Ava stared down at her screen, so tired that it took several seconds for her eyes to focus on the time. Seventeen minutes after two a.m. Forty-three minutes until ‘lunch’ was over. Four more hours until she was done at the Buy Fresh and headed for VaVaVoom. Blearily, she wondered if there was any chance VaVa would let her stay in the back and steam and hang new garments, instead of working the front. Maybe? If Amanda was there, and the bags under Ava’s eyes were too dark for ev...
2023-01-12 16:02:54 +0000 UTC
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Atae’s temple actually was surprisingly humble. There were no statues, no pews or cushions for penitents to sit on, no candles or icons. A simple wooden door opened into a space perhaps ten feet wide and twenty feet long, and at the far end was a short pedestal, with a deep purple cloth draped over it. On the cloth sat a copper bowl, though Alpha couldn’t tell what the bowl contained, if anything.
You have entered a shrine dedicated to the Goddess Atae. You currentl...
2023-01-11 19:31:37 +0000 UTC
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Alpha sat up with a gasp. Or tried to. Her head whacked hard into something, a hollow wooden thud echoed in the small space in which she laid. She blinked, looking around. Everything was rendered in shades of gray, but once her mind adjusted to what it was seeing, she could tell she was in some kind of cramped, rectangular space. Subtle gradations showed swirls that looked like wood grain, and she let her head fall backwards onto the bottom of the coffin - because there was nothing e...
2023-01-10 14:54:03 +0000 UTC
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Now that chapter eight is out, I can finally release Ava's images! Here we have real-life Ava, Orc-Ava, and Vamp-Ava. There will be one more Ava-iteration, but that won't be until the veeeeeeery end of the series, so shhhh, no spoilers!
2023-01-09 16:44:59 +0000 UTC
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Ava blinked. “Are you… awake now?”
Emily tilted her head, very slightly. Her smile grew a little more vapid. “Of course, Traveler. I am here to assist you in creating your character.” She looked to the side, catching sight of AlphaOmegadon, and for a moment, her edges seemed to… fizz. She never faded away, but it was like she made a thousand small movements all at once. Like she’d been fast-forwarded, in fact.
“Now that you have selected your character nam...
2023-01-09 16:39:18 +0000 UTC
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Though Kris had no memory of entering the ruins before, she felt a flush of heat run through the scar hidden beneath her dress as it came into sight. There were tales of old-time places that covered mils and mils, of broken buildings that towered up to ten stories high, with scattered remains telling the story of reaching untold heights.
This ruin was small, and more recent than those. Lara said her grandmother had told stories of when a man named Si of Tist used to come to the...
2023-01-09 04:50:44 +0000 UTC
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NOTE: This is for a contest on Royal Road. If I win, I get some free advertising, which can hopefully be applied to Cuckoo when I'm ready to start releasing it there. That, in turn, should help boost sales and the all-important ratings on Amazon, so, fingers crossed.
I'll only be working on this on the weekends and evenings, and it will be less than 40k words. As you know, I lean toward the verbose, so keeping it...
2023-01-08 19:07:21 +0000 UTC
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She opened her eyes to blackness. Words hovered in the darkness in front of her.
Your race has changed. You may reconfigure your appearance to suit your new race. Change appearance?
Yes/No
She blinked. Every now and then Veritas announcements had text in Very Important Red, but she’d never seen pink before. And why was ‘Yes’ almost twice as large as ‘No’?
“Um, no?”
The words vanished, but noth...
2023-01-06 15:45:14 +0000 UTC
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When Ava got home, she fell into bed; smelly clothes, dirty shoes, and all. The relief of knowing that she could pay her bills - and even had a little extra for once - was enormous, and she passed out for a solid six hours. Her alarm woke her, letting her know it was time to go back to the Buy Fresh, and she sat up, rubbing grit from her eyes.
Glancing in the small mirror above the bathroom sink, she grimaced. She’d removed her makeup before leaving VaVa’s, but there were still smud...
2023-01-05 17:39:23 +0000 UTC
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While Ava’s job at the Buy Fresh was tedious and physically challenging, her job at VaVaVoom was sometimes entirely too exciting. She left the Buy Fresh shortly after seven, and she was due at VaVa’s by eight. Fortunately, it wasn’t far away, though the relatively short distance separating the businesses contained a thousand sociological megamiles.
Ava usually took the bus to and from each workplace, but unless the weather was terrible, she walked the two miles between. S...
