ktula

I've been meaning to do this blog post for a while, but kept putting it off. Anyways, that twitter meme has got me deep in my WiPs looking for non-spoilery or lightly-spoilery excerpts from my WiPs, and I figured I really definitely should do this post now, lol.

So here's the state of things, as it were!

(If you're looking for the state of things in comparison with my last post, the last one is over here!)

I guess I should talk about wordcount first. Here's how we're shaking out so far--and please note that the numbers below contain both fanfic and potentially sale-able work, so the math won't add up:

January - 29k
February - 34.7k
March - 31k
April - 17.9k so far

It's been a bit of a rough April for me in comparison to the other months - lots of days I don't write at all, lots of days I'm sub-1000 words, which I try not to be, but it is what it is. I'm still on par for my yearly goal, so I'm just letting the months do what they like, haha. There's been some personal stuff going on this month which is impacting this a bit, and there's nothing I can do there except wait it out, so waiting it out it is! (That makes it sound very dire, lolsob. It's not dire. I just hate waiting.)

Anyways, on with the show. Here's the list of WiPs I've got, in the approximate order that I'm working on them in! As always, I take questions and comments and whatever, I'd be more than happy to chat about this.

1. Starkiller (482):  This one is done, and in the process of being posted! The Phasma-POV chapter just went up last week, and the Mitaka-POV chapter is going up this week. It's been a quietly-but-happily-received piece, and I'm really delighted for that--I knew this one was a hard sell going into it, because a) it's not kylux, b) it happens three-to-sixish-years before the kylux, c) it's an obscure AU, and d) there's Hitaka in it, but it's neither a shippy fic nor a smut fic.

2. Reach Out and Touch Faith (6461): Um, yeah. This one is done too? It's the weirdest feeling, too, because this has been such a big project, and such an emotionally intense undertaking in a lot of ways, and forautumn  and I have pretty much put a pin in it. I'm so fucking proud of this piece, and I'm extremely excited to start posting again in May. 

3. old man a/b/o: I'm moving this one up on the priority list, because I was reading through it looking for excerpts for the WIP meme, and this is so close to being done that I think I could finish it if I just spent some focused time on it, it's just that I actually need to spend that focused time on it, you know? So I'm trying to make this one a priority as I finish up everything else.

4. DTD one-shot (the earring fic): This one is actually pretty close to completion as well, I think. I basically just have to finish off the plot bits, and then write some soft adorable sex to tie off the piece, so this, also, just needs a little bit of focused work, and then I can gently shove that out the door and move forward. It's 3k right now, and I'm guessing it'll probably be around six or seven when I'm done, so yeah, there's not too much left!

5. clydeland sequel: I haven't even started this yet, and only have the vaguest concept for it, but I was recently reminded that adjacents month is in May! So I want to give this a shot and see if I can get something out during May just because that seems like it's definitely going to be the month for it.

6. techienician fic with deadsy : We're going to try to put this one out in May as well! We reviewed what we have, and I think we're just going to sketch out the rest of the scenes, and then try to get the rest of it down and go from there. So hopefully this works out as well.

7. ancestry dot com: This one is a cleaned up twitter fic thread that I'm expanding and smoothing out slightly. It's nothing major, but I still would like to get it done at some point this year. It's a Kylo-POV fic, centered around that time he tried to help his adopted sister Rey find her bio family, only to realize that he definitely, one hundred percent, banged the shit out of her brother, and then immediately got ghosted, even though the redhead claimed Kylo's dick was the best dick he'd ever had.

