Alright, now that I have your attention, it's an update chapter. As many of you know, NaNoWriMo has been a massive undertaking for me every year since I arrived on this site. In fact, it's the reason I came here on the first place--just to post my NaNoWriMo, and it spiralled out of control ever since. My favorite stories are undeniably my NaNos, I spend a lot of time planning them, working with them, and I pour all of my heart into them every year. I've joked to friends that November is my monthlong "vacation from reality" and while I still have human things to do during that time, there's always been something unique about the experience of fully devoting myself to a book.

This is why I must confirm with a heavy heart that I am terminating my NaNoWriMo for this year.

My adventure with the Dog Days War was hectic from the start, but I was actually excited about the theming, characters, and most of all the setting and slick wordplay. However, my goals were insanely high on the back end of Deja Vu and Roses and Thorns and this month has been an emotional, physical, and scheduling nightmare. I started slipping around the 8th when I tried to charge forwards to compensate for an upcoming college visit, but by the time I finished the visit my word count was dropping by the day. I started writing just to get words down, which embittered me to the story, and then I was trying to play catch up with a story this book had no business beating and contending with at least three projects and numerous tests in school. By the end I was dreading even opening the document, had multiple nervous breakdowns (one that involved hyperhydrating to the point of fatigue), and I was playing chicken with my scholastic responsibilities on a work schedule for Thanksgiving weekend that would have required 10 hours of optimal work every day.

I gave up.

I think large parts of the story were not ready yet. I think they could have been ready if I had more time but I'll never know, so it's not worth dwelling on it. I don't think pushing through would have made me hate the book any less and I definitely don't think the characters deserved that. I'm glad I got the opportunity to write out of my comfort zone a little, sending characters from town to town in a story with two distinct villain sets, and even if I wasn't executing most of that well as I hoped, I do think there's hope for the book if I left it breathe and don't force myself to choose between it and school. School is two more years. With any luck, I have several decades left to write books. (Hopefully I didn't just jinx that.) 

Anyways, my traffic during NaNoWriMo has never been optimal, but slowing to NO updates is definitely going to have some effect on my activity. I've also been absent from the stories of others, DMs, and most of the internet. I apologize if I haven't responded to you lately but my stress levels have been crazy and I really haven't had any time to talk to people.

With that aside, I do want to talk about the future, but I just hit 1.4k, my first 100 follower mark in close to a year, and I want to play 'the future' fast and loose with this account. I want a schedule that doesn't screw with junior year but I also want to produce content that people are engaged in. I want this to be fun for all of us and I think communication is the way to go about that. If you're interested in influencing what I write in the future, I'm going to do some quick synopses on projects I've been considering. Hit me up below with your top five or so, ordered if you want... I can't imagine honestly going for more than three of these at a time, so be a little frugal.

I'm going to order these by how well-planned they are, because barring MASSIVE fan support for any one story, it's likely going to hold heavy sway over any decisions I do or don't make.

GIVENS

0) The Space Between Stars: I have all of The Space Between Stars finished. I'm going to keep posting it. I can do three or so projects around this no problem.

ABSOLUTELY KIND OF READY TO GO

1)Where The River Bends: I'm having a really hard time getting back in the saddle with this one. The last chapters are a mess and I was rushing out the chapters for much of the last few months leading up to the break, so I might have to do minor revisions... honestly fanfiction in general is tiring me out, but this story is also a lot to swallow! It's a massive mess of dozens of POVs, two clans whose cultures honestly could be defined better, and a lot of relationships that pepper the clans and draw them together or push them apart. That said I want to see it through and there are some Great Juicy Twists in those last chapters. Power struggles. Poppypaw. Death. Poppypaw. All-out warfare. Poppypaw. 

2) TCHF:Rewritten: If you don't know The Cities Have Fallen, it was my Deja Vu before Deja Vu was my Deja Vu. I was so emotionally attached to this book I still draw one of the mains on everything. Its implications resonate through the rest of my books. It's also a post-apocalyptic about sparkledogs, if that's what you're into. I'm probably doing this regardless but I have a lot of plans. The writing intensity is bumped up to twenty, the jokes are going to make you laugh before rending your heart in two in a later chapter, and all those background characters who were interesting but didn't do anything now do things. (Oh do they ever do things.) The original plus utter chaos plus my new writing style. Indy will be there.

3)The Dog Days War: I want to finish this book. I could begin re-posting chapters throughout December and January and finish before my birthday, so it would be more of... an extended-mo. I still love the characters and think that with some polishing the plot could really work. I had just already messed up too much where I was out of sheer negligence.

4) CRUX: For those of you who don't frequent this book, there is a "sample" chapter of CRUX I absolutely recommend you read. It's your average YA protagonists. After they finish their books. In high school. That's the hook, anyways, the actual book is stocked  with a massive supporting cast featuring a lot of traumatized teenagers. It's coming of age, it's urban fantasy, it's got some Chrona madness in there, and it's got a smart mouth. 

