NEW STORY: "The Mirrors are Plotting" + Zelda Universe Forums Stuff + New Audiobooks Coming Soon

"Nesborne" fell through like the 2011 Halloween story. Thought I'd open up with that. But don't worry because...well, I'll get to that!

So here I am! Back again for another full blog post! Recently, I've been posting updates on the official Many Worlds of EzloSpirit Google+ Page (link up top), but if you are repulsed by such a site, then I will bring you up to speed now as best as I can!

Anyway, so "Nesborne" fell through, but there is hope! I wrote something different instead! It was a bit late (by almost three weeks), but I actually think it better fits Halloween than "Nesborne" would have. I am talking about "The Mirrors are Plotting," a 2760-word story almost guaranteed to make you paranoid about looking into mirrors! I can't really describe it too much without giving the whole thing away and ruining most of the suspense, but just know that it stars Kat, a snarky businesswoman who is haunted by nightmares of a monster with knives instead of hands. Kat is my second female narrator ever, and she is much better than Maddy Morain, narrator of "Trust Fall." Trust me on this! Reader discretion is advised for this M-rated hybrid of snark and terror---"Mirrors" is my first written work to contain the so-called "F-word"---which was released on the Zelda Universe Forums on November 20 and on Figment just yesterday.

In August, former ZU Forums member and staffer Jehanne did me the great favor of drawing some beautiful cover art for "Duck Season." However, I apparently never downloaded the image, and she left ZU in October, also apparently removing the artwork from her Photobucket account. Which means I can't make a cover for the story. Which, in turn, means I can't release it to Figment or deviantART at this time. I emailed Jehanne a couple weeks ago using an email address I found in a years-old version of the ZU Staff Page using the Wayback Machine, but she hasn't responded. So if you know how to get a hold of her (or you are her!), please let me know!

ARMED WITH WINGS LAUNCHED! + Fate of The Current + Winter 2011 ZU Awards

Bubs says, "I shoulda made this post like exactly a month ago!"

So, November 1 saw the launch of the prologue and first chapter (with November 2 and 15 seeing the launches of Chapters II and III, respectively) of my newest and most active project, Armed with Wings. Armed with Wings is a fan fiction novel project whose source is…a Flash game?! Yes, it is. You may not have believed it so, but it is possible to write a full-length fan fiction piece based on an online game. Because, yes, some Flash games and series actually have stories to them. Those are my favorite kind of Flash series, by the way!

Armed with Wings is based on the game of the same name, the first out of five games to be released (but the second in order of occurrence according to series canon) in Sun-Studios' Armed with Wings series (informally known as the Blackmist series). It follows the resurrected commander of a rebel force that had tried to dethrone the tyrant king but had failed; now, the former commander is back for revenge. He will have to scale a mountain and make his way through hundreds of guards and traps before he can reach the king in his castle.

As stated earlier, the first three chapters are already available for your reading pleasure! Armed with Wings is currently only available on the Zelda Universe Forums, but have no fear; there is a table of contents for easy navigation. In addition, a rough audio version of the fan fiction piece that goes up to the end of Chapter II is also available exclusively (for now) through the project's thread on ZU. However, this is a rough version, meaning that I deem it below standard for my audiobooks, so I will be redoing it at some point in the near future.

Armed with Wings can be found here! Enjoy! (It is rated M for violence and language. Please be aware of this.)

Now, I want to take a moment to discuss The Current. Part of the title of this post is "Fate of The Current," which has likely led you to believe that I'm scrapping it. This is not the case. I am, however, officially putting The Current on-hold. I want to focus on Armed with Wings, which I am well into the fourth chapter of. I will likely return to The Current in 2012.

Lastly, the ZU Awards are back! They are currently in the nomination period, with zero nominations for me for any award. The nomination period ends tomorrow. Thought I'd mention that.

