean that I might not get to know the new director, it may also make being in marching band very difficult. With our old director, we could find a way to work things out, but with this new one, things are going to be rough. I'm just hoping at this point that I'll still be able to hold my position (not like there's anyone else to do it) and stay in the band.

I hope that the new director does All-state Jazz and All-state orchestra. If he doesn't... there goes everything I've worked for. No scholarships, no beating Mr. Rich Kid (and his eight companions) for principal trumpet, and no making a name for myself in the jazz industry.

I'm just hoping that this will all work out.

6/23/09

Backish

I'm finally ready to move back into the world of FFN.

6/13/09

Surgery soon

I have to have my wisdom teeth cut out on Monday. Wish me luck!

...and hope I don't die. ./kidding

They're going to give me IV sedation and have given me a valium to take before surgery... and there will be pain meds afterwards. I must admit that I don't like the concept of being drugged out of my mind (since those kinds of things scare me quite a bit), but my sister says that they'll "drug me up so good I won't even care."

I've had people telling me how horrible it's going to be for the past few years, but to be honest, I don't think it'll be nearly as bad. My sister had hers removed at the age of twelve and went to softball camp the next day, and she can't even get a tooth filled without hyperventilating.

Oh, and the aftermath? Two to three days of doing nothing but watching movies and eating macaroni. I have all of the Lord of the Rings movies rented and plan to watch them during the recovery. I only hope that I will be able to remember them afterwards!

PS: as I type this post, I'm working on programming a few new systems for my current Warcraft project (500 lines of code on JASSCraft in around an hour, yay!). As soon as I get done with that, I'll be starting with a quickwrite (in the Lord of the Rings fandom) to relieve stress and get my writing unhung from Echoes and Redemption. Nothing's changed since the last update on those stories.

6/10/09

Updateish

Okay, I know that everyone and their grandma out there is like "Y R ECHOES TAKE SO LONGUE???." The issue isn't that I'm not working on, the issue is that this is a very long and difficult chapter to write and that it's starting to frustrate me a bit because I can't get thinks to happen the way I want them to. It's a side effect of me having some major issues in the beginning of the fic.

Right now, I need something that I can do to take my mind off of Echoes and Redemption, maybe another oneshot... problem is, I don't really have an ideas.

6/6/09

SCHOOL IS FINISH! And I'm now mired in another fandom.

School's over. Made A's (prolly 100's) on all my exams. Yay.

Somehow, in all of the LotR stuff I've been doing in class, I've managed to get caught in the Lord of the Rings fandom. I actually have an idea for a fic over in that section that I'll get to... sometime. Believe it or not, it was actually inspired by a class clown's comment during one of the movie scenes.

But in the meantime, around 9 pages of Echoes is finished, but I don't really... like it that much. O.o

5/28/09

News

So, while I was writing last night, I figured out that I probably have only two more chapters in Echoes. Woohoo?

Next week is the last week of school. After that, I'll have more free time during which I can hopefully work on the stories some more. Unfortunately, I have to get my wisdom teeth removed on June 15... that won't be fun.

I have what I hope is over half of the next Echoes chapter complete. It's going to be a pretty long one. However, there's a lot of crappy sections that need some cleaning up, so... don't be expecting anything until at least next week.

Also, don't be afraid to comment, if for no other reason than just to tell me that you're watching. A lot of the times I feel like I'm talking to myself in empty room. :P

5/25/09

Limited progress

Sorry for the lack of contact, guys. It's been a whirlwind with school as of late. I just finished an essay on LotR and I have another one on Hamlet due this week, not to mention exams next week, so I'm a bit bogged down. After that, though, I may be able to have more time to write. No summer band program this year. Not until August, at least.

Good news, though: I've made some limited progress. Not enough to write home about, but it's still better than nothing.

5/14/09

Posted oneshot, not feeling well

Okay, I posted the oneshot. Blablabla.

Bad news: I'm sick. Nothing major, though... I think. I hope.

5/6/09

Coming soon: "Retribution"

I finished a oneshot tonight. It may be making its way over to FFN pretty soon. Here's the (current) summary:

They say the taste of vengeance is bittersweet. Espionage and romance have taken so much from Krystal that it is all she has left . Contains Panther/Krystal and Fox/Wolf.

Be on the lookout!

4/27/09

Violin?! . . . and original stuff

I have a violin now!

I'm currently in the process of learning how to play it. I've succeeded in snapping off the bridge and breaking a string so far, but I can play some basic songs and double stop a little bit. It's about 4294967296 times more difficult than I'd thought it would be.

