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And to no one’s surprise, I am once again late wit hthe Update. Sometimes I wonder if it would make more sence to turn Thursday into Update day, so that I’m on time, but paert of me- the paert that knows me- tells me that it will juist end up being me writing the same damn thing every friday havign completely forgot to write it the night before.

I also wonder why I continue these at all. These past few weeks there hasnt’ been much to talk about, much in part- I suspect- because I’m regularly interacting with a lot of you in the Discord. By the time I’m witing it here it really doesn’t register as havign been something new or interesting.

And, really, there aren’t many of you reading this anyway.

I’m sure you’d much rather have me writing the next chapter than tellign you how behind I am because I foolishly took a break t ospend some time with Menoly and ended up with no time left to write.

The recent release of Halo on PC isn’t helping, nor is my recent return into Warframe, but I’m more tired of being behind than you are of hearing me mention I’m behind- and I’m sure you’re right sick of it by now- so I’m trying my damndest to remain focused on my work.

I suppose that is somethign new. It’s just a resolution at the moment, but progress is progress.

Probably more realistic than waking up an extra hour early- and going to bed an extra two early- to go on a walk/run/jog/thing every morning. That’s just not going to happen, no matter how many times I try to start doing it again.

To help with this new resolution, I’m going to write down my work schedule here- so that it’s both written down somewhere and so that if anyone cares to you can call me out on not following it so I get back to work.

What I’m listing below will not include anything else I may be doing regularly, but it should help me know where i stand for this job- which, really, should help me take everything more seriously. I just need to keep reminding myself that this is, in fact, a job and I am, technically a professional- so I can feel good about being on track and like a massive shithead- and not in the Tayuya affectionate way- when I’m not.

Sunday

  • Chapter Prep – Patron
  • Commentary for latest public release.

Sunday, Alt.

  • Chapter Prep -Patron
  • Chapter Prep – Public
  • Work on writing side project such as lemon or oneshot

Monday

  • Recovery day- Post by 10:30am (Local). Writing work starts at 12:00PM. 4:15-4:45 break. 9:00PM End Day.
  • Post Chapter – Patron
  • 3000 words mininum towards next update, 5000 goal.

Monday, Alt.

  • Recovery day- Post by 10:30am (Local). Writing work starts at 12:00PM. 4:15-4:45 break. 9:00PM End Day.
  • Post Chapter – Patron
  • Post Chapter – Public
  • 3000 words mininum towards next update, 5000 goal.

Tuesday

  • Personal- No work, no writing. Home Tasks, Menoly Time, Weekly TTRPG Meeting.

Wednesday

  • 9:00AM Writing Start
  • Finish Next Update- Minimum 2000 words. If chapter completed Monday, 2500 Mininum towards next Chapter.
  • 12:00PM Lunch
  • 12:30PM Weekly Update
  • 1:00PM Resume weekly writing. If goals reached acheived in the morning, an additional 1500-2500 before End of Day.
  • 5:00PM End of Day.

Thursday

  • 1000 words towards next chapter or progress towards side project (750 word minimum)

Friday

  • 1000 words towards next chapter or progress towards side project (750 word minimum)

Saturday

  • 1000 words towards next chapter or progress towards side project (750 word minimum)

You know, it actually feels really good to have that written down. So good, in fact, I took a break to print it out so that I can’t neglect to check this post later- and, you know, grab a bowl of icecream and a large glass of the cheapest red wine I have in the cabinet- hopefully it helps.

Huh, I guess these are good for something still.

But with that covered I don’t really have anything else to say.

Until I next have your attention,

-Eyazahrid

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I was supposed to post this yesterday but I completely forgot about it. Part of it was just that I’m forgetful, but I’d say a large part of it was simply because there’s been so much going on.

And because Menoly distracted me yesterday, but I give her such little attention that I can’t hold it against her.

So, where to start?

How about with all of the amazing people who have become my patrons?

Most Generous Supporters

Michael Huber

Generous Supporters

Patrick Gleese

sedition

Mackenzie Harmon

The Kevin

Greater Supporters

Elypsus

magicheart 0

Oscar Perez

Christopher pearson

Kurogane

marcothephoenix

Reaper Death

Major Supporters

Christopher

Thomas Li

GenericReader_n

Daniel Witry

Liam Kearney

?

