~hijinxfantasy

Hello, everyone.

It's been such a long time since I've posted here. I honestly hadn't even realized. I went through ... a lot of issues. But not all the reasons are bad. One of the reasons I haven't been able to post here as much is because I've been spending a lot of my writing time putting together a fully published book.

I should have mentioned it far before now, but there you have it. I'm currently about 2/3 of the way through the second novel, and have been working on it for a little more than a year. And here, a link to my first book. If you enjoy my writing, I hope you will consider purchasing this book and leaving a review. If I can get 50 reviews, Amazon will start marketing my book for me. I really have enjoyed writing this, it's modern-day instead of full fantasy, but it has a lot of the imaginative magic and fighting that you'd have come to know in my Hijinx Fantasy series.

https://www.amazon.com/Verge-Charme...../dp/1505889375

Tracy, a simple tech support worker with a new cat that just won't leave, goes for a walk one night after her plans for the evening went awry. All she wanted was to clear her head. Instead, she finds a magical charm that serves as her passport into a secret magical society in her city. Her head still spinning from the redefinition of her concepts of 'possible' and 'impossible', she is promptly pulled into the middle of a power struggle between the lords of this secret society. Lord Brin, the merciless ruler of this shadow world, demands allegiance to his law, but protects against the chaos that rules outside the city. Lord Pax seems even worse, a schemer and blackmailer who wants back the power to read men's minds. And Slate has yet to make his bid for power, but he is gathering his forces. Without even a chance to find her place, she has to choose between different powers asking for her allegiance, and must fight to keep the magic she never asked for, but is not allowed to give up. Luckily, she doesn't have to go it alone. Along with new enemies, she's also made a new friend in the form of Jacob, who went through a similar ordeal a year ago - but she doesn't like the solutions that he made. Can she forge her own path through this secret world?

It's amazing! I actually finished the arc! It's taken way longer than I had expected it to.

Now, there's a lot of reasons I ended up taking so long. I got married, I had work problems, overtime, etc. But mostly, of late, it's because I keep trying to focus my writing chops on getting a novel ready for publication.

That's not going to change, but I do want to keep doing this. I enjoy it a great deal - getting to write other folks' characters and give them awesome scenes. My motivation hasn't changed from the start - I can't draw so well, but I can write, and that means I can put my friends' characters in these crazy stories.

I really, really am glad there are folks out there who enjoyed the Swamp Men of Mictlan, and I hope you continue to watch as I slowly produce my next story arc, which will involve Nova and Vicki returning to Nova's homeland for his yearly visit to attend the Holy Bacchanal, visit his mother, and deal with the chaos that erupts anywhere they go!

So I'm almost done with the last part of the Swamp Men of Mictlan, and getting ready to move onto the next arc.

I have been fighting between a superhero arc and another fantasy arc, and I decided towards another fantasy arc, for a number of reasons. One: I want to explore Nova's background. Two: I want to involve number of characters I didn't get to use last time, including Mora's Cerine and Elisa, and Aelius' characters. I would also like a good opportunity to bring in one of Chakat_Stripedfur's characters.

If I missed anyone else's characters while writing this last arc, please, take this opportunity to remind me!

In the spirit of the 'community' nature of these stories, what with the whole point of them being to write other people's characters, I'm offering this out to folks - what sort of plots would you enjoy? The group is on their way to Nawlins, Nova's home, which is another swamp filled with zombies. En route they're going to be stopping off at a rather large library to have a bit of adventures there. What would people like to have filled in around these sceneries?

For those of you keeping track, there's exactly one scene left before I've finished my 30-scene challenge:

30) Sexy porn

And frankly, I'm pretty much lost in a flood of ideas and finding it hard to pick just one. So I figured, hey! I'll just ask those people who would actually read it ... what sort of Nova / Vicki sexy porn would YOU want to read?

So far I've had two people tell me "Nova as a girl" though one of them also specified "Nova as a Panthress - and Vicki as a guy, like in that one realm!" What else do people want? A first time? A romantic time? Post-adventure rush?

Hello, everyone!

So I'll have a little bonus bit of stuff for you this month! A friend of mine challenged me to 30 mini-scenes, each with a pre-set topic!

