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3/31/2024 - New Belrye and the Summoner Version Posted!

Just a quick update that the new version of Belrye and the Summoner has been posted! :-)

3/28/2024 - New BatS Version Coming Monday

Hello everybody! First off, the new version of BatS will be coming out Monday. While it is a good-sized update, it actually ended up being a lot more about fixes. There are an absolute ton of things fixed in this version, both big and small. If you were reading before, made a choice, and the chunk it sent you to seemed like you had chosen something different? Those are fixed now. :-)

Next month is going to be back to Gloria the Goat. We left off last month with kind of a whole new world for a few of the characters, so I'll be starting to explore that in the upcoming stories in the series.

The month after that is back to working more on BatS. All of the fixes this month (I would give an approximate number of things that were fixed this month, but, uh, I'm actually kinda embarrassed to.) set things up nicely for the next update to be 100% focused on additions. New chunks, the story getting further, that kind of stuff. Honestly, my guess is that the next version will need to be split up into two books. Looking at the current file size, I'm not completely certain if I'll hit the limit with the next update or the one after. There will be more about that when the time comes, though!

I've been debating putting a video on my youtube channel at some point, to talk about tips or advice on doing something like this. Things I would recommend, pitfalls I've run into, and at least a couple cases of "do as I say, not as I do", lol. I'm not sure if that would be of interest to anyone, or if anyone has been considering building something similar.

I also want to make the tools and code I've built for this available for others, along with instructions. I'd say that will probably be later this year, after I'm fully confident I've worked the kinks out. It can't be fully plug-and-play, but it can easily get to the point of "Open this file and change the line that says 'YOUR TITLE HERE' to add your title." For now, though, I need to get back to things here. :-)

3/23/2025 - Getting New Version of BatS Ready for Editing

This has been a very busy week of getting the new version of BatS ready to go for editing. I'm finishing the last of the inconsistencies I've found between chunks, and I'd like to get a few more chunks added for this version.

This version actually has turned out to be more about fixing subtle problems than adding a ton of new chunks, but it is still a pretty good-sized update. This month was very much laying the groundwork for bigger future updates, though. The errors I've been catching have mostly been ones that had built up over time, but were ones that were really hard to spot doing a manual read-through. For example, two chunks that should only differ with Belrye's pronouns, but one of them has a small paragraph the other doesn't. There was an absolutely massive backlog of those that had built up.

I'm definitely looking forward to being done with these, though, lol. The fixes themselves are very repetitive, but they aren't exactly the same, so each one needs to be done by hand. It gets a bit mind-numbing after a few hours.

I'm thinking one of my goals for next month will be a full refresh of my online presence. My website, FA profile, and youtube channel could all use a rewrite since each was created. I'm not sure I can call myself a "new author" at this point. ;-)

For now, though, I need to get back to those fixes. There aren't many left, so hopefully I can knock them out pretty quickly. :-)

3/14/2025 - Going to Tinley!

Hello everybody! To start with something unrelated, this weekend I'll be going to the huge reptile expo in Tinley Park. I've been to quite a few reptile expos (that's where I met the breeder I got my pet ball python from), but I've never been to this one before. It should be a great time!

Writing-wise, progress on Belrye and the Summoner is coming along nicely. While this will be a good-sized update, I actually think the biggest thing is going to be fixes and additions to existing chunks. As I mentioned in my last update, I came up with a new way to catch places where chunks that should be pretty much the same...weren't. There were kind of an embarrassing number of those, because it's actually difficult not to miss them when checking by hand.

For those of you who read the introduction to BatS, you will also notice something new this update - an explanation that no AI is used in its creation. With the scale of the project, I have been starting to worry that some readers might think I'm using AI to generate parts of it. None of my writing has ever or will ever use AI. I'm about as anti-AI as you can get. This isn't the right place to get on my soapbox, so I'll leave it at that. I assure you, the rant would be epic. ;-)

I do build tools and shell scripts, but the most complex things those do are Regular Expressions (for things like "character heights need to be a number") and Levenshtein Distances (for things like "chunk X and Y need to be within 1% of eachother, because the only difference should be Belrye's pronouns"). Actually, if anyone was ever curious, I could put out a video showing the behind-the-scenes stuff like that.

Anyway, need to get back to getting ready to leave for the reptile expo. I haven't seen any kobolds or fire-breathing dragons yet, but maybe that's because I haven't been to a big enough one before. ;-)

3/9/2025 - Rapid BatS Progress

Things have been coming along very nicely for BatS, particularly when it comes to finding and fixing problems that had gotten missed previously. There will be a lot of new chunks added this update, and I have also found quite a few places where two chunks that should be nearly identical except for, say, pronouns, have things in one but missing from the other.

