March Newsflash #2 (Patreon)

Last fortnight involved a stupendous amount of writing in the second week, and this fortnight has been... less so thanks to some medical stuff and general disruption of my usual routines. (Still, I managed to go to a city I've never visited before for a boring admin reason which happened to also be useful for some research for a potential upcoming game, so that was good!)

This Monday I discovered After This by July Talk and it promptly became an excellent theme song for the game.

I'm so excited by the reception for Chapter 5! I've had such a lot of feedback and bug reports, and it's really amazing to be able to go and make those changes - which was a lot of what I did during the first week of this fortnight.

Anyway, I am getting towards the end of Chapter 9: it's a huge chapter, and a lot of that is because of eight(!) very steamy sex scenes that took a lot of time to write. I'm realising that those scenes take about four times as long as writing anything else because of how much responsivity and branching I want to put in them! I keep wondering about writing a whole post on the subject because I've learned a ton about writing that stuff through making Honor Bound.

Intimate scenes aside, I have been really enjoying showing characters chilling out for a change.

Honor Bound current wordcount: 379376 words

Honor Bound fortnight wordcount: 14063 words

Honor Bound average playthrough: 79218 words

Behind the Scenes:

I read Rien Gray's book Love Kills Twice, a high-heat F/NBi romantic suspense book, last week. It was the queer thriller/romance I'd been looking for! The characters were hot and appealing, with a lot of substance and groundedness to them along with it. The plot was tight and I devoured the whole thing at top  speed. Much recommended, especially if you enjoyed If It Please the Court from Heart's Choice, which is by the same author.

My favourite bit:

There is a point where you can have a talk with Catarina and Fiore about romancing Fiore, and if Catarina approves it's incredibly adorable. I absolutely loved writing it.

Sneak peek:

Relatedly, here is an excerpt from a similar scene in which the MC is romancing Fiore and Savarel in a polyamorous relationship:

You continue eating; Savarel asks how Catarina's vacation with her grandparents went, and Catarina settles into a series of good-natured complaints about her small cousins.

"Although," she says, "my grandparents let me sleep on the roof garden one night, which was fun. You can see all the constellations."

Fiore laughs. "They never let me do that."

"I'm more mature and responsible than you were, obviously," Catarina @{(cat_fio > cat_fio_mid) says, jostling ${fio_their} shoulder,|says flatly,} and Fiore nods.

"Honestly, you are," ${fio_they} ${fio_say}. "Or my parents have softened over the years."

"So are you moving in together, or something?" Catarina says, waving in your and Savarel's general direction.

Both Fiore and Savarel look startled. @{(fio_romance_start < 9) "We've not really talked about that,"|"It's not been long,"} Fiore says, faltering a little.

"I have the vicarage," ${sav_they} ${sav_say}, "and, well, obviously Fiore's in New Belmir..."

Happy Ides of March to everyone reading! Thank you as ever for all your support and feedback.