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 A hub for the "Book of Masks" universe. |
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The Interactives "The Book of Masks"  : A high school student discovers a grimoire that can make magical disguises."The Wandering Stars" : Sequel to "The Book of Masks.""Student Bodies" : A high school student is turned into a blue goo that can possess people."Student Bodies: Transfer Students" : Reboot of "Student Bodies."For non-WdC Members "The Book of Masks: Archives" : Dodges the "Servers Busy" barrier!"The Book of Masks (Abridged)" : Introductory storylines for new readers.Community "BoM/TWS Message Forum" : Community for readers of the interactives."BoM/TWS/SB Wiki" : Notes and documentation for authors. Spoilers!Current Polls/Contests None The Latest 6/30: Interactive: "Golems Three-ish" 6/30: Public: "Golems Three-ish"
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| There's a new poll below—"Poll Results Plus New Reader Poll [2/1 - 2/4]" —but all during the month of February I will be running a "Sweet Sixteen" competition in the BoM Universe. Yes, it should be run during March, but the schedule didn't work out. I'm not going to tell you what it is for. Maybe it's a popularity contest (but probably not). Maybe it's to find a partner for Will in an upcoming branch, or maybe a victim. I'm not going to say. But you get to pick two of them—male and female. I've already got the brackets set up and the contestants chosen (see below, which is the best I can do at constructing a "bracket"). Two polls will be posted at a time, one for the boys and one for the girls, and each poll will run for two days. Including subsequent rounds, this will take up the month of February. The brackets and current standings are below: Sweet Sixteen -> Final Four Girls' Division Chelsea Cooper Orchestra girl (TBD) ---> Chelsea Cooper Kelsey Blankenship ---> Kelsey Blankenship ---> Kelsey Blankenship Sienna Goldman Jelena Petrovic Anita Nuevo ---> Jelena Petrovich ---> Kim Walsh Kim Walsh ---> Kim Walsh Jenny Ashton Fatima Zahedi Catherine Muskov ---> Fatima Zahedi Stephanie Wyatt ---> Stephanie Wyatt ---> Fatima Zahedi Chorale girl (TBD) Cindy Vredenburg Amanda Ferguson ---> Amanda Ferguson ---> Andrea Varnsworth Andrea Varnsworth ---> Andrea Varnsworth Band girl (TBD) Boys' Division Gordon Black Orchestra guy (TBD) ---> Orchestra guy (TBD) Dane Matthias ---> Lester "The Molester" Pozniak Lester "The Molester" Wozniak ---> Orchestra guy (TBD) David Kirkham Football player (TBD) ---> Football player (TBD) Seth Javits ---> Chorale guy (TBD) ---> Chorale guy (TBD) Chorale guy (TBD) Justin Roth Soccer player (TBD) ---> Soccer player (TBD) Gary Chen ---> Wrestler (TBD) ---> Soccer player (TBD) Wrestler (TBD) Charles Hartlein Carson Ioeger ---> Charles Hartlein ---> Band guy (TBD) Steve Patterson ---> Band guy (TBD) Band guy (TBD) Final Four -> Championship Girls' Division Kelsey Blankenship Kim Walsh --> Kim Walsh Fatima Zahedi ---> Andrea Varnsworth---> Andrea Varnsworth Andrea Varnsworth Boys' Division Orchestra guy (TBD) Chorale guy (TBD) ---> Chorale guy (TBD) Soccer player (TBD) --->}Band guy (TBD) ---> Band guy (TBD) Band guy (TBD) |
| So, yesterday concluded a four-day poll on continuing a BoM storyline. The winning entry was "Student Bodies" by a decisive margin. (In addition to the margin in the Free Vote poll, someone dropped major GPs on it.) It took an early enough lead that I've actually been working on it and have chapters already written. GP dividends will shortly be distributed to those who voted for the the losing choices. My goal is to compose ~15 chapters in "Student Bodies," then compose ~15 chapters in another storyline. Together, that should keep my free time occupied through February. So I've put up a new poll to choose that second storyline. "The Copyist" returns (it was a more than respectable second-place shower in the first poll) with some new alternates. The usual rules apply: GPs voted for the winning choice will be divided among those that vote for the losing choices, proportionate to the number of GPs they voted for the losing choices. Second-round Polls "Invalid Item" "Invalid Item" |
| Yesterday I said that I had 31 chapters composed to run during March when I resume publishing. It's a complete storyline, by which I mean it has a definite beginning and runs until it reaches a narrative-changing climax. And although I could spend February adding to it, I think I'd rather work on some other storylines. So let's have a poll! Standard rules: 1. [Poll closed and deleted]: Click on your preferred choice or choices (you're allowed to cast GP votes for more than one), then send a number of GPs through the tip form at the bottom of the chapter that pops up. 2. [Poll closed and deleted]: Here you can cast a single vote. Each vote will be worth one half of the average number of GPs cast in the GP poll, unless no votes are cast in the GP poll, in which case each vote will be worth 1. The winning choice will be the one that garners the most GPs + Weighted Free Votes. GPs cast for the winning choice will be forfeit. (They are paying for the commission.) GPs cast for losing choices will be returned to those who cast them, along with a share of the GPs cast for the winning choice, proportionate to the share of GPs cast for the losing choices. Example: Choice A gets one vote of 9K dropped on it. Choice B gets one vote of 2K and one vote of 1K. The person who voted for Choice A gets nothing back. The voters for Choice B get back 8K (2K plus 2/3 of 9K) and 4K (1K plus 1/3 of 9K). Voting closes on Friday, February 1. |
