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 |  A hub for the "Book of Masks" universe. |
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The Interactives "The Book of Masks"  : A high school student discovers a grimoire that can make magical disguises."The Wandering Stars" : Sequel to "The Book of Masks.""Student Bodies" : A high school student is turned into a blue goo that can possess people.For non-WdC Members "The Book of Masks: Archives" : Dodges the "Servers Busy" barrier!"The Book of Masks (Abridged)" : Introductory storylines for new readers.Community "BoM/TWS Message Forum" : Community for readers of the interactives."BoM/TWS/SB Wiki" : Notes and documentation for authors. Spoilers!Current Polls None The Latest 5/3: Interactive: "Tongues of Fire" 5/3: Public: "Tongues of Fire"
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| Last chapter of that transitional bit is now up. I do have some additional chapters written, but I'm going to take a couple of days off, from writing and from posting. March took more out of me than I wanted to admit at the time. Also, I've got a couple of computer games that I haven't played in forever that have been calling to me. |
| I've got four new chapters written that I can publish without embarrassing myself, so I'm going to go ahead and post them, even though they are less of a "story start" and more of a "transitional section" to set up some possible stories. Anyway— Interactive: "The Whole New You" Public: "The Mash-Up" + "The Offspring of Two Cousins" + "The Whole New You" —picks up in a place that hasn't been visited in a long time, and it is preceded by two bonus, new-to-the-Archives chapters. The story so far: Will has discovered a book that can make magic disguises, and he has succeeded in making mask. He has used it on himself, putting a copy of himself into it, but he is intrigued by the book's caution that he can add other faces to the mask before sealing it up to wear. He decides to experiment by adding his cousin Umeko's face to the mask. And what will he do with this hybrid mask? Find out tomorrow! |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "Life Inside Lucy" Public: "Life Inside Lucy" —is the last in the batch I've been publishing. Yeah, that's a nasty cliffhanger, but that's all I've got. I'm not sure if I'll be back tomorrow with anything new. I used up all my saved material getting to this point, and although I've got two new chapters written, I might want to save them back until I've got at least four or five and can be sure of giving you guys something worthwhile. |
| So, I spent the last week of February, and the whole of March, trying to write one short story a day. I didn't make it. I crashed toward the end, and missed five days. But if I include the last week of February as part of March, then I did manage to write a complete story on 31 out of 38 days, and a total of 36 complete short stories. Some I think turned out pretty good. Others ... Well, I'll leave them up, though I'm not too happy with them. Because the month is over, and because the last week of March had four writing-free holes in it, I'm going to go ahead and post links to the last seven stories I wrote for the challenge:
* * * Meanwhile, today's BoM chapter— Interactive: "With Friends Like These" Public: "With Friends Like These" —is a stand-alone. Yes, it's only supposed to set up more choices, but there's a bit more content to this one. |
| There's five chapters posted today, but they're kind of repetitive with each other, and nothing happens. Collectively, they set up 25 possible choices for Will to pursue as he picks himself a new identity inside Westside: "Marching to a Different Beat" (Interactive) + "Marching to a Different Beat" (Public)"Orchestrating a New Plan" (Interactive) + "Orchestrating a New Plan" (Public)"The Play's the Thing" (Interactive) + "The Play's the Thing" (Public)"Deal Me In" (Interactive) + "Deal Me In" (Public)"The Friend of My Friend" (Interactive) + "The Friend of My Friend" (Public)Tomorrow will also bring multiple postings. |
It's the 28th, so time for another weekly update of the other stories I've been writing this month. There's only six this time, because I've been running out of steam, and I missed a day. "The Resurrection of Meleck-Taos" (written under the joint influence of H. P. Lovecraft and Hammer Pictures) won both a daily contest and a weekly contest, but it's probably the one of this batch I like the least. Oh well. Two others were daily co-winners.