On that note, the last time I did a build, we are up to 8.1 MB for the book. Once we get to 10 MB, it will need to be split. My guess is that it won't happen this update, but probably the next. As I mentioned quite a few updates ago, my plan for splitting now is to have it so book-jumps happen as much in the beginning of the story as possible. Later in the story, when you are hopefully fully sucked in, the last thing I want is for you to have to fumble around for a different file. ;-)

There is one thing I have been considering, as well. I have always loved the idea of BatS being illustrated. If you have been reading for a while, you may remember back when I was using geometry to generate silhouettes of the player character and Belrye. Something I have been considering for down the road (when the locations of book-breaks stabilize and don't change as much, over time) is having an illustration made for the title page of each book after the first, based on what your character and Belrye look like at that point in the story. I'm not sure if it is something I would actually do (and it would be a long way down the road anyway), but I love the idea of it.

It does feel like with the every-other-month schedule, I'm able to keep up and not feel constantly behind and rushed, now. I do still intend to get back to some semblence of my old schedule, but my guess is that it may be a few years before that happens. (Mostly, I just don't see how I could do it while working full-time.)

For now, though, it's time to get back to it! :-)

2/28/2025 - New Story Released!

Just a quick note that a new story has been released: "Badge for One"! It can be found under the One-Offs tab. I suppose technically it isn't a one-off, since you should probably read "Table for One" first, but that's where to find it for now, lol.

2/23/2025 - A Bit Disjointed

This week has been rather unfocused - I kind of worked a bit on a few different in-progress stories. I am still on track to release a new one-off story at the end of this month, though! The more I think about it, is it really a "one-off" if this is the second one? Hmm...

Mostly, there was a lot going on in my personal life this week, including a beer festival and my birthday! So good stuff all around, but with everything going on it was a little tough to stay focused. :-)

Looking ahead, I've got a lot I'm looking forward to for Belrye and the Summoner next month. It should be a huge update, with a lot of new chunks and quite a few corrections. My guess is that this will be one of the last updates before it goes to being multiple books. I am thinking I will handle it by posting the individual books on FA, with my website having a collected zip of the books, like the older versions. The big difference is that all of them will also be posted to FA, rather than just a trimmed-down demo. Once things get to the point of being 5-6 books, I may need to rethink my approach, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it, lol.

Funny enough, I have also gotten some work done on the next Gloria story. There are quite a few different directions it could go, and it's a matter of deciding what I want to do. Now, some people might suggest brainstorming ideas, but what seems to work best for me is to just sit down and start writing. If I get a little way in and realize I don't like the direction the story is going, I'll either go back partway or all the way to the beginning and start again. Some stories go quite a few versions before I finally settle on one that feels right. :-)

Anyway, after a couple of busy days in a row, I'm taking tonight to relax. Look forward to the new Gloria story on the 28th!

2/16/2025 - I'm on Bluesky now!

Hello again, everybody! For starters, I'm now on Bluesky (I'm DaveTheFoxMage there too, so should be pretty easy to find!) I'm not sure what I will be using it for, but enough people have asked me about it or told me I need to get on it that I finally did, lol. Aside from FA, I've never done the whole "social media" thing, so this is a bit of an experiment for me.

Progress is continuing on the one-off story for this month: "Badge for One". It's very much a "slice of life" story, in the same vein as "Table for One" was, and I'm enjoying writing it. :-)

So, next month will be focused on a good-sized update to Belrye and the Summoner. In addition to fixing the issues that I talked about in the last update, I am going to be adding a ton of new chunks next month. I will be putting most of the effort into paths that are behind this time around, though I wouldn't rule out breaking completely new ground by extending one of the longer ones a bit. But with some of the tools and stuff I've been working on, I should be able to make a lot of progress on the paths that aren't quite as far along yet. Good times!

In other news, I've got some changes that will be happening this upcoming week with my day job. I doubt it will effect anything here, but they should be good changes. :-)

Anyway, I suppose I should get back to it. Hopefully everyone had a great Valentine's Day! And if you didn't, there's always Half-Price Candy Day on the 15th!

2/8/2025 - Issue Found

I just want to kick this off by saying I've found an issue that sneaked into BatS, along the way. There were two places where the wrong chunk got put in (so you would make a choice, it would send you to a new page, and then you would either get the same chunk again or another chunk that didn't make any sense). I have been digging through to make sure there aren't any others, but so far it seems to have only been those two. They will be fixed in the next version, and I have added some things to my checklist to make sure anything like that gets caught going forward.

Progress continues on the one-off story for this month! It has been a bit slow, because February always ends up being weirdly busy for me. Still, things are coming along there. :-)

As I mentioned a couple of updates ago, I will definitely be starting to alternate months with posting a new BatS version and posting a new story in either the Gloria series or a one-off. So the next BatS version will be coming out in March, rather than at the end of this month. As I have said, though, there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes to free up more time for doing creative things. This is a pace I can maintain while that is happening.

Looking ahead to conventions this year, while sadly I don't think MCFC is going to work, I will be doing at least Gen Con, Gamehole Con, and Midwest Furfest. I also wouldn't rule out another random one or two if they happen to work out. :-)

Other than that, not much else to report for now. Time to get back to it!

