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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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| I've reached the point in the novella where I'm more than slightly sick of it, and that's got me anticipating a return to BoM. I figured, though, that I'd let you guys help me figure out a where-and-what-to-do-next plan for that with a poll. Which means we need to get started early. If you go here -- [EDIT: Poll completed and deleted] -- you will find a poll setting out the choices I'm giving you. They are not chapters or even areas, but are characters or sets of characters to work with. They don't even pick out what kind of plot the characters will feature in. But I figure we can start narrowing down the possibilities by thinking about who you want to see featured in the next set of shenanigans. At the same time I have created a series of posts (starting here: [Poll completed and deleted]) that will let you vote for the same choices via Gift Points. It's the same drill as last time: Go to the BoM chapter featuring the character(s) you prefer to see, and use the "Tip" form at the bottom to send me GPs. You can vote in the poll, and you can send tips in any amount (the more you tip, the better the chance that your choice will win); or you can do one but not the other. It depends on how invested you want to be in a particular choice. If you want, you can even send GP tips for more than one choice. (But you can only vote once in the poll.) For the purposes of vote counting, each vote in the free poll will be worth a yet-to-be-determined number of GPs while GPs tipped to me will be worth their face value. So, for example, if each vote winds up being worth 100 points; and "Chelsea Cooper" gets 12 votes; and I get chapter tips for her worth 2,576 GPs, then she would have (2,576 + 1200 =) 3,776 votes; and if "Plinko" gets 7 votes and 4,290 GPs, then "Plinko" would get (4,290 + 700 =) 4,990 votes. Plink would thus beat Chelsea as a choice. How many points will each vote in the poll be worth? That will depend upon the GPs that are sent me. When the polling closes, I will give weigh each vote in the poll as equivalent to one-half of the average GP donation. So, if I receive 10K GPs collectively packaged in 20 donations from 8 people, then each poll vote will be worth 250 GPs (half of 10K GPs divided by 20; the number of people making the donations will not be relevant). As when we did this sort of thing before, GPs for losing choices will be returned to the senders; GPs for the winning choice will be equally divided among those who voted for the losing choices and will be sent to them. So, if your choice wins, you will be out whatever GPs you sent me. If your choices loses, you will get your GPs back, plus a dividend. I myself will neither make nor lose GPs on the vote. People who only vote in the poll will get nothing, as they invested nothing beyond their free vote. The poll and the GP contest will close in 7 days (on Tuesday, November 20). After that will come a second poll and contest offering a narrower set of choices within the broad choice chosen in the first poll. |
| Four days have passed, so here is the next one-off: "Invalid Item" (public) / "A Snow Job?" (interactive). It's still in the same area: Will picking a new identity down in the sophomore class. |
| So at least person asked that I publish items from the backlog. Okay then: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Spy Girl" (interactive). That's from the same general area as I was last working in -- one of those alternate chapters I prepared that didn't win a poll. That's the pool I'll be publishing from this month, and a new one will appear every three to four days. Don't expect any of them to have any sequels, though. |
| The last chapters of the storyline are now posted: "Invalid Item" (public) and "A Better Class of People" (interactive). I said earlier that I don't have anything else in the backlog, but that's not strictly true. I do have scattered chapters in various branches, but nothing that I like that runs for any sustained length of time. Still, I might pop in and out over the next month to publish a couple of these as one-offs. I have a number of unpublished chapters in this part of the interactive—choices I anticipate publishing, but which didn't get voted for—and those would probably be the ones I posted if I did. So, you might check back in occasionally just to see if anything has been added. |
| This month is NaNoWrMo, which is the reason I'm taking the month off from BoM to work on something else. I'll be reporting my progress at my tumblr blog: seuzz.tumblr.com If anyone else wants to blog about their month of writing—whether they're participating in NaNoWrMo or just doodling around with other stuff—post it here, day by day, as a Comment on this item. |