| I've taken a break from BoM since January 1 to concentrate on non-BoM projects during my scheduled writing hours. But I can't write for more than 90 minutes on it without becoming exhausted with my WIP, so I've been giving the extra spare hours over to BoM work. It's not my focus, but it is coming. In this way I have accumulated 31 new chapters. I mention all this so you'll be assured that, when March 1 rolls around and I start publishing BoM chapters again, I will be able to fill the month while turning my attention back to BoM composition. |
| Ouch! It's been three weeks since I've offered my thanks for GP contributions. I'm going to blame it on the fact that I've never settled on a particular day of the week to make them. Anyway, my thanks this, er, period of weeks go to Easy, Manga360, and Achillesredux for the points they've sent me. I'm also grateful to those who have contributed posts to the "BoM/TWS Message Forum" . I've had some great conversations via email, and I'm still glad to have those, but it's also nice to have a place for those readers who've talked to me to talk to each other. |
| I find WdC a baffling and confusing place. That's my explanation for not knowing I could create a dedicated message forum here, and I'm sticking with it. Anyway: "BoM/TWS Message Forum" The tl;dr: I found someone online wishing there was a place to talk about BoM. So I decided to make one. The longer explanation is in a pinned post at the above-linked forum. |
| 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." |
| So I said I'd pop in here occasionally during the hiatus, just to keep my hand in. I don't have any new chapters to share, but contra my original intention I actually have kept writing BoM chapters, though at a very slow pace. I've a spare hour early most mornings where I can do some writing, and since BoM doesn't take a lot planning out or brainstorming, I've been doing some BoM stuff during that hour. End of the day, when there's a big block of time, is when I've been doing the other stuff, and because the two writing times are so firmly segregated, I'm able to do two projects at once. But as I say, it's slow going, so I've only written seven more BoM chapters. But I like what's coming out, and I'm pretty sure I'll have something worth publishing on March 1 when I return here. |
| The name "Fredric Brown" probably doesn't mean much to you guys. He was a pulp writer in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, across a number of genres: crime-mystery, horror and science fiction. He is probably best known for writing the short story that was adapted into the Star Trek (original series) episode "Arena." ** I recently read an anthology of his short stories and his novel "The Mind Thing." He's quite good, especially when he's being blackly humorous, which is quite often. He also wrote lots of short-shorts, which makes it easy to consume a lot of his stuff in a short sitting. Anyway, I mention him here because I have the strong impression he had a possession fetish. At any rate, it's a motif that shows up more often than would seem otherwise likely. IIRC, around six of the short stories in The Fredric Brown Megapack featured possession, and the novel The Mind Thing is about a body-hopping space alien trying to arrange an invasion of Earth. If possession fiction is your thing, this is someone you should check out. Though fair warning should be given (as I know the audience for this kind of thing): there's no TG action (it's usually aliens doing the possessing) and animals feature as the hosts. ** I gather there's a vexed story about this claim. According to what I've seen on line, the writer of the Star Trek episode had never read Brown's story, and it was only after other members of the writing staff pointed out the similarities that the decision was made to credit Brown as the adapted author. This is probably one of those situations where it's best not to inquire too deeply into the actual facts. Suffice it to say that ST's "Arena" is so much like ST's "Arena" that an "adapted from" claim is entirely plausible. |
| This week I get to thank smitch, Kenny, Achillesredux, and Easy for some GPs. You make me blush! |
| And that's all for now. The latest chapters— "Invalid Item" (public) / "By Mystery Possessed" (interactive)—round off the last storyline, and will likely be the last chapters I publish until March. But keep alert for anything from rugal or other contributors. I say I'm "likely" to not publish anything until then, because there is a chance that I'll pop in long enough to add something extra. Probably not a chapter in a continuing storyline, but an independent short story that can be dropped in somewhere. I've got a couple of those floating around that wouldn't look out of place as an extra fiddly-bit on the main BoM interactive. The better news is that I am actually at work on a new storyline. I'm saving my main efforts for non-BoM stuff (I've written two short stories already, including this entry for WdC's Weird Tales contest: "The Forever Wife" ), but I've found that there's a little pocket of 20 to 60 minutes during the day when I have just enough time to dash off part of a BoM chapter but not enough time to ruminate on something more challenging, and I've been using that little pocket to keep my BoM hand in things. So there's a really good chance that I'll have something ready to run when March 1 comes along.Anyway, I want to emphasize that I'm not going anywhere, and I plan to pop up in this blog once a week or so just to say Hi and I'm still here and to otherwise wave a handkerchief at people. |
