April Update

Hey all, it's me again. Another month seems to have slipped past me, I'm not really sure where all the days went?? Where I am the weather has been fluctuating a good bit, so I suppose I was distracted with the constant flip-flopping from rain to heat to heavy wind and back to rain. This month has been a little easier on the writing front, which has once again been my primary focus. Though on that note, let's talk about March and what I was up to.

I did indeed get Chapter 2 of "The Gaia Machine" finished and published on time. I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with uploading on the 31st forever, but it's working out right now, so I'm fine with that. I had hoped to have a second thing to post before April hit, but unfortunately I was hit with a terrible case of writer's block right in the middle of this chapter and I really had to power through it. It was the strangest it's ever hit me, too; it wasn't a lack of ideas of direction, it was purely an inability to form words on paper and string together sentences. It was pretty bad for nearly a week, but as it started to ease up I was able to work more and more each day, finally getting it done and getting some great feedback from my beta readers!

As far as those other stories I want to publish, I still have them brewing and I think this month with be the month I get more things out. I'm aiming to slowly up the workload and the publishing queue from "One chapter of The Gaia Machine" to "One chapter of The Gaia Machine + A short story" to finally "One chapter of The Gaia Machine + A short story + A chapter of another work". I want "The Gaia Machine" to be my on-going serialization, and have some other more pre-defined works that get updated each month, but ones that have a definitive endpoint and chapter number set out before I start. I have a few story ideas like that, though I'm not sure which will come first, so my goal is to work up to that by focusing on "The Gaia Machine" Chapter 3 and a short side story set in that world. I have a few side story ideas, but the first one will be a little interim between one of the dual protagonists, Amelia, and her creator Sylvia. If you've not yet read the intro to "The Gaia Machine", you can read the first two chapters for free here[on-site] and here[Patreon]. I want to use these side stories to two effects: 1) to flesh out the setting and other characters and locations not normally explore via the main narrative, and 2) to explore the history and unseen moments of characters in the story, allowing invested readers to explore more of the characters and world they enjoy without disrupting the flow of the narrative with an unrelated tangent about one specific thing. I think it'll lead to a more concise body of work for the story itself, as well as a well-rounded collection that orbits around "The Gaia Machine" itself.

With regards to my site, I didn't get to basically any of the updates or new posts that I wanted to get to this month. Between writing and everything else going on in my social life, I just didn't find the time. I'm hoping that as I get better and better at the workflow of monthly writing drops, I'll be able to make better and better time, and make room for other projects like writing for my site! Basically everything I said in my March Update[link] is still true, though my Myrient post will shift topics towards being about the importance of preservation and where we go from here now that it's gone. I want to write a review of Pokémon Emerald Rogue, I want to talk about the DSpico, I want to finish my big pieces on Animal Crossing and Dungeon Defenders, I just need to find the time.

To make it easier for future me to parse, here's a quick recap of what I want to get done in April: new chapter, new side story, at least one new post for the website.

I'm also trying to use my blog here more casually! It can get tiring to only post big, formal pieces, so I want to start using the blog more casually and posting smaller and more random bits! It is a blog, after all. So if you want more of my rambling, you can look forward to that!

Thanks for reading another monthly update, March was a good month so let's hope April can be another!

~ Alex Amelia Pine