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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.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 None The Latest 2/15: Interactive: "Sunday in the Loft with Jerks" 2/15: Public: "Sunday in the Loft with Jerks"
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| So, Civilization VII came out yesterday, and I bought it. There goes all my free time. Well, no, I'm actually forcing myself to budget time for writing, and this morning I already banged out another chapter. I'm also pretty engaged in the story myself, so it's easy to write and I want to get it written. So I don't think I'm going stop writing, at least not right away. But it might mean that this branch goes on for quite a while, instead of breaking off after 7 or 10 chapters, as these things usually do, because it might be that this branch will have to be the crutch that keeps me working. |
| Okay, I think three weeks is enough of a break. * Interactive: "An Alpha of Your Own" * Public: "An Alpha of Your Own" The story thus far: After buying a book of magic in a used bookstore, Will Prescott decided he wanted nothing to do with it, and sold it to his best friend, Caleb Johansson. That was all he knew of the matter, until he got a desperate phone call one night from Chelsea Cooper, the head cheerleader, who wants his help fixing her boyfriend, Gordon Black, who somehow managed to turn himself to stone. Well, it's all on account of that book he found, Will figures after Chelsea has laid it all out to him. It makes magical disguises and magical robots you can use to replace people with, and Gordon did something stupid with it. The only hope for Gordon is if he (Will) studies the book with the help of Chelsea. But Chelsea, once she understands the book and what it can do, has plans of her own. Before long, Will is wearing the mask of another cheerleader--Yumi Saito--and helping Chelsea with her scheme to remake the cheerleading squad. Oh, and Chelsea is impersonating the school's chief drug dealer. (Long story.) As the story resumes, Chelsea is trying to get Will to make another mask in aid of her scheme; moreover, she has promised Will that she and Will will have the same number of masks, and this new mask will make it even. So Will has to decide if he's going to turn himself into Amanda Ferguson (a bitchy AP student); into Steve Patterson (a basketball-playing bully); or hold out for a different alter-ego. I've already written seven chapters in this branch, and I'm still at work. I've got a long-range plan for this one, and there's going to be another evolution coming in the storyline. |
| * Interactive: "The Hungry Ones" * Public: "The Hungry Ones" * Commentary Thread: "Commentary: "How Alana Met Marcos"" That rounds off this branch. And there's going to be a pause in the publication schedule. I don't have anything else in the backlog and will have to write something. I do have an idea for the next thing, but I haven't written anything because it's not fully formed in my head. Also, I've been distracting myself with a railroad simulator instead of being productive. I won't be going anywhere, though, and will be checking in every day. |
| * Interactive: "Making Mickey" * Public: "Making Mickey" Last chapters of this branch are now up. Commentary post here: "Re: Commentary: "A Male Mix-n-Match"" Next up: "The Girl at the Drive-Thru Window" This is a line in the Sydney-and-Will universe. They started by replacing/impersonating Kelsey Blankenship and Amanda Ferguson. Then they added David Kirkham to their circle, with Sydney under his mask. Now they have moved in on Marcos Rivera and Alana Ocampo, with Will again taking the girl while Sydney plays the guy. |
| * Interactive: "Three In One" * Public: "Three In One" That finishes off this branch, which itself was interrupted about six months ago. Commentary thread, FWIW, is here: "Commentary: "Switching Husbands"" Up next is a sequel to "A Rescue and Retreat" , which was the last chapter in the "Conspirators Three" branch, where Will and Caleb and Keith are exploring the book and have unwillingly aded a fourth to their company, a sophomore named Teresa MacNeill.When last we left them, the guys had made some masks using multiple faces, and had gone out to a party in the country while disguised as girls, where Will narrowly avoided an intense fondling. He is now trying to recover his wits. But Teresa has made a new mask, and is prodding him into helping her out ... |