That's it! A short update, since I explained Armed with Wings a lot in my last post. Until next time! (My next post will explain what happened with that "Live Q&A Event" thing. In case you were curious.)

The Current Update + ZU Awards + Music

Here's a tip: whenever I say I'm expecting a chapter to be out, don't expect it to be out then. Remember "Illusions & Lies: Undercover?" Perfect example. I haven't even started writing the third chapter yet. However, there's someone I like to show my writing to in person who I'm seeing on Thursday night, so this next chapter will most likely be done, if not online, by then. But no promises.

So, while the Summer 2011 ZU Awards season isn't exactly over--it's currently in the voting stage--it is for me. Surprisingly, I not only wasn't nominated for the Best Writer award like I was last year, but I wasn't nominated for a single award at all! Maybe I'll have better luck this winter, when the next awards season takes place. I wasn't really expecting to win, but I was expecting at least a nomination. You see, there is actually a bit of a hierarchy in the ZU Writing section, one that I have identified as follows, from lowest to highest: spammers, new members (to the Writing forum) who haven't read the rules, Writing forum newbies who have read the rules, little-known veterans, known veterans, and elite veterans/moderators. I consider myself to be an elite veteran, one among the likes of ZU members Doran_Bladefist, Holden, The Unknown Soldier (now known as Gamzee), Sakume, Jordan, Hero of Geeks, and moderator Fairess, plus former moderator and former ZU member Veyrael. Strangely, though, almost all--if not all--of the people I just mentioned were nominated for Best Writer this awards season. But I wasn't. Am I complaining? Yeah, probably a bit. If I hadn't been nominated last winter, I probably wouldn't be complaining at all. But I was, so I was expecting to at least be nominated again. Oh, well. I guess it makes sense considering how little I've actually written in the past few months compared to the previous few months.

Still Alive + The Current Launch + ...Halloween 2011...? + ZU Awards

If you read my previous post, you'll notice that it begins with an astonished question, "Did I manage to go a whole month without posting here?". Now look at the date on that post. It's March 10, 2011. Now look at the date on this post. Yeah. So not only did I manage to go another month without posting here, but this time, I managed to go three times that without doing so! Impressive?

Basically, I've been busy. My school is a college preparatory school, and they give us boatloads of work. While I'm fine with all of the regular homework, I have particular trouble with working on long-term assignments; my brain shuts down easily due to anxiety. Well, in the past few weeks, my school, which got out the first week of June, gave me about five long-term assignments at once. Imagine how that worked out for me. Long story short, I had no time to work on my fictional writing and had to dedicate a few weeks of my life to sleeping, eating, going to school, and working on...non-fictional writing (plus breathing). Let me officially mention that while writing fiction is one of the things I love most in this world, writing non-fiction (essays, etc.) is quite possibly my least favorite thing in all of existence. Yeah! No joke! (I know some college or something is probably going to find this blog at some point and read that statement. Well, my fine friends at the college or something, I'm not going to lie about that fact. I have to force myself to write essays and things. And it sometimes drives me a bit crazy. Literally. But they all get done in the end. And I'm a bit paranoid for writing this, especially considering that I won't even begin looking at colleges for another few months.)

Anyway, in writing news, the first two chapters (time flies...?) of my previously-mentioned project, The Current, are now online. The first one can be found at both of the novel's official web locations, Figment and the Zelda Universe Forums, while the second chapter, at the time of this posting, can only be found at the ZU Forums. And yes, the novel has been listed on the Master List since I first published the first chapter. You can expect the third chapter to be up by this Friday or so.

While I was not originally planning on it being part-comedy, that is what The Current is turning out to be. However, it will likely become less humorous (not necessarily darker, except for later on) as it goes on. It also  features more swears than I have ever featured in a single project! And more references to drinking! And the first-ever references to drugs (well, tobacco)! This is my most mature science fiction project to date, and possibly tied with The Midnight Sequence ("Twelve Chimes"/"The First Hour") for being my most mature overall project to date. If you are easily offended by that kind of stuff, this is one project you might want to stay away from. Sorry!

