Darkniciad

Had a lot of junk going on, so I'm still working on the Ch. 20 edit. I think I almost have the time-difference on Ch. 21 worked out in my head. I'm having to change some transitions, because I need the Brandon scene to be late in the evening, and the time difference from the Danica scene it transitions from doesn't work. It's earlier than a normal day's stopping point for Danica and Marlena, which makes it even earlier back home. So I need to change that transition completely, and modify several other scenes as well.

Working on the edit of Ch. 20. It's a long chapter, so it's taking a little while.

I think I've finally figured out how to tweak SOTM 21 to fix the time discrepancy I caught myself making. No time to actually implement it this morning, but I'm making notes so I can get to it later this evening. ( and free up headspace to plan what's next while I'm at work today )

http://www.literotica.com/s/sisters-of-the-mists-ch-19 It's live at Literotica!

SOTM 19 was approved to go live in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow at Lit. I'm going to go ahead and submit it to SOL this evening, so it will have a more or less concurrent release. There are a huge number of stories coming in to Lit right now for some reason. Two and half pages of new stories yesterday, which is crazy. I know to submit the next chapter on Sunday or Monday instead of Tuesday now, in order to avoid having it hit on Saturday. Unless, by some chance, it does really well coming out on Saturday, which I doubt. Weekends are usually ass on Lit.

Changed my mind LOL I'm going to go 6 hours and tweak based on that. I think it will make inconsistencies in earlier chapters less obvious. I can explain most of that away by weird hours kept at the Manor. Will also make it easier to tweak 20, and reduce, but not eliminate, the difficulty of adjusting 21, which has the most explicitly stated frames of time that are critical to the narrative.

Whew... 19 is okay. The time in most of the scenes is ambiguous enough. I've established the time difference in earlier chapters, but never nailed it down. That leaves me some room to play with. I think I'm going to set things on a 12 hour difference. Morning at home, Evening in the east. That makes it reasonable for the morning and evening contacts to not wake anybody up or keep them up. There will be some off bits in earlier chapters, but I think they'll be minor enough so that only someone paying extremely close attention will notice, and I can always edit the earlier chapters later if necessary. That's what I'm going to move forward with as I edit 20 and tweak 21.

D'oh! I just realized I've got a serious consistency error in what I've been writing on Ch. 21. Danica is waaay east of everyone else. It's getting late where she is, but I've been writing everyone else's scenes as if it's that late as well. Really, even later. I'm going to have to tweak Brandon's scene to set it much earlier in the day. Then I've got to rethink how I was about to end the current scene I'm writing. At least I caught it before I let it loose. I need to review 19 and 20 as well. Hoping 19 doesn't have any issues, because it's already in the queue.

Ch. 19 is back from editing, and will go in the queue at Lit tomorrow. Finished another 500 words of the next scene, too. Up to 6k words, and trying to figure out where I'm going to end this chapter. The last couple have ended on a certain note, so I want to end on something a little different this time. That will dictate what scenes are necessary to transition into it. I'm going to try to get my mailing list working again for the release. When I tried to use it for "Facing Destiny", it failed to send any emails, even though the queue processed as it should have. I saw on my host's forum that there had been issues with outgoing mail on some people's sites prior to that. After the recent upgrades to my hosting, I'm hoping it won't be an issue any longer.

Finished another scene, which is both a transition and some foreshadowing, bringing me up to 5500 words. Leads directly into the next scene, which sets up a big confrontation either later in this chapter, or the next. Rollin', rollin', rollin', keep the story rollin'... ( To be heard in Elwood Blues' voice )

Another scene down, and over the magical halfway mark of 5k words. Pausing now to finish the edit on Serpentine Destiny, but I'll likely be back to work on this chapter before the day is out.

Just finished that Brandon scene, and I'm up to 4400 words. Almost to the halfway point of the average chapter length. Forward we go!

And SOTM 19 is officially off to my editor.

Forgot come on her and mention that I'm through the first couple of steps of editing on Ch. 19. I'll finish my first pass edit tomorrow, and then get it off to Roust. Should be through the whole process and gold in plenty of time to post next week, as planned. I'll likely get going on the edit for 20 as well, but I want to finally get around to writing the truly fast-paced part of that Brandon battle tomorrow. Most of my writing time has been either early, or late, which is not a good time to be trying to write battle scenes for me. I'm either not awake enough yet, or falling asleep. Same with sex scenes. I can be tired and write storyline, but when it comes to detailed stuff... Not so much.

Two long days at work, and then a long day of getting things done. Finally have several days off in a row now. Still things to do, but at least I don't have the job tightening my schedule for a while. I managed to get a little more of that scene written before I got too tired to visualize tonight. Some time in the next two days, I'm going to knuckle down and begin my first pass edit of Ch. 19. That way I can get it off to Roust and get it back into my hands for final formatting with some time to spare.

As predicted, this battle scene is progressing quickly. I'm already up to 3k words, and there are only two dead orcs so far. Six more are charging, with another half dozen somewhere nearby. Armed with a weapon blessed by the Dwarven gods to slay those ancient enemies, Brandon is about to prove why he's called "the quick" in deadly fashion. Don't worry, that's not a huge spoiler or anything. This scene is connective tissue, and the real spoiler would be the scene it leads into. This one is really, really fun, though. I'm a little too tired to plot out this next, fast-paced section of the battle right now, so I'm going to quit for tonight. May try to get Holly Jolley ready for the downloads section.