| So, I can tell you guys what the schedule looks like now, as I've written through the plot point that I intended to reach when I started this branch. That climactic chapter will (assuming I remember) be published on Monday; Saturday and Sunday will bring additional chapters as well. After that, it'll be a month at least before I publish here again. Judging by the stats, this has not been a very popular branch, but I knew going in it wouldn't be. It was commissioned from a set of low-popularity choices, and M2M branches are always less popular than the M2F ones. But I have to say that I have really enjoyed writing it. I was commissioned to do so with the explicit request that Seth Javits get some more development. I don't know that I've gone as in depth with him as one might. But I've been as true to the character as my intuition tells me he is, and I rather like that he doesn't seem like an a*****e on inside as much as he is one on the outside. I've also enjoyed getting some practice at building crises. I don't know how apparent it is to you, the readers, for whom the idea of a "climactic crisis" might mean something more comic-bookey, like the threat of imminent extinction at the hands and jaws of some giant purple planet eater. But I do feel like I did succeeded in putting Will/Seth into deeper and worse trouble in almost every chapter as a result of his choices. Some of the credit here has to go to the voters, though, who really did make a fantastic choice in the one vote I gave you, which led to a hard conflict between Cindy and Caleb. I might have some more to say about this branch, and the choices I made, when we reach the end. |
| It's November 1, which is the day I was going to lay BoM aside for a month to some non-BoM stuff elsewhere. But though I wrote a number of chapters yesterday and the day before, I did not get to where I want the current storyline to be when I suspend it. So I'm going to spend today trying to get it to that point. Though I will not be writing in BoM for the twenty-nine days after that, I will still be publishing the current storyline, which will continue for a few more days at least. I will also still be around WdC, checking emails and the like and maybe posting a couple of notes here. But I didn't get a backlog written to carry thru the month, so I won't be publishing anything until December at the earliest. So this is prior notice of a publishing hiatus. |
| And this is how come I'm glad you guys voted for Chelsea in the last poll: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Coups Within Coups" (interactive). I've got two days to write chapters that will get me to the stopping point I envisioned when I started this branch, so I might not be very communicative. |
| So, in the previous entry I said there wasn't going to be a chapter today. I spoke too soon. Immediately after posting that entry, I started working on the sequel, and it came out quickly enough that I decided that I could make it the daily post. So here it is: "Invalid Item" (public}"The Enemy of My Girlfriend Is My ..." (interactive}Now let's see if I can get tomorrow's chapter written, for it's basically just going to be the second part of today's ... |
| Sorry, I've got nothing today. [EDIT: Oh but it turns out that I do.] But I do like the choice you guys made in the voting. I started thinking about it this morning, and though I tossed Chelsea in as a bit of fan service, I see now that she would be the best possible choice to take things where I want them to go. Did those voters realize it? Or did they luck into it? Or does it matter? |
| So I put up a poll at the end of the latest chapter: "Invalid Item" (public) / "The Company That Misery Keeps" (interactive) [EDIT: FIXED LINK] mostly because I'm not strongly committed to any of the choices and thought I'd let the audience have a say. But I should caution you that it's not going to make a strong, immediate difference to the storyline. I know where this is going, and I also know that the choice I've presented will have only a negligible influence on what comes next. But it will obviously have a very long-term impact on however this branch develops from here, so it's not a useless vote either. There's a high risk that I won't know the vote's outcome until late in the day tomorrow, so there's a high probability there will be no chapter tomorrow. If not, I might post a one-off somewhere else. |
| It's been awhile since I've posted a chapter the same day that I've written. Longer still since I've posted a chapter only 20 minutes after composing it. So I'm not sure whether I really want to call your attention to "Invalid Item" (public) / "Gaming the Game" (interactive). But at least I didn't miss posting something today, even if it is late. Of course, it also means I'm doing very badly at accumulating that backlog I wanted to build. In happier news, you all might be interested in checking out some pictures that AchillesRedux made, illustrating a scene from a BoM chapter with Will and Stephanie Wyatt: One Steps In, Another Steps Out . Graphic content warning; also, you'll need to log in to DeviantArt to see all the images. |
