11 days until I turn 36!
ebooks updated — So I finally got around to learning the better way to make Kindle books that I knew existed since forever. This, of course, meant I had to redo all my Kindle books. But now that’s finally done. The good news:
1. The new way of doing it is the proper way of doing it, so they all have integrated menus now. It always bugged the crap out of me before how you had to go all the way back to the manual table of contents to jump to a certain chapter. Now you can access it from anywhere!
2. ??? ? ?? – Gradual Understanding shows up just fine now, so it is included in the second Saitou/Sano Collection. I never did figure out why it wouldn’t work before, nor why it does work now. I guess doing things the proper way pays off :D
3. La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré Plus edition has been updated to include That Remarkable Optimism. It took this whole revamping process to get around to doing that XD
There is one piece of bad news too, though, and that is that I cannot for the life of me get the La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré ebook (solo or Plus version) to open in my Kindle for PC program. They compile just fine without any errors, and both open just fine on my Kindle for Android app, but absolutely won’t open on PC, and I can’t figure out why. I keep thinking it must have something to do with the special characters in the title, but I can’t figure out how to fix it. Surely other books formatted for Kindle have special characters in their titles and not this problem?
And it’s really annoying trying to search for support on this issue. Any search I do tends to turn up only really basic, surface-level “How to create your own ebooks for Kindle” shit, and I’m like, No, I figured that part out. Troubleshooting, please? Ah, well; this isn’t the end of the world.
Anyway, if you are a person that downloads my ebooks for Kindle (though I don’t honestly think anyone is that person), you should replace all those old .prc’s with the new .mobi’s if you can. And please alert me to any typos or weirdness you encounter!!
Heretic’s Reward — I actually don’t have much to say about this other than what I said last time. Short chapter is finished and I’m glad. Parallels to canon may be silly and I’m unrepentant. Next chapter is good bonding times squee. Yay!
The Test — I don’t have much more to say about this one either, but I did have a breakthrough on a minor issue I’d run into, and that’s awesome. Next weekend’s work should (hopefully) be a bit more productive than this one’s three or so paragraphs.
TLY — I’ma have to do a bit of rewriting on the last few chapters, probably starting this coming weekend. Long ago I had planned for one character to sneak along on the expedition they’re currently on, but then when I got to the expedition I either forgot or temporarily changed my mind and wrote it without him. But I do want him along, and I need to go back and insert him before I get to the homecoming and his mom freaking out in his absence.
Some HoH stuff — I was home sick from work on Tuesday and Wednesday (and could totally have done with Thursday too, but didn’t want to abandon my ladies on a three-doctor day). My weird symptoms included nausea/stomach pain that was significantly better while seated, so that left me a lot of time to work on stories and shit. Some of that time was spent on “and shit” (mostly formatting Kindle books), but some of it was stories.
And since it was not a weekend with a scheduled set of stories, I decided to play the one-line game. Sometimes the one-line game is less “Write at least one line on every in-progress story” and more “Write at least one line on various things until you find something that really wants to be worked on, and then just stick with that for the rest of the time.” And in this case, I got stuck in my HoH folder.
Cockatiel and Armadillo is Kamatari’s introduction and Wufei being a nerd at him, and has been crawling along due to the Conversation Checklist. Sano and Kaoru’s Phone Log, which is just what it says on the tin and 3 conversations out of 22 finished (with probably 10 more in varying states of completion), has also been crawling along due to the Conversation Checklist. Then there’s an as-yet-untitled story about Chou having dinner with Hajime and Sano, and that one’s just sort of languid and hasn’t reached Conversation Checklist point yet. Still, I hit all three of these. But the HoH story that got the most work this past week was Nine Decades.
I know, I keep mentioning all these HoH stories that I’ve never mentioned before and that are likely to take nine decades to finish. Nevertheless! Nine Decades is a collection of snippety stories (GUESS HOW MANY ARE PLANNED) about Duo’s time as a doll. One story is complete, and I started and made significant progress on another this past week, as well as getting the idea settled for a third. So that was awesome!
There’s a thing I’ve disliked in some fanfiction in the past: when the canon characters I care about are only there to serve as introduction/framework for a story about original characters I care far less about. In such stories you could often dispense with the canon characters entirely and have it be an original story, and it would actually be improved by doing so. Sadly, you always hurt the one you love, and sometimes you write things you dislike.
None of these Nine Decades stories, most probably, will ever descend quite so far as “you could get rid of Duo and this would actually be a better story entirely about original characters,” because his being a cursed magician and a talking, indestructible doll is always going to be an integral part of the plot. But I think a lot of the time the focus is going to be a lot more on what’s going on around him, the people he’s interacting with, than on him.
Since the whole point is to get a glimpse into how he was living for those 87 years, and since the whole thing is also a side-story in a series where several fics focus more squarely on Duo, I think I will be able to get away with this no problem. But it will be something for readers to keep in mind going into it. You know. Nine decades from now when it’s done :D
Well, I hope that nausea won’t flare up again and cheat me out of more work hours… but I do have quite a productive week to look back on, and I certainly never mind more time to spend on stories and shit XD Next weekend I’m back to Blood Contingency and a certain OTP having a certain First Time. Please look forward to it!