Tag: retrospective

2019 Restrospective

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Man, it’s been a long time. It feels like… 3 years since I did one of these. As usual, I divide this into 3 parts: what I said I’d do last year, what I actually did, and what I hope to do this year.

  • Continue work on Wandering Fortunes, which I did. I finished the primary edits. I did not finish editing it in full though, nor did I get started on novel 4. More on that either in a bit or a looong while.
  • Continue Odemon: Yeah. After I started a new job though it reduced to one a week. Given the amount of new Pokemon per gen these years I should, in theory, be able to finish this someday. SOMEDAY. I also did continue the Pokecomic; I only got about 10 comics done but that’s what I expected so whatever. I’ll finish it when gen 12 is out.
  • I very much did not get all my novel notes transferred to wiki format, but I didn’t really expect to it seems. I’m going pretty slow at it these days but I’m slowly chipping away at it.
  • There’s not gonna be a Darmenzi audiobook.
  • I did get a freelance job but not much came of it, and then the website I went through changed how it works to stupid pay-for-play basically so I started looking for a regular job, went crazy, and then out of nowhere succeeded in September.
  • I legitimately can’t remember how many short stories I wrote, or even edited, and I certainly didn’t get any published.

The anaconda in the room is I started writing erotica. Have I mentioned that explicitly yet? In early summer I started thinking about stuff, about my gender and sexuality, and somehow that led to me thinking about writing “hypnosisnakerotica”. In… June, I think? I wrote a long Mastodon/Twitter thread about how I can barely be said to have a gender or sexuality, and how I don’t think about it much, and ended by concluding the internet is full of weirdos so there’s no reason to be afraid, and I shouted that snakes and hypnosis are sexy, my brain married a fictional character (the cool kids call this having a “waifu”), and I started writing erotica. (By the way, it’s made me have to think more about exactly what my sexuality is, exactly. Unfortunately it’s not meant for this Earth…)

This has gone. Confusingly well? I honestly had more traction in a few months than I did in half a decade of the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos. I mean, I guess it makes sense. A lot of people are horny. It’s also more niche, which means more people will go looking for what they can find, and if it turns out a writer who is basically trained in writing novels starts writing about it… woo. If it turns out you like that stuff or are just curious it’s all here, it’s all SFW, non-lewd, it’s honestly just erotica because it’s steeped in kink/fetish, it’s really more romance, which is actually stranger for me to think about me writing than erotica for some reason!

My new day job has been going well enough, I’m evaluating book manuscripts to see if there are legal issues (libel, copyright issues, etc.) I’m still slow at it after 3 months and I make mistakes but um. I can hope things go well.

I also released Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmail 1! The idea besides this being fun was that visual media might get me more noticed but by the time this got finished I was already getting into writing erotica and having more success there, so I still haven’t actually made a section on this website for comics. Ah well. It’s still a good comic and I love it.

Now then… what do I plan to do in 2020?

Not a lot for the CCC, actually.

  • Wandering Fortunes should be all up mid-year. No estimation on final book release, though.
  • Right now for the CCC I’m focusing on organizing my notes. I only have time to do one page a week now and there’s honestly more than 50 left I think so this is going to take a while. Probably more time than I should bother with to be honest but… oh well. OCD.
  • I don’t intend to start more editing on Wandering Fortunes or write the fourth book until I finish those notes, so that’s on hold.
  • I will have another new story in a few months, definitely not something I’ve done two years in a row now…
  • Odemon and the Pokecomic will continue at their glacial pace.
  • If not obvious yet, I’m going to spend 2020 more focused on what I’ve actually gotten some traction with. It’s fun and people like it and wow! I’m going to have a post about that at the DeviantArt I post that stuff at, so if you want to know about that check it there.
  • Also my New Year’s Resolution is to hold a snake. For obvious reasons, I think.

That’s about it. Things are weird now. It’s fine.

2018 Retrospective

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

A little late, but what do you want, it feels like it’s still a week ago. Let me start by looking at the 2017 retrospective, specifically what I’d hoped to complete this year:

