Battle of Buttons, Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/64548439
Battle of Buttons, Part 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/battle-of-part-2-64785102
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In the middle of an open-air auditorium is a lifted stage similar to those found on reality competition...
2022-06-03 20:38:02 +0000 UTC View PostMoments inspired by: https://www.patreon.com/posts/66987476
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Kenna – Parrot in a Crow’s Nest
Kenna’s favorite location on the ship is the crow’s nest. She kisses you there so deeply that your back leans over the edge of the rail; only her arms keep you from falling. You feel dizzy, exalted, and a touch nervous. It i...
2022-05-31 07:18:59 +0000 UTC View PostMoments inspired by: https://www.patreon.com/posts/66987476
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Kent – Parrot in a Crow’s Nest
Kent’s favorite location on the ship is the crow’s nest. There, he kisses you so deeply that your back leans over the edge of the rail; only his arms keep you from falling. You feel dizzy, exalted, and a touch nervous. It is, after all,...
2022-05-31 07:17:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe Saucy Sides and UCRT Fairy Tales will come out tomorrow, with the final third of Gil’s interview released on Tuesday. All are over half written, and I just need to tie the bow and end the stories. Full disclosure: my focus has been all over the place recently. Partially because of real life worries and scheduling, but also because I’m adjusting to no longer living on my own. Thankfully, my mom is fantastic and understanding and schedules outings with her friends so that I can have the...
2022-05-30 03:52:59 +0000 UTC View PostPart 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/66987476
Part 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/66993837
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Damn Antonio and his reckless behavior.
Grayson was too far away to stop the bullet from firing. He wat...
2022-05-29 00:34:09 +0000 UTC View PostPart 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/66987476
This has become a twenty page story. I'm now officially writing a pirate novella. Help.
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“They’ve stopped following us, sir,” Caleb said.
Gray looked over the Vengeance’s rail and to the horizon where the scho...
2022-05-28 05:21:47 +0000 UTC View PostNB: The second half of this story is also releasing tonight, but I figured that I'd post the first half now since as most people are in a later time zone than I'm currently located. Originally, I'd intended to finish the short story about John and Mayor Z, but ultimately I needed something fun and lighthearted. And so, well . . .
Ahoy, mateys! Here be a Historical AU about psychic pirates.
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Terms To Know
Privateer: 2022-05-28 00:52:53 +0000 UTC View Post
I've already done a lot of work on these two chapters, so wanted to push out this post as soon as possible in order to quickly get working any changes that I didn't personally think of.
For those not wanting to replay the chapters: Chapter 8 and 9 includes the training scenes with Gray and Rosy, the revelation of Nick's kidnapping, Hope's phone call (which has already been completely reworked, but I'm still open to suggestions!), and the dinner date with Kenzie where AL delivers Reese's...
2022-05-26 00:14:59 +0000 UTC View PostConsidering that this chapter primarily focused on walking up a flight of stairs, it went through a lot a changes. . . and is now almost a third longer, due to all the variations with Nick’s dialogue. This chapter ended up being an even 100 pages on Microsoft Word, which meant I kept losing my spot and thus spent half my time playing Where’s Waldo instead of editing.
As to what’s new, Nick now has more bite towards Buttons with relationship scores below 80, while other the c...
2022-05-25 23:49:29 +0000 UTC View PostI've been so distracted lately that yesterday I forgot to push the "Publish" button for the post notifying everyone that the 2.0 version of Chapter 6 was up! Sorry about that, and Chapter 7 should follow by this Sunday.
There's less changes to Chapter 6 than there were to Chapter 5, in large part because Chapter 5 was twice the length and thus had more stuff to be changed. Ultimately, I decided not to merge 6 and 7, especially since this new version of Chapter 6 ended up being 2,500 wor...
2022-05-20 16:05:36 +0000 UTC View PostNo one's correctly guessed all of the quotes yet, although each has been been rightfully attributed by least one person (unless I overlooked an answer on discord, but I'm pretty sure that I checked them all).
All quotes are new lines by either an RO or a Wiseman, from the rewritten Chapters 6-9.
Here are some more clues:
-Every RO has at least one quote.
-No character has more than two quotes.
