Weekly Update and Big Announcement

Okay, we're gonna breeze through the normal weekend bit in a lightning round today so that I can get to the aformentioned announcement. The basics are pretty standard. It was a roughly normal week with around 10K of overall work getting done, The overall number for march is now somewhere between 20K and 25K, I'm still confident I can get to 40K, I'm still shooting for 50K but it'll still be a tough task. The next major release on the schedule is Gold Star 2 (which I really, really like so far. Writing Addie is an absolute joy.) and that could be as soon as 2 weeks from now depending on how priorities and production shake out. I have also started tentative, exploratory writing on the gambling/fantasy commission and, unless something happens last minute, I expect to have a formal agreement to move ahead finalized within the next few days. Just one or two last stray threads that need to be tied up first.

Now, for today's more important announcement, you're all getting an unexpected release! And, if enough of you like the experiment, you will keep getting releases much faster! And, if the plan gets approved, those releases will be patron exclusive!

Alright. Explanation time. What the hell am I talking about? (this might turn into a stream of consciousness. Apologies ahead of time.) So, basically, this week I've had an idea that I think will solve (or at least mitigate) several qualms I have had about how things went over the first year of Mouse King work and the last few months in particular. Issue one is that of patron exclusivity. You guys (and girls) are all awesome, and I'd really like to get you more stuff that's all yours, especially once I start publicly releasing the backlog I've built up these past few months. Patron exclusive spinoff shorts were the original idea, but, well, there just haven't been enough of them. Like, what, two so far? Complete flop. I just have too many projects popping into my head that it's hard to force out those stories.

That brings me to issue number two. I generate ideas so much faster than I can turn them into even shorter stories, and there are plenty of times when I'm struggling to focus on my main projects and so turn to a more recent concept in order to both keep my overall production up where it should be and avoid having good ideas disappear on me. Together that has led to a distressing (if not huge) amount of my production going into stories that are still sitting in limbo and not going out to you lot.

Issue number three, and this is a biggee, is that when I do dive 100% into bigger stories (like Artemis, Domestication, etc...) I feel bad because I wind up going week after week after week without actually releasing anything. Nice when the big thing drops all at once, but not so much when your waiting and getting nothing for your trouble.

Issue number four... I'm pretty sure there was a number four and even a number five, but I'm losing my focus and I imagine you all get the picture. Oh, right, that was it. Real quick, then the actual idea. Issue four is that I have horrible issue with every project ballooning on me and I need practice forcing myself to write passages that are more concise when appropriate. That's also a big one. Always been a big issue for me.

Okay, now the actual idea! Starting today, and pending reviews after a brief trial period, weekend updates will be accompanied by a (very) short patron-exclusive release. These releases will (obviously) not be as... thorough as my usual writing, and, in order to keep the time commitment down, they won't get as thorough a process of rewriting and proofreading to make sure that every bloody sentence passes muster. They'll get a rough draft, they'll get an editing pass, and anything that I don't cringe at reading out loud will be finalized there.

The frequency/scope of these exclusive shorts will be dependent on how things go in the trial and what I hear back when I put up a poll after the trial. My initial thought is to target roughly 1K words a week and skip the week after if any start getting too long. The plus side of doing that much is that its lot of fun little popcorn stories which are constantly coming out and patron exclusive. The downside is that it would divert 10-20% of my productivity (some of which would be earned back by the fact that I'd hopefully commit less time to chasing stories that go unfinished). I could alternatively do a 1K target every other week instead which would be a smaller chunk of time commited to these little pieces. (Or, ya know, if people hate this idea, maybe I don't do it at all. But it seems really worthwhile to me.)

In general, the types of story you will see out of this are threefold. The first is really short snapshots that are sort of like a written-form freeze frame of some fun and sexy moment (maybe 3-600 words, If I can pull it off). Type two is my best attempt to take a limited scenario and play it out as quickly as possible with just enough details to make it pop (these would be something like 500-1K words). The final option, which I will try not to do too often, would be sort of microcosms of a larger idea which I like but can't afford to commit full story time to at a given point. (These are the ones that might balloon on me.)

The current plan is as follows. As soon as I post this, I'll follow it up with my first offering. That one is a 'Type 2' microstory which clocks in at 5 paragraphs and around 800 words. Next week, I intend to release a 'Type 3' story which will probably wind up around 2.5K despite my best efforts at brevity. It, however, is an abbreviated version of the first core scene (with necessary summarized buildup) from a concept I really enjoy which I had actually started turning into a full series 1.5 years ago before losing the (thankfully early-stage) rough draft due to a joint computer/flash drive crash. Regardless, the week after that I intend to post a poll asking for input on whether you wonderful people would like to see me continue at a weekly 1K pace, a biweekly 1K pace, something else, or not at all.

For now, that's that and I will talk to you all again in, oh, five or ten minutes once I type up a quick briefing on this weekend's offering for patrons. Til then.