Some changes

I've largely left this story fallow for most of the past year. I've had little inspiration to work on it, little motivation.

That's largely changed. I've mentioned before I've used this story as a bit of personal therapy, doing some exploration of my real life dark side and asking the questions: Why do I do what I do? Why I am the person that I am? What if I stripped away my moral code? And so forth.

Those questions are becoming important to me again. In large part because I'm considering opening this story up to people I've previously hid it from.

I know, at best, only a handful of people in this great big world have ever stumbled onto this blog. And those handful don't know me from Adam. I'm just some guy out there who writes a kick-ass vampire story based on his VTM campaign and his own personal demons. But, to let people who actually know me in real life into this world is another thing entirely. To let them see my darker impulses, well, that's a little scary.

But it may be necessary for reasons I won't go into here.

Either way, I'v decided to change things up as part of my rededication to finishing the story line. I've dumped most of the references to PbN2012, because I have no idea if I'll ever get to that part of the story and so I'm not going to pretend anymore that's a realistic goal. What I really want now is to just finish PbN1999, which I think I can do.

I've also changed the background image (beautiful picture of the Philly skyline at night I found via Google search. I've given credit to the artist in the blog intro.) I've also changed the quote that introduces the story. This one fits better Michael's character and the goal of why I'm writing this.

We'll see what happens from here.

Some quick commentary...

I've got three things I want to post tonight (the first already went up: Deb's new portrait). But I also want to let you know what's going on with PbN. I posted the first chapter a little while back and I'm now well into chapter 5 of the new story. I'm going in order, which is not always how I do this.

I was originally going to treat Philadelphia by Night 1999 as a single stand-alone "act." But as I've been planning out the plot in greater detail, it's become clear to me that I'm really dealing with a multi-act story here. So I'm going to revamp a few things here on the website to reflect that. Don't worry too much. This is more bookkeeping on my end than anything else.

Chapter Two goes up next, so you'll have that to chew over.

Cleaning Up Part Two

Yeah, I know. I haven't posted in ages.

But there are a couple of things you should know...

1) The story draft on my computer is always a good five or six chapters ahead of where the story is online, so I'm almost done completely with what I'm calling "Virginia by Night" or "Roanoke by Night." That is to say, all the pre-Philadelphia material to Michael's story.

2) I tend to work in spurts. I'll go weeks without touching the manuscript and then I'll have days like today where I spend a good ten to twelve hours straight doing nothing but writing. That's like what real authors do when working on a manuscript. I do this as a hobby, so those moments when they come are pretty intense.

Anyhow, you get to see the fruits of my labor immediately, since nearly all of those hours was spend doing what I said I was doing in my last "Cleaning Up" post. I've revamped a ton of material in the Prologue, Act One, and Act Two. Some of this was to clarify world-building material like I said I would do last time. Some of it was to plant tiny seeds of plot that will grow bigger in later Acts and Chapters. Still others was to clean up language and grammar errors that I missed before. It was a lot of work, but worth it I believe. The story is really turning into what I had hoped it would be.

Oh, and I dumped the music playing sidebar. It was annoying me.

Cleaning up

I've been working on chapters for Act Four in what little spare time I have. One of the things that keeps popping up is that I have to explain some aspect of vampire society, some element of the VTR universe, and it occurred to me that I shouldn't be introducing standard elements of the universe that late in the story.

So I'm going back through Act One and making some edits to put these explanations where they belong in the context of Michael's own introduction to his new world. Along the way, I'm finding a number of plot holes and errors that needed correcting (For instance, Andreas at one point tells Michael the Mad Bishop is from Richmond instead of Lynchburg.)

So, if you've already read Act One, there are a few changes here and there. Hopefully the story will flow a little more smoothly now.

New side bar

I recently added a new Hypster song list to the Philly by Night page. Most of the songs listed there are staples of either Sirius "Alt Nation" or "First Wave." The chapter title songs are also on there, including those chapters I've not yet finished or published. So enjoy.