So, anyway, that'll prolly be occupying most of my time in the next few days. I've also fallen way behind on schoolwork (and failed a busy-work checkup recently, which has probably ruined my class rank position), so... meh. But it seems like I'm most productive when I'm the most busy, so...

Meh.

Also, I've been considering writing something original recently. I know that I already have 4294967296 stories that I need to finish, but I have this idea that's been bugging me for a while and I may have the urge to get out with it sometime soon. It prolly won't be for a while, though.

My current plans are to finish up book one of Redemption, then finish Echoes, then... iDunno.

4/20/09

Redemption VI up

I finally posted the next Redemption chapter. I feel good about the ideas behind it, but not about the writing itself. I'm ready to move on to the climax.

I promise, the next chapter will have a lot more action in it!

4/18/09

Hypocrisy... in a good way

Against my better judgement, I finished chapter four of Redemption, with a length of 21 pages. Dunno when I'll have it out. Still got that research paper to do.

4/16/09

Timeout on all stories

I'm putting all of my stories on hold.

The reason: I'm falling behind in my schoolwork. I need some time to catch up before I am able to think about writing anymore.

I thought about this a lot last night, actually. I was so closed to finishing Redemption, chapter four, but at the same time, I needed desperately to catch up on schoolwork.

So, since I'm taking economics at the time, I did a little chart dolollly (as my teacher would say), and came to the decision that I'd be much better off catching up on work before devoting any more time to my writing. This could just be for a few days, but... meh.

4/11/09

Chapter 3 up

So, pretty much, all the delay was coming in the latter half of Redemption. I figured out yesterday that I may be redoing a bit of it, and I realized that there wasn't any sense in delaying the former half because of it.

So... yeah, chapter 3 is up.

Edit: Chapter four will be up soon, possibly in the next few days. It depends on where I decide to end it. I have a place where I could stop now, but I'm not sure if it's the best place yet. I might keep writing a little bit (or just ask people for input).

4/8/09

Delayed

Sorry for the delay in putting up Redemption. I'd planned to get it up last night, but I decided that there was one little section that I had to touch up on. I do hope to get it up tonight, though, but don't sue me if I'm late.

4/6/09

Redemption news, take two

Okay, good news: draft one of the next two chapters of Redemption (I think) is finished. It's ~30 pageishes, but I have some notes in there that will be cut out, so expect it to be a bit shorter. I'd planned for it to be one chapter, but it's just a bit too much in my opinion.

Also, bad news: I have a project to work on over Spring Break (this week). It's a 20-page essay on Shakespeare plus a presentation... so, yeah...

3/31/09

Announcements

Okay, so, in the past few days, I've been making lots of progress. In the past few weeks, really.

I have some bad news (and some good, but I'll get to that later). The bad is that I have a concert tonight, rehearsal tomorrow, and Concert Festival Thursday, so for these three days I probably won't be doing anything. Friday and Saturday will probably be gone as well, though I'm not quite sure what we have planned for that yet.

The good news is that I have all of Spring Break as free time. That means I'll have a good bit of time to devote to writing.

Also, I feel like I've fallen behind on my reading (and writing), so let me make a few comments so that nobody takes it the wrong way:

I have limited time. Every day has 24 hours. 10 hours of every day is taken up by school (except on weekends, and I've had one full weekend in the past two months), 12 on rehearsal days. I usually spend half an hour on homework (which isn't enough to finish it all).

The rest of my time, 3-4 hours, I devote to hobbies. They are:

Composing, synthesizing, reading, writing, practicing trumpet/clarinet/piano/flute, programming, and gaming/making mods for games.

I can only do one of these at a time. Note that I also have school reading, and that I am behind on it (and got knocked out of rank 1 in my class because of it).

This semester so far, I have read 1,212,394 words so far in out-of-class, independent reading. This does not include FFN reading.

To give you guys an idea, here are the things I am reading right now, all for class, all at the same time (yes, my English teacher is crazy):

Brisingr, Christopher Paolini
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

I try to read as much in these as I can (within limit), and most of the time I spend on FFN is time in which I should be sleeping. As a result, I am sleep deprived. Very much so.

So don't feel insulted if I'm not reading all of your fics right now. I've had so much reading forced on me that I'm only reading the FFN stuff that I really want to.

So, sorry if anyone got bored in that really long list of excuses. I just felt like I should give a reason why I've been so lifeless around FFN lately. Pretty much, when I'm doing a lot of writing, I'm not doing much reading, and vice-versa.