1/31/2025 - New Belrye and the Summoner Version Posted

Hello everybody! BatS version 202501 has now been posted. :-)

1/25/2025 - One-Off Story Delayed

Just to let people know, the one-off story is going to be delayed until next month. Like I said in the last update, this is one that I really want to get right, since it's a very personal story to me. Believe me, it will be worth the extra wait!

I have also been making a lot of progress on the next update for BatS. I've made some changes to make adding new chunks a lot easier, without manually digging around for things I need to reference. It is already making a huge difference, in terms of how quickly and easily I can add to the story, which means I'll be able to make progress much faster. :-)

Aside from that, this is a pretty short update. My day job has kept me super-busy this week, and I've been squeezing in as much writing as I can in between. Hopefully things should be more calm next week, but we'll see, lol.

1/18/2025 - Overall Update

So, my last update was mostly about Belrye and the Summoner, but this one is all about the other current writing projects I have going. I have started on Gloria pt. 17, but that won't be getting posted until next month. It will pretty much pick up where part 16 left off. :-)

The other is a special one I am doing. I have had a few people tell me that after reading Table for One, they wanted to know more. Well, that's what I'm working on, lol. If I am being honest, I am not sure if it will come out this month or not. To me, it is a very important one to "get right". It's a very personal story, and one I have wanted to share for a very long time, so it will come out when it's ready. Still, I am going to try to release it this month. I'm just not gonna promise that. ;-)

As I mentioned last week, I will be writing at a slower pace for probably the entirety of 2025. The main thing I am trying to hold myself to is releasing at least one thing each month. I will probably end up alternating between BatS and Gloria stories, monthly. That's not set in stone, and I have some changes happening at my day job next month that may shift things one way or the other. Like I said last week, solutions are in progress, but they'll need time and patience.

Another project that I had just barely started when everything hit the fan last year was a general-audience computer game. While it is currently on hold, I still have all of the files and everything, and I would like to try to get back to it. No promises that it will be this year, but I'm at the point where all of the programming/coding side is basically done - it's just the writing part. If you enjoy BatS, this will be a similar kind of experience. Doing it as a computer game means I can do some things mechanically that are very painful to do in a book ("Make your choice, then roll a dice. If you chose X and rolled a 1...)

Overall, while things aren't going to be as fast as I like for a year or two, I've got a lot of things I am excited to work on. This month's BatS update should be a fairly big one, and I am hoping to have that special story ready by the end of the month. So far, not a bad start for 2025! :-)

1/11/2025 - Problem-Solving

Hello again, everyone! While working on BatS, I realized the size of it was already starting to get out of hand. To give an example, I need to explain a bit of how it is structured. Every chunk has a letter code. You start at chunk "S" (for "Start"). If you pick the first option, you go to "SA". If you pick the second option there, you go to chunk "SAB", and so on. Well, that works great until you find yourself squinting at the screen and going, "Is this chunk SAABAAAAAAA or SAABAAAAAA? Okay, that's just going to be a Belrye pronoun-swap of SAAAAAAA...uh, how many was that again?", lol.

The good news is that I've been working on a little helper-tool to deal with that, at least somewhat. I think one of my favorite things about working on BatS is the scale of it. I love the writing side of it, but it gives me enough challenges on the technical side that it keeps the programming part of my brain busy/happy, too. :-)

Also, despite the changes I made previously to squeeze more into each book, I am guessing we are only a few months away from it needing to go back to being multi-book. It's going to be organized a bit differently than before, to avoid the problem of having literally hundreds of books with a single chunk each. The basic idea will be to "front-load" book changes, as much as possible. So in the beginning, you may change books quite often, but it would gradually taper off to you sticking in one book until the end after that. That's the plan/hope anyway!

Here is my overarching view of 2025, as far as writing and youtube go. My plan is that I will be pretty much keeping with the pace of the second half of 2024. That is slower than I would like, but I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff this year to set myself up for 2026 and beyond. Mostly, 2024 brought a lot of unwelcome surprises for me. They all have solutions, but they're not a quick fix. So please be patient and pardon the dust, because awesome things are coming. As they say in sports, "It's a rebuilding year!" ;-)

The flip side of that, though, is that one of my 2025 resolutions is to be more reliable posting these weekly updates. They won't come out on any specific day (like this one is Saturday. The next one might come out next Wednesday.), but each week there will be either an update post or a story post. I think that's pretty much everything I have for today, though, so I hope everyone is having a great start to their year!

12/31/2024 - New Gloria Story Posted!

I hope everyone's having a happy New Year's Eve! There's a new Gloria story to read. I think this is a warm, fuzzy one to end off the year. :-)

12/25/2024 - New Belrye and the Summoner Version!

Happy holidays everybody! The new version of BatS is available now. This is a decently large update, and a good first step toward the size updates used to be until earlier this year. They will continue to grow from here. :-)

12/15/2024 - Looking Ahead

First of all, it was awesome meeting so many people at Midwest FurFest this year! I'd also like to give a shoutout to Cinnamon_Jakal - the first person I've talked to at a convention who was already familiar with my stories. That's been on my "hope it happens someday" list since I started writing, lol. They are an artist themself, so you should check them out!