Janus – Who decided to plop down right between Supporter and Major Supporter. Well done. 

Supporters

Kyle Sweeney

J. G.

tyrell daniels

Raymond Saragian

Sabyasachi Shivkumar

Draku

Gobo

Theo McPherson

June Tai

james escobedo

Sebastiaan asselbergs

gary ross

ChaosFox

Perez

Dalton Tuschl

Jin

James

Keagan

hungerycow


TheGreatBubbaJ

Dylan Coltson

Ryszard Cichoń

Nik Shepherd

That’s right, 41 fantastic patrons who have collectively pledged $126 a month to help me reach a point where I can write full time.

Or, you know, just really wanted those early chapters.

Either way is fine.

And if you noticed the math doesn’t check out – don’t you lie to me, you weren’t counting- it’s because Patreon takes 5% plus payment fees. Think it comes out to like 8% or something all around.

But the boring aspects of it aside, 41 of you donated.

Holy shit!

I can’t thank you all enough for your show of support and while we’re still a long ways off from our goal seeing how quickly you all chipped in to help makes me think we might really be able to pull it off.

Gods, I hope so.

But until then, I still have writing that needs to get done between work so let’s finish this up so I can get back to working on chapter 103.

And on that note- progress! I’ve mentioned this already but chapter 102 is done – and has been- and as of last night chapter 103 has reached 70% complete.

Technically I only need to get the regular 5k doen each week to keep up, but I figure that if I spend a few weeks eaking out all the tiem I can to get further ahead I won’t have to worry as much.

It will also free up time dfor some of my other projects.

In this case, I’m bumping ‘Write a book’ to the top of the project list so I can get it published and- more importantly- sold. I have a few ideas, it’s just a matter of deciding what would work best and what I can create a satisfying ending too.

Planning out plot isn’t exactly my strong suit, I usually just write as it comes to me.

Of course, if I was any good at it I could just write smut and fill Amazon with my cheap, sub-par porn. Sorry, “Erotic Novellas”. You have no idea how much I would love to be able to say that I make a living writing porn. I think that would be absolutely hilarious.

But speaking of writing, I need to get this finished so I can do some.

Because I don’t have nearly as much free time as I need all other projects will be put on hold for the foreseeable future, though I will return to them as soon as I can. This doesn’t affect most of you as none of my projects have really seen the light yet but I know there will be a few of you disappointed at the delay.

Sorry.

Streams will continue, I have one every Tuesday at about 6pm (UTC-7) and they last between 2-3 hours depending on if anyone’s watching, how engrossed I become, or how much I know I need to get back to writing because I’m nowhere close to my goal for the day.

It’s usually that last one, honestly.

If people like the idea I might do a “Just Chatting” stream while working on my writing, but I suppose we could all just jump into discord for that.

On second thought, having too many people talking would not be conductive to writing, nor would distracting me. Still,an option to keep in mind, I suppose.

Anything else?

Commentary this Sunday, Chapter 102-B for Patrons on Monday, stream Tuesday [FFXV], Update Wednesday, and then nothing until the following Monday when 102 goes public and 103-A is up on Patreon.

So I think that about does it. Thank you all again for your support and until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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Honestly I’m not even completely sure what I should be including in this update aside from a recap of the new update schedule and that Bonsai picture I promised last week.

Suppose I might as well start with that, actually.

There, not just a picture of both Bonsai but my sister’s cat is in the shot too. She calls him Tarzan for some unknown reason but I’ve taken to calling him Artyom, mainly because it annoys the hell out of her and also because for the longest time she swore up and down that he wasn’t a Russian Blue.

Hes’ a Russian Blue.

You know, in case you had any doubts.

But cats aside, there’s the latest picture of my Bonsai. You may note that Glas is no longer in her small blue pot and is, for some reason, in a large white pot.

The size was so she had more room, which should be obvious, but the color is a different story. As it so happens, the month of September is when local stores decide to start hauling out the Christmas shit for some inane reason lost to the sands of corporate time. What does that mean for the garden section at my nearest- well, no, but most conveniently located- store?

