Hooray! At last, Bitonality has its website. The "comics" that are there were only posted to test the working of the ComicPress script, and will come down shortly, but I think nearly everything else is set up as it should be. I am well beyond ecstatic, as I think it looks great for all the work I've put in. You can find it at: www.bitonalitycomic.com

Also, in the way of milestones, between the actual story and the outline for Bitonality, I've written well over 10,000 words now. Considering that only takes the story into the end of September and the outline into late Januaray/early February, it proves that there's still a *lot* left to do, but it's a wonderful milestone to have reached. My goal before the comic launches is to get the story itself up over 10,000 words, which I'm hoping shouldn't be too terribly much longer.

Bands are named, birthdates and other stats worked out, and everything still seems to be running almost too smoothly. Hopefully, once we begin posting in September (or as soon as I finish this short story obligation for elsewhere, whichever comes first) I'll be able to get to work on one of my other numerous projects. So many plans, so little time. But, I do feel like things are steadily coming together. I just need to remember to try not to force things.

July turned out to be an enormously busy month for me, for a variety of reasons. Unfortunetaly, it seems August will follow in the same vein. Especially as I'll be working on coding the website for Bitonality. Possibly starting today, if I settle on client to use for the comic pages. Right now, I'm heavily leaning toward ComicPress, as I have WordPress experience already.

I've commited myself fairly extensively to a number of writing projects this month, which sadly seems to mean that I really shouldn't give LJ writing communities another shot this month. (Last month, I forgot to check and missed the first challenge completely, hence my lack of participation then.) I still want to do it though, so I may try it, however unwisely.

I suppose that means I really ought to get started on the projects I need to finish, rather than thoughtless typing to LJ posts.

Sometimes new characters come at me in unique ways. It's rare to have one jump at me like this one though. (Initially posted accidentally to my fandom journal back in May.)

( Conversation with a muse. )

I've realized I'm an idiot. I don't have much time to elaborate on that particular point at the moment, so please just take it for truth.

I have, even though I never put them here, written several short stories set in the Bitonality universe. Why they aren't here, I don't exactly know. Now, they will be here also.

First up was a teaser of how Zane and Aron first met. This has actually been changed a bit for the comic at this point, but it was one of the earliest things planned for Bitonality.

( Teaser: How Zane Met Aron )


Next is a goofy little story I wrote just to show how comfortable Zane and Aron were together in their relationship. It's sort of an outtake, as there's no real reason for it to end up in the main storyline.

( Zane and Aron: Infomercial )


Finally, this story was written for a fiction challenge community. The challenge is to write a story of exactly 1000 words based on a picture prompt. Again, it isn't a part of their canon storyline, though I do think I'll work in the dollar somehow. This one can also be considered possibly NSFW, as it contains two boys kissing.

( Zane and Aron: Wanna Bet? )

All three of these stories are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. You can see character art at Clover's DA page.

In my bid to post here each day to update on work, I've got a little to say today.

Bitonality got worked on today, but it was mostly hashing out things with Clover via e-mail. Said hashing out involved a lot of things written in all capital letters. At times, we're a bit excitable. Something did get written, but it was for an event that happens well down the line from where I am right this minute, all because a certain smug bastard doesn't know when to leave well enough alone.

Something I hope to do very soon is get started with short bios on our main characters. Particularly the two main boys, Zane and Aron, then following up with the first four supporting cast members before moving on to people who come in later. Which just reminded me of something else I need to discuss with Clover. (Note to self: Talk to Clover about other members of Jeremy's band, duh.)

Betweentimes is still being stared at, and I'm starting to wonder if perhaps now isn't the best time to tackle that after all. A prior NaNo project is staring me in the face and begging for work. I couldn't get it to start when I did NaNo, but now I'm thinking the trick of starting in the middle might be just what it needs. Who knows, maybe what I think is the middle is actually the beginning. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have nailed down whether I'm going to go at it with Betweentimes or if I'm going to temporarily jump to Project Angelus. We'll see. Then there are short stories... But those are the subject of another entry some other time. It's late now, and if I want to squeeze in a little writing before sleep, I need to go do that.

I want to try and post more frequently here, in hopes that it will keep me more on track with my working as well. Seeing as it's been four days since my last post, we'll see how that works out.