As far as writing, the next version of Belrye and the Summoner will be posted on 12/24, and the next story in the Gloria series will be posted 12/31. I didn't mean for them to get posted on those dates, but if I'm posting two stories in a month, I like to post them a week apart and at the end of the month. In December, that just happens to work out to Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, lol.

Next month, I am going to be working on something a little different. For those who have read my "Table For One" story, this will be a novella-length story along those lines. Just for the month of January, that will be taking the place of Gloria. It's something I have been wanting to do for quite a while, but I wanted to get the Gloria series to a good place for a short pause.

Looking ahead at 2025, I have some exciting stuff planned. First of all, enough of you have poked me about getting a BlueSky account that I'm looking at setting one up. But also, I am looking at making most of my stories available in physical book form. :-) As always, everything I write will be available online for free, just as it is now, but for those who would love a copy of the Gloria series on their bookshelf, this may be for you! Just, uh, don't expect this for BatS. I don't want to imagine what that would cost to print and ship as it continues to grow, lol.

Anyway, now that I'd say my life has gotten back on track and I've found my new equilibrium, I'm going to also try to stop neglecting things like posting updates - I had gotten quite bad about that. So yeah, good times ahead! :-)

12/4/2024 - Midwest FurFest

Hello again! First things first - I'm getting ready to head out the door to go to Midwest FurFest in the next hour or so - woo! If you'd like to try to bump into me, during vendor hours you can often find me around Diana Stein's booth in the dealer's den. Feel free to come say hi, wave, knuckle-bump, or whatever. :-)

As for why things have been so quiet, I kinda had a 1-2 punch of getting sick and an injury all at once, at the very beginning of November. The sickness is gone, and though it'll be a while before I walk without a limp, I am mobile again. While you would think being stuck at home would mean more time for writing, sadly it kinda killed my motivation for a while. But I've been getting back up to speed, and you may catch me on a MacBook working on writing after-hours throughout the weekend.

If you are curious what I look like, to try to find me at the con, my picture is under the "About Me" tab! The only difference is that my hair and beard are currently significantly longer than in the picture. I'm probably due to take a new one, but that will have to be after I get back home.

As for upcoming things to look forward to, I am working on the next story in the Gloria series, as well as a major update for BatS! I am currently expecting both of these to come out late December. Life has gotten pretty much back to normal, and I've been getting back to the flow of things. :-)

10/30/2024 - New BatS Version!

Just a quick update to say a new BatS version has been released - woo!

As mentioned previously, this version is mainly a change for people who have been following it on FurAffinity, rather than at magicfoxgames.com - it's no longer just a demo version on FA. While there have been a few chunks added, it's not much. This month was mostly getting everything switched over so FA could see the whole thing. :-)

10/9/2024 - What I've Been Up To

Hey everybody! It's been pretty quiet around here, but I assure you I haven't been idle! I have actually been reworking a lot of Belrye and the Summoner - not the story itself, but in order to make it possible to put the whole thing on FA rather than just a demo. :-)

Now, one thing that hasn't changed is FA's filesize limit - 10MB. The main thing I've been doing is trying to squeeze every last chunk possible into a single book. The automated method I was doing before did a good job, but it was definitely leaving space on the table (setting aside the one-chunk starts of new books. This new way of doing it is still gonna have those - no way around it.) Sooner or later, though, it's gonna need to be split. That's where you come in!

There are a few different ways to handle the splitting, which will lead to different experiences for you - the reader. Because of that, I'm going to want your opinion from the options below. This isn't a poll, per se, but just generally trying to get feedback on what people would prefer. :-)

Try to front-load book switches - You might switch books every single chunk for the first few/several choices, but then you'll stay in one book until the end.
Balanced switches - An even number of choices between book changes.

If you have no preference, that's perfectly okay! The reason I'm asking in the first place is because I could make a good argument in favor of either option. The ideal solution would be if FA's max upload size was large enough to put it all in one book, but this is an extremely unusual case and increasing it that far would open the door for huge abuse.

One thing I'm going to (hesitantly) throw out there is the option of putting it on FA split up, but on my website having it as one gigantic book. The reason I'm hesitant is that it will effectively double my build times. Would you use one giant file if it was available, though? I'm open to doing it, if so!

9/8/2024 - Gloria pt. 15 posted!

Just a quick announcement to say that Gloria part 15 has been released!

8/20/2024 - FurAffinity Situation

Looks like FA has had their DNS hijacked - please be aware! Also keep in mind that even once it is resolved, it can take up to 48 hours for DNS changes to propagate (though nowadays it is usually much faster). If the address sends you to someplace else (sounds like it's going to send you someplace on Twitter, currently), don't go! I can't speak for other browsers, but Firefox currently gives a warning and an "are you sure?", as a safety precaution.