"Resolution" Reveal/Launch ; NEW PUBLISHING SITE

It's been a while, and I've made very little progress on I&L4. Deal with it. I've been busy.

With what, you ask? With "Resolution," of course! Wait, what? No, I haven't been busy writing New Year's resolutions. Those are pointless. Instead, I've been writing "Resolution," my entry in the Zelda Universe Forums' January 2011 Writing Contest, for which the theme was "resolution." The results? Well, they came in tonight, and ...I got second place. Again. I guess I can't win. But hey, last time I entered a ZU writing contest, I didn't rank ("Trust Fall," August 2010). Also remember that I got second place in my first writing contest, too ("Twelve Chimes," October 2009). "Resolution" is a thriller, which is a genre I have never bothered (or actually wanted to bother) getting close to before, but I couldn't avoid it this time. (The following is exclusive information, so be glad you're reading this!) Originally, the story was going to involve an established serial killer writing a list of resolutions, a.k.a. his next victims. (That's pretty much it for the exclusive stuff.) The final product is barely a shadow of the original idea, the only similarity being the main character, William, writing his resolution, which includes a short list of people he wants to murder. Why? William is a patient at the Woodstone Institute mental asylum for post-traumatic stress disorder. He wants to know how he develoed the disorder, but he'll have to stay for a month to give the psychiatrists enough time to figure it out. Well, he doesn't want to stick around in that dump for a whole month, so he decides to escape. Which involves brutally murdering a few people. "Resolution" is available on the ZU Forums (no membership necessary, as usual) in this thread and now on Figment.com. Wait. Figment.com? Wuzzat? To find out you're going to have to...

Final "Armor" Reception ; I&L 4 Update ; ZU Nomination

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Now that that's out of the way...

As you may have been aware, "Shining Armor" was originally written as a school assignment. Well, I'm now back in school as of Tuesday, and on Tuesday, I received my story again, which was graded and had comments written by my English teacher. The grade? A-. And in my English teacher's class, this is saying something; he's a tough grader when it comes to writing assignments! In his comments, he stated that he was impressed by my writing (as usual), and he was also impressed by my incorporation of "trickster story" elements into my story. I was especially pleased with the latter, as the "trickster" elements were more abstract in my story than in most trickster stories, and I wasn't sure that he would catch them.

As promised, I will now update you on "Illusions & Lies: Undercover." I have made progress. Last night, I forced myself to continue writing it, and I made a decent amount of progress. I can say for certain that this story is pretty much devoid of any action/violence (there are violent references, though), but it is primarily to serve as a transition from the dark (and still kind of funny) atmosphere-exposition stuff of its predecessors to the next chapter of the Illusions & Lies story as a whole. Oh, and I&L 6 will also be a transition story. Just as an advance notice! I'm not setting any actual date that I&L 4 will be ready by, but I'm hoping it'll be out before February.

Lastly, I was nominated for the Best Writer award over at the ZU Forums (along with two other, completely different awards which I don't even stand a chance at getting)! The ZU Awards are held twice a year, and they span every possible aspect of the forum community, including the creative side. This is the first time I have ever been nominated for the Best Writer award, and I must admit that I have been dying for this award more than any other award on ZU (even more than Overall Member of the Season!) since I first started posting my written works to ZU. The voting process is well underway, and there are seven other ZU members in the running for this award besides me (one of them being Holden, a member who has been giving me great feedback on my more recent stories!). This is not a request for votes (even though I can't get disqualified for making one here since this is not on ZU). In fact, please only vote for me if you (besides belong to ZU) really think I deserve the award. Be sure to check out mine and the other nominees' works in the ZU Writing forum!

That's all for now! Expect some "In the Trees" feedback within a few days! And hope you are all enjoying your first week of 2011! Ta-ta!