Yo team
I hope the new year is treating you well, hopefully the weather gets a bit warmer soon!
2016 was a good year for Chaos Nova. Thanks to BitViper, Kay and Lore, we've got a functioning website which allows us to share news, post story samples, eventually we'll have a shop and it serves as a friendly, easy-to-direct-to location.
We also have our Patreon supporters to thank for keeping the site running. It isn't cheap, but the additional support we receive certainly makes it much easier so massive thanks to Roo and Lore for that. We literally couldn't do this without you.
Work has also been progressing nicely on Seeker. It was an absolute pleasure to host Lore over Christmas, and we managed to get a sizable amount of work done. This included talking through a few chapters and working out replacements for previously written stuff that has changed since editing began. We went back through the Part 1 chapters too, and read them out, highlighting continuity errors and clunky text. As a sort of 'Patreon reward' I made the 'Behind the scenes' recordings available to our supporters, they range from chapters 1 to 9, with chapters 2 and 9 available as videos as part of the Chaos Nova Story Marathon we're running to support Kieyoties fund-raiser. If you haven't seen it yet, please check out https://www.gofundme.com/blueberrycreekrecovery and while we'd love you to contribute, boosting the signal by sharing the link is also massively appreciated.
We also recorded a ton of other stories for the marathon, and they can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_z_K_bCWNq2ss5wNOkk-PR-6A4h1FWVR
I also took part in a couple of creative writing courses which I feel have helped improve my craft. This, along with some 'friendly encouragement' from Lore has put a lot of things into perspective. I realise now that back in the day, when it was just Kieyo and myself, or Roo and Cluster, we were writing just for fun, like there was no end goal and we just wanted to see where our characters would take us, and that was important, still is, and it was important that we recently made the specific distinction between Forum and Book Canon very clear, we've got specific goals in mind now. One example of this is the excellent section Kieyo has set up for story prompts, the goal of this section is to just have fun, throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks. If, over time, the stories could work in book canon with some minor tweaks then awesome, but we're not constrained by any rules here. On the other hand, elsewhere in places like Google Drive, I've been working on Character directories, Lore has been compiling her world-building notes and between us we've worked through a lot of material from the past. Picking up Trash is an entirely different beast now because we've worked out some background stuff. The people we run into in Seeker like our friendly Trelasi 'Bora Ranger' and the places we visit like the Harper compound, just feel more real because of the work being put into the Book Canon. In the forum, I've started a thread for the discussion of our next project, The Short Story compilation, and elsewhere we're working through details of certain worlds to try and align some of the Forum and Book canon so the basic building blocks are essentially the same.
So what does the future have in store for Chaos Nova? Or ChaosNova as the legal team are safely calling it. Well in terms of the 'company' we're approaching the conclusion of Seeker in the coming months. We're gonna remove Seeker - Part 1 from Amazon, and upload Seeker - Part 2, as well as Seeker (Complete Edition). We don't plan to release Seeker in paperback unless we can work out a better deal with the printers. Print on demand via FeedARead does not make economical sense in the long run, and we would most likely be better ordering in bulk from a no-thrills printer we can deal with on a more personal level.
From Seeker, the next project is our first short story collection. We're looking at roughly 12 short stories set in the 'Early days' of Chaos Nova, the Split Personality and Seeker timeline to be more precise.
By this time, our website shop will be up and running, this will allow us to sell directly without the need for Amazon or the like. While Amazon does have it's advantages such as a massive audience and easiness of purchasing things, it's important that we make the transition. With an active shop, it might finally be time to broach the idea of merchandise. I know a few Novakians have some ideas on this.
After the compilation of short stories, my focus will turn to the Split Personality line of stories. SP1 will be receiving a bit of a tidy up, and the first draft of SP2 will be undergoing much scrutiny before work can begin in earnest.
I don't see SP2 being an easy task, and will most likely take a substantial amount of time before you hear of it again. I hope to have a sample chapter or two ready by the end of the year, but the usual caveat of 'not final work' will apply.
Outside of that, we have the YouTube side of our little community as well. We did some good with Quake-A-Thon, and I'm sufficiently 'relaxed' again to start looking into more charity gigs. Unfortunately my internet doesn't allow me to stream much gameplay, however Google Hangouts should work fine. Upcoming events won't be 4-Day events like QAT, but rather a couple of hours every few weeks for a charity we can all agree on.
Another element I'd love to bring back is the Podcast. I really enjoyed working on it with the squad although I think some changes are in order. We'll need to discuss the particulars, but I hope 2017 sees the return of the ChaosCast. (Snappy, I think we can use that!)
So that's the plan. Finish Seeker, Release. Work on Short Stories, Release. Clean up SP1, Re-release, while working on SP2, while at the same time, developing the website, running charity hangouts and bringing back the Podcast. When I put it like that, it almost sounds easy
Looking forward to an awesome 2017
Much love to you all!
Knux
I hope the new year is treating you well, hopefully the weather gets a bit warmer soon!
2016 was a good year for Chaos Nova. Thanks to BitViper, Kay and Lore, we've got a functioning website which allows us to share news, post story samples, eventually we'll have a shop and it serves as a friendly, easy-to-direct-to location.
We also have our Patreon supporters to thank for keeping the site running. It isn't cheap, but the additional support we receive certainly makes it much easier so massive thanks to Roo and Lore for that. We literally couldn't do this without you.
Work has also been progressing nicely on Seeker. It was an absolute pleasure to host Lore over Christmas, and we managed to get a sizable amount of work done. This included talking through a few chapters and working out replacements for previously written stuff that has changed since editing began. We went back through the Part 1 chapters too, and read them out, highlighting continuity errors and clunky text. As a sort of 'Patreon reward' I made the 'Behind the scenes' recordings available to our supporters, they range from chapters 1 to 9, with chapters 2 and 9 available as videos as part of the Chaos Nova Story Marathon we're running to support Kieyoties fund-raiser. If you haven't seen it yet, please check out https://www.gofundme.com/blueberrycreekrecovery and while we'd love you to contribute, boosting the signal by sharing the link is also massively appreciated.
We also recorded a ton of other stories for the marathon, and they can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_z_K_bCWNq2ss5wNOkk-PR-6A4h1FWVR
I also took part in a couple of creative writing courses which I feel have helped improve my craft. This, along with some 'friendly encouragement' from Lore has put a lot of things into perspective. I realise now that back in the day, when it was just Kieyo and myself, or Roo and Cluster, we were writing just for fun, like there was no end goal and we just wanted to see where our characters would take us, and that was important, still is, and it was important that we recently made the specific distinction between Forum and Book Canon very clear, we've got specific goals in mind now. One example of this is the excellent section Kieyo has set up for story prompts, the goal of this section is to just have fun, throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks. If, over time, the stories could work in book canon with some minor tweaks then awesome, but we're not constrained by any rules here. On the other hand, elsewhere in places like Google Drive, I've been working on Character directories, Lore has been compiling her world-building notes and between us we've worked through a lot of material from the past. Picking up Trash is an entirely different beast now because we've worked out some background stuff. The people we run into in Seeker like our friendly Trelasi 'Bora Ranger' and the places we visit like the Harper compound, just feel more real because of the work being put into the Book Canon. In the forum, I've started a thread for the discussion of our next project, The Short Story compilation, and elsewhere we're working through details of certain worlds to try and align some of the Forum and Book canon so the basic building blocks are essentially the same.
So what does the future have in store for Chaos Nova? Or ChaosNova as the legal team are safely calling it. Well in terms of the 'company' we're approaching the conclusion of Seeker in the coming months. We're gonna remove Seeker - Part 1 from Amazon, and upload Seeker - Part 2, as well as Seeker (Complete Edition). We don't plan to release Seeker in paperback unless we can work out a better deal with the printers. Print on demand via FeedARead does not make economical sense in the long run, and we would most likely be better ordering in bulk from a no-thrills printer we can deal with on a more personal level.
From Seeker, the next project is our first short story collection. We're looking at roughly 12 short stories set in the 'Early days' of Chaos Nova, the Split Personality and Seeker timeline to be more precise.
By this time, our website shop will be up and running, this will allow us to sell directly without the need for Amazon or the like. While Amazon does have it's advantages such as a massive audience and easiness of purchasing things, it's important that we make the transition. With an active shop, it might finally be time to broach the idea of merchandise. I know a few Novakians have some ideas on this.
After the compilation of short stories, my focus will turn to the Split Personality line of stories. SP1 will be receiving a bit of a tidy up, and the first draft of SP2 will be undergoing much scrutiny before work can begin in earnest.
I don't see SP2 being an easy task, and will most likely take a substantial amount of time before you hear of it again. I hope to have a sample chapter or two ready by the end of the year, but the usual caveat of 'not final work' will apply.
Outside of that, we have the YouTube side of our little community as well. We did some good with Quake-A-Thon, and I'm sufficiently 'relaxed' again to start looking into more charity gigs. Unfortunately my internet doesn't allow me to stream much gameplay, however Google Hangouts should work fine. Upcoming events won't be 4-Day events like QAT, but rather a couple of hours every few weeks for a charity we can all agree on.
Another element I'd love to bring back is the Podcast. I really enjoyed working on it with the squad although I think some changes are in order. We'll need to discuss the particulars, but I hope 2017 sees the return of the ChaosCast. (Snappy, I think we can use that!)
So that's the plan. Finish Seeker, Release. Work on Short Stories, Release. Clean up SP1, Re-release, while working on SP2, while at the same time, developing the website, running charity hangouts and bringing back the Podcast. When I put it like that, it almost sounds easy
Looking forward to an awesome 2017
Much love to you all!
Knux