One of my favorite transformation authors, @mistyfdfa, has spent the past year posting weekly status updates about their writing. Even if I’m not up-to-date on her stories, I always try to read their “conference calls”; I find them very inspiring and hopeful.
So to send out 2017 in style and begin 2018 on the right foot, I’ve decided to emulate this practice and write up an annual review!
A Soft Reboot
In July, after a year—a year!—of virtually no writing, I posted a gif of John Wick saying “Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back!” I had the realization that my periods of activity were extremely intermittent: post a few stories in very quick succession, and then months and months of inactivity. I wanted to do address those long periods of occultation by beginning to post consistently, even if it was rarely.
Time gives perspective: that same year of inactivity saw me transition away from graduate school and start a new full-time job that required a great deal of concentration and training. As soon as I felt comfortable in my new position, I turned my thoughts back to writing.
But by the same token, I wasn’t happy with the types of stories I had been telling. I started this blog as herald-of-the-machine, with the idea that I would focus exclusively on cyborgs and robots and sexy technological mind control.
And those are fun stories! But after my long walk in the desert, I returned to my blog wanting a change. So I spent the summer thinking about what kind of stories I wanted to write and whether I should change my nom de plume. And lo did Herald become Devi, and lo did my subject matter shift to demonesses and monster girls. Like I said on twitter:
Hellish Tomes
But did I actually follow through on my hope of consistent writing? Actually… yeah, I did. Between August and December, I wrote four stories: Graven Images (8/5, 1619 words); A Lot Can Change In A Year (8/7, 1726 words); The Demon Queens Of Ashar (12/4, 735 words); and Maid To Remember (12/24, 1251 words). And while I did fall a little into the old habit of activity-followed-by-indolence, it should be pointed out that the latter two stories were written over the course of the fall for a competition hosted by @sabrithebonclaw and only posted in December. So it’s not as bad as it looks!
That’s a total of 5331 words for the year—a tenth of what people produce for NaNoWriMo, sure, but also my most productive year of writing on record. I’m not going to beat myself up; over the past few months, I’ve been very committed to thinking about writing and brainstorming potential stories, even if I’ve not produced a lot. I’m happy with that I did.
With 320 notes, A Lot Can Change In A Year was by-far-and-away my most popular story; it was a sequel to a story written by @evie-hyde, and once she reblogged it the note count went through the roof. Graven Images and The Demon Queens Of Ashar had a much more modest note count—98 and 74, respectively—but I was extremely happy with them; they’re the type of story I love telling. Maid To Remember has the least amount of notes—50—but I published it only a week ago. However, it’s a little different from my usual fare, so I suspect that dampened interest a little, and I wasn’t completely happy with it, either.
Friends
I’ve made some nice new Internet Friends this year, including @saltyteafutas, @jilldoesprompts, @sabrithebonclaw, @nyxnoxnoctwriting, and @walkingawoken. It has been nice to talk to them about writing, and their kindness and support have really made me want to keep writing.
The Future
So what does 2018 hold?
I’ve got several stories in the pipeline, all of which I hope to get to in one form or another this coming year:
Those are just some of the stories I’m mulling; there are a few other projects that I have already begun to write, like this one here:
I’m also working on a sort of “shared universe” for my monster stories, inspired by a mixture of @monstrousdoctor and abe_e_seedy’s Morphological Monster Manual (which you should all buy and read!) and the Monster Girl Encyclopedia universe (minus those loli and rapey bits, yo). I’ve actually written an extensive “World Bible” of my universe’s themes and even begun to sketch out its history; I didn’t include that in my above word count, but maybe I’ll share parts of it at some point.
Finally—and this is a big maybe—I’d like to set-up a Patreon. I don’t want to beg for money, and I’m not under any illusions that I can quit the day job and write LEWD HANDHOLDING as my full-time profession. Mostly, I want a system that keeps me accountable, that makes me generate posts like this one, where I explain how I’m doing and where I’m going. If I get enough pocket change to cover the coffee that fuels this writing demon, so much the better—and if I get more than that, I could actually commission artists to illustrate my stories.
But we’ll see! The real goal of the year is to keep being incrementally productive, to keep making the time to sit down and write kinky transformation erotica. Everything follows from that.
Anyways, I’m going to sign off this update the same way I did the last one:
tl;dr: Thank you for all of the follows and likes! I really like writing and plan on doing more.