-One quote is said by one of Button's parents. The other parent ...
2022-05-19 01:59:05 +0000 UTC View PostClue: Each quote has been correctly identified at least once, but no one has guessed all correctly. All quotes are new lines by either an RO or a Wiseman, from the rewritten Chapters 6-9.
Be the first to identify all speakers to earn the Sanctum role of "Nick's Smartest Sibling" and bragging rights (at least until the contest, because I find this fun).
QUOTES:
1) “Desire is irrelevant without conviction."
2) "Newsflash: Sauron did it bette...
2022-05-17 19:51:15 +0000 UTC View Post. . . But Virgos make great punchlines. (Ha.)
The good news: My mother's surgery was a success and her tumor was removed!
The bad news: She still needs chemotherapy as the cancer has metastasized to her lymph nodes.
I'll be staying with her for the next months as Live-In Dog Walker/Official Beverage Fetcher, so everything posted here will be coming to you Live From Seattle. Despite the less frequent updates this month due to the hecticness of, well, everything, Mind Blin...
2022-05-17 02:02:10 +0000 UTC View Post
My mother's surgery was sucessful yesterday! I'll post more tomorrow, but wanted to thank you all for the well wishes.
Waiting through her procedure definitely gave me new insight into what Button went through at the hospital waiting for Nick, and the next Patreon short story will subsequently be John's POV of that same scene. (You'll get to see him interact with Mayor Z.)
Chapters 6 and 7’s rewrite is well under way! (Also, the majority of Chapter 9, because I found it easier to write all of Hope’s scenes at the same time. But Chapters 8 and 9 probably won’t get posted for another two weeks, as I still need to make a feedback post for them.)
Regarding the next update, though: I’ve extensively experimented with combining Chapters 6 and 7, since both chapters are comparatively short (only 25,000 words each!). However, I really like the cliffh...
2022-05-07 00:49:21 +0000 UTC View PostWhen did darkness become alluring?
This thought occurs to you as you lie in bed, blindfold over your eyes, and wait.
There’s a reason that children, even the ones who pretend to be brave, are afraid of the dark. There’s no way of knowing—not for sure—what lurks in the twisting black, and infant imagination creates faces and claws from that nothingness. Draw the blanket up to your neck, the childish subconscious warns. Don’t be taken unaware. 2022-05-01 00:20:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Sometimes writing is hard. Honestly, a lot of times writing is hard. For me, at least. I like telling stories. Typing them up is no more than a necessary evil in order for me to share those stories.
The good news? Chapter Six 2.0 is almost finished, and Rosy is now approximately 1.7x sexier due to some edits I made this morning.
Anyway, tonight is one of those nights that I’m simply not wording very well. Which means my stories (noticeably, April’s Saucy Side with Grayson) hav...
2022-04-30 04:26:25 +0000 UTC View PostPart One: https://www.patreon.com/posts/65701262
“Cerberus!” Glitch cursed, cradling his hand to his chest. “Hellhound, Devil Dog! Vile beast!”
Kent glared from where he knelt, stroking the heads of two trembling shih tzus. “Calm down,” he ordered Glitch. “You’re frightening them.”
“I’m frightening them?” Glitch exploded. ...
2022-04-29 07:45:16 +0000 UTC View Post(Look forward to Part 2, coming tomorrow! This short story got long.)
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Every spring, Tobias Zarneki held his annual charity auction. Ostensibly to raise funds for A New Page, a nonprofit which coordinated activities for at-risk youth in association with local libraries, Chicago’s political elite recognized the event for what it was: an opportunity to schmooze with other power players, ...
2022-04-28 03:39:43 +0000 UTC View PostI managed to get it down from 60,000 words with some judicious editing, but this chapter is still hefty. It's also late because I made the dumb mistake of having CSIDE (the program I use to test the coding) autoformat everything into spaces instead of tabs.
. . . Which meant I had to go over the entire first five chapters and redo all the coding. Or, at least, I would've needed to do this had I not given up halfway through Chapter 2 and just rolled back to older files. Which me...
