Phase 2

The second month of Teratogenesis is over and the plot is finally moving forward.  It should be fairly apparent what the situation is by now, but it will get considerably clearer over the next few months.

Other little details are beginning to appear too, shedding light on our unreliable narrator.  It’s been interesting to develop so deliberately vague a character.  He hasn’t revealed his name, his age, background or profession, although clues are emerging.

It’s quite intriguing to work on as, although each entry is only around 500 words, it is a long form piece so I can slow down the pacing I would normally use for a short story.  There isn’t the need to get the big reveal in before the conclusion, I can build and foreshadow a little more in each chapter.  But there is the constraint of only putting up one screen of text…  To spare your eyes.

It should be obvious by now that there is a pattern and what is causing it.  What shouldn’t be obvious yet is what is actually happening to our protagonist…

Stranger Aeons

I always like to open with a Lovecraft reference.

But the reason I’ve picked this particular quote is that could aptly describe what is happening on The Xaeromancer Project.

Between Teratogenesis and the search for paying work, I’ve not had the opportunity to post anything new on there.  The effort of driving traffic both to this blog and Teratogenesis has been a lot more complicated than I thought.  Suffice to say, I now know more about RSS and optimization and what not than I did last year.

So, given that The Xaeromancer Project “can eternal lie,” it will just have to take a bit  of a back seat for a few “stranger aeons.”  I do have plans for it:

• Thirteen Candles, the serial based around various pieces of folk lore, will resume, probably on a monthly basis.
• I intend to start a seasonal theme, where a short story is posted in a specific style or genre.  This will change every couple of months, in an effort to provide diverse writing and to keep pushing myself.  This might even be reflected in the site layout.  But probably not.
• There is also something of a note pad aspect to the site that I want to emphasise and so, I might start putting up fragmentary works or even bald ideas.
• Which sort of leads to the next bullet point-  Interactivity.  I think I might reinstate a comment system on what goes up.  This way I’ll know instantly what people like and where I’m going wrong.  You may notice that comments are disabled on this blog…

Phase 1

Well, the first month of Teratogenesis is all up and this means we are one thirteenth of the way through what will be a year long project.

Yes, I know.  I’m not over Christmas yet either.

“One thirteenth.”  That’s a bit deliberately mysterious, isn’t it?

So far, not much has happened but given that the story is resolving in real time, it’s to be expected.

The original idea was to write something character driven and this eventually developed into little windows into a parallel world.  There was then another two attempts at plotting the year through first a 2008 diary and then a 2009, before I gave up and used a spreadsheet.

I’ll make another blog entry at the end of phase 2, where I’ll explain a little about what is driving the story and why the form is important.