Long time no see, blogging community! I’m sorry for the unexplained absence; a whole lot of life happened to me very hard and very fast. I chose to abandon ship on basically everything and go into battery-saver mode, which seems to have paid off: all is well, all is handled, and all is squared away. It’s a brave new world, lads.
Therefore Phantasmagorium will be back to regular updates on a weekly schedule (pfffft, I say “schedule”).
Writer Confessions, Writer’s Reports, and Microprompts will all continue. Poetry, topic articles, and “what dark crevasse of the Internet did you find this in” discovery sessions will also proceed as normal. As for project updates:
Lost and Found
I did pull of a win for Nano this year, but immediately ate shit: I lost a huge amount of work.
Seriously, a computer ghost stole it or something. I am a tinfoil hat freak about all the ways I lose things, so I constantly employ duplicate files, extra file locations, emails, and my flashdrive. Yet even cracking open ancient autorecover files shows no trace the content ever existed. I’ve just about made it all back, but. Ouch.
The whole story format is HUGELY reorganized. I finally have a complete table of contents for the new version. My computer’s file system is a mess while everything gets renamed and sliced apart for relocation. I’m wading through writer gore right now.
Therefore I’ll finish out my Nano posts par for the course, since I organized everything painstakingly up until about day 25 but never actually posted them. The end of July is my tentative deadline for a beta-ready version of the whole novel. I love how much the novel has evolved and I am psyched to share it.
Fanfiction
For any of you who didn’t know, I write fanfiction. For any of you who didn’t want to know, move on.
If you’re interested: I write short stories for D. Gray-Man, Resonance of Fate, Treasure Planet, and Beowulf, among others. I only have two ongoing currently.
By popular demand, “Hymns for Dead Hearts” will be revamped from lawless, unedited infodump into actual story and continued.
A fairly bleak D. Gray-Man fanfiction prequel covering the fallout of the Asia Branch massacre for eight-year-old Kanda, Marie’s return to active duty after losing his eyes, and Komui’s promotion to the European Branch while the Generals play political chess with the Vatican.
“Stop in the Name of Love (Before I Break Your Window, Come Into Your House, and Beat the Hell Out of You)” is an annual birthday gift to my beloved and thus will not be disturbed until the sacred day. Quit asking.
A Treasure Planet steampunk fantasy fanfiction wherein King Silver accidentally triggers a kingdomwide manhunt for a “criminal” and decides he might as well use Jim Hawkins’s genius to unlock a series of ancient steamwork chambers beneath the capital. Except it’s a romcom, mostly.
Fanfiction account: Elyan White
Ao3 account: Elyan White
Other Platforms
Finally, I’ll be returning to regular activity on Twitter and Ko-Fi. Come pay me a visit! I promise I talk way less there. I think that about covers it all–I hope that everyone has had happy holidays, a good solstice, and is ready to do battle with the new year!
Note–
I will be seeking beta readers in August. If anyone has advice or recommendations for this, I’ll sell you my firstborn child. Unless it’s a highly decent firstborn, in which case I might tempt you with the secondborn instead.