Betweentimes has been discarded and renewed about three times in those four days, because I tend to be very fickle. However, I think I've finally struck on the idea that will stick with it, and now I'm going to move on to trying to write an outline for the first book. (Which is tentatively titled 'Sky Beneath Your Skin' right now, with another called 'Embers Within' to follow. But, titles and I tend to fight a lot, so we'll see.)

Outlines aren't something I typically use, but I've been using them with Bitonality and it's been going well. In fact, the process has been quite drawn out for Bitonality. First, I write what I've termed a "Fast and Loose" timeline. From there, it's expanded into a more detailed outline, and then each segment of the outline is written. At the moment the timeline is settled through several months of the story (from September to early January, actually), while the outline is set, mmm, a bit past Halloween, I think. Maybe about to Thanksgiving. Story segments aren't as far along, and so those are the area that I need to concentrate on next. After segments are written, I pass them on to Clover and she adapts them into comic format, or sometimes tells me that certain things won't work.

I'm hoping to follow a similar format with Betweentimes, in hopes that I'll get a better handle on the characters that way. I know my main character for this story fairly well, it's her supporting cast that's giving me trouble.

Anyway, here's hoping there will be more to update on soon. And hoping that I figure out if I can get a new computer soon. Handwriting is all well and good, but I'm feeling the need to settle down with a word processing program that's not Notepad. (I'm typing this on a nearly 10-year-old system that's running Windows ME. Not pretty.)

For now, bed. The day job requires my attendance at 7am tomorrow. Another thing that is far from pretty.

I seem to be stuck with the letter B quite often. Right now, I have two major projects in the works (one of which is going quite a lot faster than the other) and both of them are currently going by names that start with B.

Only one is appropriate for posting here, however. I think. I dunno. Originally I intended the other to be posted under my real name, because it's very different in subject matter and tone than what I intended this journal for, but now I'm not so certain.

Sure, this particular story starts out with a 13-year-old girl as the protagonist, but the story works through several years and won't end until Ally's 17 or 18. The plotline continues to grow darker than my original intent, and I'm starting to see no reason for the story to not be connected to the name Briar Reed.

Yes, it's different from other works. Vastly different from Bitonality in a lot of ways (especially as Bitonality is a comic that I'm doing with Clover Flynn, and Betweentimes will be a series of novels) but it's still my work. It's lost a lot of the young adult feel it had when the idea first came to me, so I think I'll be claiming it under this name after all.

It needs a lot of work, though. Right now, Bitonality is much closer to being ready to begin.

( Some info on Bitonality. )

As I was saying the other day in the Dimestore Fairytales blog, serialization will be put off until next month at the moment. I have decided on the story, which will be called Demonic Desires, and is about a detective named Derek Sanders who has to solve the case of a murder that involves the companion of a friend of his. Of course, things are more complicated than that, or it wouldn't be much of a story.

Other than that, I'm working on a piece that's a collaboration with an artist, and promises to take up a good deal of time. Also, there are two short stories that I'm working up for anthologies, that I have a lot of hope for. One involves a dark retelling of an obscure fairytale, while the other is the tale of a collector who finds himself at the mercy of part of his collection.

During all this, I'm trying to finish up the website and get some ads ready for the serial. There's a short story that was once published in bb_shousetsu that I'd like to rewrite and put in my short story archive, and I want to get some more substantial content put on the site. Also, I really want to figure out how to make WordPress themes, so I can design my own for the site.

So mcuh to do, and so little time.

The first portion of my plans has been set into motion, and I now have the front page of the redesign up at Dime Store Fairytales. Basically, that consisted of installing a WordPress blog and tweaking it a bit to suit what I'm going to need.

Now, of course, comes the hard part. Picking a couple of stories to start with, and working on them to prepare them for launch. This would be easier if I didn't have at least a half-dozen options in mind already, heh.

Off to sort through story ideas and try and narrow it down.

I should have posted here ages ago, but time has been in short supply lately. The last time I posted (officially forever ago, I think) I was concerned about a short story I'd submitted. The story was accepted, and the issue has since been released. The submission was to BENT Magazine and it was published in issue 4. The story is called "Fade to White".

