cool and unusual punishment

wow and I almost went ten seconds without talking about my books

SPEAKING OF THOSE THREE PROJECTS BECAUSE ONLY TWO OF THEM ARE UP

I know this sounds like a lot of work for me to suddenly take on, and yeah, when people start a bunch of books at once they usually don't finish them, but I've actually been working on all of this since before my NaNoWriMo. One of the big things about my "once weekly" schedule was that there was this massive discrepancy between my update schedule and my queue, so my readers were nowhere close to where I was, and it just wasn't working for me at alllll. I think this schedule should work better even if it'll be a lot of work. Again, not talking about the schedule until I'm sure it'll work, but if you just put the books in your reading lists, you'll get notified when they update anyways. 

I think a few people have noticed AMALGAMA, which will continue to update probably indefinitely (it's like eighty four chapters I'm sorry). There are some books that say things that need to be said. There are some books that you find as an author that you need to tell. Then there are some books whose characters HOLD STAKEOUTS OUT IN YOUR FRONTAL LOBE AND CONSTANTLY BOTHER THE SHIT OUT OF YOU UNTIL YOU WRITE THEIR DAMN BOOK. AMALGAMA is a glorious clusterfuck. I explained it to three people at my school and all of their reactions were somewhere between bemused and concerned. There's very little conflict, twelve main characters, and the premise is just the characters themselves. Living. Existing. Killing each other. They're good characters, though? It's just something I have to write. It's been two years. This thing is not following me to college. If you really like intense angst, shapeshifters, monsters in general, and awkward conversations, well boy howdy, I probably just wrote your book.

CRUX, like most of my urban fantasies, started with a really bad joke that spiralled into existential horror and a massive cast full of sad teenagers with PTSD and/or depression. In this case the joke was me shoving every YA stereotype I could think of into a room and having them duke it out. Think of it like the world's worst crossover high school AU but for a bunch of books that don't exist. The main character, Derrick Renard, is an "extra" (or Chosen One, but if there were A Lot Of Chosen Ones) whose "double" or companion was killed during their mutual quest. Said quest involved a laboratory and unauthorized experiments and yeaaah you know that turned out well.  He now has to survive high school while fighting teenage guy instincts and fox instincts and somehow manage to make friends despite how absolutely not over his double he is. 

The Cities Have Fallen is getting a rewrite. If you didn't read the original The Cities Have Fallen I don't blame you but it was my favorite book of mine for years. Nothing topped it emotionally for me until Roses and Thorns, followed right after by Deja Vu, and I still have a very soft spot for the characters and even some concepts even if the execution is about as appealing as sandpaper. I was in eighth grade so the prose was LOADED with cheesy vernacular, bad jokes, and I don't think I've bitched enough about how poorly handled some of the minor antagonists are. The rewrite is written in a means more akin to a myth, although it'll still have the playfulness of the original. Think sweeping motifs, soft moments, lots of imagery, and of course, hell to pay. It's still The Cities Have Fallen, one of my most dramatic stories of all time. It'll be up on the third. :)

The other three books I *might* be working on are basically all in the same update slot, crammed in there like three peas in a pod fit for like half a pea. 

MUSE is that 'short story' I was talking about earlier. Actually, no it wasn't, but we're not talking about that other short story. MUSE will come out whenever it comes out and the chapters will probably be like 500~ words each. It's a story about writers set on a rip-off of Wattpad, featuring a stuck-up popular author, the one guy with no life who updates at 4 AM for 5000 words daily, and a girl writing her favorite book. The three of them all realize they're writing the same book from different perspectives, within the same universe, and that they must work together to figure out how this story even *came* to them or why they've all been given the idea.

Where The River Bends isn't dead but I think I'm going to do some major revisions. At the very least I need to reread the whole thing again before I start updating. Uh, sorry. Kind of. Kind of sorry. Man I can not write fanfiction anymore.

Finally, I do want to do this CYOA (choose your own adventure) but I have to do all of the "faces" for the characters first. If you've ever played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, you probably remember how the dialogue boxes have the characters emoting? Yeah. I wanted to do that. I know it's ambitious and they'd probably be so bad I'd have to replace them immediately but I have this singular idea for a CYOA with a ton of audience involvement that plays like an RPG. The idea is old as Extraordinary and I think I might finally be ready to do the characters justice.