| * Interactive: "Taking One for Team Kendra" * Public: "Taking One for Team Kendra" That's today's chapter, and it rounds off a 7-chapter run. Commentary thread is here: "Commentary: "A Dolt Tries Setting Up a Date"" Tomorrow I resume where I broke off when I vanished, with "Solving Other People's Problems" . That's the one where Will and Caleb, looking for a safe place to do magical research (to fix Will's dad, who got petrified into a golem) replaced a school tutor and her university professor husband.That was supposed to be a five-chapter run, but I left after posting only three chapters. I could have posted the last two chapters, but decided to extend it, so there will be five chapters worth of material starting tomorrow. (I say "five chapters worth of material") because some of those chapters will be broken up into smaller chapters in order to facilitate choice-making. Short chapters will be posted in bundles.) |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "For the Love of Sarah Johansson" * Public: "For the Love of Sarah Johansson" —brings that short branch to a decision and a resting point. There's a commentary thread here in the forums: "Commentary: The Mother of All Revenge Plays" Next up is a return to a place where Will and Caleb are still friends. Collaborators even. And Gordon Black is there too. It picks up with "The Temptation To Be What Another Wants" . This is the branch where Will and Caleb, while playing with masks, accidentally revealed themselves to Gordon, who insisted on joining them. He and Will even swapped lives briefly; as a result, Gordon got thrown out of his dad's house and has moved in with Caleb and his mom. The latest drama: Gordon and Chelsea have broken up, and David Kirkham got turned into a golem. (So Caleb is pretending to be Kirkham these days.)The branch ended with a couple of different chapters, each pointing in different directions, but I'm picking up the one where Gordon tells Will that he wants to go out with Jenny Ashton; and he tells Will that if he gets Jenny to go out with him, he'll set Will up inside a new mask of someone who can be Chelsea's new boyfriend. What comes next starts tomorrow. |
| I've finally got caught up enough—and got my head back into a creative space, I think—that I'm going to start publishing my backlog. I left off in the middle of a storyline with "Invalid Entry" , and instead of publishing the last two chapters in that line, I'm to write a few more before returning to it. In the meantime I'm going to continue with a sequel to "Vengeance on an Ex-Friend" That's the story where Will and Sydney are plotting to create their own Brotherhood of Baphomet, and have decided to target his former best friend, Caleb. Readers liked the choice "Start with Caleb's mother", so that's where we'll begin. Here it is: * Interactive: "The Mother of All Revenge Plays" * Public: "The Mother of All Revenge Plays" |
| A general head's up to anyone who had been corresponding with me before my last vanishing act: If your name is not Nostrum, bickuribox, or ThePrussian, then I have likely flushed all your old emails away in a giant inbox purge. If you have important business with me please get in touch. If your name is Nostrum, I think I have all your emails going back to September '23. If your name is bickuribox or ThePrussian, I think I have all your most recent correspondence but a few emails might have gotten deleted by accident. |
| ... I ain't dead. There was no crisis or anything, it was just another one of those damnable collapses. But I am so disgusted with myself over this most recent one that I am determined not to disappear again. In future, even if I find my enthusiasm curdlng, I am going to do my best to resist the temptation to crawl into a hole offline. I'll do my best to grin my way through and be neighborly and helpful here. I've got a bunch of emails to get thru, will do that tomorrow. I do know that the email box was full, and it's cleaned out now, so if there's stuff you want to email me about, you can. Anyway, there's no real story to tell about what happened. It was just hitting the wall again, and I just found it impossible to get back onto my feet. I'm still having trouble with it. Usuallly I can pick up momentum again after restarting the writing. But though I did restart writing back in October, it just petered out again real quick. Depending on what I think of the chapters I wrote when I revisit them, I will probably start posting the thin backlog I've got in a few days. We'll see then how much I have recharged. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "A Rescue and Retreat" * Public: "A Rescue and Retreat" —ends the current branch. A short-and-sweet commentary post can be found here: "Re: Making a Fourth Maskateer" Tomorrow I start fulfilling another commission, with a short sequel to "Meet the Welches" . Background:Will and Caleb have accidentally petrified Will's dad, and the two of them are trying to find a cure. They need a secure place to work, and Will has just hijacked the body and identity of one of the school's tutors, Shannon Welch. They have just arrived at the Welches' house, to take care of Shannon's husband. * * * After that, I will tackle the Will-and-Sydney-and-Caleb storyline I've been polling about. I've just closed the second poll, and I don't even know why I bothered to poll you people. It was obvious a mile away what routes you would want to see the story go down. Anyway, "Will should impersonate Caleb's mom" was the runaway winner, both in the free votes and the GP votes. I didn't even bother to calculate what the final vote would have worked out to, but it probably would have been 75-15-10. [EDIT: Okay, while figuring out dividends, I did have to calculate the final vote. It as Will-64%, Sydney-25%, Golem-11%] At least some people were smart enough to GP-vote for some of the losers, so that there will be a GP dividend distribution this time. |