Transition went smoothly. I've written the opening of the next scene, got up to 2k words, and I'm about to start a fun battle scene, so the wordage should climb quickly the next time I sit down to write.

Had a brainstorm, and went to implement it. Now to test it... W00t! Uploads are working The upgrades my host did apparently required migration, and my absolute hosting path changed. That was what was buggering everything up. So, at some point soon, I'll be doing some upgrading of my own now that the issue is resolved.

Well, the upgrade my host performed appears to have caused some issues. User uploads of any kind aren't working on the forum, which includes profile photos ( avatars ). This means I can't even upload the Ebook for Holly Jolley Christmas until I've resolved this. I certainly can't do those upgrades of my own that I mentioned in the shoutbox. Luckily, it seems user uploads are the only issue. I just wanted everyone to be aware of it until I'm able to resolve the problem.

Got a little bit into that second scene. Up to about 1500 words. I know where this next section of the scene is going, but beyond that, I need to figure out what's next, in order to know where to transition into it. That's where the mindless portions of my workday come in tomorrow. My schedule changes this week. Instead of having a long weekend, I'll now have Wednesday and Thursday off. Thanks to taking every Saturday at the end of the year off, I also have another normal weekend as well, until after the first of the year. By Wednesday, I should know what other threads I want to pull in this chapter, and which one will be the best to transition out of this scene into. Actually, I do know a couple of other upcoming scenes, but they're either later in this chapter, or the next. I need to find what comes in between. I need to get back to Meckataur, and follow-up on the final scene of the previous chapter. Those may be good to transition into each other, but they're no good as a scene for this one to transition into. So, I need to delve into the less-formed things and find a logical flow to get to them.

Well, after some fits and starts, the first scene and first 1000 words of Ch. 21 are complete. Moving on to the companion scene with Danica and Marlena next. Not sure what thread I'm going to pick up after that. There are several. One bit of good news is that I'm starting to get some of my old mojo back. The last couple of weeks, I've been able to write at less than Ideal times when the young one is up and running around. For the last few years, that's been virtually impossible. Every bit of time I can write when he's here and awake is that much more time I can get words on paper. I also have a significant number of days off around Christmas and New Year's. I do want to try to write a Valentine's story for the Lit contest at some point during that time off, but I'll devote a lot of it to SOTM as well. Off to work on that next scene while I'm still awake enough to visualize without dozing off.

Okay, I couldn't get that Lamia thing out of my head. LOL I did at least manage to keep it down to a scene light on the wider mythology I've been developing, for the purposes of filling the Monster Sex category at Lush. It's a little shy of 6k words. That satisfied my muse's insistence on doing something with it now. I'll write the second half with all the deeper cuts into the mythology and the ( continuing, as there's already some in this first part ) setup for more stories in the series later. Both will be posted together as a single submission at Lit and SOL, where such things are more appreciated. If it generates enough interest at Lush ( Unlikely ) I'll add it as a Ch. 02 there when it's done. So now I can concentrate on SOTM again With any luck, I'll have some wordage to report tomorrow.

That contest story ( well, the first draft ) is complete, and SOTM Ch. 21 is underway Starting out with Celes and Ashley in the manor, and in about two lines, her tale is going to merge with the last Danica scene. Forward!

Trying to finish a story for the Winter Holiday contest at Lit, so I'm delaying the start of Ch. 21 for a couple of days. I did pause that contest story for a half hour or so as well to get some notes on paper. Had a brainstorm from nowhere while I was driving and had to get it down while it was fresh. 700 word outline for a Lamia story that's a potential series starter and easter-egg level crossover with Magic of the Wood and The Fey Folk. Those two series already cross over at easter-egg level. What easter-egg means is that no characters are likely to cross over, but concepts and mythology probably will. The fairies that have a brief role in Blessing of the Wood could easily be from the Fey Folk series, for example. One of the notes in the new Lamia concept is that dryads are mentioned as being real as well when the Lamias are asked. The series potential is both for finding more of the scattered Lamias, and possibly discovering some of the other "mythic" creatures that are very much real, but have been pushed into the fringes by the explosion of humans. The mythology I'm developing for the Lamias has some parallels with the dryads of MotW, but they've never been particularly benevolent like the dryads. This series would be about monsters, where MotW focuses on dryads and other nymphs, and The Fey Folk focuses on fairies and other wee creatures. Anyway, I'm 3400 words into that contest story and just wrote the beginning of the first sex scene. It sets up a couple of things, then the next sex scene builds on that. Then the last one is the flash-bang finale. I'll probably know by the end of tomorrow whether it's possible to finish it by the end of the contest. If I determine there's no hope, I'll probably set it aside, get Ch. 21 going, and then come back to it and release it after the contest, but before Christmas, because it's Christmas themed.

Chapter 20 is officially complete, and the first draft clocked in at barely shy of 14k words. Chapter 21 will get underway shortly They should start coming out sometime around the second week of 2018. I'll begin editing around the middle or end of next month, in order to use as much of the intervening time to write as possible.