  • Released Darmenzi, as I’d planned. It’s available as an ebook on Smashwords and, as I’d wanted to, I looked into a different physical copy publishing site than Createspace because I wanted to leave Amazon entirely, which I have, I haven’t gone to Amazon at all probably all year! So I made the paperback of Darmenzi through Lulu.com, and I think it worked out well. I’ll probably use it for Wandering Fortunes in about 47 years when I finish it.
  • I started Odemon, as I’d planned, and though it was daily the first half of the year, for certain reasons I gave up on that and made it three times weekly–usually. Still, I’ve kept up on it, and did a look back at the Odemon of this year on social media recently.
  • I’ve kept up on my Mastodon account and basically have written stuff on Mastodon then copied and pasted it over on Twitter. I actually abandoned the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos Twitter account because I wanted to leave Twitter, but the way Mastodon works with sharing kind of made it harder to do it there and I eventually abandoned the Mastodon Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos account. Maybe someday if I’m popular enough for people to pay attention, but probably not.
  • I got a Ko-fi. I pay attention to it less than Patreon but I try to keep both updated. This lets me use Ko-fi for rewards that would be a one-time thing instead of a monthly thing, like mailing copies of books.
  • Posted stories, wrote stories, didn’t really submit stories too much to publications because I didn’t have any for it but near the end of the year I did and I’ve started doing that again.
  • I did continue Wandering Fortunes! Things are moving along at a steady pace with it. The Pokecomic… not so much. Apparently in 2017 I did about 50 comics, 2018… barely over ten. That doesn’t mean it’s abandoned, in fact I have a comic I’ve held onto for several months now and just have been waiting until I get back into it, but the problem is I have several projects and it’s more or less the least-important one. That said replaying Pokemon Moon made me want to get back to the comic so we’ll see how it goes this year.
  • Wait what? Recording on the Darmenzi audiobook had been done before 2018 even started??? That’s depressing because NO recording has been done since. Various reasons have resulted in it being hard to get it started on, but things are clearing up so hopefully something can be ready to show off before the year anniversary of the book’s release.
  • I got a freelance job! I was doing some organizing of levels for a mobile word game which I started around May, did that for a couple months and when it was done they had a new job for me to do. That lasted all the way until December; since then things changed and I’m no longer doing it, so I’m back to looking for a new job. Now that I’ve done something maybe I won’t feel so panicky about it.

Other accomplishments include the yb_ebooks project, which has consisted of me dumping a huge amount of text from the half-decade or so of writing my friends and I did in the old Yoshi Bodyguards fan universe we accidentally created. The bot was set up by my friend, while I’ve been going through all the text and stuff and putting it in place for the bot to access. It’s ranged from fun to mind-numbing, especially when I go through stuff I wrote over ten years ago. It’s weird to call it an accomplishment though because it’s kinda pointless. That said, I also started planning a secret project with some old friends. Will it go anywhere? We’ll find out!

So what do I want to accomplish in 2019?

  • Continue work on Wandering Fortunes. In terms of posting it online I should get to around the three-quarters part of the story, so 2020 should see the completion of it. I actually hope to finish editing it before the year’s end, though, and if I can do that, begin writing the fourth novel. Considering I wrote Wandering Fortunes like 5 or 6 years ago, I’m kind of excited to start a new novel.
  • Continue Odemon; at the rate of 3 a week I should get through about 150 more. As Pokemon gen 8 may release next year I may find a lot more to go through before I’m done. I also do want to continue the Pokecomic, though ten comics might be about what I finish.
  • It would be really nice to get all my novel notes transferred to wiki format this year! I don’t know if that’s likely but I’ll keep chipping away until it’s all in there, at which point I can finally start writing new notes again.
  • I mentioned the audiobook, right? I really hope work on it can get started for real, before it’s been so long since Darmenzi released that it feels weird to release an audiobook version. Experience on that should help for if an audiobook of Wandering Fortunes is created.
  • Get another freelance job so I don’t go broke halfway through the year!
  • Finish a few more short stories that I’d be willing to submit to a publication, and maybe get one of these actually accepted! That’d be awesome! There’s also at least one short story I’ll be posting on this website in 2019, but that’s for later.

I think that’s about it. Let’s all make 2019 the most adequate year on record!

EDIT: OH FIG I FORGOT ONE MORE GOAL FOR 2019! I actually want to start writing articles on this website. I know, I know, it’s something I’ve said a lot before. But what I’m thinking is just, each week I’ll think about the writing-related stuff I’ve done and come up with some little article to talk about it. I kind of did that without meaning to a little while ago–I have an article idea from when I was working on some novel notes. I’m a bit behind on work right now so it might be a bit before I get to that but that at least will come; the rest, well, we’ll see. No promises.

Duth Olec’s 2017 Retrospective

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

It’s cool to do this, right? Actually I might have done these sort of things in past years too. I don’t remember. But let’s take a look at what I’ve done this year, assuming I do remember!

