Happy New Years & Contest & Rambling & New Story Teasing!

First off, happy 2020! This last decade got kinda weird, but a lot of great things happened during it (I think?), so let's hope that even greater things happen this new decade!

Like more hentai featuring super lewd hand-holding and head-patting. 

Anyways, I'm co-sponsoring a contest over on Scribble Hub!

https://forum.scribblehub.com/threads/scribbly-anniversary-competition.1430/ 

It's sort of like NaNo except actually friendly to new authors. The goal is to bring new authors into the community, so if you're interested in starting up a new story for the contest, feel free to come and join! The prize is $200 and a full 24 hours advertisement for your story on Novel Updates.

If you're not interested in joining it yourself, please recommend the contest to other authors you might know. The more that this gets around, the better for Scribble Hub, and I'd love to see Scribble Hub grow even more than it already has in its first year.

That aside! I guess I'll go ahead and do a quick overview of my progress this past year.

In 2018, I wrote for a total of 2,385 hours and wrote a total of 1,327,112 words. The averages came out to 9.8 hours a day and 5,461 words a day.

So, for the year of 2019, I wrote for a total of 1,716 hours and wrote a total of 1,091,539 words. The average came out to 7.9 hours a day and 5,100 words a day.

It's less than 2018, sure, but I feel like it was much more consistent and also better (and healthier) for me. A major reason for the larger numbers in 2018 was because I was only just getting started as an author online and, at the beginning, I was writing for nearly 10+ hours a day consistently doing anywhere from 5,000 - 15,00 words a day. I really tried brute-forcing my way into success, and it worked to some degree. Not with my first story, sure, but it kind of did with TTE.

Now, I've gotten into a healthy writing routine, I've learned how to make myself focus more to cut the time to write a chapter down from 8 hours to 3  hours, and I'm making enough money thanks to all of your support that I don't have to stress myself out over pushing myself beyond my limit.

Though, my hours and words are looking to go up again.

You really think I can start a new decade without also starting another story?

ASV is something that I still want to rewrite someday, but that's on the shelf for now. The same goes for STAW and SG. More recently, there's Horror Core and Cultivating Mass. Horror Core is something that I have a ton of interest in, but it's also something that I don't really want to get into without having an artist with an appropriate style to back me up for it. There's also the fact that while I have all sorts of ideas for it, I don't really have any coherent way to bring them all together in an overarching story. I really want to try and outline new series before beginning them now so that they can be more focused. There will still be slice of life elements in all of my series, of course, but I really want to try and push myself to improve as an author. Both for myself and for all you. So, I guess you could say that some of my resolutions for the year are to improve my writing skills, read far more (at least 2 books a month), and write even greater quality stories (and chapters for existing stories) for all of you!

Sure, I'm content with my level of writing right now, but I can't let myself fall into the trap of not fighting to improve because of that. There is always room to grow even better. That's why I'm not ready to continue something like Horror Core right now, because I really want to do it right.

Of course, even though I'm saying all of this, there's always the chance I suddenly get a huge amount of inspiration and write it next week.

Then we come to Cultivating Mass. This is another story that I absolutely intend to continue someday and already have quite a bit of plotting done for it. I'm also fully confident in my ability to make it how I want it to be right now instead of having to improve first. However, thanks to LDQ, I think I've already got my fill of silly nonsense going on and I really want to focus on improving with telling "serious" stories. The latest TQH chapters are a great example of the kind of writing I want to do more of and get better at. I want to work more with writing that has (or tries to) have meaning and convey messages to the audience. It's something I've never really cared about before, but it's somewhat of a personal goal for me. 

I guess, in a way, you could say that I've already got my fill of slice of life silliness going on and now I want to try out some mature, serious stories (that still have moments of silly slice of life, of course). They're still going to be Ace Arriande stories, too. I have no intention of changing my style and writing like somebody else. Even if it's a more serious story than what I usually write, you're still going to be able to tell that I'm the one writing it.

I'm also haremed out which is another reason for putting Cultivating Mass on hold. Like LDQ, CM is meant to have a huge harem. The next story I plan on writing is going to have romance, but it's not going to be harem. I still absolutely adore harems and am going to write more in the future (in addition to the ones I'm already writing), but I've got to switch things up every now and then. So, expect romance but not harem in my next story.

