Team J.A.F.

It's always great to read a mystery.  You know that portions aren't going to get solved until the end, and I know I always have to keep reading on to see just what happens.

It's a little harder to write a mystery.  When I do, I usually know the big reveal early on, and try to subtly hint towards it without giving it away.

But writing a mystery while also not knowing what it is... that's tough.

The LSO Round Robin Epics are fun, but both my Bionicle and COT stories have some pretty decent mysteries going on.  All the authors are setting them up, but I really want to know what their intentions are for the stories.  Hopefully we can pull it off and make it a fun, compelling read even as we try to figure out what's going on too along the way.

Also in other news, I've been spending my unemployed nights to work on one of my other personal stories.  The story about this story: I wrote the original almost a decade ago and worked on it for years, but then lost about half of it when my computer was stolen and I didn't have a full copy on backup.  As such, I started rewriting it again three years ago, and I've only been making slow progress on it.  But last month I got past one of my writing blocks, and now I've been cranking out the story; I've written nearly 30,000 words of it in the last month.  Woot!  Sure, I'm just at the halfway point of where I had it last time, but I've had years to work my ideas in my head, and now it's mostly just a process of getting it typed out.  (At least, until I hit another spot where I get stuck on how to continue... and as a writer, I tend to avoid jumping over troubled spots, because I like to build my current writing on what I've already said and such.)

But yeah, not having to wake up in the morning and go to work really frees up a lot of evening time to write.  Too bad I like having money more, or else I would do this all the time.  

Well, apparently my entry is gonna lose in the System Building Contest Poll.  That was pretty much guaranteed, since I never win in BBC, and I've had a lot of experience to back it up.  But it didn't help that NOBODY FREAKIN TOLD ME WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF THE MOC IN THE FIRST PLACE.  Is it good, horrible bad, fine but not enough to shine compared to the others?  I dunno.

Granted, the same thing happened with my COT short story.  (ultraviolence, I thought we had a deal.  I read and reviewed your story!)  But again, not surprised; it's been years since anybody has actually read my stories I've posted here.  Oh, when it comes to asking me to read other stuff, people are just fine with it... but heck most people hardly even look at my set reviews posted on the front page.  Grr.

And since I'm in an angry ranting mood... the System Building Contest Poll took almost two weeks to get up.  Okay, I was gonna give them slack for the holidays... but seriously, it's just ONE POLL.  You didn't even rename the forum it was in.  Did it really take THAT LONG to post it?

Also, school tuition: WHY SO FREAKIN EXPENSIVE??

I'm feeling adventurous, so I want to read somebody's stories.  I'm still on break, so I could use a good epic or something to read.  But I won't do it for free...   You see, I have my Sci Fi Christmas storythat's being ignored.  So if somebody wants to kindly take a look at it, then I'll review their story of choice.  (I always try to leave reviews when I read stuff... I just don't read as much as I used to.)

Dunno if there'll be any takers, but I'll throw this out there.  

Hey, look, there's also a COT Short Story Christmas themed contest!  I think I'll enter!  I think I'll write a 6 thousand word story.  Great!

So yep, my story, despite the title, doesn't focus on Christmas too much... mostly at the beginning and end.  But it's there!  I took a lot of inspiration from various Sci Fi shows, but the two that were most influential were Firefly and Titan IE.  I got the kind-of intergalactic government system from Firefly (although mine is less like the Alliance and more like the UN).  And the big thing from Titan IE was just the idea that vibrant communities could live on space stations.  And there were various other references (even a Bionicle one... I stole a line from Pohatu, although it wasn't too original so maybe it shouldn't count.)  However, the big thing I thought up on my own was the aliens: that came from studying for my Biology class, and reading about these cool plant / bacteria symbiotes, so I decided to come up with one of my own.

The story ended up being quite long because I wanted to throw in a lot of actiony stuff with all the basic plots, leave room for some morals and character development, and have a good amount of witty dialogue.  I thought it had a good flow to it, but so far the people I've asked to read it have refused to do so, so I don't have any other opinions on it.  You know what you could do?  You could read it and give me a quick review.  I'd like that very much!

Story Topic can be found here.  It is in COT, so I expect that when I wake up tomorrow, it'll be in three pages deep, so this one link may be the only way for people to get to it.  

Anyway, that's all, thanks for reading!

You know, the one for the COT Christmas Short Story Contest?  I've had it outlined for a while, but I decided to start writing it tonight.  But there wasn't a part where I could stop writing, and I just kept typing away until I came to the conclusion.  I still need to edit it slightly, but right now it's at 12 pages in MS Word with over 6,500 words.  So yeah, it'll be a long one.  But I felt that I covered all the major themes that I wanted, and the flow feels nice to me, so hopefully it won't be too long.  (After all, the last story contest had some lengthy entries too)

This has been my first real vacation since spring break last March.  Since then, I've either been in school, had work, or a combination of the two.  I only started getting my weekends free in November, so it's nice to have free time again.  (I'm not counting BrickFair or BrickCon as vacation times... those were ADVENTURES!)

Sadly, now my days off are through, and I have a morning class to attend tomorrow.  (Why am I still awake again?  I should get some sleep.)  Also, I have some large assignments due soonish.  And while I got a lot done this break, schoolwork was not high on the list.     (I did manage to write 12,000 words for my story, and no it was not for NaNo; I actually just like to try to work on my stories when I can.)  Finals are just around the corner, so I gotta stop slacking and get to work.

Of course, I do have one BZP project that I hope to complete this week.  Ben, Aaron, and Rene know what I'm talking about.  

So I had maybe like three epics that were in progress when BZPower went down.  But I'm considering some new options.  I would like the story to all be on the new forums, so people won't have to jump back between the archives and new forums and such.  So what I could do is repost some of the chapters here (y'know, one day at a time, as per forum rules.)

BUT this could be a problem for my Slizers on Mata Nui epic.  (Yes, I still plan to finish it)  I mean, I have like 50 or so chapters posted so far.  But here's another difficulty; some of the earlier chapters were pretty bland, and I wouldn't want to repost that kind of writing without improving it.  And the story, while I enjoyed writing it, turned out tooooooooo long.  This may be because I tended to ramble, having little fights here and there that didn't really lead anywhere, and then empty conversations that just rehashed old content.

So perhaps what I should really do is REWRITE SoMN from the very beginning.  That way I can improve the writing, speed up the pace, and even remove inconsistencies.  After all, I started this back in 05, before we knew about the Brotherhood, the vast Matoran Universe, and the fact that everything was inside a giant robot.  It would be easier to tackle these at the beginning rather than trying to explain them in the middle of the epic.

Of course, there's the issue of readers; I would like to have some people who follow the epic, if but occasionally.  I know pretty much all the older readers have vanished, and newer readers don't want to read through 50 chapters to get caught up.  But if I start from scratch, I might be able to gain some new readers... and if any old readers return, I hope to add a few new side stories to make it different than the original.

But I guess the question I'm posing here is: should I do this, and if I do, will you read it?  Even if it's only a chapter every week or so (not something that will take a long time to read).  I would like to get back into the story writing business, and I'd like to take any blog readers I can get along for the journey.  

(Do I still have blog readers?  This new blog format makes it difficult to find specific blogs, so I have a feeling mine might keep getting looked over)