Weekly Update - 9/14/22

So I'm mostly back to feeling okay, with the exception of this annoying lingering little cough that I've had for the last week or so, the constantly feeling that there's a nasal trickle against the back of my throat itching and getting on my last goddamn nerve. Also, the heat has finally broken here in the Bay, and I'm wearing actual pants again, having lived most of the last two months in shorts, with fans on constantly. Of course, this means we're entering fire season, so we'll see how long it takes before we hit the first all-encompassing wildfire of autumn. I'm sure it's just around the corner.

People seemed to like Breakpoint 1, which dropped yesterday for Tier 2s and up, and that makes me glad, because I know that story's going to be living in my head for a while, and the fact that you folks dig it means I can keep doing it. There are loads of details in the initial chapter that may seem small but will add up a lot as we move forward, and I promise you, I'm going to do my best not to run off the rails like Lost eventually did, and if people guess what I'm doing with some particular thing here or there, I'm not going to change it for the sake of trying to surprise the audience. I value a consistent narrative too much for that.

Friday will mark a return to Morgana's Gift, which I haven't touched in a few months, so that'll be fun to come back to. I've still got a few outstanding commissions from last month that I promise I haven't forgotten about, but am trying to get done along the way as I continue to recover from the Covid knockout. I realize how ridiculously late I am with those, but Covid was a brutal kick in the teeth for which I was not prepared. Next week, I'm going to have the added benefit of less commercial work, so maybe I'll be able to use that time to get caught up and start in on this month's commissions as well. Everyone's patience has been massively appreciated. You people are saints.

Next week, on Tuesday we will have Quaranteam: McCallister's Madness 2 followed by the much-anticipated Quaranteam 50 on Friday or Saturday, depending on how the next few weeks play out. I want to get that right, being that it's the end of Book One, so it might take me a little extra time, even with QTMM2 already written and done. We'll see how that goes. I've been putting in time on that here and there for a while now, but it's got a lot of moving parts, all of which need to land in the right place. It will be big. It will answer a lot of questions and ask a whole lot more, and it will start to set up some of the things we'll be dealing with in Book Two. The current plan is that QT2/1 will drop in the middle of November, and we will do 1 QT2 chapter a month for November-January before moving back to a 2 QT2 chapter per month starting in February of '23. 

The plan is still to release a revised version of QTB1 in November, accompanying the release of the for-sale print/ebook version (currently on my calendar for December, with preorders starting in November), which will include all of Piper's Prelude and the first several chapters of Phil's Tale. If I have time, I may write an additional short story for that version, but maybe not. Just organizing and getting it together for print-on-demand is something I haven't done in over a decade, and Amazon's CreateSpace has changed loads since I did it last. I'm talking to my friend who did the artwork for the site to help me generate a cover for the book, but that's going to creep into my time a bit in October. We'll see how it goes. 

To reiterate, the revised version of QTB1 will be posted as an ebook/pdf here for Patrons, so you don't have to buy the full release, but if you want to, believe me, I would love it if you would. You could physically hold a print copy of the damn thing in your hands, which is a feeling you never get over. I'm not planning on doing a hardcover, simply because of the additional cost. In case you haven't been following closely or have forgotten, I'm going to actually be doing a full edit/minor rewrite pass of the early chapters of Quaranteam to clean up the timeline a bit, and to flesh out the earlier chapters a little bit. That'll be taking up time over the next few months, but it's important, since the timeline is embarrassingly floaty in the first several chapters, mostly because I didn't think it was going to matter. Leave it to me for the literal one time I'm not paying strict attention to continuity for it to become the runaway hit I always wanted. This isn't a light project, so I've been slowly chipping away it for a while now.

Now's also as good a time as any to tell everyone, the book's author won't be listed as "Corrupting Power" but instead will be the penname Devin McTaggart. That's not my real name, obviously, but I know Amazon in particular frowns on 'odd' writer names, so the official in-print name associated with Corrupting Power will be Devin McTaggart moving forward. When I introduced the name in QT, the plan was to use that name for this, and I figure now's as good a time as any to let people know about it. (The spelling correction will be in the updated version. I waffled on which way it should be spelled - "McTaggert" or "McTaggart" - but eventually came down on the latter.) So if by some weird chance, you think you've run into me in the wild, you can call me "Dev" and I'm likely to respond naturally. 

I will also be using the McTaggart name on the print/ebook version of If I'm Honest, which will hopefully also drop before the end of the year. That release in particular will include a one-off unpublished IIH story that I don't plan on posting here - considering that book will be a little bit cheaper than QT:B1, I don't feel bad about giving people here a reason to pick up that ebook/print book. I started sketching outlines for that story a couple of days ago while waiting for my takeout to be ready.  It's from a ways back in Harvey's timeline. Both books will mention the online penname Corrupting Power in their jacket blurbs, but they won't be the focus of it. I promise I will have an additional IIH-universe story for the Patreon before the end of the year. Might be a one-off, or maybe the first of a small-run story (like 3-5 chapters), but probably not the start of a larger-run story (10+ chapters), not yet anyway.

Also along those lines, just so everyone has plenty of warning, I will be taking a week off in November for Thanksgiving, and the end of December off for Christmas/New Years. Keep in mind, I'm likely going to be writing during some of that time, but I'm going to try and get back to being ahead of schedule rather than writing under the gun and behind schedule like the last few months have been. 

The last two releases for the month of September are the second Tier 4 and above voted on release on 9/27 (the poll for which will go up today and will run for five days), and Quaranteam: Phil's Tale 11 on 9/30. Somewhere in the back half of the month I'll also throw out The Devil's Details 3 on some random day. I'm just now starting to throw things onto the calendar for October - there will, of course, be new chapters in Brewster's Brood and Breakpoint guaranteed. I'm also going to let Devil's Details take up a regular release window for October only, specifically to allow me a little bit of extra time to work on the ebook version. Also, the release on 10/28 will be a new Silversmith story, which may turn into an annual Halloween tradition around these parts. If you haven't read the first Silversmith story, it was posted near Halloween last year and was called "A Treat's Trick." It's a standalone piece for right now, and we'll see how next month's story figures into it, but it's very likely to also be a self-contained piece. 

Whew. I'm long winded today. Looking for the public release schedule? You know I wouldn't forget. here's the list of what's coming to the free sites and when. (Keep in mind, there'll be three things dropping over at EMCSA this week, because I forgot to send QT45 and the Cast list over to them last week).  9/17 QT 45 (as well as Cast of Characters), Threadbinders 4, 9/24 - QTPT8, 10/1 - Before The Storm 1, 10/8 - QT: Piper's Prelude 3, 10/15 - QT46. For those curious, it's currently about a five-month delay from when something's written for the Patreon before it hits public sites. It'll probably cap out around 6 months, and at that point, I'll consider doing double releases twice a month to keep it around that far, but maybe I'll let it grow even further. Still thinking about that.

I also need to replace the "ground rules" post with a newer post, and I'll probably do that in the next few days, as we're technically celebrating our one-year anniversary on the 20th, when I first announced the Patreon to people. I was scared as hell when I started this, convinced that people who'd sent me emails urging me to do this weren't going to put their money where their mouths were. It's nice to be wrong, and you people are awesome. I have to pay TAXES on this next year! That rules.

Anyway, I should stop writing a news update and start writing other stuff, so I'll end this post with a bit of music from The Afghan Whigs. They just put out a new record recently but I want to leave you with one of their classics. It's good to have you here - just don't get crumbs in the carpet. Thanks!

Faded - YouTube