That's kind of related to me wanting to focus more on serious stuff and messages and themes and all that. By having a smaller and more focused cast, I'll be able to focus way more on their individual character growth/depth.

The yuri harem is also being excluded from my lineup for now because of these reasons. There's also the fact that, because the main girl wants to run her own meadery in it, something that I really want to do is create some workable (read: actually good) mead recipes in real life to use in the story. I want her to go into detail with the recipes in the story, and I want readers to be able to actually copy the recipes with success. So, this requires a lot of testing and messing around with mead recipes. Is that completely unnecessary? Sure, and I doubt that any significant portion of the readers would actually consider trying the recipes out, but it's still something that I want to accomplish with that series.

As for what's coming next - well, I now have three series that are plotted.

One is a fantasy series that has no romance in it but an absolute fuck ton of shipping potential, the main lead is a woman, it's pure high fantasy (no isekai, no litrpg), and it's heavily inspired by Final Fantasy XIV (and Final Fantasy in general). I'm already so attached to characters in this story that I have not even written that thinking about some of the arcs involving them has gotten me all emotional. This series is really going to be a long-term passion project of sorts for me. However, because of that reason, it won't be coming out anytime soon. It's something I'm going to work on over a long period of time to make sure that I really get it right. I can't even confirm that it will be out within the next few years.

The next series is one that I'm nervous about because, in all honesty, it would probably be very attractive to a crowd that I have no interest in being attractive to. It deals with a very psychologically-damaged main character and his borderline-yandere lover who has no hesitation in killing and stealing the bodies of other women to use for him. This story is heavily inspired by Saya no Uta and a certain doujin series involving a shapeshifting black slime. In many ways, the main guy and waifu are irredeemable. They might have some positive traits, but there's no getting around it that they are bad people with bad intentions who do bad things to others. While this is something that I would normally never be interested in, the fact that it's so different from my usual themes is something that draws me to it. It's also "only" going to be a 4 book series, maybe 5 depending on if I want to separate the aftermath epilogue from the 4th. I already have them plotted out and know exactly how the story is going to go from start to finish. However, I need more experience with writing dark stuff without being edgy about it first, and I also need experience (such as reading about) protagonists who are horrible people but made capable of rooting for them. After all, nobody is going to read it but the edgiest of edgelords if I can't make the main two characters sympathetic to some degree. I already have plans for how to do this, but I need to be better before really putting them into action.

Then there're the birbs of paradise story. Cute magical idol birb girls. This isn't the third series that I've got plotted out, but I already got art for them and everything. Alas... this is another story that is being put on hold for the above mentioned reasons regarding silly stories. There is also the fact that I want to have a lot of mature and serious themes involved to contrast the otherwise absurd plot, and with how massive of a cast it's going to have (probably my largest cast of characters second only to the fantasy one that will take me years to write), it's something I'm just not ready for yet. I do have a huge notepad full of ideas and arcs for it, though.

And now for some other various ideas that I've toyed around with recently:

Super dense (beyond harem anime protagonist dense), huge, bulking guy who is the absolute definition of gentle giant. Gets a shy moth girl waifu who has to try and break through his denseness. Very accidentally lewd.

Harem aftermath. Dude saved a fantasy world and got a huge harem during the process. However, as soon as the world was saved, his super OP skills were all taken away from him leaving him more or less powerless. So, the story revolves around him more or less being a stay-at-home dad raising way too many kids while his wives go out on various quests and work odd jobs to bring home some money. That many kids is going to require a lot of money, you know? One idea I had was that one of the waifus likes to call him master to be kinky and stuff. Her kid with him decides to copy momma and call the MC master. After seeing how much it bothers him, all the other kids join in and start calling him master just to screw with their old man. The waifu comes home, starts getting frisky, calls him master... and he just deflates and starts to cry because being called that was absolutely ruined by his kids.

