Weekly Update - 1/18/22 (Patreon)

Ah, an entire house to myself for a couple of weeks. The flatmate is away traveling, meaning I don't really even have to put on pants if I don't want to. I even have the fridge stocked with Mezzo Mix, so it's all good in Mr. McTaggart's neighborhood. 

Yesterday I posted a previously commissioned one shot, Brass In Pocket, and as such I introduced a tag, "One Shot," which will be used for standalone stories that there are no current plans to revisit. I thought about tagging the Silversmith stories with the "One Shot" tag, but I feel like those two are part of something bigger that's just being developed differently, so I'll leave them without it. I finished a second commission for that commissioner yesterday (with a similar theme) and I can't wait to share that one with you next month, because the damn thing is probably one of my favorite one-offs I've written in a long, long time. I was worried I wasn't going to have an idea for it but instead I woke up Sunday morning with this wholly formed idea in my head and just started putting fingers to keyboard.

This Friday will see the release of the next chapter of Breakpoint, and those of you who are reading know I had all sorts of fun with the ending of the last chapter. Expect things to continue to get even stranger and wilder. It's so much fun writing that story, because every chapter I get to throw more wrinkles into it.

So, the schedule for the rest of the month has its entries in place, but the timeframe for all of them is a little floaty. But before the end of the month, there will be another chapter of 7 Secrets of Mr. Magpie, Quaranteam Book 2 and it looks like CARP is winning the You Decide poll. I'm also likely to post another chapter in A Pack Of His Own and The Devil's Details somewhere along the way. We'll pick back up with McCallister's Madness next month and I may have another commission or two to be added into the cycle somewhere along the way next month as well.

Also next month,, I'm going to release the revised version of QTB1 as a single PDF/Epub to all Patrons, and the hope is that the for-sale version will also be available during that month. Editing has been coming along nicely, and pretty soon I'll be going through the process of formatting it and including all the various accompanying stuff. I think I'm more excited about that than anything, the idea of holding a physical copy of that monster in my hands, knowing exactly how big the damn thing's going to be. All said and done, including Piper's Prelude and the Cast of Characters, I think it's about 400k words, which is a whopper of a book. (Seriously, the first book in the Game of Thrones series is only 298k words. Of course, I'm only waving at War and Peace, which was 561k words...)

Over the next week, I'll also finish transitioning from the old laptop to the new laptop, getting everything ready to move over fully. Honestly, I feel like I've got a good handle on everything right now, which is a nice change of pace, and where we want to be getting back to full time. I even had a professional project that needed immediate turnaround spring up in the middle of Monday and didn't freak out in the slightest. So I think we're through the storm for the time being, and thanks to everyone for your patience. Tonight's even the last predicted night of rain for the coming week, so that's both physical and metaphorical.

It's like one of my favorite exchanges on film, from a great flick called The Recruit starring Al Pacino and Colin Farrell. "Would you consider yourself subjectively firm or objectively flexible?" "Metaphysically wrinkle-free?" God, I love sharp dialogue like that.

The overwhelming majority of my Patrons have voted for me to keep the exclusivity for work written here to just six months, so starting at the end of February, I'll be releasing 2 chapters publicly some weeks and just 1 in others. Obviously, Brewster's Brood and Breakpoint won't be released, so on timeshifted weeks that had one of those in it, there will only be 1 release, and there'll be a few more weeks with just 1 release to accommodate the Christmas break. 

I also realized my math was a little off, and we aren't quite yet at the 6 month point, which is why the shift from end of this month to start that to end of next month.

So here's what I think I'm looking at for right now: 1/21- Quaranteam: Phil's Tale 10, 1/28 - Mr. Magpie 3, 2/4 - Before The Storm 2, 2/11 - Morgana's Gift 12, 2/18 - Quaranteam: McCallister's Madness 2, 2/25 - Quaranteam 50 & Janus Coins: John's Story 4.

And a couple of you have said you missed me contributing to music you should be listening to, so the most recent chapter of Morgana's Gift included a Spotify playlist of what songs I was using as chapter titles for that. I realized a bunch of you may not have realized that the one shot this week also took its title from a song. Here you go. 

Pretenders - Brass In Pocket (Official Music Video) - YouTube