Unit Tri3Ax's Blog, page 3

Progress Continues

Hello All,

After a couple week’s effort, I’ve finally finished the first draft of my upcoming story, tentatively titled Uniform Daze.  Care to take a stab as to what it’s going to feature?

Now begins the process of editing, and I’m hoping I can knuckle down and get it done in a couple days, in time to be released over the weekend.  I’ve discovered that I want to adhere to some stricter stylistic rules, so it may be slow going, but I’m hoping that the effort will pay off in the long term by leaving my stuff more readable, and looking a little less amateurish.  I think too much reading of un-edited work has left my ability to detect proper style a little off.

I’m up to four items released onto Amazon, which is good, although my resolution to do more editing is likely to extend to the rest of what I’m re-publishing, so pace there might slow.  It means I may take a little while longer to get back up to speed, but again I think it’ll be worth it.  I’m also going to give the four that are up a full re-edit, something I hadn’t planned to do, but I think that it would be best if all of my stories have a consistent formatting.  I won’t be changing any content, but I will probably redo my dialogue and punctuation a bit.

The plus side of re-editing older content is that I’ll be re-familiarized with it in case I get any inspiration to continue the stories.  Which I’m planning to do.

Overall, I’m thinking about the effort in terms of being a long term investment, and I think that people would rather read consistent, well formatted stories.  Since I’m going to start writing longer works, the plots contained within will also be elaborating.  I already considered plot development to be my strong suit, and I’d hate for poor mechanics to get in the way of things.

Regardless, I think that Uniform Daze can be ready to drop into the Amazon hopper hopefully sometime Saturday, although Sunday may end up being more likely.  It clocks in at 50,000 words, which puts it just into true Novel territory, which I’m very proud of.  I’m hoping that I can maintain a pace of one novel of this length a month.  Given that January is just now only half over, that’s a reasonable estimation of my pace.

I’ve already decided that I’m going to take another stab at writing the sequel to Proteus.  It’s been too long, and I have some really good ideas for how to make it work.  For whatever reason, during my first tenure as a writer, I had a hard time making that story work, but new ideas and some time away may have been just what I needed.

We’ll see how it goes.  Overall, I just wanted to keep the blog active, as part of showing that my return to active status is a bit more genuine than last time.  Last time, I wrote two short segments of Interface (which is on hold but not dead) clocking in at about ten thousand words total.  This time, I’m much, much further along, and my motivation is high and I anticipate continuing forward after the next release.

That’s all for my rambles for tonight.  Thank you all, as always, for your loyalty and patience as I attempt to find my stride.

Dusting Off, and New Format

Wow, hard to believe it’s been about a year since my last post.  I let things go for far, far too long.

As the title of the post says, I’ve decided that it’s time to end my hiatus, and return to a more active status as an author.  I could go into why the break ended up being so long, but there’s a lot there.  Suffice it to say, I had a lot of stuff to work out, but my desire to write has been really growing, so I’ve decided that it’s time to formally declare myself back on active status.

Also as the title of the post says, I’m going to be changing up my format a little bit.

First, I’m going to be going with an Amazon-only model.  Kindle Unlimited is just too good an approach for erotica.  A lot of authors have been saying that it’s been a really good change for them.  In order to enroll in the program, you have to be Amazon exclusive.  While this means that Smashwords customers will be out of luck, they represented a pretty small number, and I hope that they’ll understand, and possibly even try out going through Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Second, I’m going to abandon the serialized release model that I used in the past.  This is also part of the KU approach, longer novellas do much better, because of the way that they calculate value of a work.  In reality, most of my stories ended up forming a complete story arc anyway, so this is mostly an organizational change, although it should allow me to also evolve and develop stories with different pacing.  There were plenty of times where having to have erotic bits in each release hamstrung me with how the story got to play out.  I think this’ll be better, although it does mean that releases will be a bit further apart.

Third, I’m switching over completely to CG covers.  Checking out the news, it looks like there actually have been cases of models who have objected to how their pictures have been used, despite signing a release.  While the end result could end up either way, I don’t want to take that risk.  The technology has also made huge leaps in the last year, so I don’t think it’s going to hurt me all that much.  People don’t spend that much time looking at the cover, after all.