It means the already poor selection of pots becomes even smaller until you’re left with two options; brown plastic or white ceramic.

Plastic just seemed undignified so for now she’s going to be in the white pot.

She also, well, looks pretty pad. Something about her branches is off and I think I may need to trim her a bit. Might even have to remove the second trunk that I was hoping to twist around. A damn shame, that.

But if it keeps her alive I really can’t complain.

Well I can, it just doesn’t’ help much.

And would you look at that? We have content for the update.

Now that the Bonsai have been taken care of, we’ll do a quick recap on future updates.

Starting with Monday’s chapter 100, updates will now be every two weeks but will be increased to 10,000 words. Chapter 101 will be posted 2019.10.14 and 102 will be on 2019.10.28.

This change is partially to satisfy those who have complained about small chapters and partly to give myself a bit more flexibility. We’ll see how it goes.

That said, I have work in the morning so we’ll end this here.

Until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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Alright, we’re doing this fast because Muse just returned to me about two hours ago and I was finally managing make some progress in chapter 99 despite attempting to write it for the majority of the day.

I might even manage to finish it tonight, which would be grand.

With that said, chapter 99 of Sealkeeper is at 83.2% as I write this and, well, that’s almost everything I have for this week.

No, seriously.

I’m still sick, though these three days off have really helped my recovery. Sealkeeper is still moving steadily along, which is good. There’s been a pause in streams first because of training and then because I was sick. I was going to stream Borderlands 3 last night but with no voice decided it was a bad idea even if it was really tempting.

There hasn’t been much progress on any side projects- though I’ll have some time this week if I finish the chapter tonight- but that’s not much of a surprise.

I was supposed to replant my Bonsai during my days off but have just been too out of it. Hopefully next week I can get them into some new soil.

Other than that, the only real thing to talk about is how my personal schedule is being modified now that I’ve received my regular work schedule.

Sundays are still reserved for Commentaries.

Mondays are new chapters.

Tuesdays will become our stream days, though depending on the timezone it may be very early Wednesday. I’ll work out the exact times when I next announce a stream. Well, I’ll try. I might announce a stream right when it happens in which case no, I probably haven’t worked out the times but I want to play now damnit.

Wednesdays will remain the Weekly Update and, hopefully, the day I finish the chapter for the following week. With our upcoming change to chapter updates it will be every second Wednesday that I plan to have chapters done by but we’ll see how things work out. If you don’t remember what’s happening with chapters after 100 you can check out the 2019.09.04 Update again or wait until the update after chapter 100 where I’ll give a recap.

It will also be in the AN- yes, we’ll have an AN for it- of chapter 100 considering how important it is.

That should cover this week- I know I’m skipping something in my rush- so I’m going to return to the chapter before Muse gets bored and finds something else to entertain herself with.

Until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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I suppose I’ll start this update with the fact that I’ve managed to catch something during last week’s training- on the last day- and brought it back with me to enjoy over the final week of hands-on training.

It. Sucks. Balls.

Ten hours in the sun climbing up and down ladders when you can hardly breath, are having trouble with your vision, and sweat from walking up the stairs when you get home is not a very good combination.

Boss-man came through for me before I left though, recommended a medicine that worked almost instantly to clear my body of absolutely everything it contained. It was….Lovely.

And by that I mean no, it was not.

I do feel a bit better though, so I cant’ say it didn’t work like he promised.

Managed to snag a day off, too, so hopefully I can use tomorrow to finally get over this.

I’m not that lucky, though, and it will be just my luck that the only opportunity I have to finish chapter 98 will be spent with me barely awake and unable to see my screen.

And why don’t I knock some out tonight? Because my dumbass wasted my freetime this morning- admittedly I wasn’t exactly awake- browsing the internet for things I cant’ afford. Didn’t get much writing done for tonight’s update or next week’s chapter so I have way too much to get done over the next twenty three hours.

Lets’ try to knock it out quickly, then, before I end up falling asleep.

First, if you didn’t read the 2019.09.04 update I would highly suggest doing so. After chapter 100 updates will be every two weeks, more details available in last week’s update.

