So…
Some big changes.
First, let’s discuss some of the things I actually managed to get done in August.
I released two whole machinimas!
For those of you unfamiliar, machinima is the making of films using video games. And I have wanted to create machinima using a few of the Halo games for a long time now. I now have the ability to do so, and am slowly finding ways to carve out time here and there to put some together.
I created Not Alone in its entirety in 2016. Then I felt I needed a break. That became a few months, which became six months, which stretched on and you get the idea. Eventually, I began production of Not Alone 2 in 2017. I got through about 85% of it, and then gave up, because I realized that not only had it been an entire year since I had uploaded anything to my channel, but at the time I felt like I wasn’t going to have the time to regularly, or even irregularly, produce machinima, so I took down Not Alone and gave up.
Recently, I started thinking about machinima again, and finally decided to get back into the game. I made a brand new channel, and a new machinima that’s like a bleak music video for Halo 3, (you can see it here), put back up Not Alone, and got to work finishing up Not Alone 2. Which I finally did just a few days ago.
Soon I will begin production of Not Alone 3. I have a lot of ideas for it and I hope it doesn’t suck.
And then I have a lot more ideas after that.
On the fan fiction front, I’ve decided to say fuck it, and just work on one thing at a time. So The Will To Live and Nerves of Steele are back on hold. I’m sorry. The good news is that I’ve made kind of decent progress on And There Was Another, and it’s almost done. We’re on the last planet and the endgame of the story. Ideally, this will be wrapped up this month. After that, I’ll work on The Will To Live and try to get that wrapped up. But fuck, that one has a lot more to go.
Okay, time for the big update.
I am removing all of my original content from WattPad and deleting my S. A. Lusher account.
I debated doing this near the beginning of 2019, but this time around, I’m not doing it for emotional reasons!
I’ve been considering this for a little bit now, and ultimately I asked myself the question of: why am I keeping The Shadow Wars on WattPad? There’s a few reasons, but none of them really seem to outweigh the benefits of enrolling them back into the Kindle Unlimited. I know, I know, I’ve been down this fucking road before. More than once.
At the end of the day, I need to pay bills, and I can earn more money being in the KU.
If this decision is annoying or it pisses you off, I am sorry. I’m genuinely not trying to be a jerk or anything, I’m trying to do what makes the most sense for me and my own life. Although I think at this point that my presence on WattPad is minimal at best. I’m not sure how many people will actually notice the absence of The Shadow Wars.
So when will this happen? In one month. October 1st, 2019, the stories get deleted and the account goes down.
And so where does this leave us with future original content? I’m going to go back to my old-school form of posting: I’ll upload it as I write it, to my Obsidian Productions account, give a fair window of time for everyone to finish it up while I edit it, and then I’ll take it down to upload it.
Which begs the question, what’s next?
Well, at some point, and it’s genuinely hard to say when, because I feel so stretched thin with my current fan fiction stuff, I want to finally begin working on the followup to The Shadow Wars: Kane’s War. I still know exactly what I want to do for the first few novels, and I’ve got a decent idea of what I want to do with the series as a whole, and I’m actually kind of amped to write it.
But I need to clear the table first.
Which, I would like to point out, YES, I realize the hypocrisy of opting to work on fan fiction instead of original content after I just got done talking about how I need to do what makes financial sense. Sometimes I’m stupid, and sometimes I’m just listening to my brain, even when I don’t know why it’s saying what it’s saying. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my shit sorted and start working on Kane’s War at the expense of my fan fiction. We’ll see.