| Yesterday's chapter—"Invalid Item" / "Invalid Chapter" —took that storyline to a crisis point. Today I switch back to the storyline before, the one that was running in the middle of December. That one too had reached a crisis point, but I've pushed a little further into it to take it to another crisis point. For a very long time there has been some undeveloped background information about this corner of the story, and this is the perfect spot to finally put it onto the record. At least, I think it's been undeveloped. I don't think the revelations to come have ever been published, but maybe there is a chapter I've forgotten about where they get made. It's not going to run long, I'm afraid. Three more chapters, and then I'm done in until March. |
| And BOOM: There are officially three thousand chapters in BoM. A couple dozen of them don't really count, though, so maybe I'll drop another BOOM when we hit the real number. It might be awhile, though. As I said a little while ago, I'm going to cut back on BoM this year to write other stuff. Fair warning: After the current batch of stuff runs out it will probably be March before I start publishing in BoM again. And I regret to say I didn't write that much more during the rest of December. The storyline I was working on just didn't pan out in a way that I liked, and I think you guys would like it even less, so I'm not going to do anything with it. I do have one more chapter to publish tomorrow to round off the current branch. After that, I have four more chapters from an earlier storyline that I'll publish. I will try to remember to pop up in this blog, so you'll know I'm still around. And I will probably be checking emails every day. I'm not going anywhere. Just turning my attention in another direction. |
| My sense of the days got all messed up over the holidays, so I missed my usual days for thanking people for GPs. But I have special thanks to give three people, who dropped way more GPs on me than they needed to: smitch Tal werwerew Thanks guys! You really went beyond and above over the holidays. |
| So, esteemed reader Kenny has been reminding me for awhile that "The Book of Masks" is coming up on its tenth anniversary. And today is it. This universe is now officially ten years old. Okay, 12-30-2008 was the day I created the interactive and posted the first few chapters: "Prologue in a Book Store" "The Fake Book" "Making a Mask" "The Solo Magician" "Myself, the Guinea Pig" . But except for a few chapters posted in January and December of 2009, it was dormant for almost two years. Not until November of 2010 did it really get going. (I think I had it locked under "Private access" until then.)But still ... Ten years. Are there any other statistics I could mention? Well, as I post this, it has 2997 chapters, but that includes appendices and a few blog-like entries. If we subtract those, it stands at 2968 chapters; though if we include the spin-off/sequel interactive "The Wandering Stars" then the number rises to 3431. That works out to a publishing rate of almost 1 chapter a day, and more than 1 chapter a day if we lop off those two dormant years at the start. I don't know how many words are in it, but each chapter probably averages around 1500 words apiece. (Most of my chapters come in at around 1725 words, but I'll be conservative in my estimates.) That means that BoM/TWS between them contain about 5 million words. That's more than 10x longer than The Lord of the Rings, and five times longer than the Harry Potter series. If most novels run between 50K and 100K words, then BoM/TWS is equivalent to between 50 and 100 novels. EDIT: Wordsmitty asks how many page views Chapter One has. I've never really paid much attention. So let's see: The description page for BoM has 117,205. Chapter One (The Prologue) itself has 112,517. Ouch. Maybe I should revise the Prologue, for the first real chapter ("The Fake Book") has 27,424. * * * I don't mention all that to brag. I sure as hell didn't do it all myself, and you all know that this thing has had a lot of contributors, from rugal (most especially) and imaj and Wordsmitty and smitch, as well as past contributors (like Collider) whose names have vanished off their chapters after contributing some fantastic ideas to it. No, I emphasize those big numbers above because they're a testimony to steady work. If a journey of a thousand miles consists of hundreds of individual steps, then the composition of a 5 million word interactive universe consists in writing one chapter at a time. Patience and perseverance can do amazing things, as anyone who's seen what a stream of water did to the Grand Canyon can attest. I mentioned the work of my fellow contributors above. I have to give enormous thanks to them, for their help in making this ... thing. Not just for their own contributions of words and ideas, both inside the interactive and privately in email conversations, but also for liking it and being enthused enough by it to add to it. I am also deeply grateful to its readers. There aren't many of you, but each one of you, whether you've corresponded with me or have just been a number in the "Page Views" statistic, boosted my morale immensely. Authors are fond of saying that they are sustained by their readers, and that is certainly true in this case. It doesn't take many of you to keep me writing. Each of you is like a tankful of high-grade fuel. Is there another ten years in this thing? I sure don't want to make any promises, and there have been plenty of times in the past when I thought it had exhausted itself. All I can say now is what I would have said ten (or eight) years ago when I started: Let's write another chapter today, and let the tomorrows take care of themselves. |
| I hope people don't mind that I took Christmas Day entirely off. You won't miss out on a chapter, though. Everything will get shifted back by a day going forward. See the text box above for direct links to the two new chapters from me. |
