Stultus: Blog

I posted up a new story for the Halloween contest and the voting is over, so I can 'announce' it now. I finished (and posted) two chapters before the entry deadline and I have the next chapter done, and the final chapter in-progress...

But with a voting score of 6.15 (WTF???) I'm not sure it's worth my time to add anything to this.

I've also started work on the final 'Dragons of the Night' chapters, but at the moment I'm not sure when I'll find the motivation to finish it.

I've been working on Halloween stories for the last two weeks and decided yesterday that I was going to also compile some 'True' Ghost & Paranormal stuff together for the annual Halloween 'True Story' thread on Reddit. So I started listing various items of non-fictional weirdness together and then sorted it out chronologically, so it makes at least some sense.

I might also send the 'bigfoot encounter' bit off to Buckeye Bigfoot for her to read. I didn't think much of the encounter at the time, but compared to most of the 'bigfoot crossed the road in front of me' stories I've heard lately, this story might be a bit more interesting to some listeners.

A couple of stories, like the Alcatraz school trip, I've written about before, on FARK and as comments on several paranormal and High Strangeness discussion boards. At least one of these true stories has also been the topic of discussion on someone's YouTube channel podcast (with permission), but this is the first time I've tried to compile everything all together, in one story.

This story, "My (True) Ghost & Paranormal Stories" is not a fictional one, like the nearly 100 other tales that I have posted here (under several author names). This one has has the additional added benefit of being entirely and completely true.

Last year's hard brush with mortality has made me want to just kick back and tell other's about just a few of the various weird things that have happened in my life, just so that the stories might be remembered, and not lost entirely to time. And what better time to tell 'weird ghost stories' than Halloween!

There's quite a few episodes of WTF-ness listed, but given time, and a clear head, I could easily double the size of this account... but I probably won't. Anything else would probably be too 'meah' to be worth the time to either write or read. I think I covered the main most interesting bits.

Again, these are just a few things that I figuratively and literally wanted to get off my chest before I check-out for good (not soon, I hope). Think of this as telling stories at night with friends around a campfire. You don't need to believe me, but remember some of the weirdest tales are true ones!

More stuff (Halloween) to be posted soon, and the next chapters of a few other pending things have their wheels slowly grinding now too.

Having a day or two to think again about things, and reviewing what I'd posted, I've made a few tweaks today to the 'My (True) Ghost Stories' tale. For starters, I cleaned up a few typos and added more details to several of the encounters (like the bigfoot stories) - things I'd forgotten to add when originally writing this. It's pretty complete now, so I won't add anything new to it from now on.


The next (long overdue) chapter to 'Now is All We Have' is posted. Now, I'm back to working on more Halloween stuff. I had a decent day today and got about eight hours of good writing time in!

Still recovering painfully slowly from my major heart attack. More bad days than good ones still. Even on a day when I feel OK, I tire out extremely easily. My apologies.

I've not been entirely idle. I've been working on "Now is All We Have" intermittently. I've got a few chapters sort of done... but I've wanted a really good day, when I'm not huffing and have a clear head to do a final last review.

Keep nagging me - I've got way too much that needs to be done!

I'm working on ideas for various Halloween story contests (here and elsewhere) and have just enough done that I'm feeling positive about getting at least one of them 'done' and posted somewhere. Meeting the deadline for SOL's contest is going to be a tricky race though. I need at least one 'above average' day and about ten hours of accumulated writing time this week to finish it. I have a very bad history 'just missing' story deadlines, here and at Lit.

A more sure bet is my finishing a Halloween story for Nancy at the Buckeye Bigfoot Youtube channel. She wanted some Sasquatch fiction for a special show, and I've got a pretty decent story idea that's right in her wheelhouse. :)

I suppose I ought to start planning now for Christmas stories too, including my serial 'When the Hunter'.

So much to do!

Chapter Six of Now Is All We Have is uploaded. Again, this (and the next chapter) were both written months ago, before the heart attack. They just needed review and revision.

This chapter probably has the most explicit sex of the story. Anything later on will certainly be much more low-key. I deleted about half of my original draft of this bit of the story as 'too much information' and I've got qualms about half of what is left, but kept it (for now) since I couldn't mental think out a shorter Cliff's Notes version of this. I felt it was important for the narrator's decision-making process, to fully fire his desire for revenge.

I was very uncertain about how to flag story codes for this section. I added a few, but since the narrator was not a participant, I didn't add too many. Let me know if you think that decision is mistaken.

Still working on the next Baad chapter. It's about half done, but the problem is that I keep re-re-writing that first half over again. Hoping to work it a bit late tonight and over the next week.

...Edit...
The next 'Now...' chapters 7 & 8 are also now reviewed and 'done' and chapter 7 has been added to the upload queue for next Wednesday am. I'm going to give chapter 8 a final look later this week and upload it probably next weekend.

This finishes up all of the pages that I wrote earlier. Starting on 'new' chapter 9 after I get the next Baad chapter done.

Three uploads submitted, staggered a bit for posting dates. The next 'Now is All We Have" is up now... with an additional chapter queued for Sunday evening. The next 'Born Under a Baad Sign' is set for tomorrow, Friday night. :)

I'm still a bit disappointed with the voting score for my Valentine's story. I had a reader remark that readers get very easily offended nowadays and I can be a little politically incorrect. Something of an understatement, actually, but I didn't think that story had much (if anything) in the way of politics or stuff intended to deliberately annoy the overly 'woke'.

Me? I'm a political moderate and can (gleefully) poke fun when needed at either the right or left.... or at myself. If you can't laugh at EVERYTHING, then nothing can really be funny anymore.

Three more chapters or so of "Now..." are done (6+ months ago as a rough draft) but all of them need tweaking time. The next two chapters are still mostly the high school 'revenge' bits. I had some thoughts once of just cutting all of the school parts of the story and posting them as a completely separate 6-7 chapter revenge tale... but I decided (with some reluctance) that this past was important to the future growth of the character, so the tedious bits stayed.

As I warn everyone, in almost every story, the SLOW code is there for a reason. I'm trying to tell a story, and that usually means not jumping straight to the juicy parts! The new Baad chapter will have to be written from scratch, but I've got it much more clear in my head now about what happens next. Only three chapters (at most I hope) left to do. Then something else new.