5) Hearts of Gold Minor Rewrites: I promised these back in April but haven't done anything. Basically I'd be going back through chapters, retouching them without altering most of the dialogue (okay most of the good dialogue. I might have to cut a few Ashley-samas) and adding description and proper grammar. It'd be nostalgic for all of us who were originally on board, which is a surprisingly large chunk of my audience. :V

I'M GETTING THERE/FUN TO DO BUT SOMEWHAT UNPLANNED

6) Amalgama: Amalgama has been host to some of my best characters ever since their conception in ninth grade. I can not tell you how many redesigns each character has gone through or how much nuance I have planned (or lack thereof-- some of these guys do not screw around. You know what their deal is. You know to GET OUT OF THEIR WAY.) for them. They're shapeshifters. In the woods. Will they decide to be man or beast? Will they ever understand how human culture works? Can people change? Will I get thrown off of Wattpad for having objectively terrible people as 'protagonists'? Who knows 

The book itself is 84 chapters with relatively little plot, driven mostly by character interaction, and that's where the trouble lies. Amalgama is way above my skill level to write. I want to really differentiate the characters. I mean, you should be able to tell who's speaking just by reading the prose level of difference. All of this without ever making it feel cheap. I want to go through it, but updates would be slow and I'd probably go back and edit them perpetually. I have to get on it at some point, though, because I adore this book.

7) CYOA: Gevona's Hope (Solar/Lunar Edition): This asshole friend of mine kept telling me I should do a Choose Your Own Adventure in ninth grade and it's been on "the idea docket" ever since even though I claim to want nothing to do with it. It would be really fun to have audience interaction, but this would also be a Chronaverse-based CYOA, that is to say, shenanigans abound... There would be options at the bottom of each chapter, but audience members could also input and "second" comments by commenting on them, as well as mess with party members and the like, ask questions, all the good stuff. Fourth wall breakage everywhere. I actually have a general plot for this one to follow in a matriarchal fantasy world where the heirs are dropping like flies. The audience chooses one "heiress" to follow throughout the story...

Generally I'd say it's somewhere between Homestuck and Fire Emblem?

Oh yeah there'd be pictures. Mediocre pictures, but pictures of some kind. I'd be doing this mainly for fun or as a cooldown activity from my other books, with 500 word or less chapters.

8) Out of Bounds: This is my other hyperdeveloped urban fantasy. There's a chapter for it in this book as well, if you can find it. It follows an alien stuck in a meat sack, who is on their community service/quest to save the world from cryptids, who were actually aliens the whole time. Said cryptids now hope to turn the earth into a recreational facility for everyone in the general Milky Way area. One alien and four teenagers  accompanying them as meat shields/back up/friends??? must master their powers and deal with their crippling personal problems by beating the shit out of them or laughing in the face of death/society/aliens. It's a very flippant book but I love the characters. 

SO THIS EXISTS. 

I'd have to spend until December getting the "outline" done for any of these but I'd like input on which you'd most like to see developed, even separately for any projects I do *actually* take on.

9) Extraordinary: My first urban fantasy. I want to totally redo the worldbuilding and make the main characters more interesting, especially because the premise is just "magic exists in this one". That said, it's gods mixed with your typical monster fare mixed with me screwing around with said myths, so I did have a significant amount of worldbuilding planned already.

10) LUX: Elementary school urban fantasy. Kind of. Don't read this to elementary schoolers. Or do. If you're noticing a pattern it's because I made thirty urban fantasies and then realize oh shit I have no clue what I'm doing. So. Eight children are called to save the world in their dreams, while retaining minor powers in real life, however, as they venture further into this new world, nothing is at it seems and one of their member is hiding a secret nearly incomprehensible in magnitude. The very fabric of reality has been lifted out from under them and there's no going back for anyone involved as one twisted history comes to light.

11) Tratsen's Sorrow: A blind boy known as kin to the stars. A boy who fell into the future, now deaf in one ear. A mute girl who traded her voice for her city and lost both. In a post-apocalyptic landscape ravaged by angels, where the world lies two years away from its final judgement, these three unlikely heroes must find the Answer needed to appease the beings who have ravaged their world and navigate a universe where only the darkness is safe.

12) Luminous: I've been telling myself I'll write the story with the Elysian dragons in it for years. Dreamland with even less of an access point, inundated in culture and enwrapped in a mystery that spans universes. Three young prodigies are set up against some of the most dangerous forces ever to face their kind, and with one of their existences on the line, they're willing to go against superiors and consult with Ivy, a plucky time traveller who insists she's the child of one of them (not that she knows who) in order to fix ancient wrongs.

13) Spirits Rising: Heaven's Aria: Humans have been in communication with interdimensional travellers for decades, who have supplied them with technology in return for a few children every year, who serve as emissaries between their kinds. Ava Brightfield had always aspired to be one of these children, but when she gets everything she'd dreamed for, she finds herself plunged into scandal. The travellers are thieves between worlds, their purpose has nothing to do with being 'emissaries', and both a young detective intent on bringing the system down and the next-in-line for high command of the travellers are confiding their deepest secrets in her. Ava knows one choice could change her future forever, and both sides dangle critical information about her over her head. Both pawn and player, Ava must navigate the treacherous webs of ally and enemy while protecting friends on both sides, but she may not be able to save her own reputation... or her head.

