Progress Report – November 2012

November 2012 Posted Works

November 2012 was a good, productive month. Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | November 2012

On Fanfiction.net, I posted An Announcement, Apple, A Kind of Blue, Local Flavor, Before the Fall, Brown,  Gainful and The Tribe. I also added If You Can’t Stand the Heat. I changed the protagonist’s name from Paul Miller to Will Slocum (this is how that story will be from now on).

On Ad Astra, in response to their Burdens of Command challenge, I posted Day of the Dead as a Halloween story, and it won! I also linked to it on The Delphic Expanse. I added a number of stories to the In Between Days collection. These included A Single Step, Achieving Peace, Ceremonial, Day of the Dead, Detroit Rock City, Half, The High Cost of Dissidence and Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses. In response to a prompt about gatherings, I added The Tribe. Also, I began working on a story for the family prompt (my own prompt!) called A Gathering.

On Archer’s Angels, I added Pat the Bunny, an HG Wells story which will also fit the Hall of Mirrors. I also added Before the Fall, an In Between Days prequel story in response to a prompt about the seven deadly sins (the story was about pride).

My Daranaean series, Emergence, was finally issued by Trek United Publishing!

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Emergence

Emergence

Milestones

Day of the Dead won the Ad Astra challenge! It was featured for a month and I choose the next challenge subject. I selected family as a prompt.

Together hit the 10,000 read count milestone on Ad Astra on the 19th. Intolerance continues to approach the overall 10,000 read count milestone, with well over 9,000 so far. For stories with only one placement, Hold Your Dominion is the current champ, with over 2,500 reads.

WIP Corner

I finished the last of the four E2 stories, lining them up with canon and Star Trek fan fiction. I began thinking about a new series, to probably take place in a post-Nemesis scenario. However, it will have a lot of old friends include canon characters Martin Madden and Wesley Crusher.

Prep Work

Because the new Ad Astra challenge was set for two months, and the holidays were coming and I was done with the HG Wells series, I worked on some one-offs. These were mainly from a lot earlier in my writing days, to get them to better dovetail with fanfiction. I edited and created covers for The Puzzle, There’s Something About Hoshi, If You Can’t Stand the Heat, More, More, More! and The Adventures of Porthos. I also interwove them into my fanfiction, giving them dates (e. g. Hoshi had to happen fairly late during the In Between Days period as Jay Hayes‘s replacement, Bud Dawson, is in it. Heat had to happen early as it references Naomi Curtis and a bunch of helpers for Chef Slocum, and Shelby replaces Naomi as Lili replaces all of Chef’s earlier assistants.).

This Month’s Productivity Killers

I finished writing the E2 stories, and spinning out The Times of the HG Wells. This made for a double dose of difficult feelings. Both of these moments were a bit trying, and for dissimilar reasons. The E2 stories in particular deal with Jay Hayes‘s death. Hence ending those stories feels a little bit like the character’s death all over again. The end of the Wells stories brings with it a bit of sadness (even though it’s an overall rather happy ending). That’s because those characters aren’t so easy to revisit. Both of these have made it a bit hard to start a new series, yet I am determined.

Furthermore, as ever, I continue to look for work. The holidays are undoubtedly also going to turn into productivity killers.

Posted by jespah

Shuttlepod pilot, fan fiction writer, sentient marsupial canid.