The Book of Masks Homepage

So What the Hell Was That?

Oh God, how do I face you guys after disappearing like that?

Is there even anyone left? Maybe everyone just gave up on me?

Well, I did warn you that things might be a little hiccupy.

I don't have any good reasons for that last hiatus, particularly given that it was in

And it was really a jerk move on my part, especially being in the middle of a poll while writing a storyline that I was going to let you guys help dictate.

So I'm really sorry, and I do apologize.

I don't even have any good reasons for that disappearance, for it was just a variety of crappy little things that snowballed to cause it.

So I did start to write the continuation of that storyline. Trouble was, I didn't like what I wrote and put it aside, first for 24 hours, then for 48, then for 72 hours, hoping I'd get back into it or find a better way to write it.

Then I discovered that I just didn't want to write it.

So I played Minecraft instead, and procrastinated that way. Eventually I did get bored with the game—I told you that would finally happen—but then I found that boredom with Minecraft didn't give me the desire to write.

And it was worse than just not wanting to write a BoM chapter. I found that I just didn't want to write at all.

So there was a week or so of frustration at that, during which I just didn't want to do anything.

Then, wouldn't you know it, Minecraft dropped a giant update: lots of new features and physics and environments. Huge stuff, and that got me back into the game for a little while. It might have been fatal except that after a week or two I rediscovered all the reasons that I don't like vanilla Minecraft and can only play modded versions of it.

The result was, thank God, I finally made myself so sick of Minecraft that didn't want to go back to it, in new or modded form.

So late last week I went back to see if I could write, and to my relief found that time away had fixed whatever problem I was having, and got some writing done. I still delayed returning to WdC until after the holiday weekend had passed, however. I wanted to get a lot of chapters written first, so that I'd have them on hand to publish. The last thing I wanted, after the pratfall when I tried returning from that first hiatus, was to fall on my face again by publishing a chapter and not having anything to follow it up with.

Also, I was just dreading having to log in and face you guys.

Anyway, here's the situation: There's a new chapter up—"Friends and Anti-Friends"  (interactive) and "Invalid Item"  (public)—continuing that storyline I had written and taking the choice that had the most votes when I last checked in on the polling results. There's also a poll up on which choice to take to continue it.

But no matter what you vote for, you will get a sequel, because I've written sequel chapters for each choice. But! I can't absolutely guarantee that you'll get more chapters after that. It depends on two things. If you guys make the "right" choices after that—if you go the way I suspect you'll want to go—then you could get a bunch more chapters, because one of those storylines is written all the way through Chapter 27. If you go off course, though ... Well, I'll try to compose the desired chapters, but I can't absolutely guarantee it. If worst comes to worst, I might just declare a "wrong turn" and start publishing the storyline that I've composed instead.

So, once again ... I'm sorry. I know I'm serving up free ice cream here. But I do feel like I made a kind of promise the last time I checked in, and I feel very bad for failing so badly to keep it.

I'll be trying to catch up on other stuff around here in the meantime.