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| I forgot to note on the blog that yesterday's chapter would be the last in that set. But if you read the Archive pages, you will have figured it out. Anyway, that is all of the new branches that I have in the backlog. Starting today I am going to dip back into a stream where I recently did some pruning. The story picks up with "Senior Secrets" . Will and Caleb were playing around with masks, with the plan of copying some of the alpha jocks so they could get close to their girlfriends. But things went sideways when they accidentally tipped their hand to one of the alpha-est of the jocks, Steve Patterson. Patterson seized the Libra and set up a kind of secret club, forcing Will and Caleb (and later on, Keith) to get masks of various girls, which Patterson and his friend Gordon Black would then hang on a golem so they could ... Well, you get the idea. Caleb has recently met his quota of mask-making, and has been rewarded by being allowed to take over the identity of Seth Javits.Will has also just made his quota, with an additional twist. He scored a copy of Joe Durras of Eastman High and gave it to Patterson; Patterson (for reasons that Will does not know of in this branch) has decided to make Joe and Frank his private, personal property. Patterson offered to let Will move out to Eastman with him, to become a kind of deputy, but Will has declined. Will is now at a cross-roads. Does he continue to hang out with his friends Caleb and Keith, and help out with Patterson's schemes? Or does he try to distance himself from them all? I've got a bunch of chapters to post, but they won't start or develop a story. They will just set up some choices. The chapters are big enough, though, that I won't be dropping them all in one batch, but will space them out over the course of a couple of days. Today's chapter: Interactive: "New Bosses" Public: "New Bosses" |
| Today's chapters— Interactive: "Green Meanies" Public: "Green Meanies" —conclude the latest short branch. It was a set of chapters I had on my computer for ... well, a very long time. It's the same thing with the chapters I'll start publishing tomorrow, which are also some old things I found while rooting around my files. They take place at St. Xavier's. Will was infiltrating that very snobby school by pretending to be a girl named Abi Steiner. But he got busted by Abi's friends, who took the Libra from him and tied him up in their secret hideout. This basic situation—Will imprisoned while Abi's friends take turns pretending to be Abi—has been developed before, but this branch sprouts off in a different direction from "Pulling a Switch on the Old Switcheroo" * * * Meanwhile, here are seven more stories from my March of Madness:
Six of them are contest entries, of which five were winners; the sixth contest hasn't been judged yet. So, yeah, that's a pretty good record, if I may say so. |
| Today's schedule brings a two-fer: Interactive: "A Trap for Blake O'Brien" + "Girl Meets Boy" Public: "A Trap for Blake O'Brien" + "Girl Meets Boy" Not out of any generosity on my part, I regret to admit, but because the first of the pair is so short. |
| Today brings an end to the 5-chapter run I've been working on: Interactive: "The Best Defense" Public: "The Best Defense" Tomorrow I start publishing some chapters that I wrote a long time ago but left in the files. It branches off of "Body Swapping as a Solution" . Will and Sydney are planning to make their own "Brotherhood of Baphomet" using golems, and are trying to figure out where to start. Will, meanwhile, is being bullied by friends of Blake O'Brien, the football player who has a crush on Sydney.The new branch begins with "The First Step of a Random Walk" , which is a chapter that was published in the interactive but never published in the Archives. I'm publishing it there today so as to prepare for the new chapters, which will begin appearing tomorrow. |
| March 15, so it's time for another link-fest. These are stories from the first week of March—the official start, I suppose, of my March writing project. There are 8. That's because two of them—"Mid-Season Replacement" and "Date from Hell"—were written the same day. The two contests that day were extra-inspirational. I'm tickled to say that three of them were winners in competitive contests for their respective days, and two of them shared a first prize. One was also named a weekly winner in its contest.
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| In addition to today's chapter— Interactive: "Getting Real with Charles Whitney" Public: "Getting Real with Charles Whitney" —there's an extra: "Schools of Thought" I'm still revising the interactive, and this morning I chopped out a tangle of branches. I also revised one of the major nodes in order to open up more possibilities, and the extra chapter is an insert made as part of that process. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "Laura Comes Clean" Public: "Laura Comes Clean" —finishes off the commissions that I started accepting late last year. But that doesn't mean I'm done publishing BoM chapters. Even though I've been concentrating on non-BoM stuff this month, I've been carving out an extra hour each day to put into the interactive. Some of this takes the form of editing/updating old branches for continuity issues, but I've also been adding chapters or parts of chapters. At the moment I've got 10 more chapters I can publish. With luck and stamina, I might be able to write enough more to carry us to the end of the month. Tomorrow's entry will start a 5-chapter run that picks up where "A Meeting of Minds" left off. Will and Caleb have been experimenting with masks and golems, but disaster strikes when they sell some of these items to Caleb's cousin, Dylan. The golem, disguised as a student at the tony St. Francis Xavier prep school, has run off, and they need to capture it before it does something to the real guy. Will and another Xavier student, Roxanne Hurley, have just gone for a short drive when they are intercepted by a quartet of hijackers, including two who appear to be twins ...* * * Meanwhile ... Because I'm still concentrating on short stories I am not officially open to commissions. But I am open to listening to pitches for commissions. If you'd like to commission something from me and you have an idea, feel free to send me it, so I can mull it over. |
| I haven't managed to write any more Spider-Man scripts, not after the first, because I bumped my head on some continuity issues and have been nursing the bruise since. Instead, I've decided to devote March to writing short stories, with the aim of writing one a day. Most of these are written for contests here at WdC. I know people come here for "Book of Masks" stuff, but once a week I'm going to trouble you anyway with links to the stuff I've been writing on the side. I mean, it's up to you whether to click on the links or not! The first batch of seven actually come from late February, as I was warming up. Most of them are in the "weird" genre, meaning grotesque fantasy, and all of them are written tongue-in-cheek in the manner of old pulps from the 30s and 40s—or from the 70s at the latest. At least one of them—you'll have to find it yourselves—might amuse the BoM readership as having a similar story motif.
