The Book of Masks Homepage

Happy New Year!

First, the good news. I am alive, and I haven't been gone for as long as I was last year.

Second, what happened?

Well, the last time we talked, I said I was going to take a hiatus from publishing, but that I intended to stick around and not drop out. Unfortunately, some other stuff came up.

The first and decisive crisis was that a close relative of mine was hospitalized with pneumonia on the day before Thanksgiving. That knocked everything askew, both during/over that holiday and for the week after. I was entirely preoccupied with that.

Then, as the expression goes, we had the holidays at our throats.

Actually, I was (both emotionally and in charge of commitments) ready to come back the week before Christmas, and I could have started checking in, but I made the mistake of deciding that I wanted to have something in hand when I came back; otherwise, I feared, I ran the risk of dropping out again. So I spent the middle of December playing with ideas. I decided I wanted to do something in the Hollywood setting, so I spent the last half of December coming up with sketches for settings, personalities, etc., so there would be some kind of Hollywood playground I could further develop.

But then I decided that I wanted you readers to have a say in it: picking where the story would go. That would mean polls, and what would I have for you while the polls were running?

So ... yada yada yada ... what am I back with?

* * *

First of all, I am back with a poll: [Poll completed and deleted]. More background is given there, so here I'll just say it's a poll for a Hollywood story. Will and Sydney (in the personas of a just-laid-off TV actor and his daughter) have just arrived in Hollywood and are looking around for a new identity that they can steal and use to dig deeper into the industry. Which of five targets will they choose?

You guys, of course, will have no idea where any of this will lead, so I'm not exactly holding my breath for a round of heavy voting. Still, I want to give those of you who want to participate a chance to. This poll (and subsequent polls) will run for three days each, and there will be five or six of them. Each poll will generate a new chapter, and after five or six such chapters, hopefully things will be detailed enough that I'll just take over and write more on a regular schedule.

* * *

In the meantime, I will be back tomorrow with the start of an 18-chapter story. It will NOT, however, be a storyline in any interactive continuity, but will be a standalone story: one of those "Will picks up a book and starts to read it" things. Also, it's not completely original to me, but is a prose adaptation of "The Five," a webcomic that chronicstuss published on Deviant Art a couple of years ago.

My intent is to keep people involved and amused with that while the Hollywood chapters slowly roll out, and while I cast about elsewhere for something to continue.

EDIT: I'm tackling emails now. My priority is dealing with the small stuff. Larger stuff may take me awhile to get to, but I aim to at least touch base with everyone within the next 24 hours.

EDIT #2: Okay, I am committed to the Hollywood story line, but I am also posting another poll asking a more general question about what sort of story readers would want to see BoM continue or tackle. Here: [Poll completed and deleted]