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  • Began posting the prog version of Wandering Fortunes online: on my website, on Wattpad, and for the first time on Medium. At the rate of one chapter a month, I’ve gotten twelve of these chapters up. That puts me at about a third through the story. This story is actually somewhat special to me–the first two novels were partly based off ideas I had years and years ago, but Wandering Fortunes is the first story I came up with after I decided to go into noveling (authorial term). Furthermore, the main characters, and many other characters, are based off characters I used to use in collaborative stories I wrote with some old internet friends. Were it not for those pals I would never have gotten into writing, so I thank them profusely. (Also some characters in Wandering Fortunes are inspired by some of their characters, too! Don’t worry, I got their permission.)
  • I continued the Pokecomic, which started when Pokemon Sun and Moon released last year. The first comic of this year was 39, and on the 30th I’ll post number 89, so that’s fifty comics this year. At that rate I’ll finish it in 2019, probably sometime after the 8th generation of Pokemon comes out. I’m actually rather surprised and proud I’ve been able to keep this comic up, considering these side projects involving art usually peter out for me pretty early, but this is something I’d wanted to do for over 5 years, probably since the 5th generation of Pokemon games came out.
  • In April began a new Twitter account for the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos where theoretical tweets from major CCC characters are made, using trending hashtags or responding to other tweets or simply posting about their lives. Shortly after announcing the Darmenzi release date I started posting theoretical messages from during the story. It’s been fun! I like coming up with stuff for the characters to say, such as on Thanksgiving, every character I’m using posted what they’re thankful for. Here’s a few highlights:
  • I released two pieces focusing on the premise of the character Top from Wandering Fortunes interrupting an existing story, with Lord of the Rings and Magic Banquet. (See also Wattpad here and here, and Medium here and here.) This is a premise I’d actually come up with earlier while reading a different story (which is yet to be used) and I was just like “man what if Top just showed up instead and distracted this bad guy”. I really like the idea because I really like Top and they’re basically the poster child for the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos, but it turns out I’ve had a bit of trouble coming up with more scenes to use, though that’s mostly because I don’t think about it while reading a book and then afterwards I don’t remember the book well enough to fit Top somewhere. But gaddfern it, I am GOING to find a way to shove Top into Charles Dickens one of these days!
  • I announced the ebook release date of Darmenzi, which isn’t until 2018 but still I announced it in 2017. This involved a lot of stuff that’s stressful for me. That press release? I tried to send it out to press places. I actually contacted people, trying to promote it. I still have more time to work on promoting it. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOO but I’m going to try anyway. I’m not expecting a miracle but. like. you know. a burgeoning fanbase would be nice. Whoa! This 2017 retrospective just got real…ly dumb. uh.
  • I posted a super special Christmas-themed “short story”! It’s a giant satire of religion and the bible. I could definitely being the most controversial thing I’ve posted, but I also see it as one of the best because I get to be oddtastic and write nonsense. There’s even some Seuss-esque rhymes! It’s on my website here, Wattpad, and Medium.

DISASTERS

  • well most of the year for everybody and everything but ME SPECIFICALLY…
  • The beginning of the year sucked because as usual I was working at Bloom Insurance Agency, but even worse, it was customer service! For an incompetent company (not Bloom, they contract with insurance companies to do sales, it was the client who was pretty bad) in a badly-set-up system and also this is all redundant because it’s health insurance. The exception to health insurance is a company that’s not garbage in all ways. However, this wasn’t much of a disaster so much as par for the course over the past several years because I always start the year working since it’s their busy season and then after the first of the month I go on furlough when there’s not as much work and I can do good work. However…
  • I returned in mid-August and it was… weird, at first. I was put on a program without a lot of real training, but it was a program winding down, we were calling insurance agents, not customers, and again, it was winding down, so for the most part we just called answering machines, calling people who were called before, or just waited for no one to ever call. There ended up being so much downtime that people could often go home early. However, that ended, and then I went to an actual program for actually selling health insurance… and… oh Gourd, what was that company called? I’ve forgotten! Hang on… Aetna, I think? Pretty sure it was Aetna. DANG, did I get a pompous vibe from them. Anyway there was so much garbage terrible and finally I snapped at work. I described it at length here. As I say there, there was just a lot of really skeevy capitalist garbage that is totally legal and fine and okay but makes want to figgin PUKE, and I hate health insurance, I hate talking on the phones, I hate sales (making it all the harder for me to promote my book, but I’m still tryin’!), and I finally realized I could not help this rude person, and not just they were so rude, but my being there was a figgin detriment to every person who called and got me. To survive in capitalism I was having to make the world overall WORSE.
    I would rather die.
  • Continuing the theme of I Can’t Hold Down A Job Anymore, Basic Guaranteed Universal Income Or I Will Be Forced To Make The World A Worse Place To Survive And It Will Be You Stupid Conservative And Libertarians’ Fault So Good Job On That, Would You Rather I Die, at the end of November I applied to a job with my local paper as a night mailroom inserter or something or other. It was basically just placing newspapers in machines so they get sorted and ads and papers are placed in them right. Turns out because I have a garbage body I can’t do physical labor, certainly can’t do it at any decent speed, absolutely not at a decent speed needed for most jobs, and therefore just cross out physical labor with Talking to Customers on the list of jobs I can’t do. I forget how much I talked about this but basically the job was about 5 hours a night and after half of that I was nearly faint and couldn’t continue. I had to quit. After half a night. So that little experiment failed.
  • net neutrality repeal but again that’s something regarding the entire country, you don’t need me to tell you about that. Although after the repeal vote I actually called my reps about it, and note that after the calls I wanted to curl up under a chair so yeah phones suck die die die phones
  • Oh I guess the Patreon debacle was a slight disaster but Patreon walked it back so I think it’s gonna be okay.
  • Aaaand that’s really all the disasters of the year, my personal disasters totaled two, everything else was fairly fantastic, and those two disasters were both ME TRYING TO WORK A REGULAR JOB. Seriously, what do you want from me, world? But let’s move on from these sad parts and look forward to…

