In case anyone following this is interested, I finished "On Location" a couple of weeks ago. A complete version of it in .rtf format is available here.

What a long, strange trip it's been!

I started out writing "On Location" somewhere in July/August 2003 with much enthusiasm. It was a time when "Sabrina Online the Story", "Zig Zag the Story", "From the Wings", and "A Fox's Tale" were all being updated regularly, and numerous other SabrinaVerse stories were being proposed and developed. I had visions of it making a big enough impression on the community that others would want to write stories of their own that treated mine as canonical and use some of the original characters it introduced. My thinking at the time was that I'd keep at it on a regular basis and put out a chapter every 2-4 weeks and get the whole story done and posted within about a year. And I got off to a decent start - the prologue and first two chapters were posted within a month and the third chapter a couple of months later.

Then I hit the long dry spell. It would be a year and nine months before I got chapter 4 out. I was still married at the time, and this was happening around the time my marriage was falling apart, in addition to various other issues and events. Indeed, one problem my then-wife had was that she didn't like my interest in furry. We shared a single family computer at the time, and one day after I left for work following one of our discussions on this particular conflict, she took it upon herself to delete some of the mail folders where I kept my furry-related correspondence, including one where I had saved all the emails related to "On Location", which included ideas, suggestions, and other backstory information others had sent to me.

Once that dry spell ended, I got chapters out at sporadic intervals, ranging from 5 to 13 months, over the next five and a half years, and was up to chapter 12 in early 2011. I was not happy with the pace of the writing, and I saw various forum threads bemoaning the fact that it's hard for a reader to reacquaint himself with the plot of a story when the time interval between chapters is too long. Some expressed the fear that this would become yet another work that would end up being abandoned incomplete, as is all too common on the internet and has happened to a couple of other SabrinaVerse stories. I was determined not to let that happen to "On Location". For one thing, I never lost interest in the story - I still often ran through ideas and plotlines in my head during some of my spare moments. For another, it helped that I had a definite endpoint for the story in mind (some of the other stories seem to be ongoing serials). I made various attempts to get more consistent about writing the story regularly, most of which proved to be false starts, and after a while I was feeling really down about my (in)ability to write material at a reasonable pace. It was when I took a writing sabbatical in September/October 2011 that I finally succeeded.

The biggest problem I'd run into over the previous years was that I'd lost my momentum, and each time I came back to it to write another chapter I had to reacquaint myself with where I was, where I was headed, what I was thinking, what I had already covered and what I needed to cover in the next chapter. It's difficult to keep that sort of thing in your head over a long period of time. While I was still able to write the main scenes properly, some of the underlying themes and threads I'd hoped to convey got lost, as those can be the more difficult parts to sustain and recover when you're only pulling out the story once every few months to write another chapter. I don't recommend it, and I shall never write that way again. It works much better when you keep at the story and stay with it. There were also things I wished I could change in earlier chapters but didn't like the idea of retconning stuff I'd already posted if I could work around it. For that reason I shall most likely in the future stick with writing out a story fully, at least an early draft of it, before posting any parts of it.

Now, about the story. It's a story about Clarence and Wanda. Cindy's in the picture too, or at least never far from it, but mostly Clarence and Wanda. I liked the encounters they'd had in Sabrina Online the Story, even though they seemed to be sporadic with Clarence mostly avoiding Wanda, a situation that could perhaps continue indefinitely. Thus I became fascinated with the notion of throwing them together where they're bound to see each other quite a bit, enough to go well beyond the occasional awkward encounter at Double Z Studios. It would essentially force them to work out where they really stood with one another, and in the end move beyond that to understand themselves and each other better in the process. And it was from this notion that "On Location" came about.

There are things about the story I'd do differently if I could do it over again. They say that in a story, everything should be there for a reason and to help advance the story. I had started out with each chapter being one day of the story, and as I soon discovered, one of the drawbacks of that approach was that I needed enough material for each day to produce a decent length chapter. On one or two occasions I had to invent scenes that probably weren't really needed in order to fill out a chapter to a decent length (no, I'm not going to say which ones; if you can't tell then I must have done something right). I'd gotten into the habit of including a "breakfast chat" in each chapter, intended to better acquaint the reader with some of the supporting characters, and some of those became slice-of-life material that served little other purpose. There were a number of places where I provided considerable detail on the story within the story, meaning "The Wild Southern Rose", in the belief that readers would find this worthy of inclusion. What's presented is not the whole story - there are plenty of bits filmed on sets back at Double Z Studios, and which are not detailed in "On Location" (often because they're being filmed someplace other than where Clarence is) - but I wanted to give readers a general idea of the overall story arc, at least if they have some ability to mentally rearrange scenes being filmed out of sequence. Much of this isn't strictly necessary to tell the narrative of what happens with Clarence, Wanda, and the other crew. I've never really gotten any feedback one way or the other on whether these bits made the story more enjoyable.

