So, this is just a quick post to congratulate myself on having got something creative done over the past month or so. Because I feel like I deserve it for the minuscule amount I’ve achieved. Yay me!
Seriously, though – dayjob keeps me pretty tired by having me be on normal office hours instead of my natural sleep pattern, and also takes away time that I could be using creatively (or wasting playing video games, same difference). Dayjob is less demanding in terms of actual work to do right now, so I’m writing this update.
MUSIC
I’ve written a super-filthy punk song called “Slam My Glam”, all about going out and having kinky oral and buttsex at a fetish club. I’ve recorded all the parts, I just need to settle down and create a mix I’m happy with.
I’ve also come up with a little tune in Dorian mode that feels like it would work well as a scene-setting background music or intro for any fantasy-themed TTRPG session/actual-play. Will need to work out an arrangement to bring out the best atmospheric vibes for the purpose – maybe try a few different moods to give options.
STORIES
In January, I bashed out a pervy porn fantasy into a roughly 10k word story of the type you can find on Smashwords if you turn all the filters off and go looking in the Erotica section. And it is indeed my intention to publish via that platform. Having left it a month or so since I finished the first draft, it’s probably coming up to time I should be launching into the editing process to make sure the work is as polished and ready for market as I can make it. Careful proofreading and editing is not always apparent in other ebooks (though still better and more common than on some sources!) so here’s hoping it makes a difference!
I also wrote a little bit more of my second novel, but now seem to have mislaid the memory stick I saved it on. I am sure I have a save in one of my computers too, I don’t think it’s lost, and I am sure the stick has just slipped into a corner somewhere and will turn up soon enough. But having it available as the primary version helped!
VIDEO GAMES
Rather less sexy filth involved in my current video game development project (there’s a couple of sexy/filthy game ideas I have plans for, but those can wait).
It’s based on a pen-and-paper game Papa taught me to play back when I was small. I don’t know if it has a “proper” name that it’s known by more widely, and I don’t remember it ever having a name that we knew it by. It was a maths/geometry type thing about navigating a boat around some islands and back to the starting point. On each turn you could adjust your horizontal speed and your vertical speed by +1/-1, and the aim was to be the fastest around the course without crashing into land or the other boat.
It seemed like something that should be relatively easy to implement as a 2d video game, although of course it turns out to be trickier than I imagined! I’ve got the basic movement mechanic working now, so I just need to figure out a reasonably attractive GUI for inputting the turn by mouse-click instead of using the arrow keys (although I want to keep that option!) and figure out how to make it work as a turn-based “hotseat” multiplayer game. Creating an AI to pilot the other boats in single-player is also on my to-do list but I have less confidence in my ability to do that.
A naval combat variation might also be doable, I’d need to think about how that would work in terms of how to do attacks.
CONCLUSION
So, that’s what I’ve managed to get done in the last month or so. All of it adds up to a lot of unfinished projects, but at least I have clear goals on each one for what the next step is, and I can progress them somewhat at least.
Valery North - Writer 