In unrelated news (genuinely unrelated), I am looking at starting to post my stuff on a new site in addition to here and FurAffinity - SoFurry. I haven't decided for certain, and I need to figure out a few things about their site first, like how they handle PDF uploads, but it has a lot of features that would be extremely helpful. In fact, it might even be possible to put the entirity of BatS up! But still looking into that.

As much as I hated going to alternating months for BatS and Gloria, it was definitely the right call (short-term, at least). I'm not feeling rushed, and it is good to feel like I can take a day off on occasion without falling behind. I had been able to do that before, but with the changes at work, I had to make the tough decision.

Anyway, hopefully FurAffinity can get everything straightened out soon - from what I was reading online, it sounds like the site itself wasn't compromised, but take that with a huge grain of salt since information is very patchy currently. As someone who works in IT by day, though, I think it's a good bet the site/data/content is okay. DNS would be on a completely different machine, and often it is done through a completely different company than the web hosting itself.

Finally, regardless of what may happen, I do keep redundant backups (onsite and offsite) of every story I post and the entire contents of my website, so if something unrecoverable happens to my site, FA, or both, I can be back up and running in a day or two. And I suppose now's as good of time as any to remind everyone to back up your stuff! :-)

8/11/2024 - Two Announcements

Hello everyone! Okay, I have two announcements - one good, and one not so much.

Let's start with the good one. I have been working on a new game for these past couple of months. I wanted to make sure I got past any technical hurdles/walls before I officially announced it, but at this point, things are looking good there. This will be a SFW, general audience game, about relaxation and self-discovery. It is text-based, with buttons for navigation. At this time, I haven't quite nailed down a public release date. My very rough guess would be Q1 of 2025, but the official answer is "It will be available when it's ready." :-)

Which... brings me to the second announcement. I'm not bouncing back as well as I had thought from some of the chaos of last month (and also, some things have actually gotten worse even in this past week). That has been putting a pretty big damper on my writing and creative stuff, in general. I am still working on long-term solutions to some of that, but in the short-term my writing will be slowing down somewhat. My monthly projects (BatS and the Gloria series) will be posted on alternating months for the time being.

So at the end of August, there will be the next Gloria story. At the end of September, there will be a new BatS update, etc. Again, this is a short-term thing while I work out longer term fixes for some issues going on in the background. Writing, game-dev, and my youtube-ing bring me tons of joy and fulfillment, so getting back to the point where I have enough time to do them is my top priority! I don't have a timeframe for that (believe me - I'd be way less stressed if I did), but it will be as soon as I can.

So yeah, kind of a mix of good and bad news here. But to focus on the bright side, the bad news is only temporary at least!

7/28/2024 - Gloria pt. 14 Delayed

Hey everybody. I just wanted to post to say that Gloria and Friends part 14 will be delayed to August. At this point, I've managed to mostly claw my way back from the perfect storm at the beginning of the month. But as I look at the in-progress story and the amount of time I have left, I just don't think I would be proud of what I'd be able to put out in that amount of time.

Good news, though - that will mean that after Gen Con, I can hit the ground running. August will be back to the normal, big BatS updates and a new Gloria story!

Looking toward the rest of the year, if things go as normal, my writing generally tends to pick up over the fall and winter. There is generally less going on, and somehow the falling leaves or snowstorms always put me in a writing mood. :-) With my work changes, I'm not sure what I want to do for NaNoWriMo this year. I might do either a scaled-back project or something a bit different.

As I mentioned last time, if you are going to Gen Con, you can probably find me at Diana Stein's booth (it might be listed as "Naiad Studios"). I help out around the booth a bit throughout the weekend. If you ask about DaveTheFoxMage (or just FoxMage), you can probably bump into me there, lol. If you hit the "About Me" tab on this site, you can see what I look like. My hair's significantly longer currently, but I haven't decided if I'm going to cut it before the con (liking long hair vs. the heat, lol).

Also, after I get back from the convention, I have a big announcement! It's something I've been dying to tell people, but I wanted to make sure I didn't run into any barriers I couldn't get past first. Watch for that next week. :-)

7/23/2024 - BatS v. 202407 Released!

Just a quick message to let everyone know the new BatS version just released! Like I mentioned in my last post, this is unfortunately a very small update due to all of the craziness that happened this month. I will be back to my normal, much larger updates next month! :-)

7/20/2024 - Upcoming Releases and Gen Con!

Hey everybody, I'm back! Well, it looks like the "perfect storm" wasn't quite over. Without going into too much detail, my work schedule has changed in a way that is going to put a significant dent in the amount of time I have for writing. I'm not sure what kind of an effect this will have, but since I'm already starting this month behind from the server issue... yeah. I have some ideas for how to try to minimize the impact, but I'm still adjusting to the new normal even outside of the writing stuff, so it may take some time to find my new equilibrium.

Belrye and the Summoner will be getting posted on the 23rd. I am a bit embarrassed by how small of an update it will be this time around, but again - perfect storm. August should be back to much larger updates again, schedule change permitting!

