Annual Report - Year One

Right. So, this is gonna be a bit of a long one. Apologies in advance. Gotta do the standard review/preview of last/next months, but I'm also gonna do a macro version for years one and two as well. So, ya know, that's gonna take a bit. But, hey, I'll use headers so you can only read any individual sections if you want. Anyhow, here goes...

November/December Review

So, my accounting for daily progress kinda derailed around both (American) Thanksgiving and Christmas, but as best I can tell from piecing things together I'm pretty confident I hit the target of 50K words with a few thousand words to spare. Also, an important note, as best I can tell all patrons who had signed up before the end of November should either have their December refund in hand or have it in the works. Patreon makes clear (on my end) that those take a little while to get processed, but in a week or two if anyone thinks they didn't get theirs please send me an email/direct message to let me know and I'll figure out why. (It'd probably be because I missed someone...)

On the whole, I ended the double-month feeling pretty good. I've moved well past my minor spell of burnout and made pretty good daily progress when I wasn't taking time off around the Holidays. Over the course of that span, I got all but the very beginning of LRL written and revised, I got 90% of the first 'Sack of Kharishan' short written and about 75% revised, and I got a decent amount of work in on a few other assorted projects. Exactly where everything in active/semi-active production stands is more of a January topic, so, without further ado...

January Preview

Before I get too far into the weeds on where individual projects stand, I do want to get a logistical update or two out of the way. First up, in recent months my writing process has evolved from two stages into three and doesn't seem to be going back, so moving forward I will be shifting from reporting progress as writing/revision to the writing/rewriting/proofing system I utilized one month. However, to keep things where they've been and not burn myself out again, I'm not going to go crazy and up my quota all the way to 60K. The target has always been RELEASING 20K words a month, after all, so it's important to consider what actually adds up to that. Since rewritten passages generally wind up 30-60% longer than first drafts and final copies add another 10% or so, the actual combined quota is gonna go up to 50K rather than 60K (resulting in something like 12K of fresh writing, 18K of rewriting, and 20K of proofing). That means My weekly target is gonna be 12K and change. From recent workdays, I think I'll be able to manage that in this system.

Also in more logistical matters, as I've gotten no pushback to speak of, I'm going to be transitioning to the 2 months early access for shorts, 4 months for full stories/chapters that I mentioned before. That's somewhat in theory, though, at least for a while, as I've not been releasing publically for quite awhile and just building up a buffer. So I've got plenty of stories that will go public before anything fresh which will probably mean more exclusivity than that 2/4 months for you lot at least for awhile until I'm more caught up on the public releases.

Okay, I can't think of any other major news, so let's get down to the upcoming stories.

First up, I'll be looking to wrap up the first 'Sack' short. At this point, there's about 4.5K words that are finalized, 3.5K words that are rewritten but not proofed, and modest holes that need plugged at around 500-1K words. That'll make it significantly longer than I anticipated (I am shocked...), but it shouldn't take more than two, perhaps 3 days more. So, I anticipate releasing it to patrons next weekend.

The other primary project in the works is Artemis: A Huntress Hunted. After an extended hiatus that will hopefully have allowed me to reset, I'll be giving it a full readthrough once 'Sack' is out of the way and then making it priority number one. I love it far too much to abandon it even if it weren't so close to the finish line, but it was really kicking my ass. So, hopefully going back with fresh eyes will allow me to get the remaining chunks out of the way. Assuming that happens, my intentions are to release it the last weekend of January, maybe a touch earlier. My best estimate is that it had something like 4-8K words to go, but it's been awhile so I'm not 100% how accurate that is. I can't imagine it'd be much more, though, as there's really nothing left to hammer out except the bulk of the main sex scene. Once it does go out, I'm pretty sure it'll run 25-30K words. So that'll be pretty much a whole month-plus of release. Or, ya know, a month because I had such a dry spell working on it that you all went (very patiently) without releases for awhile there.

Other projects, the initial 'Sack' short I had started kind of got shelved (the one coming out isn't the shepherdess) because it wasn't really coming together and only had a little work done, but I could bring it back. There's the home invasion short that's around half written, I'd guess, but I think I'm gonna shelf it for when I need something with a headstart down the road cause right now I'm NCR'd out and want to do at least dubcon, maybe full blown consensual. That leaves 'Daddy Issues'. That one's kinda fun and consensual, so I may pick it up after Artemis when I start in on the next cycle, or it may get punted for awhile. Not sure how I'll feel. It's much too far along to abandon, but not close enough to completion that it HAS to stay at the top of the queue. 

