Whoo, boy!

Well, in the last month or so things have been cah-RAY-zee for me.

About 25 days ago I turned in my two week's notice at my job at the hotel. I'd just, well, I'd had enough of everything, and of being stuck where I was, and so I decided to push the issue and set myself a date to move back home -- Monday, the fifth of September.

Thinking ahead, I decided to go ahead and fill out an application or two online ahead of time so I'd already have some prospects brewing before the end of my time at the hotel.

This is where things got weird.

First of all, I want to do something I only see authors rarely do -- thank all my readers for their comments.

When I first started here, I felt lucky to get three or four comments on any story or story part I posted. And you know what? I still do. Seeing that people like my work enough to responds -- and often into the double-digits of comments, no less -- always makes me feel amazing. To know that my work has affected someone enough that they feel the need to let me know about it -- it's a powerful thing, and one I hope I never stop appreciating, because every comment is special.

So. Switcheroo and related characters.

I know some people have been less than happy with how little description I've actually given most of them in the story. First of all, I apologize for that.

However, to help with things, I have a little bonus for you!

Here are a handful of pictures of the Switcheroo cast I've drawn over the last few days. I'll add more posts like this as I get more characters done.

Keep in mind I'm not what you'd call the greatest artist, so bear with me on these:

In the last twenty-four hours I have managed two pages of "Princess For Hire" and three pages of "Switcheroo," giving me a total of... three pages of "Princess for Hire" and three pages of "Switcheroo" ready for the next postings! Almost there!

Seriously, though. I'll try to have the next part of each story out by the middle of next week. In the words of the great Ellen Hayes, I am finally entering a period of not-suck that means my writing is progressing again.

Who'da thunk rereading your own stuff would help?

Anyhow, I'm off to write!

Melanie E.

If one good thing has come from my Year O' Challenges, so far it seems to be Henry Harrelson's Custom Fit Boots.

I've been following the comments on all the stories, and I've seen that a number of people seem quite interested in seeing more stories in this particular universe.

I wasn't going to say anything, but...

It has recently come to my attention that someone has been cross posting their entries to my Ultimate Writer's Challenge at other sites. While I wouldn't do anything to stop this (even if I could,) I would like to ask that if you're going to do this you wait at least until the challenge is over.

Part of the entire point of the challenge is to draw authors out into posting, and readers into responding. By cross-posting stories to other sites, that somewhat undermines the second goal by splitting the potential readers between sites.

Alright, so here's the question.

I'm working on both PFH Book 2 right now and Switcheroo heavily, with another few projects getting worked on here and there. I'm not going to make any changes to the way I'm doing PFH, since it's into the second book already, but I am thinking about making a subtle change in how I do postings of Switcheroo. Specifically, I was thinking about going from two chapters per post to one, so that I could potentially post more often.

Peter The Duck