Hello everyone. I’ve made the hard decision to take an indefinite, although not quite complete, sabbatical from writing.

First, the why’s. My mood disorder stuff is still really bad and unpredictable and I feel even without the other health issues I’m about to share I’d be struggling to meet expectations over at least the next few months. But even if that stuff was perfect I’d be having to do this. I’ve got some medical issues with my hands that are preventing me from engaging in any typing longer than about a half hour or so, and even that hurts quite a bit. I’m still working with my medical team to figure out what’s going on, but I don’t expect things to get much better any time soon.

It’s clear to me that I just need to take a long, indefinite step back and focus on healing. What does this mean? All of my current/recent projects are in indefinite hold/outright canceled. I have no idea when or even if I’ll be able to/try to go back to full time writing and what’s going to be healthiest for me is to not be thinking about trying for a while.

That being said, it’s going to be REALLY had to not write. I know I won’t be getting much done any time soon, but it’s always been hard for me to create stuff I don’t share in some way. I know I want to have something I can add to a bit here and there and share with people somehow, but any kind of “regular” story is just too much writing to get any realistically satisfying work done.

While mulling over WHAT kind of project to tinker at here and there to scratch my creative itch the last few days I stumbled on something. WAY back when I started writing smut my first few CYOA style stories were written using a webpage called inkle. At the time they could format finished stories into a file that could be published on Amazon, and that’s how I wrote/published my first few interactive stories. This included “The Defeat of Champion Girl” and “Wasteland Slut: Escape From the Bunker”.

At one point they stopped offering this service and I moved on to writing those kinds of books they way I do now: in a word file and using hyperlinks. At the time of the transition away from Inkle I had been pretty bummed as the app allowed you to insert some simple game-like logic into the stories.

I discovered recently Inkle didn’t actually stop being developed and is more functional then ever. So what I’m going to do is take the long unpublished “Wasteland Slut: Escape From the Bunker” interactive story and very slowly rework/update it. Since the entries for these CYOA style stories are very short I should be able to get an entry or two done at a time without further straining my hands.

This will be something I’m doing more for me (I LOVE writing and a big part of me NEEDS to be doing it), but even doing it for me I need to be able to share it for it to be satisfying. The great think about Inkle is I can simply share a link and you all will be able to read the in-progress story. Even partially done this will probably be FAR more satisfying then reading slowly posted read throughs on the discord, and I’ll be able to work some game-like logic the story.

The story/game will be readable HERE.

Now, as I said, this is something I’m doing mostly for me and even the best version of the foreseeable future will see this project going at a REALLY slow pace. Because of that I’m going to keep the Patreon paused (which means no one can sign up and no one will get charged) but hold off on shutting it down completely. Come next month when I need to decide to reactivate or keep it paused I’ll probably throw up some kind of poll to see what backers want.

Main takeaway: for the foreseeable future the ONLY project I’ll be working on is a single interactive story that’s a re-work of something old. There’s a good chance there may be days or even whole weeks I can’t add to it, and even when I can it won’t be much. I probably won’t make too many posts (maybe only to mention when I’ve gotten signification sections posted).

You should expect things to be about the same through at least the new year, and maybe longer. There’s a chance I may never be able to go back to writing like I have the last couple of years. If/when I know details I’ll share them on the Patreon (it it’s still up), my discord, and my personal webpage.

As you may have noticed (especially if you’re on the discord) I’ve been struggling to get steady/focused writing done the last month (honestly, the last few months). I’d like to take a moment to go over some of the whys and my plans to try and be better, or at least offer more realistic expectations to readers/backers.

I try to be pretty open about my health issues and how they impact my writing, especially my mood disorder. For a long time I had a fairly steady cycle of ups and downs, but I seem to have gone through a major change in my cycle (which happens every few years). I’m still not sure where things are going to settle, but I’m no longer bouncing between ups and downs with a steady baseline. I seem to be stuck in a prolonged low, and getting steady writing done in lows is always hard.