Anyway, time to wrap this up.  As of this moment, there are three titles up on Amazon, Proteus, On Call, and Crystal Rapture.  I’ll be working on getting the rest of my old library up over the next month or so.  I’m also working on something new in the background, and it’s coming along nicely.  I’m hoping that it’ll be out before too long, but a few weeks is still going to be the earliest.  Until then, keep an eye on both Amazon and here for more details as I post up my older stories, if you haven’t gotten a chance to check them out in the past.

Chapter 2 of Interface is up

True to my words, I’m pacing myself a bit more on releases, but it’s about time for the next one.  I actually had all the writing done weeks ago, but I wanted to have some more time to play around with the images.

Quick link to the story itself.

This was mostly because Daz3d, the software I use for my rendering, recently got iRay support, and it’s a pretty awesome package.  You may notice a slight difference in the way the images look this time compared to chapter one, and I’m not just talking about the fact that Becks’ hair is so much longer now that she’s let it down (sorry, that’s just life in 3D art world.. nobody has actually made a set of 5 hairs that are all the same head in different styles, it’s like each one was expected to be a completely different person, it’s annoying).

Anyway, I’ve spent a few weeks getting comfortable with iRay rendering, and frankly it’s kind of awesome.  The light is just so much more detailing, so I’ll probably continue with that for the time being.  Some part of me is really tempted to make chapter 3 a full comic book, just so I can up the amount I get to play around.

We’ll see.  One way or another, I plan to release more of this story, we’ll see what the format is when we get there.

New Release

So, there’s two words I haven’t put together in like, a year.  After a long, long break, I’ve finally released something new.  I’ve decided to start a new project, rather than just picking up one of my old ones (although some of the old ones should continue, at some point).  It’s also completely free, and I’ll be hosting it here.

The story is called Interface, and it’s got a lot of my favorite (and most prevalent, some might say) elements, a Mind Control chair, human programming, and cute girls being forced to wear sexy clothing.  Good stuff.  Like most of my stories, it’s not just all sex all the time, so fair warning, there’s none in the first Chapter.  This one serves more to introduce characters and what’s going on, but I always think that serves to make it even better once they get down to business.

Interface – Chapter 1

As mentioned before, I’ve also started making pictures of events in the story, but they’re not essential to enjoy the plot.  Rather, I think they help serve to convey what I’m imagining, and also I think many of them are sexy as hell.  They also help me maintain focus, and I’m hoping that it’s a good balance between just a plain old text story, and a true comic (which as I mentioned, don’t have the time to do regularly).

Each chapter should have a number of images conveying significant plot points, and I may also put up some “promo” images as well, depending on the chapter and my mood.  The first one doesn’t have anything that I’d consider a good promo image, but starting with Chapter 2 I’m making a few just as I compile things in my rendering setup.  Chapter 2 will hopefully post this week.

As always, please feel free to either leave a comment, or send me an email at Tri3Ax@gmail.com.  I love hearing from people.

Getting The Itch

So, first and foremost, I am not dead.  Just something to get out of the way.

As I’m sure anybody reading this can imagine, I got burnt out and needed to take a break.  Still not completely back, but I’ve been feeling a major creative itch lately, and I think I’m going to start writing again.  No guarantees about what, and I’ll probably be a lot less hard core about things than before.

I’ve also decided, at least for now, that I’m not going to release through any sales outlets.  There’s a number of reasons, but putting yourself out there kinda sucks, and also having to constantly dread Amazon’s draconian rules schizophrenia definitely sucks.  Good news though is that means anything would be posted up here directly.  Also means I may post partial/incomplete stuff, which I suppose is a mixed blessing.

Regardless, here will be the best place to find things.  I’m also thinking about posting my old stuff as well, so keep eyes peeled for that.

One other thing, as some of you who were reading right before I bowed out for a bit know, I really enjoy 3D art. Some part of me wants to do comics, but I just don’t have the time.  For the time I spend making one comic release, I could do three or four novels.  But I really like having images to go with my stories, so I think I might just start doing that, rendering a few scenes per chapter, and just linking them on the story page.

We’ll see how things play out.  The short of it is that I’m thinking about writing again.

Quiet Month

As many of you can tell, September has been a bit of a quiet month for me.  Amazon was a little bumpy from what I heard, but apparently it’s stabilized out.  I’m thinking I’ll probably go ahead and put my stuff back up, but not until I’ve created new covers for anything that used stock photos.  Thinking that’s probably for the best, all things considered.