THE LIST

1) Meeting for the first time
2) Holding hands
3) Gaming/watching a movie
4) On a date
5) Kissing
6) Wearing each others’ clothes
7) Going to a costume party
8) Shopping
9) Meeting the family
10) Chillin at the beach
11) Making out
12) Eating ice cream
13) Genderswapped
14) Fantasy version
15) Sci-fi version
16) During their morning ritual(s)
17) Spooning
18) That first time together
19) In formal wear
20) Dancing
21) Cooking/baking
22) In battle, side-by-side
23) Arguing
24) Making up afterwards
25) Getting married
26) What would their kids look like? (it's OK if they're the same gender, wing it)
27) On one of their birthdays
28) Doing something ridiculous
29) Doing something sweet
30) Sexy porn

So, I know it's been 5 months. I know, I'd mentioned everything that was happening to me before.

Well, this past week, I've been at Disneyworld. Time to get away from it all and relax ... and realize just the extent that I had let my stress get the better of me for the past three years. As I become more relaxed, my creative spark suddenly reignited big-time. Stories are thrilling through my head and from my fingers once more, like I haven't felt in far too long. It's wonderful!

I wonder if this being the first time in three years I've gotten 8 hours on a regular basis has anything to do with it...

Anyway ... I'm starting up part 9 already. I know, part 8 was supposed to have the massive glut of fight scenes with everyone's characters, but my imagination REQUIRED a fight scene against a giant monster. Silently. Reminiscent of the Conan movie, of the fight against the giant snake.

I hope you guys enjoy it, and I hope that I can keep this creative spirit burning bright! :)

Holy moly, did we get a ton of snow. It really messed with stuff, my back was hurting for days after all that shoveling. I carved a massive valley so as to get out my front door, and then had to clear out around the cars in the back.

The new site I'm working on is 'up', on a hidden directory on Brian's site. I've tested it, it all seems to be working, no warnings. As is usual for prepping to bring a site live,  brianblackberry realized that there's still stuff he wants changed before it goes live, so we're working on making alterations to the text and a few of the graphics, here and there. I've worked in website development for over a decade, and I've never had a client who was wanted to just 'go live' once they saw the test site.

When we release it publicly, it's going to be *very* piece-by-piece. The initial release will be nothing more than the most basic site possible. The first three additional releases will be a back-end administrative release, which you guys won't see ... a front-end login system, which you guys *will* see, and a comment system, so that you guys can respond. After that... well, we'll just see! Likely we'll start getting feedback from folks by then, and that can help us determine which way to go.

Urg. I'm behind in everything, now. There's a website I'm working on, stories I need to write, everything. But the first half of this week has been taken up with my car suddenly deciding not to start! It took me six hours just on Monday to take care of car-related issues... and more time spent on Tuesday. Plus, of course, frustration. Just the most recent of two weeks worth of stuff breaking and taking hours of my time away.

But... part 7 is now done! The site is coming along strongly... and things are going well enough. I hope to have the site done this weekend, if at all possible.  brianblackberry and I have been working hard at getting stuff ready for it, and it's finally almost all put together. Just need to lay it out, give the code one last once-over, and put it up for a bit of testing!

And the subsequent parts should be coming much more swiftly, now! I've finished moving, I've gotten married, and all the really, really stressful things are mainly behind me! All that's left is planning a trip to Ireland, and that's nothing compared to what has already passed over the last two years.

When writing in general, and especially when writing Hijinx Fantasy, these are the steps I take for creating:

1: Rough Draft

This is usually done on a dictaphone, to and from work, as well as random scribblings in whatever notebook I happen to have with me at the time. It's *very* rough.

The great thing about this is that it's mainly just flow of thought. While I might sometimes spend half an hour getting my brain in the right way, the second half an hour of travel is all just flowing words.

2: Second Draft

This is generally done as I'm transcribing from notebook or dictaphone over to electronic format. I clean up a lot of my initial wording, revise what I focused on - sometimes I'll dictate paragraphs into the dictaphone that ends up being a single quick sentence on the final draft, sometimes I'll say a single sentence on the dictaphone that ends up being several paragraphs.

3: Review

During this stage, I run over the story as written, so far, and clean it up a lot. I look for awkward phrasings, rewrite a paragraph here and there, and generally tighten up the sentence structure and word structure.

