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Recently, I competed for a Master/slave title. Title holders represent their communities and teach about what real, healthy Master/slave dynamics look like. In a lot of ways, real M/s can be hotter and more powerful than any story.
Those of us in the regional contests will be getting together this Sunday in the afternoon US east coast time to talk about our experiences on a live stream. If you'd be interested in learning about what hot sexy dynamics look like in the real world, come join us Sunday.
In that community, I am known as BlindDancer.
One of the most consistent comments on my Phoenix Rising
story was that readers wanted to learn more about the AIs. What were
they doing? How did the ephemerals work? My serial Novella, href="/s/30550/concerning-nora-smith">A Glimpse
of Nora Smith brings us back to the Immortality Curse
universe to explore some of these questions.
Nora was one of Ariel’s most outspoken classmates, unabashed in her
ideas, and steadfast in her support for Ariel. Nora was also an NPC in
the game of Phoenix Rising: an ephemeral generated by the AIs,
lending depth to their virtual world.
This novella is her story. How did she come to be a whore? How did
she come to be ready to adventure alongside Ariel by the end of the
first novel? But it is not told from her point of view. Instead, we get
to see Phoenix Rising from the viewpoint of Nora’s AI
controller–her metamind, the part of the game responsible for figuring
out who she is.
As we soon discover, being a whore is no easier for an AI metamind
than it is for Ariel.
I really enjoyed writing this novella, and I cannot wait to hear what
you think. Join us over at href="https://immortalitycurse.com/">immortalitycurse.com and let us
know. There’s also information on the next upcoming full-length novel in
the series.
A new story set in the Immortality Curse universe will be coming to SOL, probably in March. This story follows Nora Smith, one of the minor characters in Phoenix Rising: The Immortality Curse. She becomes more important to the later stories, and so I wanted to spend some time thinking about her as a character. However, I also wanted to delve into the world of AI non-player characters in the Phoenix Rising game.
So, rather than telling the story from Nora's perspective, the story is told by Nora's meta mind, the part of the AI responsible for figuring out what Nora's back story, so she can live her life just in time for it to be ready for her interactions with the players. This is by far the most interesting science fiction I've written.
An early draft was posted to patrons over on my pPatreon, which can be reached from immortalitycurse.com.
There's a lot more to come. I'm in the middle of finalizing the second ebook in the universe; that book includes the rest of the content from the story already published here. A third book is done with content editing, and ready for final details like adding character sheets and the like. That's all new content, and it's great to see how much my writing has matured. That book will eventually come to SOL, but it will be released as an ebook first. Unfortunately, looking at how ebook marketing works, I think that to expand my readership beyond SOL, I do need to give Amazon an exclusive, at least for a time. I'm not pleased with that necessity, but it's the only way to make content available for free on Amazon, and the regretable truth is that many readers are much more willing to take a chance on something free than on something they have to pay for. I do promise that the book will make its way to SOL (and Bookapy) eventually, and I will be bringing the Nora Smith novella here first as a thank you for the community that has helped me get started.
Beyond that, I've had a lot of great progress working on as yet unfinished content. I managed to write 50,000 words since December 19, which is great for me given the other commitments in my life.
<a href="https://bookapy.com/s/455/the-immortality-curse-phoenix-rising">The Immortality Curse: Phoenix Rising is now available on Bookapy. This is the first half of a similarly named story published here a couple of years ago. Of course there have been some updates and improvements. The original 211,000 word story felt too long as an ebook (and was way too big as a paperback), so I've decided to split it for ebook publication.
I have a first draft of a third book (one beyond what was published on SOL) and am over 1/4 of the way through a fourth volume. I'm excited about the series and am looking forward to sharing with you.
If you do decide to buy the ebook, by all means buy it from Bookapy and support the community. As an author though I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to leave a review on Amazon to help me reach readers beyond this community; leaving a review or telling your friends about my work is the single biggest thing you can do to support me as an author.
Phoenix Rising: The Immortality Curse was a great success and I'm pleased to report that I wrote another 110,000 words in that universe. That's not news to those on the Phoenix Rising discord server.
Getting that novel out to readers has taken a back seat to life and the pandemic and moving across the country. I'm settled now and eager to write more in the Immortality Curse universe, so publishing what I have has been a focus.
Unfortunately things are somewhat complicated. I'd like to publish the existing novel as an ebook, not just here, and I'd like to do that before releasing the new novel.
Strangely enough the real challenge for me has been producing a book cover. I'm blind, so I'm not going to be the one to do that myself. I'm happy to pay for an artist, but I don't seem to be good at finding one. Going up to someone and saying "Hey, this is something I've invested a lot of my life into. Will you take my money and help make it better by putting together a cover," is hard. It's harder when the subject matter include adult content and you're worried about whether they will judge you. And unfortunately, getting rejections from people who aren't interested in taking my money and helping doesn't make it easier. The reason has generally been that they are too busy, and that's probably true. But it starts the little demons of self doubt running around in my head.
And yet I'm really motivated, so I'm going to go make another round of trying to find someone to do the cover. I picked up the new novel after having not looked at it for a while, and it's really good. I can't wait to see what you think of it, so I'm very motivated. Yes, there's a lot of proofing and editing to do. It will be a while. But this is the best I've ever written and I can't wait to share.
I am also almost done with a round of editing the existing novel. Even a year later, it holds up as quality work, which certainly agrees with what you readers thought. But I did want to take time to make an extra round of polish before publishing the ebook.
If any of you have recommendations for good artists in the community who would take a commission, please reach out. I have a few leads even if no one reading this has suggestions. i am really excited to be writing again, and plan to get started on entirely new content soon!
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