| The current storyline continues with: * Interactive: "Mickey Martin Makes Her Debut" * Public: "Mickey Martin Makes Her Debut" Meanwhile, the last poll is now closed, with "Start with Caleb's mom" the decisive winner, both in terms of free votes and GPs. In fact, someone could have made a killing by voting GPs for one of the losing choices. If one person had voted 10 GPs for "Start with Caleb" they could have gotten almost 45,000 GPs back. But no one voted for one of the losing choices, so all GPs go back to their original senders. Next poll is now up, asking: Who should impersonate Caleb's mom? "BoM Poll: Caleb's mom" Same rules apply as before. This will be only a 3-day poll (practically all voting in the previous round was done in the first 72 hours), and will close at noon ET on Wednesday, June 26. |
| For the next two weeks I'm booked with chapters that fulfill two commissions, but I'm already looking past that. I got poked enough times from enough people about "Vengeance on an Ex-Friend" that I knew that would be the next one to continue. I'm at work on it already. My plan is to continue all three branches with at least 5-7 chapters each (maybe more, depending), but I don't want to publish all three back to back. So I'm running a poll to see which of the three that readers want to see published first: [Poll completed and deleted] As the poll emphasizes, this is not about seeing which choice gets taken. It's about which of the branches will be published first. So, do you want your favored choice to be the first one? Or would you vote for a less favored choice, so you'll have a chance to savor the anticipation? Poll closes on Sunday, June 23, at 12:00 ET. In the meantime, today's chapter is now up: * Interactive: "A Sex Change at School" * Public: "A Sex Change at School" |
| I've built up a bit of a backlog by finishing of some commissions, and tomorrow I'll start sustained daily publishing again. It will start here: "Three Little Maids Are We" That's the branch where Will, Caleb, and Keith have been playing with the masks; have crafted some female personas for themselves; and have acquired a fourth partner in the sophomore girl Teresa MacNeil. Separately, I've been having fun with AI-generated images again ... "Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Reference Photo Carousel" |
| As I said I might in my last update, I'll be adding odds-and-ends chapters here and there for a little while as I start writing new BoM storylines and building a backlog. These will mostly be appearing in the same few areas, but don't expect any sustained storytelling from me, though some of them might get a sequel sooner rather than later. |
| Lord help me, I'm writing a script again. Anyhow, that seems to be the reason my BoM brain is seriously distracted by non-BoM stuff. Distracted enough that although I've been negotiating some commissions, I'm just going to have to put off doing them, or anything else BoM related, until I've got this other itch scratched. I'm not disappearing (he says, like all the other times he's said he's not disappearing before disappearing), and every couple of days I might even publish some one-off chapters I've accumulated. We'll just have to see. But I do intend to check in here every day. * * * Oh, and the most recent branch? That's concluded now: * Interactive: "The Family of Heather Dow" * Public: "The Family of Heather Dow" It was for a commission, only five chapters. There's a commentary thread: "Commentary: "A Trip Past the Supermarket" aka "Heather Dow"" |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "For His Love" * Public: "For His Love" —suspends the latest branch from a cliffhanger. But even if not a lot has happened on the page, this branch has canonically advanced the overall plot of BoM and opened up a new kind avenue for shenanigans--and for other things. A commentary/discussion post on the branch is here: "Commentary: You or Blackwell? " .Coming tomorrow, another commission. This one also takes place in an area that hasn't been visited in a long time. In "Crap to the Future" Will, who was trying to get rid of the book, put it in the school time capsule. But it seemed afterward to have vanished from there, or perhaps it never made it in. At any rate, Will (and then Carson Ioeger) become increasingly convinced that something gamey is afoot: that people at school are being replaced with doppelgangers who have subtly altered personalities. Carson's best friend, James, seems to have been a victim.In "A Collision of Conspiracies" , Will has the chance to tell Caleb of his and Carson's suspicions. In the road taken, Will chickens out. Tomorrow will show what happens when Will talks to Caleb.Some of these chapters may not be familiar to readers of the Archives version of BoM (the non-interactive version), because the Archive branch petered out with "The Biggest Secret in the School" . The missing chapters have now been added, so that you can catch up to where interactive readers have been able to get. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Some Will Act Where Others Dare Not" * Public: "Some Will Act Where Others Dare Not" —rounds off the latest branch. I hope you all liked it. I did, because (among other reasons) it finally gave me a chance to write for Adam Dortch, who has been rattling around inside my head for a long time without ever getting onto paper. Not that he emerged fully formed, even my imagination. But he did surprise me at a few points. (I had no idea, for instance, that he was one of the assholes who makes social media such a sewer.) But having got him introduced, he at least feels more real to me. As for the mystery of Clover Mystery, feel free to speculate in the commentary thread: "Commentary: Clover Mystery" The last few branches have been written for commissions, but tomorrow brings something I chose for myself. I will be returning to an ancient part of the interactive, an area so old that I don't dare look to see when it was written. It is also an area I made no contributions to until now. My point of divergence comes here: "Casting for a New Part" . (And if you don't recognize that chapter title, it's because I changed it. Way back then, chapters were usually named after the choices.) But the roots of it begin nine chapters before: "Third Thoughts" , and you can go a little further back than that, if you want.(And if you read the public version, the line of chapters after "Third Thoughts" will likely be new to you.)But basically, here is what is going on: Will, being freaked out by this book he bought, tried to return it to the bookstore, where he met Professor Aubrey Blackwell, the academic who accidentally lost the book and wants it back. He offered Will a great deal of money for it, but Will (not liking the man's looks) declined. He instead kept it and kept investigating it. That led to the creation of masks and mind bands. But Blackwell has not been quiet. He tried again to buy the book, and was again rejected. There followed a burglary attempt at Will's house. Now Will is worried—scared even—of what else Blackwell might get up to. And he becomes terrified when he sneaks into one of Blackwell's lectures, and discovers that Blackwell has turned Lucy Vredenburg—sister of Cindy Vredenburg—into a golem. He also knows that Blackwell has a spare mask or two of his own, which he can use to impersonate one of Will's friends. |
| After a number of hiccups along the way, today's chapter— * Interactive: "Three Little Maids Are We" * Public: "Three Little Maids Are We" —rounds off the latest branch. ThePrussian has already kindly got a commentary thread going: "Commentary: Keith Does It Again" Tomorrow I return to a recent area: the Mystery of Clover Mystery Clover, or whatever you want to call it. This time we back just a little further up the chain, to "A Trap of One's Own Making" . Will is being badgered by a mysterious person named "Clover Mystery" who has been catfishing him thru fake DMs, and he has also had some mysterious encounters, most recently with Maria Vasquez. He has set a trap for "Clover," arranging to meet up with the various fake IDs that have been DMing him at a coffeeshop. He has arrived to find the real girls, and some of their friends, there. Also, Maria and Chelsea Cooper are there.In the road taken, Will barges over to Maria's table to talk to her. Tomorrow we'll find out what happens when he just keeps to himself. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "What Laura Had to Say" * Public: "What Laura Had to Say" —stops a branch cold. I will be coming back to the "Clover Mystery" section in a week or two, in another area, but tomorrow I start fulfilling a different commission. This one is in a relatively new part of the interactive, the "Conspirators Three" section, where Will and Caleb have brought Keith in to study the book and the masks. Rather than continuing the branch that already appears there, though, tomorrow I will branch off a midpoint: "Faces All Around" . There's not much backstory to give. Keith made a mask that mixed his face with Stephanie Wyatt's, and now he has a mask that contains Jenny Ashton's form. The last time this branch got continued, they sealed it up and got in trouble when taking "Jenny" out in public. Tomorrow we'll find out what else might go wrong if they try something else. |
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