4: Add Tone / Final Review

This is a really fun part to the process... for Hijinx Fantasy, this is where I remind myself what the tone for the piece is supposed to be, and re-read it not from a 'what happened?' standpoint, but a 'is it written in the right tone?' standpoint. For Hijinx Fantasy, this usually involves making the text more colorful, adding lots more adjectives, altering some descriptions to seem more high-fantasy. A simple brawl in the first and second drafts might turn into an epic melee in this final review, as I remind myself what level of fantasy we're dealing with. It's a whole LOT of fun, and is the fastest part of the entire creative process.

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The relevance at this moment?

I'm stuck on 3 right now. The last few paragraphs are boooooooooring, and do not tie up the chapter very well. I need something more than "Oh, look, it's a temple, let's get ready for a fight." Probably going to cut out the description of the temple *entirely* and save that for the beginning of part 8, instead ramping up an inspiring "big damn heroes" speech.

Sorry it's taking so long, after I said I wanted it done last weekend!

The story is a little delayed - Some things went wrong this weekend that took up more time than expected ... but I do have the stuff that usually takes the longest done, so I should be able to get the next part posted tonight or tomorrow.

In the meantime, have some world building to tide you over!

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I refer to my process more as 'World Growing' than 'World Building.' I start out with a basic assumption about a world, then dial back the clock several centuries, or millennia, or however long it takes, and let the world 'grow' to where it is now. A world with a fundamental difference - like the presence of magic - is going to look significantly different from our own world, it won't just have magic 'pasted on top', unless that magic is hidden (see; urban fantasy)

In this case, the world is so significantly different that I had to go all the way back to the creation of the world. Quite *literally* building a world.

The 'world' is made up of hundreds of realms. Many realms are smaller - there are realms only a few acres across speckled all over the place - while some few other realms are gigantic, lasting for hundreds of miles or more. The majority people, though, live in realms between 5 and 25 miles across.

'Up' is the center of the world - gravity presses towards the outside. If the realms are all pressed together to make the world, like the tiny beads pressed together to make a styrofoam ball, then the center is hollow.

Or, more specifically, the center is home to the Chaos Storm. The Chaos Storm is a churning mass in which, occasionally, a seed of order forms. That order remains, and forces the surrounding chaos into ordered crystalline structures, growing as it is tossed about through the massive, unimaginable cacophony which is the center of the world. When that order crystal (or crystals) is finally spat out, rejected from the Chaos Storm, there is an equal amount of chaos dust spits out the far side of the storm. Those orderfalls and chaosfalls fly between realms, finally striking one and landing, and significantly change the nature of the realms they crash into.

The realms closer to the center of the world are inner realms. Some of them are similar to outer space, lacking the elements - missing out on air, heat, ground, or water... these are only colonized by those of other realms, but some have floating bits of world where extremely alien races emerge, bizarrely twisted by generations living so close to the Chaos Storm.

As you go further out, you get more and more sky realms - airy, cloudy realms some with massive floating islands or fantastic ecosystems that never have to land, built on the backs of sky-whales or giant floating jellyfish.

Progressively, as you proceed outwards, you get mountaintop realms, then realms which are hilly, to realms which are open plains, deserts, swamps, and the like. Then you have valley realms, half-closed in by earth rising up on all sides, and finally cavernous realms. The outer shell of the world feels very dead - it lacks magic, air seems stale, it is pressed in on all sides by earth, very claustraphobic, and even powerful magic items slowly are drained while on this outer crust. What lies beyond the outer crust? That is a subject of great debate - some think there are other worlds out there, other chaos storms. Others think that the crust is the edge of all creation.

The 'border' of a realm is a very strange place. The realm barrier is rarely seen as an actual barrier - looking out the side of a realm barrier shows you landscape stretching far off into the distance. Looking 'up' at the center of the world shows you the sky - the fantastic colors created by the chaos storm, a phantom 'sun' passing overhead (no one knows what the sun is. Perhaps some blazing realm filled with a giant fire orderfall that no one can reach? ) and a number of large realms passing overhead. Sometimes, realms look like our own planets, to people looking up at them - one might see Saturn, or Mercury, hanging low and swollen overhead. Other times, they look like giant floating rocks, or massive storms that never end, or just about anything. Some realms look like moons - and aside from the Lunar realm that orbits through the wide gaps between the Inner Realms, some realms become second, third, or even fourth moons. Looking down from one of the sky or mountaintop realms can see endless space beneath them, possibly a vast landscape, but more often seeing the tops of realms far, far, far down below.

