Honor Bound Newsflash: July #1

I'm excited about Honor Bound Chapter 1 being out in the wild! I so appreciate the comments on it during June - it really helped me refine it before other people got their eyes on it - and I'm really looking forward to sharing Chapter 2 in August for Sneak Preview subscribers and above. If you have any other thoughts you'd like to share about Chapter 1 I would love to hear them - on this post, on the form, on my Tumblr or on the CoG forum thread, whatever suits you best!

It's always strange, though exciting, putting up a new thing - I was a bit nervous about whether people would enjoy it, plus it always feels a little odd going back and doing edits while also writing a new chapter - but I'm really pleased to have done it.

Along with doing some small fixes and tweaks to Chapter 1 and sifting through feedback, I've been coding and writing Chapter 4 this fortnight. I took some time to do difficulty/stat balancing in which I spent most of a couple of days looking at numbers, writing them down, tweaking things, looking at numbers again, wondering why they hadn't changed as much as I hoped, and tweaking them again.

It was as thrilling as it sounds. But I have balanced the stats! No longer is it inexplicably much harder to get high Survival!

Here's a song from my playlist that I've been listening to while writing! I added this one to the playlist because it makes me think of a particular character (and indeed some MCs). Guess who...? Granted it's not entirely fair, since this character hasn't displayed a lot of this song's vibes, but...

Current wordcount: 153033

Fortnight's wordcount: 16886

Average playthrough wordcount: 40911 (I literally gasped when I saw that number, oh my gosh)

Behind the scenes:

This week was weird because some (non CoG) work I was doing ended unexpectedly early. Honestly it's been a bit rough and was very sudden. I'm now doing my CoG work full time - which is what I love most, honestly. I'm very fortunate to have reached a point where I can do that, at least for the moment.

In other news, I read Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby which I liked in some ways but had mixed feelings about in others. Which is a bit of a wishy-washy comment but there we go.

Much less wishy-washy was reading Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins. Terry Pratchett books were a constant during my teenagerhood and they really helped me step out of a very formulaic fantasy reading rut that I'd fallen into. I honestly love his work and reading about his life in such a warm, unromanticised way was wonderful. I cried a whole bunch. Highly recommended.

Much less... overtly positive was that over the last few months, my sibling and I have been very slowly watching the Twilight films on second-hand DVDs got from the charity shop on a weekly basis - sometimes less often, and sometimes in chunks thanks to my baby nephew needing assistance. This fortnight we finished Breaking Dawn: Part 2. I hadn't seen any of the films since the first one at the cinema, and vaguely recalled some of the plot points but not in any great detail. It was... a journey. I am forever changed.

Sneak peek:

This is a bit spoilery for what's going to happen in Chapter 4 so if you want to go in totally fresh, look away now!

With clouds of darkened smoke billowing past the window of your compartment, the train has reached the outskirts of New Belmir City. The trees are green and full now, and the jacarandas lining the railway line are heavy with purple blossoms: the weather teeters on the brink of summer, about to tip over.

It's late afternoon, and your journey with Captain Korzha has taken up most of the day.

My favourite bit:

I am really enjoying describing characters' clothes! I loved doing it in Noblesse Oblige too, but in Creme and Royal Affairs it was usually describing them during fancy occasions and usually the characters and PC were in school uniform. So it's lovely to think much more about what people are wearing at different times.

Here's a little peek, since I'm embarrassed to have realised that I forgot to put a new one on the last post!

Savarel hoists a bag of snacks and water onto ${sav_their} back. $!{sav_their} outdoor gear is more hardwearing than their usual clothing, which tends towards loose, pale, and draping; today, ${sav_theyre} wearing a long gray coat and chunky walking boots. Matia looks much the same as ever in ${mat_their} dark blue overalls and coppery leather jacket. $!{mat_their} golden hoops sparkle all the way up ${mat_their} ears.