I'm happy with how well some of the original characters were developed, including Vernon Procyon, Nathan Fenicus, Nancy David, Martin Lupina, and Jennifer Ironne. Also Gypsy Coyote, who is actually James Bruner's character. With others I'm less satisfied and feel I could have done better job, such as Miranda Civet, Clint Aardwulf, and Aaron the Bobcat. Initially I presumed that there were about six to twelve additional cast crew than were ever introduced in the story - for example, Rose's father undoubtedly makes appearances in "Wild Southern Rose" but I neglected to include him in any scene in "On Location" (including a couple where he almost certainly should have been present). There would also be more handyman/support crew types like Clarence and Vernon. Early on I had intended to give names and personalities to more of these players, but what ended up happening was that I'd fall back on the same ones I'd used before - I'd have Vern working with Clarence instead of one of these faceless other guys. One could argue that that makes sense from a management perspective - if the two of them work together well, keep giving them the same crew assignments. I could have explored some of these characters better if I'd kept up writing more regularly and consistently. Remember what I said about having reacquaint myself with the story after months away from it? These are the kinds of threads and deeper layers that get lost when the writing is as sporadic as it was for so long.

I had also hoped to include more of the clique, but after a couple of appearances in early chapters there just didn't seem to be any reason to include them in the story. For a while in the middle chapters it was even an effort to keep Cindy in the picture, though later in the story she re-emerged as a more prominent character. Sabrina was a pleasure to include. She didn't need to appear often but when she did it was always a natural fit. I had information from Cateagle on some other events going on with Lee and Debbye that I had intended to at least include brief references to, but I lost track of that information (it may have been in the notes that were deleted). Josh Fox appears in the Prologue but by the time I wrote the later chapters, his player/author hadn't been seen on any of the forums in a long time and appears to have abandoned any interest in SabrinaVerse or the community.

So it's done at last, and according to Microsoft Word, the final full version weighs in at about 82,600 words (counting the front matter only once); that's enough to make my longest written work to date, though it only beats out my previous longest work by a couple thousand words. It almost certainly has flaws that a more serious writing critic would trounce on, even some of the same sort of things I'd bring up if I were asked to critique a similar work. I had more than enough stumbles and delays getting this story produced; nevertheless it is one I am proud of, and am happy to have put out there for all who enjoy the world of Sabrina and Zig Zag.

The last full chapter of On Location went up on The Raccoon's Bookshelf last night. I'm still working on an Epilogue that will go up in probably two weeks. The server where my personal webpage is located has been down for a few days so I haven't been able to post it there yet, but it will go there too once the site comes back up. I've also converted all of the chapters completed to date into .rtf format and will be posting those one per day to my Fur Affinity account.

I've posted Chapter 16 of On Location to my website. It is also available from The Raccoon's Bookshelf.

There is only one more chapter remaining to be posted, plus an epilogue. I hope to get it out in two weeks but I'm struggling a bit with a couple of scenes from the final chapter, and if it takes me a little longer to get it right then so be it.

I've just posted another chapter of On Location to my website. Actually I posted a chapter two weeks ago and didn't announce it here. The second most recent chapter has been on The Raccoon's Bookshelf for two weeks, and the latest one just went up this evening. After this, only two more chapters and an epilogue to go, and the story will be finished!

For the last two and a half weeks I've put some of my spare time activities on hold while I buckle down on a writing project.

It's a SabrinaVerse story entitled On Location. I started it in 2003 with great enthusiasm, and got three or four chapters out in the first three months or so. But after that, work on the story slowed to a crawl as it got crowded out by other concerns in my life. I got separated and divorced during that time and you'd think that would mean more time to work on the story, but somehow it didn't happen. I never lost interest in the story, and I had scene ideas for later chapters I was really looking forward to getting out. But for long stretches it was difficult to get my mind back into writing, and there were parts I had to wrestle with to get to come out well. I was only getting a chapter out every few months, in one case over a year, but I was determined not to let it become one of those stories that gets abandoned partway through.

I was very unhappy with the pace, so a couple of months ago I made a decision to set a time when I would devote as much of my spare time as I reasonably could to working on it until it was finished, and that time started earlier this month. It was afraid it would be drudgery, but once I forced myself to make it my main focus, the story and the characters came alive for me, and it's been a pleasure to get immersed in them. I'm making great progress, and have completed the first draft of about two-thirds of the remaining story. Some of the scenes have been in my head and my summary outline practically since I started on the story eight years ago and it feels great to have them committed to words at last.