Gloria pt. 14 is currently planned to come out on the 30th, but that may or may not end up happening. I finally had a chance to start the first draft today, which doesn't leave too many days to get it drafted, edit it, and have it ready to post. If that changes, I will be sure to make a post letting everyone know. I'm really looking forward to this one, but if it needs more time, then it will get released when it's ready. :-)

Man, that was kinda three paragraphs of doom and gloom, wasn't it? Well, let me finish with two pieces of fun and happy news! First, I will be attending Gen Con, as usual. :-) As always, if you want to meet for a hi-five or anything, the easiest place to find me is generally Diana Stein's booth in the vendor hall - I help out there during the convention.

Finally, about a month ago, I posted that I was working on a new browser-based game project. I just wanted to say that progress is still ongoing for that. While I don't want to say anything official about the game's content just yet, I am currently doing some of the initial legwork for it (this month's goal is to get the start screen written - slow and steady). It will be a single-player game, done entirely with Javascript. No tracking beyond the standard "request came in for this resource. Resource sent." webserver stuff. Not even a single session cookie! Watch this space for more details. :-)

Anyway, I need to be going, so I should wrap it up here. I want to thank everyone for their patience while I've been dealing with a whole bunch of stuff that has happened all at once. Hopefully things can finally start getting back on track!

7/8/2024 - Finally Getting Back to Normal!

Hello again! So, depending on whether you follow me here or on FurAffinity or YouTube, you may have heard the news that I was having major server issues. I have gotten everything moved over to a new webserver, and I will be getting the DNS switched over tonight.

The downside is that this puts me almost 1/3 of the month behind in terms of actual writing, and I've had to skip two weeks of Doom videos while getting all of this sorted out. But thankfully things should be returning to normal now.

One major upside is that it's a whole lot easier to maintain and check in on things now, especially when I'm on vacation. Rather than a bedroom-server like I was running, I am now using a cloud-based server platform (Linode). A second upside is that I'll no longer get big lag-spikes if someone decides to download one of the big BatS zip files while I'm in the middle of playing an online game, lol.

Over the next 48 hours or so, you may get bounced to either that site or this one. The way domain names work, changes aren't instantaneous and need time to spread to name servers around the globe. So if you see this update on one device but not another right away, don't be alarmed! :-)

As a final thing for BatS, I am currently only going to be hosting the zip files. Mostly, once the story hit several hundred books, it's not really practical to deal with the individual books - the page gets unwieldy. Also, it roughly triples the time it takes to upload the site to the server. If you would like me to re-add the individual PDFs, though, please hit me up on either FA or YouTube. If people were using them, I can re-add them. :-) For now, though, I'm gonna get this posted and flip the DNS over!

6/30/2024 - New Belrye and the Summoner Version Released!

Just a quick update to let everyone know the new version of BatS has been released! :-)

6/27/2024 - New BatS Release on Sunday and Short Website Outage

Okay, two things for this update. Let me start with the outage. After all of the storms and everything we have been getting hammered with here, my router could use a reboot. I will be rebooting it Sunday, at the same time I am doing the website update for releasing BatS. Between the site update and the reboot, things will still be down for less than an hour. So if you try to connect on Sunday and can't, please try again a little later! :-)

On that note, the next BatS version will be releasing this Sunday! There are a lot of new chunks this month, and so far MisterTanuki and I haven't found any errors. Good times!

Aside from doing the site update and server reset on Sunday, I'm going to be taking the weekend off. Just taking some time to relax, play games, hang out with friends, and all those sorts of things. Besides, next week is the 4th of July, so I want to be as caught up on sleep as I can before that. (I spend "Drunks With Explosives" day hiding under my bed with ear protectors. Last year it was 42 hours before it had died down enough for me to finally feel safe enough to sleep. That's not a typo - 42 hours without sleep. Yay...)

On a happier note, in a couple of weeks I'll be at the Schaumburg NARBC reptile expo, down in Illinois! This will be my first time going to one that size, and I've been really looking forward to it. Gonna try to not come home with a second pet snek, but we'll see how my willpower holds out. ;-)

Anyway, I hope everyone's looking forward to the next version of Belrye and the Summoner! Speaking of which, I need to get back to editing, lol.

6/23/2024 - Gloria pt. 14 Released, and a New Project!

Hello again, everyone! Hopefully your Pride Month is still going well. :-) Gloria pt. 14 has been released now!

I have probably rewritten this story at least a dozen times. It is definitely the darkest the Gloria series will ever get, but it is the beginning of a bit of a story arc. Please see the extra disclaimer inside the PDF!

Also, I just want to give a very small teaser here. I've been doing some preliminary research for a new browser-based game project. I don't want to say anything more yet, but definitely watch this space for further updates. ;-)

This week's main focus will be on editing for Belrye and the Summoner, with that being released a week from today. As I mentioned in my last post, this is a huge update!

Anyway, I'd better get back to it. I hope you enjoy the fourtheenth story in the Gloria series! :-)

6/15/2024 - Happy Pride Month!