Mental health issues are a reason, but never an excuse. To be my best self as a writer I need to try my hardest to be self-aware of my limitations and work within them. I’ve at times struggled with that thanks to the ups and downs of the mood disorder, and sometimes I let my hopes lead to promising more than I can promise.

I’ve learned a lot about what leads to the most things being written over the last few years, although once again thanks to my mood disorder sometimes I have to learn the same lessons a few times. One thing I’ve learned is too many projects lead to few of them getting far, and that I’m not super good at mixing different genres/styles of stories.

I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing genre burnout and over the last few years have gotten into a pretty reliable flow of Fantasy in the summer and Superheroine with a little bit of Sci-Fi in the fall/winter. I think that’s something that will continue to be reliable and that anyone who has been hanging around for more than a year or so knows what to expect.

Looking back on the last couple of years I can see that, as much as I WANT to, I shouldn’t be trying to mix different kinds of writing formats. I love the interactive CHP stories, but they take a lot of work/time to get finished and it is really something I shouldn’t be trying to work on unless I’m 100% focused on one of those books. Trying to have one of those as a side project while I work on other stuff (like I’ve been trying to do the last month or so) does NOT work for me. As much as I want to be able to bounce between that kind of story and a more traditional one I just can’t. I’m going to ask you all to gently remind me of that should I try again.

The other two kinds of writing formats I work in are traditional, single-story narratives written without anyone else’s input and poll-driven stories. I’m starting to think that the public poll-driven stories, as much as I love them, only really work for the Fantasy stuff. I have had WAY more creative success with writing stories that way but instead of having them be public stories working with a single backer via Patreon. It scratches the same creative itch but leads to a MUCH more focused story that feels more likely to either get finished or at least find a semi-satisfying stopping point with the hopes of being picked up later on.

With my move away from aiming to get stuff done to be published as ebooks and focusing more on publishing things for free I’ve been finding those backer-driven stories the best fit. Right now I’ve got three of those going on and I plan on continuing them till they are either done or I hit that genre burnout near springtime and need to shift to Fantasy stuff. With my writing output being so low I think trying to limit myself to those three projects, with maybe one other project mixed in, is the most realistic thing for now.

That means I probably won’t get a spooky season story done this year. If I DO take a swing as it gets closer to Halloween and the mood is stronger my plan is to take some of the stuff that got written for the abandoned CHP stories posted on the discord and try and turn some of that content into stand-alone stories. There are a couple of things from the Halloween Carnival story that wouldn’t take much work to turn into a story, and I could take what was done for the hypnotist story and fold it into a stand-alone story that would fit well with those. No promises, but if I do anything it will be that.

The Kero Girl story is nearing its end. I’d like to keep a lesbian story in my rotation, it’s a good creative palette cleanser especially when other stories are leaning heavily into misogyny and noncon kinks. My plan is to replace it with Superheroines of Sapphica City. When Kero Girl is done I’ll start re-reading/re-editing it and posting it chapter by chapter for free then when I get caught up continue it till spring.

There are big plans for the Lady Luna story and even with it being my “focused” story I’m working on the most I don’t see that being something that nears an ending anytime soon. The other backer-driven story is just starting and probably has a long way to go as well.

I will probably end up doing something for xmas season, but I’m not putting much thought into that till we get closer. Beyond that I would like to do something sci-fi, specifically with the unfinished Zanthippe Space Cop story. Trying to do an open-ended ended poll driven story based on the setting/character didn’t really work for me. Over the next couple of months I’ll be thinking about the best way to mine the content in the book and turn it into something else. It would be nice to try and finish the CHP book one day, but since that would require my full focus for at least a few months I just don’t see that happening. I think trying to find a way to pull bits out and turn them into stand-alone shorts would be more realistic.

The big takeaway for this next month: I’ll be keeping my focus on the three backer-driven stories I’m working on, with a small chance of a spooky season short using content I wrote for the abandoned CHP stories I worked on over the last month or so.