| If you look above this post you'll see a text box describing this blog. It includes a link to the "Invalid Item" where unregistered members can access non-interactive versions of my chapters hassle-free. Well, I've just added another little section to it: links to the most recent chapters I've posted (in both interactive and non-interactive formats) plus a link to the latest interactive chapter posted by an author who isn't me. I will try to remember to keep that slot updated when I add chapters, so that readers can just come to this page for a quick link to reach the latest stuff. It'll help me too, so I don't have to flip through multiple pages to reach the spot where I'm posting chapters. And it'll be less intrusive than posting updates in the blog itself, just to post links. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before. I am probably the stupidest person I know. |
| So, here's a little dividend: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Opinions Sought, and Opinions Unwelcome" (interactive). It's not much, but it's there for a purpose. Chapter 2, "The Fake Book," sets up the three branches that all the various storylines have spiraled out of: Will exploring the grimoire with friends; Will becoming a pupil or adversary of the warlock Aubrey Blackwell; Will getting rid of the book but getting roped back into it as others start using it. This new chapter is there to do something similar, but with a slight twist. The choice presented is "Show the book to your dad", and Chapter 3 is about that. But the choices at the end basically recapitulate the choices at the end of Chapter 2: Investigate the book; return it to the bookstore; get rid of it. Why is that? BoM has been a ten-year project, with new characters, backgrounds, and situations developed over that period of time. There are many early chapters and storylines that do not reflect or account for things that were developed later. I think that's okay. I have tried to turn that to an advantage by keeping all the storylines somewhat limited. Story-telling requires selection—the author selects what is important to the story—and a storyline that included everything would be too fat and clumsy to be enjoyed. In looking BoM over, though, I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea if there was a way of re-approaching older storylines from scratch with material since added. I don't mean by re-running and re-posting those storylines exactly. I mean by almost starting the interactive over again, with the chance to go down certain familiar avenues again but this time while knowing a lot more about the universe. My first thought was to start a new interactive—literally, start BoM over again. But then I thought that maybe there was a way of doing the same thing inside BoM itself. Hence, the chapter "Opinions Sought, and Opinions Unwelcome." It doesn't develop much off of "The Fake Book," and more or less ends with the same choices as ended "The Fake Book." But just in this way it's like an alternate to "The Fake Book," and so provides a place for slightly alternate, and maybe richer and more informed, storylines similar to those that come after "The Fake Book." I've no plans currently to add any sequels to this new chapter. It's only there to open up a possibility. Right now I'm intent on developing some new characters inside of well-developed storylines. |
| Okay, here's the start of the branch that will run through December 31: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Becoming Braydon Delp" (interactive). Background to the story is here: "Invalid Item" As I mentioned yesterday, I had the first seven chapters already written and waiting on my computer, so this is using up some of my archived stuff. But it's new to you, right? |
| We're eleven days off from the new year, but I'm going to go ahead and talk about the year ahead and my plans for it. I think I'm going to be cutting back on BoM. No, I'm not going to stop working on it. It's too much fun and it's far too useful to me. It's the sandbox where I develop characters and situations and ideas that I can use elsewhere. But I am going to be taking longer absences from it so as to work more deliberately at other stuff. The plan I have right now is to devote myself in month-long chunks to different projects. One will be BoM, and the other two months will be to other projects. I will rotate between them. This means that likely there will be only four months next year when you'll be getting chapters from me. Well ... Maybe more than four months. My idea is to devote a full month to each project, and since I can typically write more than thirty BoM chapters in a month, you will likely get more than thirty days' worth of BoM chapters at a time—probably between five and seven weeks of them. But if all goes to plan, there will be at least four lengthy pauses from me next year. I will still make make periodic updates to the blog, though, just so people know I'm still actively at the site. * * * Meanwhile, today's chapters—"Invalid Item" (public) / "Sleeper, Awake!" (interactive)— bring the second storyline of the month to a close. Yesterday I wrote the last chapter in the third storyline, which I will start publishing tomorrow. It's actually a branch where I had seven unpublished chapters already written, so I just had to write three more.But there's eleven more writing days in the year, days that I'm giving to BoM, so that there will be more stuff from me in January. At least, there will be if I put a period to this blog post and get back to w— |
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