I hope everyone is having a happy Pride Month, so far! Whoever you're into, and whoever you are inside, keep being you, and keep being awesome! :-)

The next version of Belrye and the Summoner is going to my editors today. This will be a massive update, with over 100 chunks being added! Since this is the first build on both a new computer and a new OS, a lot of the focus on editing this time around will be on "mechanical" things, like making sure page links work, jumps between books send you to the right place, the zip file for the whole-version downloads on the website can be opened on different computers, etc.

Looking ahead, the next Gloria story will be posted on 6/23, with the next version of BatS being posted on 6/30. After that, we get into July and starting to get ready for Gen Con! There will be more information as that gets closer, but I would love to bump into people there. :-)

Anyway, I need to get back to it. I will be back to doing these weekly updates, going forward!

5/31/2024 - BatS Version 202405 Posted!

Hello again everyone! BatS 202405 has been posted now! Also, I'm almost fully up and running on the new computer - about the only thing I still need to do is to get my posting script pointed to that machine instead of this one. This will be the very last post from this laptop, before it gets factory-reset and given away to a friend, lol.

I should be back to my normal weekly update posts starting next week, now that I'm on a computer whose OS isn't held together by duct tape and hope. ;-)

5/23/2024 - One-Off Story Tomorrow (and Computer Issues)!

Okay, let me start with the good news, in case the title made you nervous. Nothing is lost and I still have all my files. A career in IT really drills in the importance of backups, even on your home machines. :-)

I had a whole long thing typed up about the computer issues I've been running into, and what was my last straw with Windows 11, but this month it crossed the line from "annoying but I'll deal with it," to "I consider this completely unusable." There we go - three paragraphs of ranting summed up in one sentence, lol. I'm going to be picking up a new computer this weekend, and after a few days of getting Vim/LaTeX/Python installed and configured on it, this laptop is getting shut down for good. This one isn't Linux-friendly, so I have no use for it, but I'll be seeing if any friends want a freebie laptop.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be posting my one-off story called "Table for One". It's a very different subject, as well as a very different writing style from normal for me. It's also my first story written in first-person! And unlike everything I have posted so far, it is SFW.

A week from tomorrow, the next version of BatS will also be coming out! Sadly, with the amount of time I spent fighting with this laptop I didn't get as much added as I had hoped, but it is still 92 new chunks added, as well as fixing some typos and other issues along the way. :-)

Huh, I just realized this means my website is gonna need a new tab alongside the ones for Gloria and BatS, lol.

5/2/2024 - Major Problem Caught and Fixed!!!

A major problem was just found in the most recent Belrye and the Summoner update, that broke the pathing between books. This has been fixed now. Sorry about that!

4/30/2024 - New BatS Update Posted!

It's the end of the month, and you know what that means. It's time for a new release of BatS! This update adds roughly 60 more chunks, so there are some new options to explore.

Looking ahead to next month, my May is seeming like I should have plenty of writing time, so I'm planning to add a ton more. BatS currently has 738 chunks, if you can believe that. Next month, I'll definitely be breaking 800, but I'm thinking breaking 900 should be very doable. Time will tell, though!

4/23/2024 - Important Update

Just a quick update on two things. First, the next version of Belrye and the Summoner will be coming out a week from tonight! This version adds roughly 60 more chunks, and editing has been going well so far. :-)

For the second news, I hit a bit of a wall with this month's Gloria story. Like I restarted from scratch three separate times this month, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to come out right. I'd like to do a clean/SFW one-off story, as sort of a "creative reset". It's an idea I've had in my head for a long time, and I'd like to actually write it. So, I apologize for the lack of Gloria-and-Friends related shenanigans this month, but I hope you enjoy the story that will be coming out instead!

Just to emphasize, the Gloria series isn't going away or anything like that. My plan is to take a bit of a breather while finishing final edits to the next version of BatS, then next month write a special one-off. In June, I'll be back to the usual series!

4/13/2024 - Belrye and the Summoner Goes for Editing Tomorrow!

As the title says, BatS is going for editing tomorrow. Good times! This version adds a few dozen chunks, along with some edits to existing ones. I felt some of the shorter ones could use some fleshing-out, especially toward the beginning of the story where you have several choices in a row. Later on, chunks will actually tend to be a lot longer. You could kinda think of where we are now in the story as "character creation", which is why it may feel like not much is happening between choices. :-)

Once BatS goes in for editing tomorrow, I'll be turning my attention back to Gloria and her friends. I've got a few ideas for the next story, so it is just a matter of narrowing it down. After all of the characters that have been introduced since the beginning, I want to mainly focus on Gloria, Robert, Ally, Marci, Sally, and Three. The others will certainly make appearances, but to me those 6 are definitely the main characters. Who knows, though - maybe there will be a spinoff sometime with the grand adventures of Clara? I have too many stories I want to write and not enough time to write them all, lol.