2023-01-04 18:37:17 +0000 UTC
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Ava sat up in her pod so quickly that she banged her head against the closed door. Newer models were padded, for just that reason, but this was an old, basic model. She grasped her mask and pulled it away from her chin, peeling it up and away from her face. The old gaskets gave way easily, though she knew they’d leave telltale marks on her face.
“What the hell was that?” she shouted, starting to throw the mask out of the pod. Belatedly, she remembered that there was no wa...
2023-01-03 19:46:13 +0000 UTC
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Chapter One
Ava stared down at the spreadsheet displayed on her screen, tapping her stylus against her teeth with a soft click. “Just two hundred dollars, huh? Just.” She laughed bitterly, tossing the stylus down on her desk and leaning back to stare blankly at the ceiling.
Ever since her mother had lost her battle with cancer the year before, Ava had been drowning in debt. Not that she begrudged the expense, since every moment she gained with her mom had been worth...
2023-01-03 17:19:25 +0000 UTC
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When I started Legendary Farmer, I was just doing what I love to do: writing! Stat blocks were there primarily because it was LitRPG (and I fully intended to make more of them in editing). Since they weren't something I was focused on, I may, just possibly (and I'll deny it if asked publicly) have winged them. Not ALL of them. Rouge's stats are based on simple math, but how they affected her skills may have been, ah, somewhat variable at times. One thing I completely made up were her...
2023-01-02 23:16:25 +0000 UTC
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Eyeball enhancement surgery went well, and I have some fun details for when one of my characters gets implants. The world looks like I'm still wearing greasy glasses, but I can actually read this screen, which is an improvement by itself. It may take anywhere from a few days to a few months for my eyes to heal and my brain to adapt to the change. Definitely getting a headache just from the telehealth visit and this, though, so I'll round it up by promising that I'll be back Monday! Also, if y...
2022-12-30 17:45:06 +0000 UTC
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As they ran, Wep pulled a health potion from his inventory and popped the cork. As carefully as he could while balancing atop a half-ton swine, he pulled out the tiny bat and held her protectively in his hand. Now that she was starting to dry, her fur was a beautiful copper color, though she had large tufts of silver fur that stood up in front of her ears. He pressed the rim of the open glass bottle to her tiny, slightly squashed-looking snout, and tipped a single drop of the cotton-candy pin...
2022-12-28 18:33:56 +0000 UTC
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Amazon has selected Clearing for a Kindle Daily Deal on January 28! That means I get free advertising for a day. Woot! It'll be discounted to $1.99 on both the US and Canadian stores, so it's a good time to spread the word 😉
Congratulations! We selected the following title(s) for a Kindle Deal on Amazon.com. Amazon will handle the price updates during this period.
Clearing: Legendary Farmer: Book One will be discounted...
2022-12-27 19:59:11 +0000 UTC
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The mob was a hyena that stood taller than HB, though nowhere near as wide. It had slavering jaws wide enough to bite off Wep’s head, and its spotted coat stood out around its shoulders like an enraged anorak. It would have been frightening if it hadn’t been busy spinning in circles like a pomeranian chasing its own tail.
As it spun, it yipped furiously, and every fourth or fifth cackle held the Fear debuff, causing a cascade of resistance notifications down the side of Wep’s disp...
2022-12-27 16:32:49 +0000 UTC
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HB’s powerful trotters made short work of the road out of Vargo, heading for the new goblin capital, Refuge. Wep had had a long-shot quest in Quarternell’s last true military base about a year before, and while it hadn’t panned out, it had achieved two things. First, going there had unlocked the ability to [Teleport] to the small Traveler’s guild on the outskirts of the town. Second, it had allowed him to level up his [Merchant’s Intuition] to level twenty.
As a third benefit,...
2022-12-23 19:18:41 +0000 UTC
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George swung his legs into his immersion pod, body groaning as it settled into position. As comfortable as the beds were, for the most part, his old bones just didn’t play along like they used to. Leslie, his nurse, set a hand on the lid of the pod and smiled down at him anxiously.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Mr. Short? That was a bad attack you had earlier today, and the doctor said-”
He snorted, but smiled at her. She was just doing her best to take care of him. “Y...
2022-12-22 17:28:55 +0000 UTC
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Millie flipped a towel over her shoulder and looked back at Struthio, who was stirring the pot of creamy grains cooking over the grand kitchen hearth. “Th’ dough should be ready t’ rest now. I’ll work on the filling, if you can check th’ oven.” Carefully, she laid a thin layer of cheesecloth over the dough laid out in tidy mounds all over the floured wooden table. It was almost dawn, and soon the locals and the Travelers would be in for breakfast.
