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... have been greatly exaggerated.
It's been a while since I published anything, for sure, but I promise I have been writing. It's just that I've been working on a bunch of long-form stuff (aka "novels"), and haven't had as much focus or interest on writing shorts.
The great news (for me at least) is that I just finished the first draft of one of them. (Did I say "30k words"? Um...) The bad news is, it still needs a lot of work! I've been reading Refuse To Be Done by Matt Bell, and there's a ton of advice for writing novels in there that I'm itching to try. I hope that drafts two and three won't take as long as draft one did (over a year, by my watch).
What that means in the short term is that I've still got a long road ahead of me before this novel is ready to publish. However, I do have a couple of shorter pieces that I've started, and one of the suggestions Bell makes is to take a break between drafts. So I might throw my next few blocks of writing time at one of those and see how far I can get.
As a final note, there was a thread over on Tumblr about leaving comments or ratings on "old" works and whether there was any point to it, and I'm here to say — please do. It means a lot to us authors, I promise.
Also, I'm not using Twitter any more. If you want to stay in touch and find out what I'm working on, you can find me on Tumblr (@monkeysmut or @charlesjeffries) and Mastodon (@monkeysmut@smutlandia.com).
More soon, I hope. – chuck
The big news: No Good Deed, my new story from the Archives of the Order, is in the moderation queue and should show up some time soon. It's a long read, not quite as long as Careful, but it's up there. It's also a lot less sexy than my previous work, so I'll be curious to see what you all think of it.
I've also gone back and shuffled a few things around, spruced up some story descriptions, and cleaned up a few tags. Most people think of 'spring cleaning', but honestly I like doing a 'fall cleaning' just as much, both around the house and in my online spaces.
Unfortunately, other than that, fall is a busy time for me, and I haven't been getting much writing done. I still have two other longer WIPs, but other projects are demanding my attention right now; that's just life, I guess. I'm still reading a bunch, which helps to keep the ideas flowing.
Anyway, I know it's been a while since I produced anything on here, so I hope this new piece whets your appetite for a while. Thanks for sticking around! – chuck
... the day in September where I finally published a bunch of books and updated my blog?
$0.99 e-books of Two Vines, Dom and Shrub, and Golems (the extended version) are now available for sale on Bookapy. Check my author page over there (link on this page), or hit the links on each story individually if that's your thing. I always appreciate your support, especially because I do give these books away for free so I know you're not getting anything "new" (besides some cool cover art and some frontmatter you don't care about, heh).
The new book, "No Good Deed..." is nearly finished and I should be able to publish it some time this month, as I was hoping. It's been both frustrating and enjoyable to write, teaching me some things about my craft and also giving me some ideas for future stories to write. I look forward to sharing it with you all and seeing your comments!
Books! We got books!
First, though, a note of appreciation: Careful won second place in the Golden Clitorides "Best BDSM Story" category, and I'm super grateful to everyone who read it and voted. I'm blown away by the fact that Careful's rating is up over a 7.5 (on 150 votes!) and the short is edging close to an 8.0. If you rated it, thank you, and if you haven't read it yet, give it a chance (and a rating and/or a comment). I'm pretty proud of it.
I'm in the midst of finishing up a new story in the Two Vines universe (now known as the Archives of The Order). It's about 75% done and needs some editing, but I'm hoping to finish it up in August. It'll serve as the anchor story for an e-book collecting all four stories, which ought to make an appearance some time in September.
In the meanwhile I'm also working on EPUB formatting (and making covers) for the other stories in that series. The individual books will be cheap, partially because I don't think you should pay a lot for a 5k word story, but also to make it easy for anyone who doesn't want to pay for one of the longer books (Careful or the new Order collection) to throw me a buck or two.
But regardless of whether you choose to toss me a few bucks or not, I appreciate all of you who read my stories. Writing has been a great source of escapism as well as a chance to flex my artistic muscles over the last 6–9 months, and without readers it's pretty pointless. So, thanks.
— chuck
A few folks have been clamoring for an extended version of Golems, and now I'm happy to say you've got one. It's about twice as long as the original, dives deeper (heh) into Celia's encounter with the enchanted creatures, and integrates the plot and characters a bit more into the Two Vines universe. The story's the same, but it's enough of an upgrade that it made sense to publish it separately, rather than make a "version 2" of the existing story and keep the existing statistics and comments.
I've got a fourth story in the works for that universe as well, in preparation for turning the whole series into a book later this year. And, yes, that means I'm working on three new books at the same time. I haven't completely forgotten about the novel, but Volume 1 of the slow-burn ghost story I referred to in a previous blog post has blown past the 20k word mark I was targeting and is looking likely to hit 30k before I'm done with it.
Will I actually publish any of those books this year? Stay tuned!
– chuck
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