PLANS FOR 2018

  • Obviously I mentioned Darmenzi releases next year. It comes out Wednesday, January 17th. If I can get some selling I’ll be happy. I’ll pretty much take any number over zero, but I’d like double-digits. (I’d be ecstatic over triple.) Currently only the ebook is set; I don’t want to use Createspace because it’s owned by Amazon (which is why I’m reluctant to do anything related to Goodreads), so I’m going to try out other self-publish websites. I’ll keep you posted on that. I do truly believe this book is better than the first, and it begins to bring up questions about the creator and narrator with the antagonist, Darmenzi. Some closure, some sadness, and some some fantastic villain interaction. But with a few weeks left I still need to work on promoting it…
  • I want to start a new daily project in 2018. I don’t want to reveal too much yet, for some reason, but it’s totally ripped off from inspired by something KC Green is doing. It also means this blaargablog will pick up by about… Whoa wait I had at least one post a day from the 15th to the 20th! That’s pretty good. anyway lotsa %.
  • I’ve gotten a Mastodon account! I really would like to stop Twittering but whoops I need to build an online presence and using websites that have traffic is a slight requirement, sorry. I’m still not sure how I want to do this but I might just give up and post at both places equally with the same things, which would also involve making a second Mastodon account equivalent to the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos Twitter.
  • Might get a Ko-Fi. A cocoa-wifi. After the Patreon thing happened I was like “huh, maybe i’d rather make my goals just flat amounts to reach towards instead of monthly givings goals.” Now, I changed that idea because most of my current Patreon goals are actually recurring things that I would want a continuing stream of income to help with (posting more chapters a month, the Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmail which to be fair I mostly want to wait to do because I want a big enough fanbase to get a steady stream of questions but I’d also like to pay my artist friends for drawing the comics so yeah), but there are some that could work as an accumulation of everything donated (special stories, comic/graphic versions of short stories, that Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos Online RPG idea I wanna do someday), kinda like mini-Kickstarters except there’s no guarantee and you give money even if it takes 5000 years to reach the goal, since it’s more of a “thank you!!!” than an actual end goal. Maybe. I dunno.
  • There are at least one or two short stories I will post here next year, and I’d also like to write more and maybe finish some and maybe even finish some that I could submit to publications! I’ve sent one to a few places but it hasn’t been accepted, though to be fair it’s a character-centric story that probably works as being posted here first anyway. I have an idea for a short story I’m going to begin working on soon that might work.
  • Continue Wandering Fortunes! Continue the pokecomic! The former I hope to pass the halfway point on in 2018, and the Pokecomic to, who knows, maybe get to the 3/4 point.
  • Darmenzi audiobook. Work on it is a bit slow because I’m a bit slow, but the idea has been in the making for a little while now and some recording has been done. Some more recording needs to be done and then editing will be discussed. No promises or predictions on when this will start–I can only give myself a deadline.
  • Some freelance writing/editing? Look I clearly suck at holding down a Regular Job, and selling books takes more time than society will allow for survival, so I might have to look to that to have an income.
  • Be the best Duth I can be.
  • And at least a functioning Jeremy.

I think that about wraps it up. See you in a few days for my Clichemas post, and come January 1st I should be starting that new daily project I mentioned.