14) Dios II: Two kids enter a fantasy world, spurred on by a voice promising adventure, and never leave. Twenty years later, two failed heroes have made different paths for themselves in a fantasy world riddled with flawed logic and mismatched levels of development, and one former warrior for the fate of the world has found a way to get home. However, her partner has no intentions of taking it, having found purpose in this new universe, and the two must try to win each other over while discovering more about their purpose in entering and the two gods who they supposedly inherited their powers from.

15) P0larity/Polarity: There have always been four with powers in this world. They need not share anything in common: they can appear at any time, anywhere in the world, but there can only be one of each 'power set'. These people, with powers so great that no technology known to man can stop them, are inevitably drawn to assist or destroy each other, but the most recent iterations have emerged into a world that is destroying itself. The story switches between the perspectives of two pairs: North and South/West and East, as they come to terms with themselves and decide how to play into the fate of their world.

16) Unnamed Fantasy Book: When I first entered Wattpad, I had only my DragonClan books going and wanted to accompany it with one of my projects of the time. I decided on either to upload a revised version of my Nuzlocke or a Warriors ripoff known at that time as "The Activity", which I've mentioned in previous chapters of my first art book. I've been redoing it and have substantially remodeled the story into that of a fantasy world where four factions, each watched over by the Du'vagnt, one of the long line of women who each once took on the spirit of one of the world's gods. As disrespect grows amongst the mortals and tensions rise between kingdoms in the wake of years of terrible plague and starvation, it is when the world most needs peace and controlled magic that it is most lacking in it. Through this chaos flies Valen, lover of three Du'vagnt and professional responsibility shirker, who must find heroes, appease angry Du'vagnt, and stop the war he may have caused by flirting incessantly.

I have way more of these. Maybe as many as twenty more, no lie... However, almost none of these have this minor thing called "a plot" so I've left them off. If anyone wants I can hit you guys up with a bunch of synopses for my minor/auxiliary books sometime.

LONG SHOTS

I have no clue what I'm doing.

17) Penstroke: I want to do a longer series and currently the Main Idea is about a girl with the ability to enter books and assist authors from the inside. I like the idea alright, but I have a lot of others that would work for longer series as well. Opinions? What do you guys think about shorter books and longer series, in a more serialized format? (a la PJO, where I could *potentially* go on forever but all the books are minor plots leading up to the eventual defeat of a greater threat)

18) The Chrona Book In The Woods: I really want to do a thing where the characters are at camp. I can not think of a better setting for an urban fantasy than a camp. I really can't. I have four different books that take place at camp.

DESPERATION PROJECTS

19) The Panacea Project: This was one of the four books that could have become my NaNoWriMo this year. I don't think any of them would have fared better, in fact, I'm sure this one would have gone down far worse... anyhow, the fifty-first Auspicia has gone down in history as one of the youngest to die and one of the most neglectful, hot-headed, rude, passionately awful leaders ever to grace the position. While her infamy is widespread and one of the most common arguments against the Auspicia as a whole, fewer know about her location during her long absences, and even fewer have tracked it down to a small lab on the continent of Evelsca, which was at the time undergoing major development. Her friendship with the members of said lab and the experiments she undertook there are lost to time, but what she lost and what she broke are perhaps more dangerous to everyone in her world than anything she could have done from the throne.

20) Riptide: My other bastard Dreamland project. I promised years ago I would never do more than one book from each Auspicia, because otherwise I'd be here f---ing forever, but Riptide is the one book that keeps perking up because I love the main character. Riptide is a quieter story about a convict exiled from several dimensions who engages in a smuggling ring during the time of the Plague and ends up exactly where she had hoped never to return, by the ocean, babysitting three pups whose powers are dangerous enough to get them saddled up with a protector of her relative level of power. It's fluff. It's allllll fluff. It's fluff about a dog who hates herself. I don't know what you want me to say.

**Side note: If you've been reading up on Dreamland, what do you most want to see out of the series? Deep Chronaverse lore with the angels/seraphim/etc.? The other continents? Defenders? Any historical events of note you're interested in?**

21) Fourth Nuzlocke: If I get to 2000 and people hound me about this enough I will do it. It's not something I'm dying to do but it would be fun. The Ultra Beasts/wormholes of Pokemon Sun and Moon are practically begging for some weird-ass Goldeneye lore. 

It won't be the Shauna thing but there would be cameos. Glorious cameos.

(Oh yeah--if there's anything else anyone had in mind, or anything I've mentioned in the past you'd like to see, please comment below. :V)

so, in conclusion, the truck wasn't just a cheap trick to get you here tonight. The truck is a metaphor. For school. Emotions. Growing up. 

but I do crew. As a rower, I feel obligated to tell you we can suplex trucks.

So let's keep moving forwards. On foot. 

Fuck trucks.