Now that that's out of the way...



SC all-state band! Hurrah!

But anyway, I have a concert to go to. Bai.

Edit: I left out something. My school had an armed intruder today... which was really weird, but it was (thankfully) a big scare over nothing. >.>

3/27/09

Redemption news

Okay, well, I'd planned to get Redemption out by this weekend, but that's not happening. This chapter is turning out much longer than I'd thought it would be. As of right now, it's 17 pages, and I have two or three more scenes that I have to write in and a couple of other stuff I need to add before I actually begin the editing process (which should cut out at least 1 complete page worth of nothing).

I've actually worked a little ahead of where I plan for the next chapter to end, but not much, mind you.

I'm debating publishing this next "chapter" as one chapter or publishing it as two. It would make it more managable if I split it into two chapters, I guess, but I'm still a bit uneasy about that.

Any comments? Suggestions?

3/26/09

Fanfiction.net died?

Fanfiction.net died (hurrah redundancy!)?

So... yeah, I'm hoping that this'll be fixed sometime soon. Maybe they're implementing new features or something.

Meh.

...and it fixed itself as soon as I posted this. Just my luck.

3/11/09

Another update?

Well, I managed to get another story posted. "Pressure," renamed as "Necessity," is up in the Star Fox section. Check it out.

3/9/09

Balance—quick update

Balance is up, check it out at FFN. Explanation of it can be found on my profile there as well.

3/3/09

An arbitrary to-do list

So, I've been working on and off on a lot of different stories lately. I'm going to try and keep a list of what I'm working on/should be working on, I guess more for my reference than anything else. Here's what I'm juggling at the moment (all fics are Star Fox unless specified otherwise):

"Pressure", Fox and Krystal centric, tragedy—retelling of a canon event that's probably been told a million times. Writing challenge. Explores how concern can blind the concerned and hinder the concerned for.

"Balance", Fox and Wolf centric, implied friendship—an exploration into the life of a hero with a touch of the classic "there's someone out there who has it worse than you"-type stuff. I need to hurry up with this.

(no name), romance/tragedy. Oblivion fic, centered around two OCs—a man's spouse is murdered by the dark brotherhood and he takes up a vendetta against them; he meets an argonian and falls in love again, only to realize that the argonian is the one who murdered his spouse. Explores the multiple dimensions of people and how assumptions can go so wrong. Probably won't ever happen.

Redemption, SSB fic, Fox and Wolf centric, romance/tragedy; an exploration into how desperation and self-exploration can ruin real-world relations. I'm really looking forward to getting this one into the later chappies. I won't give away anything, though.

Enduring Echoes, Fox and Wolf centric, romance/adventure/tragedy; an exploration into how sometimes the past can interfere with what everyone would rather be the present. Nearing completion. Hurrah!!

I've started a couple of other fics not worth mentioning here, but none of them will probably come to fruition.

Stuff to read/review:

Snake of the Rose's Desolace, which I really need to hurry up and finish. It's only been on this list for a year.

Tex-hampioro's A New Hero A New Enemy, which is almost the same as the above, only I don't need to go as in-depth with reviews.

Basil-Ovelby's Andrew trilogy and "Occassional Fluctuations in Character." I've already read these, I just need to go review them, meh.

Bryyo's Star Fox Universe: Season 2, the last two current chapters. Again, I've read these, but I need to go reviewify them.

--

I've also been dabbling in midi lately. I have one (incomplete) work finished, other than the harp solo I've been working on that's not ready yet and an arrangement of Nobuo Uematsu's "Fragments of Memories" that I won't post. This was mainly an experiment to find out how things sound, and though I haven't written a proper ending yet, I kinda like it. Find it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?imi3ng4xmin

Aaaaand that's a wrap. Oh boy.

Updates, sort of

Okay, so, I've been kind of hovering around for the past few days, not really doing anything. So I decided to do something practical

The first thing is the start of this blog, which I'll hopefully be able to keep up with.

The second is that I finally managed to add some stuff to Apocrypha, my forum. Hopefully, it'll pick up in a bit. I'd really like to see the featured writer topic spring into action.

Oh, and, I took a random glance at the new traffic pages and I realized that people actually look at my community. So maybe I'll go add in some stories to it. iDunno. Some of them are so bleh that I'm not sure if they're trollfics or not. If anyone wants to become a staff member, PM me.

So, tonight, I don't think I'm really going to do much else other than work on my works in progress. I have a few fics that I need to go leave reviews for, but I think I'm going to save that for when I have lots of free time.