As a random tangent, I've actually started getting into writing things by hand, over the last couple weeks. The actual stories still get written on the computer, start to finish, but I'm finding doing brainstorming or roughing-out plot ideas with an old-fashioned pen and paper is very helpful. It is something I had read quite a few people recommending, and honestly it feels like it is working well for me, too. I also find I'm using it as a "cool down" after a writing session - writing down ideas for where I want things to go, notes for things I don't want to forget between sessions, etc. Just some fun behind-the-scenes detail!

I know it's a bit early to say this, but I'm already thinking ahead to NaNoWriMo. I'm kind of torn. On the one hand, I could do another Gloria novel, which would be fun. But on the other hand, I could come up with an equally ambitious goal to do for a month in BatS. For example, maybe adding 500 chunks? Just like last year, nothing would be posted in November, but it would be posted in December after editing.

If you would like to nudge me in one direction or the other, send a message or drop a comment on my FurAffinity! I know the Gloria series gets more views (partly because it's in the main gallery, and not in scraps as a work-in-progress), but plenty are into BatS too! Either way, you'll have plenty of new stuff to read at the end of December!

3/31/2024 - Gloria the Goat pt. 13 Posted!

Hello again! Just a quick message to let you know that Gloria the Goat pt. 13 has been posted! This is a pretty tame one, but it focuses on some character development. This was a fun one to write! :-)

3/24/2024 - New Version of Belrye and the Summoner Posted!

Hello again! As the title suggests, there is a new version of BatS available! One thing that has changed with this version is that I'm using different version numbers, consisting of the year and month (so this one is "202403" because it is coming out in March of 2024). The first reason for this is that it makes it clear how old or new a version is, and the second is that it lets me sidestep the age-old question of "when do I declare it my 1.0 release?" :-)

This update isn't as big as the last few, because March has been unusually busy for me this year. For April, though, things should be back to normal again. I've got big plans for that. ;-)

In other news, the next Gloria story is coming along nicely. I'm currently expecting to have it ready to post by a week from today. As always, though, if I need to delay it a few days to put out a story I can be proud of, then that's what will happen. At this time, though, I don't expect a delay like that to be necessary. Just to give a bit of a hint, this month's story focuses mainly on a certain nonbinary horse!

So enjoy the new version of BatS! And the next story in the Gloria series should come out a week from today.

3/18/2024 - Progress!

First of all, I'm not dead! These last few weeks have been busy, both with day-to-day life and with writing, and I decided my available time was better spent writing than posting updates about why writing isn't happening, lol.

Though as long as I'm here, I might as well talk about the writing piece of why I'm a bit behind. :-) Toward the beginning of writing Belrye and the Summoner, I wrote a program that does a whole bunch of checks for errors I catch myself making, then runs all of the LaTeX builds in parallel to spit out the PDFs). As the project gets larger, this will of course take longer, but the amount of time it was taking was drastically worse than expected. I ended up ripping the program apart and rebuilding it, which took quite a while to do, but it means my builds won't become inconveniently long for quite a while yet.

So, here's what to expect for the rest of March. This will be another month where BatS gets posted before Gloria, just because the newest BatS version is closer to done (it's with my editors now.) It will be a smaller expansion for BatS than the last few have been - closer in size to the last new months of 2023. Still decent-size, but nothing too crazy. The next version of BatS will be posted on the 24th, with Gloria pt. 13 coming on the 31st! :-)

Anyway, I finally had some time to post an update just to let everyone know I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, and that I'm still on track to post my normal stories for the month!

2/29/2024 - Belrye and the Summoner v. 0.12 Posted

Hello again, everybody! BatS version 0.12 has been posted now. As mentioned in the last update post, I have removed the character portraits. It would have taken an immense amount of time to get them ready to handle species changes, and that was more time than I wanted to spend on something not directly related to telling the story.

2/22/2024 - Gloria pt. 12 Posted (and BatS news)

First of all, Gloria part 12 is posted! This one is a bit of a tone-shift from prevous ones, and also includes a type of content that has been mentioned in the background in prior stories, but has never happened "on camera", so to speak.

For Belrye and the Summoner, there's a big change coming next week. Not long ago, I had added character portraits below the stat boxes. Well, those are being removed again. As I sat down to modify them to handle other species in preparation for the species change options, I got about 40 hours in, looked at where I was, looked at how much I still needed to do, and estimated it would be several hundred hours in total. This would be hours taken away from, you know, telling the story. Between always drawing you as human and Belrye as a goat, or removing them, it was decided that removing them was the better option.

On that note, BatS v. 0.12 will be posted on the 29th, a week from today. Right now we are in the "explosion of books" phase. Every chunk added 5 choices deep, 10 choices deep, etc. is the start of a new book. So there will be periods where no new books will be added for quite a while, followed by times where new books are added at a very rapid pace. This upcoming version brings us from 12 books to 325. No, that's not a typo, lol. And in fact, it's going to mean a bit of a redesign of the BatS section of the page to accomodate it in a way that finding, say, version 0.17 book 173 easy.

As a final, random side-note, today's my birthday - woo!