Next, well, I went back through the update myself just now and it looks like the only thing I promised was to talk about Naruto and Yagura in either this update or a separate post.

And with that in mind I’m going to cut this here and type it up real quick.

I hope.

If we’re fortunate I’ll see you all in Monday with a completed chapter. I used to manage 5k a day and I did it sick once, too. Granted, it took excess of twelve hours but I should be able to manage.

Until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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Time for another update, huh? The bad news is that being in a hotel for training I didn’t take pictures of my Bonsai this morning.

The good news is that I’ve made some progress.

What have I made progress in, you ask? Excellent question. We’ll start with the Bonsai just so it’s taken care of.

Made progress with the Bonsai? Yeah, you know damn well what that means-

I finally decided on names.

The Bonsai in the red pot will be known as ‘Coch’ and my favorite- the one in the blue pot, if you’ve forgotten- will be ‘Glas’.

What do they mean? Red and Blue, respectively. Did you really expect anything else from me? You should know better by now.

The fun part is that the plant in the red pot- which I can’t be bothered to look up and can’t for the life of me remember- is supposed to become purple eventually and the one in the blue is supposed to be- ready for it? – red and orange.

Little bit of irony, little bit of contrast, little bit of effort.

Perfect.

Oh, and it’s Welsh if you were wondering.

Cymru am byth.

But Bonsai aside, we made progress in other areas too.

Sealkeeper, for example, already has chapter 97 ready. Well, not “ready” as in I could post it immediately but the writing itself is done and i just have to go through for typos and such before I post it.

And come up with a name, I don’t think I’ve done that yet.

Nevermind, I went back to check and managed to come up with something. Another item off my list.

What else do we have? Ah, yes, I mentioned last week that I would be doing a Naruto/FemDanzou story to motivate Valkipher to write his own and I think I’ve figured out some of the most critical parts I needed to have in order to start.

I’m assigning that to Saturday, though I may do some work on it Friday when I get back from training just so I can enjoy my day off without any responsibilities.

Actually, I’ll probably end up using Saturday to prep Monday’s chapter because I work Sunday and know I’m going to be exhausted when I get home. Better to only have a Commentary to get done that evening rather than having to do the Commentary and the edit. It always keeps me up much longer than I plan for.

Before I forget a recent comment- you’ll here about it Sunday- combined with what I managed- by some miracle- to get done on Monday and Tuesday this week has me thinking that it would be a good idea to elaborate on the similarities and differences between Yagura and Naruto in a non-narrative medium.

Don’t quote me on that, that last paragraph could be all sorts of incorrect. Still, I’m going to write about the two of them- with a focus on Yagura- and I’ll include it with the weekly update. No, don’t quote me on that either.

I’m going to write it on Wednesday, it may or may not be included in the Update but it will be posted to the site.

On one hand saying things on here helps me get things done because I feel obligated, on the other I don’t have the best memory and I’ve probably;y forgotten a lot of the things I’ve said.

At least it’s saved on here so I can always go back and look, that’s definitely a benefit of writing these.

The last thing I can think of is an important change to how I’m going to update Sealkeeper after chapter 100. Believe it or not I do pay attention to feedback I receive- my commentaries aren’t me guessing or making things up- and something I have noticed pretty regularly for some time now is dissatisfaction with the length of my chapters.

Because of this, I’ve decided that chapters after chapter 100 will be 10,000 words long each at minimum.

Don’t start celebrating just yet.

Because the chapter length is increasing, the time between chapters will also increase and I’ll be updating every other week. This will start with the posting of chapter 100 on 2019.09.30 so chapter 101 should be expected on 2019.10.14.

This should bring back the larger chapters of the past my readers seem to want without completely returning to updating only once every couple months.

I managed to get a chapter done pretty quickly this week- and I’m not sure how- but because it’s an exception to the norm I’m not considering it feasible for me to churn out a 10,000 word chapter every week. Maybe pother writers manage that a day, maybe with my three days off a week I can dedicate two of them to knocking out 5k each, I don’t know.

