November Newsflash #1

Hello and happy Friday! I've been mostly writing Honor Bound this fortnight, with a few Royal Affairs expanded epilogue edits.

Here is a nice instrumental song from my Honor Bound playlist!

I'm very pleased to have put Honor Bound Chapter 3 out in the world - it was a little scary, but the feedback has been incredibly useful. I've edited some of the descriptions in the intimate scenes for clarity, and have also added the option for trans men or transmasc nonbinary MCs who have had bottom surgery to pick whether they had meta, phallo, or unspecified (if those options don't feel comfortable: the scenes are still very spicy but it's slightly less anatomically specific).

I wrote up a post on the CoG forum on the topic (if you get an error when you click, you need to be in the Adult Reader group on the forum to access it) about how I've coded the scenes, if you're interested in taking a look!

And I've made an itch.io page for the public version of Honor Bound so if you want to keep track of progress there, please do! On the itch version you can still make named save slots, and current progress will be saved if you accidentally close the tab (which constantly happens to me).

I removed some of Honor Bound's code and got rid of the chapter checkpoints (they'll be there when the game is released, but they were causing bugs), so the fortnight wordcount looks deceptive. I've actually written around 13,000 words in Chapter 6 - hooray! In this chapter, some really important things are afoot, and there will also be a definite cameo from one of the Creme characters, and optional cameos from a couple of others.

Honor Bound current wordcount: 238960

Honor Bound fortnight's (deceptive) wordcount: 6680

Honor Bound current playthrough length: 62349 (this is literally approaching the playthrough length of Creme de la Creme. Already. I have no idea what's happening anymore)

Behind the scenes:

I had such a nice time going to AdventureX in Greenwich! I hadn't gone to AdventureX in five years, and Greenwich in far longer. I got to catch up with lots of people who I'd not seen in person for ages, including a ton of lovely friends I worked on Love Island with back in the day, and Joey Jones, who's the author of Lies Under Ice which is coming out soon. The whole thing left me feeling  excited and optimistic.

Sneak peek:

This is from Chapter 6:

It's fully dark outside beyond the warm lamps stationed around the school buildings. Your eyes are sandy, but a splash of cold water to your face helps wake you up.

Moving as quickly and quietly as you can down the darkened halls, your breath sounds alarmingly loud, but once you're outside, the noises of the wind and grass and animals mask it better. Close to the line of cars, you spot ${varenn}'s tall, neat silhouette leaning against the wall in a pool of lamplight. $!{var_they} @{var_pl peel|peels} away from the wall as you approach.

"Thank you for coming," ${var_they} ${var_say}, and then falls silent as the sound of jaunty whistling approaches from the direction of the gardens.

My favourite bit:

Oh my gosh. I wrote the saddest thing the other day and I loved it so much. It's about the MC, Fiore, Catarina, and Savarel discussing the late Jaime and I hope you like it when it happens. It gave me Feelings(tm).

I hope you have a good weekend, and if you're doing NaNoWriMo, may the words be flowing freely!