Once Artemis is out and I start a new cycle, I'm gonna have to make a few decisions. I'm getting close to starting the actress commission I've mentioned previously, but the other inclusions aren't certain yet so I'll probably do some polling of patrons to see how interested people are. I'd like to do the 'thanks for saving my sister' story as a fun-to-write consensual option, but Domestication has waited quite awhile for chapter 5 and doing both plus the actress story would leave no room for anything fantasy/historical/Sci Fi/Adventure-ish. So I'm not quite ready to say how everything will shake out. For now, it's 'Sack', then 'Artemis', then probably 'Actress'. After that, we'll see.

Year One in Review

Okay, gonna try not to drag this on for too long, but it is a whole year to consider.

First off, I feel pretty great about the fact that, through all the ups and downs, I managed to complete more than a full novel's worth of stories when word counts get thrown together. Throughout all of that, I also learned a lot about how I work best and most efficiently, how I can bully myself into being productive, how much time I need for various things and all that sort of stuff.  So it was definitely a solid year one on that front. 

In total, I took Domestication from a standalone story that didn't want to end to the first four (rather oversized) chapters of what's probably winding up as a full-length erotic novel, even if in a bit of an unorthodox format. I also wanna say I churned out half a dozen stand alone stories/chapters? (off the top of my head I'm thinking of Theft, Locker Room, Bar, Making Amends, Perils 1, and the vast majority of Artemis? Maybe one or two I'm not thinking of?) Add to that a decent collection of shorts and spinoffs, and I think it's a decent amount of output.

The downsides I'd say were mostly twofold, the times where I fell short of production quotas and winding up a bit underwhelming on the financial side. As to the former, the only time that got too critical was the late October/early November burnout, but as previously discussed I think I've moved past that pretty well. As to the latter, I'm reasonably confident that in large part I can chalk a lot of that up to the fact that I stopped releasing publicly in the second half of the year. That (not-really-a-single) decision can mostly be chalked up to 3 factors. 1. I was often racing to get enoughw riting done and taking hours to handle the hassle of website releases didn't seem wise. 2. I wanted to build up a bit of a buffer that I had lost. and 3. I was very curious what would happento patron numbers without fresh releases. Of those 3, 1 I just have to get used to, 2 I have successfully done that, and 3 I was pleasantly surprised to see that total patron numbers have stayed pretty steady even without public releases. That gives me confidence in the long term viability of the Mouse King project in that, as long as I continue writing and releasing at a reasonable pace, I should have a respectable supplimental income. And, as I start releasing publically again, hopefully the floor of that income should rise. 

Year Two Preview

Okay, last but not least, the future!

Year one's focus was on figuring out if/how I could make myself write on a productive, regular basis as opposed to the intermittent sort of scattered work I had previously done throughout my life. In total, I think that went well and by practicing so regularly I do believe I've gotten significantly better. Now, however, if I'm going to continue the Mouse King project indefinitely I need to turn my attention outwards. To date, the money I've gotten out of Mouse King has come FAR short to the time I've sunk in. To make the project viable long term, I need to change that. At present my plans in that regard are fourfold. Resume releasing stories publicly (duh!), increase my footprint by publishing in more places, bully myself into writing more shorts/splitting ongoing story isntalments into shorter individual instalments so that I have more total releases, and taking up commissions. Overall, I'm cautiously hopeful that things will go well and by the end of year two I'll have Mouse King up to a meaningful, steady component of a full income. But we'll see.

In terms of what I work on this year, I have a few competing priorities. First, I'd like to get the main phase of Domestication completed. (I'd have to double check the notes, but unless I'm drawing a blank I think there are 3 more main set piece 'chapters', but any or all may need to be split up into smaller instalments.) Second, I'd like to get more patron-exclusive spinoffs out. Third, I'd like to get an ongoing series underway that's more adventury. (That probably means trying a few more chapters of Perils, but I could go a different direction instead.) And, of course, I'll always have a constant flood of scenarios popping into my head that show up FAR faster than I can write them. But, I can at least get a few of the main recurring ones completed, I hope. (I think the two most important recurring ones are the consensual 'lesbian thanks little sister's hero' one I've described and one that can be summed up as 'defeated warrior woman must convince the man who bested her to buy her little sister at auction so they don't wind up separated'. If I can get all that done in one year, I'll be happy. If I could ALSO get Empire Games off the ground...

Well, that's it from me for tonight. Good night all, and Hopefully you've all had a good few weeks whether or not they included Holidays that were meaningful wherever you happen to live. (As best I can tell, you lot come from at least 4 different continents. That feels so weird to me...) I'll talk to you all again next weekend with a standard report and, unless calamity strikes, a more minor release. Til then, be good, just not too good.