I used to be able to do it, I remember, but that was before I worked full time and had more free time than I knew what to do with.

So, to make sure it’s an obtainable deadline I’m simply doubling the time I usually take to account for the amount of work increasing. As far as I’m aware, the logic in that is reasonably sound.

Hopefully this middle ground will be more satisfying for my readers.

That’s all I really have to cover this week so;

Until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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Seems we’ll be doing this weekly, almost like a pre-chapter sort of thing, and that should be fine. I would like to do them more often but I’ve been strapped for time lately and it just wasn’t a priority when all I really had to talk about was finishing a single chapter.

Well, I say strapped for time but during the 2019.05.17 stream we ended up spending over an hour playing slots in Moxxi’s Bar. We’re going to go ahead and consider that “work” because I was streaming.

It’s how I’m justifying it, anyway.

Speaking of streaming, I typically stream every Friday at 0400-0700 UTC and on most Saturdays at the same time. For me that’s Thursday and Friday evenings but who knows what that might be for all of you.

This coming week will be a bit different because my boss is going on vacation so my schedule is a bit weird. I’ll be off Wednesday the 22nd and Tuesday the 28th. I’m not sure about the 28th, but I should definitely be able to stream on the 22nd (2019.05.23 at 0300 UTC). I’ll probably keep it something simple because I will have work the next morning- in fact, I may end up streaming earlier because of it- but we’ll see.

There should be no interruption to your regular chapter on Monday the 27th because of this.

If you miss a stream they are available on Twitch at Twitch.tv/Eyazahrid or posted on my Youtube. I’d give you three guesses what my channel name is, but you probably don’t need them.

You may have noticed that there’s another post here today that isn’t an Update. I mentioned it in the Author’s Note of Chapter 80 but my Commentaries will contain responses to the feedback I receive over the week after posting a new chapter.

It helps keep the Chapters more tidy and allows me to make Author’s Notes as long as I like. My plan is to do these every week, but hopefully it won’t take two days like this last one did. Didn’t have much free time, which was the main reason, but I didn’t start Chapter 86 until Wednesday or Thursday because of it.

Couldn’t work on the next chapter when my mind was still on one of the earlier ones. Writing it down certainly helped.

Unlike Updates, I will not be announcing the posting of Commentaries. They’ll be mentioned with Chapter updates but should be available the day before on Sundays.

If you’re interested feel free to check them out, otherwise enjoy the more story-focused chapters. It should look a lot cleaner without my giant Author’s Notes taking up the first page.

With alternate media out of the way, let’s focus on the progress we’ve made over the week.

Chapter 86 of Sealkeeper is done, as you probably know, despite being started later than I would have liked. On Friday evening before the stream I did get to work writing more for the Tatsuki oneshot (though who knows, it might become an entire spinoff depending on how things go.) which I continued working on Saturday morning before work.

My seven new pages (Just shy of 3k words as I write this) flowed pretty easily and it was incredibly refreshing to be able to write without worrying about all the things the main story has in play right now.

If I’m to be completely honest, I probably could have posted what I wrote back in February of last year (some 1600 words) and been satisfied with it. Not the best ending, certainly, but there was just a rightness to it that had this sense of hope for the future. It had me grinning at my own brilliance, which is always fun.

The Warlock of Winterhold didn’t see any progress and neither did any of the other projects I have on my list- which I really should write down soon – but with the next chapter done, the commentary for last week’s chapter, and the progress I made in the Tatsuki oneshot I’m pretty satisfied.

Just wish I had more time to work on all of this.

And speaking of time, I still haven’t done my final inspection of the next chapter yet and there are plenty of mistakes in this update I need to correct so i can post it. With that in mind we need to wrap this up.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten what you’ve really come for — Chapter 85’s teaser.

Mai takes some chances, we meet two of the next generation Wolves, Mikoto contemplates the thought processes of plants, and Gaara writes a letter to his Tou-sama.

And there you have it, the May 20th Update. I was going to keep it the May 19th Update as I started it on the 19th but seeing as it’s technically morning now I’ll just go ahead and change the name.

Now, I’ve got a lot more work to do before I can enjoy a shower and collapse into bed.

Until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid