Full Status Report

Wednesday is part of the weekend, right? Asking for a friend...

Alright, it's later than I was supposed to get this out but apparently I wasn't quite as done with spending time at the doctor's office (and in transit...) as I thought a week ago. Moving forward should be a lot clearer, though, and I really needed to finally take the time to write this up.

First order of business is a sitrep on where things stand. At the moment, I have three stories that are in active production and they should give me enough of a spread that I can focus on them without introducing anything new to the mix. The first of those is the second chapter of Gold Star. That one is in a bit of a weird spot as 95% of what's written in it is fully polished and ready for release, but it's not at a very good point to break the chapter and I've had trouble making much progress on the next chunk of action. Currently it stands at something like 8-9K final count and needs probably another 2-3K to reach a good point to end the chapter. If I can break through the wall I was hitting a month ago it shouldn't take too long to get that wrapped up.

The second story in active production is a commission story that I've talked about before. In short, it's a 'you bet your ass' story featuring a party of four brash mercenaries/adventuresses who lose a bad wager with some rivals and wind up getting worked over pretty hard as a result. It's in the early stages, but progress on it hasn't been too hard to come by so I'm hopeful that the creation process will go smoother than some stories. (Looking at you Artemis.)

The final active story is a shorter one that I don't believe I've gone into much before. It takes place in the modern day and features a less than reputable politician and an even less savory spymaster. In short, the latter attempts to ensure the security of his agency's budget by offering the former the best bribe he can come up with. Exactly what that bribe is will remain mysterious for the time being, but you can probably all imagine the basics if not the details. This story is probably 80% or so written and 50% or so rewritten. At this point I'd estimate the final length to be in the 8-10K range. 12K max.

Second order of business is to lay out my plans for the forseeable future. I'm still a bit uncertain of how consistantly I'll be able to find time to write, so for the time being I'm going try and counteract that by doubling down on existing works and focusing on stories that I have already started and then shelved for whatever reason as well as on continuing existing series. If I can successfully restrain my wandering mind, that should help me to keep releases at a reasonable pace even if I don't have quite as much time to work with in the short to medium term. It will also be good for me. I have a tendency to move on before finishing things and that's really not a good trait in a writer so I definitely could use a bit of time to double down.

Additionally, in a surprising (to me, at least) development, the proposal to regularly write more patron-exclusive shorts did not fare well so they will not be a regular feature in the near future. I thought it would be a helpful way to reign in my short attention span without seriously compromising on more important stories, buy apparently people who sign up with an obnoxiously long-winded writer like me aren't as into the shorts. Who knew. Anyway, I've got a few I'll sprinkle in and may add to that pile from time to time, but I will be focusing instead on full scale stories wherever possible.

Third order of business is an important one. As promised, since my production might drop moving forward I've established a new pricing scheme for patrons. Patreon doesn't allow for modification of a tier's price while anyone is a member of it (up or down), however, so the preexisting tiers are now hidden while three new tiers with the same names but a more clear description and prices around 20% lower are available in their place. Anyone who wishes to take advantage of this will thus have to manually switch over to one of the new tiers.

Finally, I don't know exactly how long it takes for patreon to process refunds (it says awhile but isn't terribly specific) but I imagine everyone's refund for last month should be processed by the end of this week/weekend so if that doesn't show up feel free to drop me a message and I'll double check status for you. Going through the list manually, it's always a possibility I might miss someone even if I take extra care to be thorough.

Alright, that's it for tonight. I'm pretty tired and I want to get some sleep. By this weekend I may be organized and focused enough to start regular updates again, but, well, it's me so that might not be until next weekend instead. As you all have probably figured out, I'm not exactly the best at keeping on top of the housekeeping...