Realm barriers are usually natural barriers - a terrible rapids, a tall cliff, a thick forest. When you try to get past the realm barrier, mages can feel a tingling... Only occasionally will anyone see a shimmering, opalescent wall. If someone tries to walk past the realm barrier, they see themselves as walking normally, going around trees, or climbing the cliff, and can keep doing so forever. however, for every equal amount of effort, they only get half as far as last time they put forth this amount of effort. In essence, no matter how far they travel, they still have to get halfway to the realm barrier - Xeno's Paradox in action!

Within the next few parts, there's going to be a big mass combat. I'm tossing out openings - if you have a fantasy-character that you'd like to have guesting in a bit role, just showing up and kicking some ass, then let me know, and I'll do what I can!

Let me know what they look like, let me know what they fight with, and what their fighting style is.

So here we have a pulp fantasy story, that people have reviewed... and just the other day ... my mom finds it.

And after getting past the first few paragraphs, and giving some critique of the wording, she reaches Vicki's description, and starts to scold me ... for not making Vicki sexy enough. "She's a pulp fantasy character!" cries my mom. "Much of her power is bound up in her sensuality! How could you steal that away from her?"

*facepalms*

So that kinda derailed the part 6 I had almost completed, as I went back and looked at what she was saying.

In other news, Part 1 has been re-uploaded. If you don't want to re-read it, basic changes are:

1: Fewer repeated words (Thanks RingtailBandit!)
2: Vicki's description is more sensual.
3: A subtle difference in description here and there.
4: Vicki winds up naked in bed with two serving girls. Fill in the blanks.

I'm going to be changing the format for Hijinx Fantasy.

Notably, I've noticed that the parts are a little long, and this creates two problems. First, it's a little more imposing for anyone who wants to read them, and second, it means it takes much longer between postings for me to bring something new!

So for now, I'm going to create some 'placeholders' that will hold the place for when I break down part 1 and 2 into smaller parts. Then, before the end of the month, I'll have the next part ready to release!

So the ultimate end to this will be smaller releases more often for you!

I am friends with a lot of artists, and one thing that artists can do for their friends is to draw their characters - to take personal imaginations and bring them to life with pencil and paper. This is something I've always wanted to be able to do, but my art has never been quite good enough, I felt. I can produce decent amateur stuff, but it usually takes me an extremely long time to do so - a week for each decent piece. I really get more points for effort than actual skill.

A few weeks back, I was reading an article about famous authors putting their friends into their works - a forest named after a high-school buddy, a queen named after an old flame, a villain named after a college friend. It occurred to me, suddenly, that I was a writer - instead of just putting the names of my friends into my works, I could theoretically write stories with the characters of my friends in them.

Now, I couldn't write a story for each of my friends, each in a different world. My creativity doesn't work that way - so I determined that instead, I would write a world in which most characters would 'fit', and then write a series of stories set in that world.

The challenge was in figuring out a world that suited this. I mean, some characters are sci-fi, some are medieval fantasy, some are modern-day, and some are urban fantasy. Some are human, some are furry, some are alien. How could I make a single world made up of all these different worlds? I came up with and discarded a few ideas involving dimensional travel and the like, and finally was inspired by the The Land of the Lost. Watching that trailer, I realized - worlds that you travel between, with different laws of physics, in a good old-fashioned pulp fantasy sort of way.

It would not be serious. It might have serious moments, to be sure, but it would be silly, it would be over-the-top, it would be larger than life. Everyone would be spectacular, small villages with ordinary people would live five feet away from the Rampaging Monsters that only bother the heroes. You could travel quickly from a desert land to a swamp land, because instead of distance separating them - it's reality itself throwing up a barrier and changing the rules between one step and the next.

My main inspirations would be Conan the Barbarian, Shandu the Magician, Perry Rhodan, and all those old dime-store novels and radio shows. I would use the adjectives and similes you never hear in serious fiction anymore. And I would have friends showing up all over the place for one purpose: to be awesome.