Updates and a (Maybe) Story Bonanza for Literotica's Upcoming Halloween Story Contest

By maybe, I think three stories...  Maybe.  Maybe more.  Whenever I try to be a bit more definite about these things something goes horribly wrong and scuppers all the plans.

Anyway.  Literotica's annual Halloween contest is on the way.  The details of which can be found here.

As an aside, if you're a budding writer that likes succubi/monster girls and is not afraid to get your hands dirty with a little bit of explicit smut, contests like this are a great way to cut your teeth and find readers.

As for me, currently some of my projects have stalled and trying to bludgeon through them isn't doing my productivity any good.  I think I'll use this contest as an excuse to let #ChaosWriting out of the cage and see how many short stories I can blast out during the three weeks of the contest.  With a bit of luck that might clear my head and get the production line moving again.

The first story is already submitted.  You should see that go up tomorrow when the contest officially kicks off.  After that I'm not sure what we'll get or how many.  That's the beauty of #ChaosWriting.

I'm not trying to win this time.  There's been a trend in recent competitions for some entrants to go long, and I mean 90K-word-novel long.  With the way Literotica's scoring system works, it's pretty much impossible for a good 5-10K short story to place over a good 90K+ novel, so I'm not going to worry about it.  This is more an exercise in clearing out some old ideas and trying to get back in touch with what made me so prolific in my early days writing for Literotica (being more carefree and less trying to brute-force stories at a guess).

There's another two stories where I'm nearly done with the first draft, so I reckon we might see three new stories in October and hopefully more if the juices really get flowing.

So where does this leave the other stuff?  Here are a few updates.

Sandwiched by Series
Sticking to a hard monthly schedule isn't working here.  I like the covers and concept, so it will continue, but with a more flexible release schedule. i.e. When the story is done and I'm happy it doesn't feel rushed.  The next one is "Sandwiched by Scyllas" and I'm about 60-odd% done with it.

Okasare Kenny Series
The original idea was for this to be the monthly serial for 2016. Then I tried to use it as crazy live-novel-writing challenge, which was a cool idea, but a bad thing to launch into with other stories (in particular Succubus Summoning) still incomplete.  The Sandwiched by series was a trial to see if I could keep to a regular monthly schedule for a series with more continuity.  I'm not confident I can do that at the moment, so I won't officially (re)launch Okasare Kenny until I have six months or so worth of chapters in the can and can be confident it won't stall like Succubus Summoning 201 did.

A Night With Ceptophthorié
Alas poor game-writing experiment.  This one got shoved to the back burner when I fell behind on first A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day, and then various other things.  It's something I want to do, but I have to get my other writing stuff sorted first.

Jackson in HRPG-World
This is tailor-made for putting up on the blog in small chapters.  I need to get other things done first (Succubus Summoning 201!) before I can get back to this.  And I will get back to it because I know how the story pans out and I'm very excited to see readers' reactions to it. ;)

Succubus Summoning 201
The big one.  The one I really should get done considering Succubus Summoning 101 outsells all my other books put together.  Why aren't I on it?  It didn't get done in November/December last year basically.  That was when I went through a rather drastic life change that involved losing my job and changing countries.  It got put to one side while I got back on my feet (and aside from not being as productive with my writing as I'd like, I am thankfully back on my feet) and now I'm having a little trouble picking up the threads again.  I should be able fix this once I get around to the editing process in assembling the previous chapters into a coherent ebook.  I'll be on that as soon as I've had my fun with Halloween.  The aim is still to get the ebook finished before the end of the year and out as soon as there's an opening in eXcessica's publication schedule.  The final two chapters (of 201) will be posted as soon as they're written though.  I'm not going to let readers wait for them longer than they have to.

Some updates anyway.  It's been a weird 12 months.  Hopefully the next 12 months won't feature quite as many missteps, fumbles and failed experiments.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy the free Halloween stories (however many of them there end up being).

Update on Okasare Kenny

It's going on hold.  Sorry about that.

This is only temporary.  It's being returned to its original place in the queue.  After seeing how well the Let's Play of Monmusu Quest: Paradox did for the blog numbers I got a little over-excited and jumped the queue on something I already had a very good plan for.  I'm going back to that original plan.  Next year I'm intending to put Okasare Kenny out as a monthly serial on Amazon (and others) spread over the year.  First of all I need to instil confidence that I can keep to a monthly schedule.  This is what the Sandwiched by series was intended to be (before I got sidetracked).

Currently I'm working on finishing up some projects that should have been completed in the first half of the year - the print version of A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day and other tales, the next instalments of Sandwiched by ("Sandwiched by Scyllas", "Sandwiched by Succubi"), and a long-awaited conclusion to the Succubus Summoning 201 arc.  Once these are done I'll have a more cleanish slate and can get back to Okasare Kenny and a novel idea featuring Nicole I've been tinkering with.

Because of the change in plans I'll be pulling the Okasare Kenny chapters posted on Lit and StoriesOnline.  The ones I posted here I'll leave here.

A live-written (sort of) novel posted daily on the blog in daily instalments is something I want to do at some point.  I did enjoy the bits I did on Okasare Kenny before realising I was neglecting other projects that should have been finished off sooner.

As a writer, metaphorically showing your underpants in public is a little embarrassing.  In future I'll try to rein in my excitement until a project is actually complete/near-complete.  As per my usual penance for screwing up I'll raid the short story stockpile and dig up something juicy to post for your reading pleasure - look out for it Monday.