One of the things that still stands is that if I ever get a formal warning from Amazon, I’ll have to call it quits. Nothing from them so far, so hopefully my pulling my catalogue was just unneeded panic.  A few stories may get pruned out completely, mostly the really old stuff that wasn’t selling at all.  Regardless, things should trickle back up over the next couple weeks as I have time to redo covers etc.

Another thing I’ll mention is that I’ve come to enjoy the free time from taking a couple months off of writing, although in other ways it’s recharged me and left me with ideas.  Either way, I’m probably not going to put as much focus on this writing as I did before, since I just don’t have the time or energy.  There should be releases, but they’ll be much further between.

Also, I’ve gotten a few ideas for some more mainstream appropriate stories, and I want to explore my options.  We’ll see, if I put out a “real” novel and it bombs miserably, you’ll probably be seeing a lot more erotica.

Just a quick “I’m alive” update today, and saying that I do plan to put some stuff back up, but we’ll see.  Writing adds some stress that I don’t really need right now, so if things start to get zany with Amazon again, who knows.  However, based on what I’m hearing, pulling everything might have been an overreaction.

Until next time.

Update – Amazon Takedown and Still around

So, I realize it’s been a little while since I’ve been active.  I’m afraid the day job has just been crazy, so I haven’t had much time for writing.

I have some time to myself in the near future, so I had planned on getting some writing done.  The problem is that I’ve just found out that Amazon is apparently doing some more serious crackdown on their Erotica (Same Shit, Different Day, no?)  Anyway, as a preventative, I’m going to be pulling pretty much everything.

For now, my stuff is still up on Smashwords, and I’m going to look into alternative outlets, as well as once again exploring the possibility of selling something directly on this site (there’s always challenges).  At any rate, if you DO intend/want to follow my stories in the future, please sign up and follow the blog.  I’m not sure how much longer information will be available on my author page on Amazon.

Hope to have more next week, including the possibility of a release.

New Release (08/05/2014)

So, first real new release announcement on the new site.  Hopefully people have signed up to get email announcements, if they were so inclined.

Mind’s Vault – Friends and Enemies   Amazon / Smashwords

 

Greg Walker’s story continues in part five of Mind’s Vault.  Things have gotten pretty routine for our mind controlling protagonist, and he’s enjoying the attention of his three loving companions.  A snap decision to enjoy an evening out could, however, have some unintended consequences.  After all, did anybody really expect Greg to be able to keep all of this a secret forever?

As a side note, I really like the way Monica turned out in this cover, her expression speaks loads to the fact that she’s under a conform to clothing command.

 

More to come, the next two parts of Mind’s Vault will actually be told from the viewpoint of a new character.  Unlike with On Call and Remote control, I think the POV will always “snap back” to Greg, with other characters only allowed a small arc but never being promoted to main characters.  I think that’s part of the problem I’m running into now with Power Plays, there’s 4 points of view and it gets confusing and jumbled.

Other than that, not a lot going on.  Feel free to check out the second chapter of Doctor Sexton’s Toys, which is now up.  I’ll probably drop the depths section in the near future, since that’s going to become a traditional novel.   I’m enjoying the 3D art, but let’s face it, Depths is probably something I can sell, and for now I can’t sell the 3D stuff.

As always, please feel free to drop me a line with any feedback, and until next time, enjoy.

Updates

So, quite a few changes going on.

First, as many of you may have noticed, the fourth part of Mind’s Vault is up.  I highly recommend you check it out, as the story continues to be as awesome as I’d ever hoped.  There’s only one more chapter in this initial arc.

Amazon  /  Smashwords

Now, as many of you know, the great beast Amazon likes to stir every now and again, and remind everybody just how powerful they are.  It looks like they’re in the middle of another shift right now, with a focus on cracking down on non-consensual sexual content.  I’ll freely admit, some of my stuff is a little less than comfortable for some people, but my stuff is far from the most hard core.  Still, as a bit of a preventative, I may take down some of my stuff to just keep the eyes turned elsewhere.