Quest: “...
2022-12-21 18:59:40 +0000 UTC
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Warning: This story occurs during a war. It is not light and fun. If themes of war or fear are difficult for you, you may want to skip it.
Nekthadt kin-Thallen pressed his face into the mud, praying silently, desperately, as his tears mixed with the blood and filth on the ground. Please, Gi-na, A-tae. Spare her. I’ll do anything, only spare her life. The whip whistled through the air, and he flinched as it hit, ...
2022-12-20 21:06:48 +0000 UTC
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Part II
Through the narrow crack in the webbing that surrounded her, the spiderling could see the light change, flickering as the Man carried her. Was he called… Iorgas? The concept of a name was strange, but Mother had one as well, and in her mind, it felt right to identify one’s self as different from Other. Why not use a word for this? After all, she had named ‘tree’ and ‘Man’, so naming herself wouldn’t be strange.
As Iorgas carried her, jostling occasionally a...
2022-12-19 18:02:20 +0000 UTC
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I don't need one for sending it to publishers, but if I'm roundly rejected, I will need one when it goes up on Amazon 🤣 It's too dark, but it's a start. I'd do quite a bit more work before using it. (Maybe even change it entirely, as happened with Clearing's cover... Twice.)
Thoughts?
2022-12-17 16:59:23 +0000 UTC
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Part I
Food. Battle. Sleep. Sleep when she could find somewhere safe to rest. If she dared let down her guard, she would be eaten, just as she would eat the others. Others like her, not like her, it didn’t matter. She ate them all, and grew. When the first molt came, she instinctively knew she’d be in danger. More danger even than when she slept, since most of the Others slept at the same time.
She ate and grew, and when the image of herself - though how she knew it was Self...
2022-12-16 18:17:37 +0000 UTC
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Then, of course, I met Walter. The poor fellow had never set foot outside his home county, and was the most unworldly of men. It made stalking and capturing him quite an entertaining endeavor, but that is another story entirely.
-Lady Chatterwick’s Journey
Her eyes were still green. Greener than they had been before she transformed? Perhaps. But what Maria noticed most was a new confidence in the set o...
2022-12-15 17:13:35 +0000 UTC
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will be tomorrow! I had a whole other arc I was going to throw in there (involving the kittens getting chased around the castle), but I did a quick check on my word count, and it was already the right length for a book aimed at middle-school-age kids, so I needed to wrap it up! That means that on Friday, I'll start the first short story about one of the LF characters. I'm trying to decide if it should be Sumi, Nekthadt, or the Head Librarian. Thoughts?
2022-12-14 17:41:43 +0000 UTC
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While the place I returned to had many things in common with the home I ran away from, it was still subtly different. It was some time before I realized that the difference was me. Having faced one-eyed goblins and marriage-minded rakshasas, I knew I could handle anything my family could throw at me.
-Lady Chatterwick’s Journey
She was beautiful. She had known that the silky, deep brown fur of her paws...
2022-12-14 17:38:14 +0000 UTC
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In the five years I’d been away, my father seemed to have aged ten. I wondered if he had always been so small.
-Lady Chatterwick’s Journey
Cat feet nearly silent on the smooth stone tiles of the balcony, Maria padded toward the door that led into her mother’s chambers. The door was nearly always open when it was warm and pleasant outside, and she was surprised to find it firmly closed today. She no...
2022-12-13 17:56:08 +0000 UTC
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I'm considering sending GT to traditional publishers, to see if there's any interest. That means it would stay here until it's published, whether on Amazon or somewhere else. Publishers usually don't want series from new authors, so that wasn't really an option for LF, but since GT is standalone, I can do it. What do you think?
Also, I should have a new chapter every day this week, and hopefully next week as well. That may well finish GT. It will definitely put us very close. Woohoo!
2022-12-12 17:41:34 +0000 UTC
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Never let down your guard simply because your goal is in sight. Or, if you do, don’t wear your favorite gown that day.
-Lady Chatterwick’s Journey
Maria had never been allowed to freely walk the streets of the city in which she lived, and she was amazed at the treasures and tragedies it held. As the two kittens traveled branches, roofs, and narrow dividing walls, she took in everything around her. Even when she...
2022-12-12 17:33:31 +0000 UTC
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