Since then, I've started a number of projects, but haven't had the time to find appropriate venues for submitting them. Very soon, though, I plan to do something about that. Right now, I'm trying to finish up a piece for bb_shousetsu's upcoming 'Short and Sweet' issue. I've had a story there before (under a Japanese pseudonym), but looking back on it now, I desperately want to rewrite it. I love the story, but the technical aspects of it need work and something I'd tried as an experiment really didn't work as well as I'd thought at the time. That may go on my list of things to work on. If so, I'll probably post the rewrite here. Also, the way the story ends leaves room for future stories, which is something else to look into.

Right now, this is all speculation as it is, since I have another project that I'm hoping to release soon. Once I decide which one to start with. Heh.

No matter how many times I make a submission for something--paid or not, original or not--I turn into a nervous wreck. This time, it's a rather minor submission of a short story, but I'm very fond of this particular short story so I'm trying to keep my fingers crossed for it around the stress of the day-to-day work.

Here's hoping for a bit of good news.

Once a day... Not so much with the success there. If I didn't know myself as well as I do, I'd be shocked and dismayed. Instead, it's pretty predictable.

It's largely thanks to the fact that original work has been very little lately. Most work has been on the meager side, as I seem to be blocked up whenever I'm at the keyboard. I have managed to write when I have paper and pen in front of me, but thus far it's been loads of notes for a fandom project of fairly large proportions. It's for an event that's a pretty big deal in this particular section of fandom, but as I'm trying to keep this journal strictly for non-fandom activities, the details won't be appearing here. After this project, my fandon stuff will take a major sideline to everything else, but I couldn't resist this particular invite.

Now, if I could just hush the muses for a short time, I'd be set. Instead, they're invading my dreams rather insistantly.

Speaking of, as it's growing a bit closer to 3am than I wanted to see today, I should probably be headed for sleep soon. I just need to stop watching Expedition Borneo on Discovery.

I did get a start on the V-Day ficlet, but now I'm not at all sure that it's going anywhere. Of course, seeing as I did nothing on it today and I need to get ready for work in a moment, it may go entirely nowhere. I haven't a day off until V-Day, which makes things yet more difficult.

Perhaps tonight I'll feel okay with the idea of taking a break, and I can jot some notes or something during my ten minutes. I really need to get a handle on all these ideas, and settle for working on just a couple at a time.

I need to get ready to go, but I wanted to stick with my daily posting to this journal schedule, and I don't know how tired I'll be when I get home tonight. Maybe I'll have something project related to discuss then.

Rather than doing any serious work, I'm about to embark on a short ficlet as a V-Day gift for my artist Clover. It's using our original characters, and hopefully I can finish it up in time. If it works out, I can also use it for the picfor1000 entry that I signed up for using my fandom journal.

There's a lot of other things I should be doing, but procrastination is fun, and today is a relatively horrid day anyway. I guess this is denial fiction writing, where I pretend it isn't winter by writing about sunny summer days and sweaty boys not wallowing in angst.

I really haven't anything important to say here, I just want to be in a blogging habit. Hopefully, once I'm through this bit of self pity, it'll keep me motivated to have done work to talk about here.

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Were I to step into a confessional, I'd hardly know where to begin. Do I talk about my fanatical obsession with things Japanese, diving into the details of Shinsengumi uniforms while I play-act bits of the Meiji Restoration using my fingers as puppets? Maybe I talk about my son, and how I worry that I've done too many things wrong on this single parenting lark, even though there's nothing I can do to make his father grow up. Or I could discuss the job, which exists to make sure bills are paid, but as each year passes I think it grinds a little more of me into the dust of hopelessness.

Perhaps, because this introduction is for a writing community, I could make confessions about the words I put to paper or screen. I could say how I fear to put things out there to be read, but how deeply I thrill just knowing something has been read. Even feedback of correction is precious, because someone has read my words. I suppose, if I wanted, I could mention how sometimes writing makes me feel insane, and how other times it gives me something to do with the insanity of having tiny people living their own lives inside my mind, and how often I envy those lives that they have.

In reality, though, I'd say nothing at all, because fear locks the words inside my throat. It makes me grateful that my fingers can still find the keys, and that the screen reflects a small eloquence that my tongue doesn't possess.

Here, I can say, "Hi. My name's Briar, and I'm a writer."