Another small idea I had, which I won't go into too much detail regarding since it would ruin it if I ever write it, was a guy and his companion in a very sort of empty and depressing fantasy world. It is meant to be an incredibly bittersweet story and is inspired by Girls' Last Tour. Just two companions trying to keep each other sane while they discover the truth behind the world, what happened to it, and try to change it.

Then there was another idea (which I jokingly named "Burly Brute & Gutsy Girl") which was going to follow a husband and wife pairing as they went around on adventures. The husband was going to be this huge hulk of a man with biceps bigger than most people's thighs, body hair all over, a huge and bushy beard - just an absolute brute of a man. He was also going to have a pretty short (but thicc/busty) waifu who could seemingly eat forever and ever without gaining thousands of pounds, and she was going to have some major attitude. The two were also going to partake in copious amounts of public displays of affection and arguing, often back-to-back. However, they were also going to be inseparable and borderline incapable of living without each other. They'd turn into completely different people when not together and, no matter how much they might fight over petty things in public, they'd always have each other's backs and instantly team up if anybody dared to complain about them.

Then there was my idea of Combat Healer. WW2-themed magic+guns war going on with a MC who was a dedicated pacifist and frontline healer. Inspired by Desmond Doss, the real world medic during WW2 who was so badass while being a total pacifist who even tended to the enemy that they had to tone down his actions in the movie because they thought the audience would think it was too unbelievable.

Isekai Petting Zoo. Sort of like Kemono Michi but managing a zoo for a queen who summoned him into a fantasy world. I actually plan on this being in the same setting as my yuri harem story.

I wanted to do a yokai hunting story featuring a guy and his waifu going around slaying all sorts of demons in/for various villages, but I never got too many ideas for this and it would require me to do a lot of research into yokai lore to do as well as I'd like.

There's also TTE's sequel that I wanted to start posting before TTE is even over, just not revealing that it's actually TTE's sequel for a while, and this is actually what I've started working on recently. However, I've decided to put this on hold (until TTE is actually closer to being over) in exchange for a different idea.

And now, after telling you all of those ideas that are relatively unique compared to what I already have... this is when I tell you that my next story--unless I end up dropping it before posting it for some reason which I highly doubt will happen--is going to be another VRMMORPG story. This is the third story that I've got plotted out and only just came up with it this past Sunday.

I'm sure that some of you are disappointed in the VRMMORPG part of it. Just switching EDE to EDO disappointed a ton of people who are tired of VR stories or who think I don't need another one because I already have TTE. Yet, here I am, about to begin another VR story.

1. I'm just really close to MMORPGs in general. I've loved them ever since I was a kid, so I don't know if I could ever get tired of writing VRMMORPG stories.

2. As far as I know, I think I've got a pretty unique idea for it that will give it real consequences and stakes without relying on the gimmick of "you die in-game you die in real life" or "the AIs are like real people so we have to save them all" or anything like that. It's still going to have many typical MMORPG elements in it, and I plan on it being even more like a game than TTE and EDO, but it won't be a LitRPG and it is going to explore a lot of themes within it. I guess, in a way, you could say that one of the main concepts inspiring the story is that being "just a game" doesn't take away from how real and impactful it is. It's going to be less about the game itself and more about what themes and growth are explored using the game as a medium. Lots of psychological stuff and mindfuckery. Whether I can pull it off as well as I'd like to or not is the question.

3. It's also going to be pretty absurd and surreal in a way. Probably even crazier than LDQ in some ways... but also dark. Not grimdark, but probably darker than any of my currently ongoing stories. 

4. It's going to have a pretty top-tier waifu if I do say so myself. Her and the MC are going to be so cute together, and all the dark and psychological/emotional stuff going on is going to make their cute moments together so much better.

5. tl;dr: im a slut for vrmmorpgs.

And that about does it for this post that very quickly got far larger than I planned on it getting.

Thank you for the year of support. I know I say this all the time, but you guys are literally supporting my dream and the only reason why I'm able to do any of this. That's why I've really got to try my best to become even better for all of you.

Thank you for your continued support, and here's to another year - a whole new decade of giving you stories \o/.

And don't forget about the contest!  https://forum.scribblehub.com/threads/scribbly-anniversary-competition.1430/  

Happy New Years!