The most recent chapter (which was mostly written but needed editing at the time I started this exercise) was posted to The Raccoon's Bookshelf website last Friday and to my personal webpage yesterday. There are four chapters to go in the story, and I expect to get them up at a pace of one every two weeks.

I found out a short time ago from one of my sons that one of the family dogs passed away yesterday. She was almost 16 years old so it was not unexpected. She stayed with my wife and kids after we separated more than 5 years ago and I haven't seen her much since then, but I still thought of her a lot.

One day in October 1995, only a couple of weeks after our previous dog had gotten loose and was hit and killed by a car, we went looking for another dog. One owner had a litter she was selling for not much, and there were two we couldn't resist. We ended up getting both. Dutchess and Tricksie, sisters and littermates, were our family dogs through three moves.

Tricksie became ill and passed away unexpectedly when she was nine years old.

Now Dutchess has gone to rejoin her sister. Another pet who was a part of my life has passed on. Dutch, you were loved by me until the end, even though I got to see very little of you for the last few years of your life.

Happy new year to all!

The lyric quiz I posted a week ago has been updated with the answers, and the replies have been unscreened. Two of the responses were external to LJ. One if them was my son RJ, who oddly enough didn't know any of the ones most frequently answered but knew a few that no one else had gotten up to that point. The other was via a PM on PlanetFurry.

Finally, if you saw my post yesterday about my bout of depression, I'm feeling much better today. My theory was that it was brought on by a sudden increase in my caffeine intake. One of my Christmas gifts were these single-use packets of coffee for an 8-cup pot. I had used two of these on consecutive days. Normally I make about 6 cups and it's nowhere near as strong as these so I was getting quite a bit more than I was used to.

What? Another lyric quiz from me? Yeah, whatever, I decided to pull together another one just in time for Christmas. I hope y'all are enjoying all your new presents and the time you get to spend with your families and loved ones. But if you happen to wander here to LJ, here is a lyric quiz to tease at your memory. As a couple of others have done lately, I'm going to keep all replies screened until I reveal the answers in a week or so.

( How many of these songs can you identify? )

This quiz is brought to you by The Lion's Share, where you might hear and are welcome to request any of the songs used in this quiz. The show airs twice a week on KWKAT PlanetFurry Radio. For more information on air times and how to tune in, visit The Lion's Share webpage.

( Answers behind cut )

I went through an exercise on another discussion forum where people were posting their 5 favorite albums. And for me it did prove to be quite an exercise. I started writing down albums I liked enough that I thought they deserved to be in my top 5, and ended up with 12 albums (and there are probably others I didn't think of). And that was despite limiting myself to only one album per artist, and thinking of about twice that many more that were just barely less favorites. After rather painfully paring the list down further, the 5 I ended up with (in no particular order) were:

1. Supertramp - Crime of the Century
   
2. Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus
   
3. Genesis - A Trick of the Tail
   
4. Dan Fogelberg - The Innocent Age
   
5. REO Speedwagon - Live: You Get What You Play For
   

Perhaps the most obvious thing about this list is that they are all 1981 or earlier releases. The list of a dozen had a couple more recent ones, with others on the 'barely less' list, but altogether, easily three fourths of the candidates were from 1985 or earlier.

Part of it is probably the rather common effect that whatever music a person enjoys listening to the most during their high school and college years tends to remain among their favorites for the rest of their lives. But another reason for it is that it's far less common for me these days to play and get familiar with whole albums. When you load a hundred albums into Winamp or your mp3 player and hit shuffle, you don't experience those albums in anything like the same way as when you play the CD (or the original vinyl LP) straight through from start to finish. For example, I'll compare my experience listening to Genesis to that of another progressive rock band that's a relatively recent discovery for me, Spock's Beard. I've listened to most of Genesis' studio albums through many times and have developed a pretty good sense of which ones I like the best, and of what the stylistic and personnel changes of the band were over time. With Spock's Beard, I've heard and enjoyed many of their tracks, but it's usually been on random shuffle with other artists mixed in, and I've never really developed that sense of what's on which album. In the case of Spock's Beard it's quite possible I'll do that eventually - I certainly intend to continue listening to new whole albums in this manner. Unfortunately I have many, many more albums in my music library than I'll ever have time to properly become familiar with in a way that I could give them a fair comparison with the albums I've known and loved for many years.

I don't remember having a favorite when I was younger than about 8th grade. From that point for about the next 3 years my favorite was Elton John. The range and timbre of Elton's voice has changed since then, but yes, I still enjoy his music, both from that era and his more recent work, even if there are other artists I would now call favorites. One of the things that got me hooked on The Lion King was the music, both his contribution and the awesome score work by Hans Zimmer.