Category Archives: Asking for Help

Another chapter has just been sent to the Editing Gang

No idea when it will hit, but should be either tonight or tomorrow, unless they tell me it is crap drafted by a kindergardener high on acid.

EDIT: They said it was crap drafted by kindergardener high on acid but I published it anyway.

Also, messed up all the ellipses.

Thankless Tasks : Edits on AO3, FF.net and Rewards. Also status update.

The sheer scope of what I am attempting to do is becoming literally unmanageable. Therefore, in the interest of using some of these goddamned Steam coupons, I have had an epiphany.

See some game on Steam you’d love to have but don’t have $55 to fucking waste, or your wife/parents/college debt won’t let you? Have some spare time you would be willing to expend in mindshatteringly boring tasks in exchange for said games?

Contact me. I have put off cleaning up and editing a number of documents, and I literally need someone to clean up the OSABC version on AO3 and get some of the other works on there.

Good with art? Same deal.  (I’m looking at you, LuckyFK. I have a literal muscle-woman that needs art, she makes your ripped up Shepard look like an anorexic.)

As for the Great Work ™:

  • The next chapter of TWCD is … sort of written but still in very heavy first-stage revisions. I have to be careful how I do this so it doesn’t come off as silly….while being completely fucking silly. I also have to come up with associated memestorm for the aftermath. Beyond that the next few chapters are outlined but I may have to revise them.
  • The Engineer’s Guide to Oh God What the Fuck is proceeding well, although I’m going to have to dig out some Conspiracy X and Shadowrun sourcebooks and medical texts and fully crib together my half-ass theories on augmetics. Most of my bionetic stuff is original, while the nanonics is a mix of ConX Atlanean tech and stuff I liked in the Neutronium Alchemist. My cyberware is a blatant homage / ripoff of Shadowrun style cybernetics with a touch of Deus Ex and Megatraveller thrown in, so it literally conflicts itself…and of course despite tossing out the word several times in the game, the Mass Effect canon is completely worthless in defining ANYTHING about the state of cyberware. Say it with me … Goddamn it, Bioware
  • Ahern says the next chapter of Lions is halfway done and if I wasn’t such a lazy fucking pile of shit it would have been put out nineteen fucking years ago, or something like that.
  • I’ve been working on No Single Raindrop to find some sort of concluding arc to it. Maybe by midyear.
  • I’ve done some heavy edits and cleanup to the Encyclopedia Biotica but it’s not published yet. I would love some new ideas for biotic powers.
  • I REALLY need to do some minor retcons around the Hanar, as my original design document did not have the Ascendancy so hostile and had the drell as serving as the main line of communication between the Citadel and the Hanar. May need to revisit that before I get too far into the Hanar Cerberus Files.
  • Speaking of Cerberus Files, I am thinking of re-writing the Batarian Section to be AFTER the collapse of the Hegemony and the Rise of the Batarian Empire. Thoughts?
  • Absolutely no work has been done on the crackfic or happyfic Memories we Forget to Remember. Sorry.

 

Current State of the Premiseverse

My fellow (insert your nationality here), the only thing we have to fear…is Conrad Verner.

HEALTH: Additional problems with the herniated/bulging disc in the spine. Surgery does not always fix the core problem that caused it to herniate in the beginning. Right now, sitting for long periods of time tends to aggrivate it, and given my IT job, by the time I get done with work I am usually not in a good place to try to sit down and write. I am going to a chiropractor (one who is shorn of idiotic bullshiat like homopathy and goddamned reiki) which has reduced some of the issues, but I may not be back up to full condition for another week or two.

I may (or may not) feel like writing short pieces in Memories, One Single Raindrop, or Lions in Blue and Silver — work is also pretty hectic.

PERSONAL CRAP: My mother gets final analysis done today on whether or not the lung cancer has been blasted into remission (four weeks of chemo and seven of radiation, we can only hope). Obviously how I end up spending the next several months hinges on whether or not she’s healthy or will need to endure more chemo or possibly surgery. I will admit it has been distracting me (along with the back pain) and if she’s healthy I will have a much clearer head.

If not, I don’t know what will go down. While I make a good amount of money, the costs so far have driven me to almost $15,000 on the credit cards with only about $6,000 in the bank. I still have car payments, bills, insurance and my own medical costs to deal with. If I have to start cutting costs or taking a second job that will obviously preclude much more writing.

FAMILY: My family members in France are, for the moment, safe. My cousin was actually going to go to the Eagles of Death Metal show before he sprained his ankle — he might have died if he had gone as planned. Given the insecurity some of them are feeling some have called me to crash in the United States for a while — another distraction.

THE WORK ITSELF: TWCD is going well enough — it has already surpassed ATTWN in reviews, even though it is 100k words shorter at the moment.  I have most of the Omega chapters at least outlined, as well as the sections after that.

I have made no progress on any of the documentation works (Cerberus Files, Biotic Encyc, STG Files) because of no time to do any research.

No Single Raindrop, Lions in Blue and Silver, and Memories we Forget to Remember have chapters partially done but no serious work finished on them.

 

I wouldn’t expect much out of me this week, as I am hoping rest and ice and chiropractic adjustment to the region will calm things down. I am also on-call this week for work, which means I don’t have a lot of time to sit back and write.

Now that you have listened to a bunch of shit no one cares about, here’s what I need from you:

Two questions.

  1. I have an artist who can do portraits of various OCs — which five do you think should be done first? EX: Dragunov, Cole, Sedanya, Pel, Kyle
  2. I’m looking for anyone interested in overhauling and polishing up the full text of OSABC I and ATTWN on AO3.

Working on next TWCD chapter this weekend

I feel like doing so, although I have some running around to do today. Hoping to have something ready to go late today or by Sunday.

I’m still replotting some things in the outline so don’t expect 10k a day blasts anytime soon.

I’m also thinking of adding a ‘donation’ button to defray the cost of paying for related art. I was thinking of having a series of facial sketches done for most or all of the OC’s of importance, but the cost for such a thing is around $40 a pop from most of my favored starving artists.

Considering my finances , I can’t really afford that kind of outlay any time soon. Comment if you think this is worth it or not.

OSABC on AO3

After hours of hardcore tinkering, I finally managed to bounce an import of OSABC to Archive of Our Own, although still covered in shitty formatting.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/4844429

Anyone active on AO3 who has the time to edit the headers and footers, set tags, that kind of thing, please let me know.

I’ll add ATTWN and TWCD as time permits.  In other news, I had two teeth extracted today (thank god for emergency dentists) and I’m pretty dopey.