The Book of Masks Homepage

Something to Keep Things Active

I really enjoy posting stuff, and not having something to post has been driving me nuts. So I went looking and found something I think will keep things semi-active here for next few weeks. "Invalid Item"  (public) / "School for Demons, Chapter 1" . I'll be serializing it over the next few weeks, publishing chapters on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. This should take up the next six weeks, which will bring us close to the start of March. It was one-third-written when found it last week, and I'm finishing it up while giving my intended WIP a bit of a rest.

It's not a BoM story, except by convention: There's a section of the interactive where Will finds a book full of stories and novels, and it's a story reprinted in that anthology.

Some cautions: First, it's pretty close to being straight-up pornography, much more so than features in BoM itself. That's because it's inspired by a bit of hentai I found a long time ago, one of those rare pieces that actually had the rudiments of a story. I liked the idea of the story, but wound up dragging a lot of the rest of it with it as I adapted, rewrote, and expanded that idea. It just seemed the natural thing to do.

Second caution: I know nothing about Japanese culture, nor do I have anything like a handle on its styles. But along with the pron came dragging a kind of narrative and conversational voice. I am not trying to mimic anything, and my ignorance of anything to do with Japan is woeful. But as the pron came, so too did a kind of voice. Maybe it should be read as an extremely incompetent translation/adaptation of something genuine.

Third caution: It features some of the nastiest characters I have ever conceived. It may be hard to stomach simply because the characters are so horrible. It's a work of satire, and not in the pleasant SNL "ha ha, we're having fun making fun of silly people" kind of way. No, this is satire in the classical sense of "caricature something already despicable in the grossest, most hateful way you can."