2022-04-26 00:36:40 +0000 UTC View PostChapter Five 2.0 will go up in a few hours (internet willing), but I'm sharing this snippet because I suspect most Buttons won't take time off wooing their love interests to go have have pineapple salsa with Nick at "Don't Kale The Vibe."
I'm really, really proud of the vegetable joke. Thanks to everyone on The Sanctum discord that helped me workshop it.
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Don’t Kale The Vibe’s entre dishes are adequate enough, but they’ve gained popularity due to their dips....
2022-04-24 02:40:58 +0000 UTC View PostBecause I can never leave anything well enough alone, here's a sneak peak of Sally's new optional romance scenes! (Chapter five now almost breaks 60,000 words, but we're going to ignore that to focus on smooches.)
Originally, I'd intended for Sally's romance to have three starting points: one in chapter five, one around chapter fourteen, and a "at long last we now both acknowledge the potential between us" ending.
The chapter 14 activation point didn't work out (there's been a lot...
2022-04-23 02:46:44 +0000 UTC View PostDelays happening since I added in a new clue to Chapter 5 that comes up in Hope and John's convo. This requires me to add in a scene, taking out Button's solo walks around Chicago and replacing them with scenes where Button can undertake various unethical endeavors such as hacking into their father's email account in order to find a letter sent by a certain mask-wearing vigilante.
More foreshadowing is always good, right? I'm hoping to get this scene finished by this evening (I have the...
2022-04-20 21:11:56 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 5 and 6 are finally rewritten. I just need to finish debugging the code, and they’ll be released this weekend. I tried to finish Chapter 7 as well to include the three chapters together, but 7 underwent major changes and may still get merged with part of Chapter 8 (I’m working on finding the right cut-off)
Most importantly: I finished writing the new scene with Hope and am satisfied with it! I’d been skipping over scenes with her because, truthfully, writing about...
2022-04-16 07:03:17 +0000 UTC View PostI'm finished with Chapter 5 (just had to resolve some issues that arose from switching computers), but I'm trapped with indecision about where to start it (and, subsequently, where to end Chapter 4).
Chapter organization is essential to reading experience: it determines whether you set aside a book during a "good stopping point" and forget about it, or if after a chapter ends, you feel compelled to go park your car behind an abandoned KFC and turn off your cellphone so that you ca...
2022-04-10 21:51:55 +0000 UTC View PostBattle of Buttons, Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/64548439
Note: This interview is getting insanely long, with a third section releasing at the end of the month. Feel free to ask more questions of all the ROs on either this post or on the Sanctum discord.
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The stone auditorium from before has vanished. In its place is a lifted stage similar to th...
2022-04-06 04:52:23 +0000 UTC View PostAre YOU suitable for a postal career with THAB? Participate in the Courier Rating And Personality System to find out!
Link: https://uquiz.com/quiz/yKgOpo
(Battle of Buttons Part 2 is taking longer than anticipated to finish, so I took a step back to brainstorm and created this quiz. THAB is the company that you'll be working for in Delivery for the ...
2022-04-04 02:24:47 +0000 UTC View PostI updated the demo for Mind Blind 2.0! Hoping everyone likes the changes--I feel like it truly adds depth to the main character. Perhaps takes a way a tiny (unimportant) bit of character choice, but overall you'll be left with a poignant experience that will even change the flavor text for certain selections in Chapter 2. I'm honestly super excited to share this new and improved iteration of the story!
(2.0 Demo Link: 2022-04-02 02:37:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Note: This ended up being a LOT different (and longer) than the reality show version I originally intended, with a main character from Delivery for the Damned rudely barging and commandeering the interview.
Your questions will from before will get used for part two! If you come up with any additional questions that you think may help the host reach his final decision, please add them to this post.
* * * * 2022-03-31 23:36:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Seoul isn’t a city.
At least, it’s not a city in the way that Chicago is a city. Seoul stands with New York and London and Tokyo, a sprawling labyrinth of tiered levels, neon skyscrapers looming over tangled roads that arch over and dip under each other in a stream of ever-moving headlights. On your third day in Korea, you decide to visit a few of the quieter areas, palaces with courtyards the size of football fields and shrines where the trees are twined with red ribbons.
The...
2022-03-31 05:04:56 +0000 UTC View Post