Devious Journal Entry

Okay!  First things first, if you're reading this and you haven't read "Laurel is Dead", go do that.  Like seriously, I just posted it last night.  Go.  Do it.  Link: fav.me/d7i9xu6

In all seriousness, I haven't put out anything in a long time and that's for a number of reasons, but a big part of that is that I've been working on this one for a long time.   gave me some basic ideas that sounded really cool, but I really struggled with how I was going to connect them all in one story for a few weeks.  Eventually, the idea for the sort of complicated series of events that would create a woman that could do all of the things I wanted her to do and still possess a believable emotional state and motivation came together and I loved the idea so much that I just took off with it and admittedly got a little carried away.

In many ways, I think "Laurel" could be three stories in one, and I couldn't resist giving as much detail as possible to each of the story's segments as I went along.  The concepts really pushed me out of my comfort zone, too, so there were times where I really had to struggle to find the right, best way to progress from one moment to the next.  I'm thankful for that and I feel like writing this story has expanded my abilities just that much more.

So, obviously I'm really excited about this piece.  I'll try and stop gushing about it for a little while, but basically, if you've been waiting on a commission for me I promise they're going to start coming out.  They won't all be over forty pages, and I hope nobody's upset by that.  Sometimes a story just needs more to really be what I want it to be, I guess, but they will take less than three months to write.

With that being said, I think it's probably best that I close commissions for a little while so I can really make progress on the ones I already have.  I also want to get back to doing some for "Flare Rising" once I've done that, and there's some possible plans for cool projects and collaborations in the future as well.  If you have an idea that you want to talk to me about for writing in the future, by all means continue to send me your notes.  A large part of my writing process is mulling these ideas over for a while and finding just how I want to plot the course of the story, so putting ideas in my head never hurts.  I just don't want to accept payments and commit to more projects at this specific exact moment.

For those that are interested in my personal life, too, I can say that the job search is still ongoing.  I filled out an application for The Express yesterday and it felt like I was playing Never Have I Ever with the fifty question personality survey I had to do.  "Have you ever helped yourself to more than $50 of in-store merchandise?"  "Everyone shoplifts a little when they're young, right?"  "Have you ever sent personal e-mails or texts while at work?"

I'm deeply concerned that honesty might not have been the best policy, but surely my genuine and truthful nature will be rewarded when they (never) interview me, right?

Other than that, I'm having tons of fun on pokebattle.com, and I invite any fellow pokenerds to check it out, too.  It's a lot of fun to build goofy teams and annoy people, and I'm really looking forward to when they break out the lower PBV tiers so I can make use of some of my dumb creations like Eviolite Bronzor and such.

That's about it!  Mario Kart 8 is so soon and it'll probably consume a fair bit of my life, can't wait for that.  Can't forget about Mario Kart.  Seriously, though, go read "Laurel" if you haven't.  It's important, man.