I don't know what good this will do because I didn't follow the last one, but let's give it a whirl.

To do:

• HOWL 2.2 (really need to finish this motherfucker)
  
• Voting Incentives
  
• Audio chaps for youtube
  

So, as I mentioned, I finished my first book yesterday. Unfortunately I cannot tell anyone in my family about it. Why's that do you ask? Simply because it has gay content in it and I'm not out to most of them. Ah, I can hear you say, but isn't the solution to that problem easy?

No. No it is not. I know the closet is self-defeating, I know that it's hurting more than just me, that there's this huge chunk of my life that I can't ever share with them. I know that, really. But the thing is? I'm not all that upset about it. Oh sure, I'm frustrated and mad at myself, but not enough to rock the boat. The status quo may be flawed, but it's working for me right now.

But of my problem is, I'm not a big risk taker. I'm not coming out to my parents until I'm absolutely sure I have a place to say if things go south, just in case. Not that I expect them to take it badly, but it's just too much of a biggie to worry about. Can't be homeless, after all. The closet is a lot more complicated than the gay party line says it is. It's not about shame, it's not about self-flagellation, and while there is some fear involved, it's not really about that, either. For me, it's about caution, and having all my ducks in a row.

Maybe they'd be cool with it, maybe they wouldn't care...but what if they did care? It's just too much to think about, to process. My fragile human mind can only handle so many what-ifs at a time. Better to let this one happen as it happens, I think. At least for now.

Anyone who has ever read anything of mine, now you can vote for me on TepWebFiction.com. Sure, it's for my original fic and not for fanfic, but that's okay. Send a little goodwill my way, anyways, please.

Made up a little progress today. And two percentage points!

6148 / 50000 words. 12% done!

Go me, I'm awesome.

Okay, dropped the ball the last few days, but wrote two side stories today so made up some progress.

4821 / 50000 words. 10% done!

Still have some tinkering to do on the second one, so the word count may change slightly before the day is out.

If you're on my friends list, and thus reading this, it's probably because you enjoyed something that I've written. The something was probably one of my completely smutty fanfics, and I am unbelievable thrilled at that.

But I'd like to take a moment to pimp my original fiction Dead Boyfriend. As you can probably guess from the title it stars a young vampire hunter who finds himself startlingly attracted to a strapping young vampire. Complications, comedy, and carousing ensue.

It's got gays, swords, and violence, with a bit of plot on the side for those that are picky like that. So please take a look, I think you'll enjoy it. And if you do, tell your friends.

Actually, tell your friends if you hate it, too. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll like it.

I'm feeling like I should hit the table of contents and read back over my whole story just to make sure I haven't gotten off track or lost the flow of things somewhere, and the only way you can do that is to start at the beginning and hit go. But here's the thing. I hate chapter one. I really do. As far as requirements for first chapters go it barely hits the minimum, introducing people and showing us a bit of Regan's personality. I'm not sure there's anything technically wrong with it, I just don't like it.

So the obvious thing to do, then, would be to start at chapter two and hit go. I'm not sure my OCD would allow that, but I guess I could give it a whirl. What I really need to do is sit down and brainstorm what exactly I want an improved first chapter to look like, but in order to do that I'd have to put into words just why the current chapter one is bugging me and I'm not sure that I could. There's just this sense of "wrongness" about it to me, in some vague, ill-defined authorish way.

Maybe I could hit up the other writers on my friends list and pick their brains. That might not be a bad idea actually.

In other writing news, I need to decide what I'm going to about the side story this week. I had a plan about doing a little mini-story in sequential order, but I'm not sure that will be feasible. The stuff I need to come across might be over and done with in the main narrative by the time the side story catches up. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, I guess. More background details to flesh in, while the absolutely imperative stuff has already passed on. I dunno, we'll see.

My whole process is very experimental, as you can probably tell. I've never made it this far in one of my projects before. The only ever thing I've come close to was in one of my previous projects that I churned out 28 chapters of. I only worked on that for maybe two months before I burned out on it. I've already been working on this for over 6 months, 24 weeks plus however long it took me to write up to chapter five before I started posting online.

It's not a stellar amount of progress by any means, but it's a record for me. Small victories, folks. Small victories.

I posted an audio-only video of myself reading chapter one of my original work Dead Boyfriend on youtube. Check it out.

What's this? Two chapters finished in one day? Maybe my muse is trying to make up for yesterday.

I wrote 1942 words and finished two chapters today. I think that's the most I've done on something that wasn't fanfic in a long time. Feels good. And I might poke away at it some more, yet.