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| With— Interactive: "A Dane Disguise" Public: "A Dane Disguise" —I've finished off another commission, one that I've been returning to off and on over the past few weeks. Starting tomorrow I will publish the last chapters in the first-and-last commission that I had on my plate: the first I accepted, and the last I will finish. It picks up with "A Trap of One's Own Making" . Will's life is going to shit on account of some weird crap with the girls at school. A bunch of them have been coming on to him, then denying it. Now, people are accusing Will of inventing fake girlfriends, and of sending fake DMs and texts to himself in order to back up those lies. Our hero is angry and bewildered.Last we saw he set a trap for his persecutors by arranging for all the girls that have been flirting with him (including a cheerleader, Maria Vasquez) to meet up at a coffee shop. He has just arrived to confront them, but none of them seem to have any clue as to what he wanted to see them for ... This will be a ten-chapter run. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "The Cherry, Hung with Snow" Public: "The Cherry, Hung with Snow" —rounds off a palate cleanser that was also a commission. Now it's time to jump back to the previous commission and finish it off. In "Joint Ventures" , Will traded the grimoire to Spencer Osbourne for a couple of doobies. At the end of the chapter he had a chance to talk to Spencer about the book, but he turned Spencer down. That led to two short branches. In "Some Ginger and Mary Jane" Will's friends and acquaintances started acting strangely, and in "Portable Bodies" Will found himself body-swapped with a cheerleader.In tomorrow's chapter, though, we'll find out what happens if he decides to meet with Spencer, to talk about that book he traded away ... * Separately, Tal gave me a book-cover-style image for "Student Bodies" , so that it matches the style of Book of Masks and The Wandering Stars. It's up now! |
| I am away from my regular computer today, and forgot to bring a copy of today's chapter with me, so there will be no chapter published by me today. Sorry. EDIT: Meantime, let me try to catch up with some thanks to the various people who have sent me WdC Gift Points. I really do appreciate it! AchillesRedux DarkKing Easy Ein forthefunofit Tal That One Guy the-knight-croisant ThePrussian55 Theresa Daoang [a.k.a., Freakyduchess] |
| Interactive: "Gallons of Gossip" Public: "Gallons of Gossip" Those chapters suspend one commission. Now comes another commission that doubles as a short (4-chapter) palate-cleanser. Like the last palate-cleanser, it involves Sydney McGlynn, and her and Will's plan to create a "Brotherhood of Baphomet" out of magical clones. In "Demons by Night, Demons by Daylight" they have taken over the identities of Kelsey Blankenship (that's Sydney) and Amanda Ferguson (Will), but Will hasn't forgotten that he was being bullied from a couple of different directions before he made the switch, and he's thinking about now doing something about it .. |
| Today's chapter— Interactive: "Invalid Chapter" Public: "Coach Class" —rounds off a palate-cleanser/commission. Tomorrow—internet access permitting—I return to a commission I suspended work on earlier. In "Joint Ventures" Will sold his mystery book to Spencer Osbourne in return for two joints, one of which he contributed to his class's time capsule project. In "Stoned-Cold Stupids" that plan backfires after he changes his mind and lifts the joint from his teacher's desk and replaces it with a different contribution. The result is that he gets detention and gets grounded.The story went in one direction after that—one that climaxed in "Room Services" with Will bagging up a bunch of weed for Kim Walsh. But tomorrow we'll start exploring a different path things could have taken. |
| My internet was out this morning [Sunday]. Given the weather it is possible that I will be off and on the internet over the next couple of days. EDIT: Today's chapters are up early, on account of I'm not sure if I'll be able to stay online today. Interactive: "Invalid Chapter" Public: "She Who Runs the Show" There are also some new chapters for the Archive readers: "New Boss, Same as the Old Boss" --> "Senior Secrets" The last of these also will pop up for Interactive readers as a new chapter. It's actually a replacement chapter for one of two chapters that I moved to the NC-BoM and deleted from BoM. It's not much of a replacement -- a little revision here and there. The main changes are at the very end, to set up a wider array of choices. Depending on whether I can get online, I might post some short sequels to further set up choices. |
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