Happy new year!!

Nora’s Story

One more down! After 8 months and 13 chapters, One Way to Graduate is finished and I want to thank everyone who read my foray into a less conventional romance with an open mind. I also have to thank AliasMV for editing, CelestialSecrets for betareading certain chapters, as well as a last shout-out to a betareader on Reddit with a similar disability, who validated some of the facts and tone in the final stretches. Biggest help was Alias, from start to finish!

This is also the first story I have published to Literotica, and the reception there has been really wonderful. Of course with another story done I have also looked for ways to polish, publish, and share it to a wider audience, and one of those ways is illustrations!

TwoFlower0 on DeviantArt has drawn a great version of Nora here, and I’m excited to see her arrive visually after living inside my head all this time! She is a bit prettier than I imagined, but who am I to complain, that’s just how good TwoFlower is! I’m attaching a few versions below, just with subtle variations.

Nora Wilkins, ready to party.
Nora Wilkins, not ready to party.
Nora blushing, just cause!

Are all these variations necessary? Hardly.

Website Updates

Secondly, I’ve put some work into the site, fleshing out the commenting links, where chapters and stories now point to DeviantArt pages and/or Literotica where theres a page exists. While this site could have a comment section, it would rely on an external service for upwards of $10/month, which is more than hosting costs already. And there are plenty-good comment features on other services. Remember the Discord is always open!

Here is a little list of improvements since my last update in July:

  • Integrated Netlify-CMS

    • Highly recommend for a backend, but its not magical from a UI standpoint. Pretty magical otherwise.
    • Theoretically this allows me to update posts quicker, and that’s been true for stories but not the blog, sorry!
    • Lots of background Oauth business with hooking the CMS up to Github via serverless AWS hooks. Usually not necessary, I forget why it was for me…
  • Rejig “comments bar”, allowing direct access to the actual chapter posts on other sites, where applicable.
  • Make most pictures on the site link to their respective artists’ posts on other sites. Go support!
  • Fix footnotes on the long “full story, all chapters” pages
  • Added collapsible chapter lists for stories, where before 36 chapters might take a bit of time to scroll by. Important stuff!
  • Add reading time estimates, including more accurate measurements/time/word count on hover!
  • Clearly define collaborative stories, even though all stories are somewhat collaborative.
  • Clearly credit editors and patrons who contributed/commissioned works. Its important to acknowledge support!
  • A bunch of other tweaks, as always. Mostly for readability.

What’s Next?

I’m aiming to continue work on Dollhood, which is progressing nicely, while I assist other writers in development and editing. I also aim to dive back into the world of the Betas, but we will see… :)