| The two most recent chapters in the current storyline are kind of flashback heavy. I'm not a fan of flashbacks, but I prefer them to exposition dumps. But that still makes them tricky to write and fold into the narrative. A single day of writing had given me the three chapters that I have now posted, but they required some heavy revision before I was reasonably happy with them, and that took an extra day. Having cleared that mess away, though, I think I see easier writing ahead. Anyway, for the record: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Of Friendships and Fouls" (interactive). |
| So here is the start of the new branch: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Hijacking Javits" (interactive). The contest that inspired it was a commission to write a storyline based on a choice that did not receive a lot of votes when we were voting on choices to take, so I'm not sure how popular it's going to be. As I said yesterday, I'm not going to open the continuations to voting, so even though I will be publishing a copy in a public form, I won't feel obliged to flog each chapter appearance here on the blog. If you want to follow the story but have trouble accessing the interactive, consult "Invalid Item" . Links to current chapters will appear there under the heading "Current Storyline." If I forget to update with links there, check the most recent link in that section for a link to the next chapter. |
| So, today's chapter is up, though it's not the one I expected to win: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Unexpected Dates" (interactive). That's alright, it gets me to where I wanted to go: a stopping point for this branch. So there's no poll at the end of it, and there's not even a choice. What comes next? That's a decision I put up for bid a couple of weeks ago. Those of you who didn't submit a bid will find out tomorrow what the winning choice was. Those of you who bid and lost will be getting an email later today returning the GPs you bid along with a little extra dividend. And if you bid for the winning choice, then you'll know what will be coming next because you won't be getting your GPs back. I don't know how long the new storyline will run for -- at least a week, I hope, and maybe more. (The chapter choices will NOT be open up for polling, so I can write multiple chapters a day and build up a backlog.) I'm not sure what will come after that. I'm planning to take all of November off to write something not for BoM, and I'd like to get a backlog of chapters written to cover that month, but I don't know where in BoM/TWS I would be doing that. It might be in the "alternate BoM" that I planted a few weeks ago; it might even be a regular, non-interactive story. But I don't think it will be in the "sophomore" section, which I want to take a break from. |
| I was up early to drive someone to a medical appointment, so today's chapter is going up a few hours early as well: "Invalid Item" (public) and "Action Under Cover" (interactive). The next few days are going to be a little weird for me, so even though I know what will come next (for both choices) I'm not certain I'll be able to write them and post them in a timely manner. |
| So, the final vote did end decisively in one direction, but it was late breaking that way, which didn't give me a window to compose a sequel. So it'll be tomorrow before a new chapter goes up. The good news, maybe, is that I've a pretty good plan for the sequel chapter, the alternatives that will follow, and the sequel even to one alternative. So I think I can get multiple chapters written today. |
| I won't tell you whether you guys voted wisely or not yesterday, but there is a new chapter today: "Invalid Item" (public) / "Piled Higher and Deeper" (interactive). |
| So I had kind of a bumpy two weeks there. I had to do some housesitting, which wound up complicating my schedule in a way that wrecked my concentration, and I had some other things to get done as well. I also had a hard time with "Invalid Item" (public) / "The Brain Twister" (interactive). I got the first 2/3rds written pretty quickly, but then got stuck. Part of the problem is that a chapter like that feels both necessary and like wheel-spinning. For genre reasons it feels necessary; also, given Grant's characterization, it seems like something that needed to be written out explicitly. But it's a chapter that doesn't really advance things, and the choice at the end doesn't look like an obvious advance either. I actually do have one of the choices written, so if you guys vote wisely, you will definitely get a chapter tomorrow. If you don't vote wisely that will probably be okay too, because I'm pretty sure I know what would happen in the alternate. |
| Well, that totally didn't go as I expected. Not that I had the alternate chapter written. The poll was neck-and-neck from the very start, so I didn't put any time into writing a chapter that wasn't clearly going to win. So it'll be tomorrow before I have the sequel written. |
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