I’m planning on finishing out MV, at least the first Arc.  The second arc actually featured some more subtle control, so it might still be ok.  In terms of other work, however, I’m going to be putting a pretty hard stop to anything questionable, and just focus on stories with a heavy focus on hypnosis and control, but a bit more obvious consent.  Stories like Hypnotic Condition (where he never touched her until she was comfortable with it) or Deepening Desires.

In order to keep my material production up, I’m going to scrap the comic version of depths (I may release the first bit as a bonus) and turn it into a normal ebook.  That way, I should be able to maintain publishing without worrying about Amazon’s retaliation.

I may re-write Spellbound to be more Amazon friendly, so that I can continue that storyline, and just have things be toned down a bit.  I’m not sure.  Amazon’s arbitrary enforcement can lead to some major headaches when it comes to making stuff that’s hot and close to the line.  Who knows, maybe I’ll try JUST releasing something on Smashwords, and see what happens.

A final thing.  Some of you may have already noticed a new link up at the top of my blog, for Tri3Ax EMC Comics.  Making depths gave me the itch to produce some harder, more content heavy EMC comics.  Unfortunately, I can’t release them commercially, since pretty much no payment provider will take them (at least without a huge up-front and annual investment on my part, and I don’t make enough to bother).  So I’ve decided to release them for free.

If you like them, feel free to leave a comment, and if you want to show your support, either buy an eBook you weren’t sure about, or gift certs to Amazon (oh the irony), Daz3d, or Renderosity are all always appreciated.

Site Modifications

Most of you should quickly notice the first modification made to the site, which is that I installed a plugin that requires age verification.  Given the stuff I deal with, it’s probably a good idea, and it’s mostly just to cover my ass.  It should only ask you to verify once a month.

I’ve also gone ahead and installed another plugin that flags my blog as containing non child-friendly content, which means that content filters should kick in for it.  I’m doing this, again, mostly to cover my ass.  If you’re a normal person browsing, you shouldn’t notice a thing.

Part of why I’m doing this is that I’m actually going to be posting some explicit content, so I figured I needed to cover myself a bit more.

For the time being, I’m going to hold off on trying to sell my ebooks etc. directly from my website.  It’s an idea I’ve toyed with, and there are a couple payment processors that will process payment for such content (I’ve spent a while checking) but there’s enough overhead that I’d rather not do it if I don’t have to.  I just want to make sure I have a backup in case Amazon decides to do another of their crazy random purges.

Now, on the comic front, I have two types of comics I’m working on presently. The first is depths, which is complete for 3 chapters, BUT I have to go back and re-render pretty much every scene to a higher resolution, because Kindle wants the page to be at least 1800×2880.  While this isn’t a huge problem, it takes time away from other things, so it’ll happen when it happens.

I plan to release depths on Kindle, if they’ll allow it.  I’m not 100%, but the sexual content should still be within their allowances.  If not, then I can fall back on Paypal or another processor.

However, I’ve recently been giving into temptation to make a comic that’s a little more hard core on the mind control and sexual content angles.  That one is outright going to be a no on Amazon, and most other payment processors it’ll be close enough to the thin line that I don’t really want to risk it.  As such, I’ve decided I’m not going to charge for it, for the time being.

The good news, however, is that I really want to post it somewhere for people to read, so I’m just going to post it here in it’s own section.  Unless I find out something amazing, it’ll probably be free.  I’ll try and make updates somewhat regular, but we’ll see.

Now, making this stuff isn’t free, so if you’d like to support it… buy a book.  It not only helps with my ratings as an author, it gets money to me, so yeah.

Anyway, expect to see something about my more explicit comic, Dr. Sexton’s Toys (do you see what I did there…) soon.  I’ll probably post the first chapter today, and then trickle out more a couple pages at a time (you know, to keep you schmucks coming).  Depths will be out when it’s out, and I’ll be trying on Amazon.  I want to release the first 3 chapters in a single go, to get to the hypnosis bits quicker, so it’ll probably take another week or two to re-tweak to higher resolution.

And of course, the writing will continue as time permits.  There’s one more Part to the first Arc of Mind’s Vault, but I’ll probably go into the second Arc almost immediately (since it’s currently popular).  Other things on the table are more Power Plays (although it honestly flopped, so I’m debating scrapping it, dunno if I screwed up or what), more Room Mates, or more Spell Bound.  Since Comics aren’t an option for Spell Bound, I’ll probably go with interior images writing for that one.