8. light side noir au: This also used to be a twitter fic! But it got to the point where I wanted to do more with the second half of the fic than what twitter would allow, so I shelved it until I can go back and do the second half of it. This is going to be a weird one--the concept for this is essentially that Ben Solo goes into politics, but has a fairly major ideological schism with his mother, changes his name, and starts delving into some really unsavory politics. At one point, he's attacked in an alley, gaining his typical scar, and from there, his political views get even worse. He finds an unlikely ally, though, in the Senator from Arkanis, who begins supporting Kylo in all of his sketchy, sketchy viewpoints. It's a tough piece, because it's decidedly noir, and it's vicious, and it's very not nice, and there's more than a bit of fascism in it, but we're in Kylo's viewpoint, so he doesn't label it that way, because he's right. (UGH.) Anyways, it's a mess, but I do care quite a bit about the AU itself, once we get past all the problematic content, so I'm going to sit down and work on this at some point. 

9. Aphelion: And, here it is--the long-awaited Hux-POV prequel-sequel to Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo/sequel to Starkiller/etc. This is my major longfic project for the year. I'm working off about fifty thousand words that I'd drafted a few years ago, but mostly need to pitch--but, thankfully, the fifty thousand words that I wrote also looked after all the intersection points between Ben's storyline and Hux's, so I'm really glad I saved myself that work. Yay, me!

10. filthy!Kylo: I actually thought I only had nine projects, and then I remembered that I had briefly conceptualized a tenth. I don't know what it's going to look like, but it's a post-Crait fic where Kylo is literally marinating in his own failures by choosing not to wash, and Hux is offended because it's bringing perception of the Order down even lower than what it already was. Hopefully this will be a quick fic, but I'll have to figure out what the hell I'm gonna do with it first, lol.

So, there you have it! Ten fic projects for the year, hopefully. It doesn't seem like it's that much now that I've put it on paper, but I'm also trying to draft two original novels this year, do edits on a third, and also put out a collection of short porno stories, so I'm going to have to find some extra time to try and whack all of this out. But now that I've got it all down, this definitely looks like a year for me, so I think I can just go from here and try to sort everything out.

Huzzah, etc. Wow, am I ever tired, lol.

Starkiller (6558 words) by ktula
Chapters: 1/3
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Dopheld Mitaka
Characters: Finn (Star Wars), FN-2003 | Slip, FN-2000 | Zeroes, FN-2199 | Nines, Armitage Hux, Dopheld Mitaka, Phasma (Star Wars), Original Male Character(s), Bastian (Star Wars), Moden Canady, Snoke (Star Wars), Kaplan (Star Wars), Thanisson (Star Wars), Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Hitaka - It's Casual and No One Is Happy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Financial Issues, New Beginnings, audition, The Grand Mythos of Armitage Hux, Questionable Fashion Choices, Casual/Consistent Use of Hard Drugs, BDSM - referenced, Sex Work - referenced, A Stunning Lack of Morality, isolation tactics, Phasma's Ring of Keys, Steadily Worsening Mental Health, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Phasma Has No Empathy, Mitaka Trusts Too Much, Finn is Doing His Best, Unrequited Crush, Unlicensed Physiotherapy, excessive use of alcohol, Irresponsible Use of Prescription Drugs, Threats of blackmail, Smoking, Manipulation via Written Contract, Canon First Order Aesthetics
Series: Part 4 of Come As You Are
Summary:

Finn is looking for a new start—and this audition is going to be it.

Phasma is refining her exit strategy. After all, nothing lasts forever, and this opportunity is burning itself out faster and faster as the days go by.

Mitaka is managing what he can, and gritting his teeth through the rest. It’ll be okay in the end.

And Armitage Hux?

Hux is consumed with bringing Starkiller to life on stage, but he’ll bring them all down with him if something doesn’t give…

*

Black Sun is hiring dancers between the ages of eighteen and twenty four for the debut performance of Starkiller, set to premiere later this year. Black Sun is a contemporary dance company based on the technique, rigour, and aesthetics of classical ballet, and focused on producing works that are expressive and demanding, with a distinct personality…

 So, you may or may not be aware that I did a series of behind-the-scenes entries for my last longfic, Dollars to Donuts--kind of like DVD commentary, basically! I enjoyed the process of doing them--it helped me work out a lot of my process for the craft of writing, which I hadn't really been thinking about in much detail, and it also helped curb my desire to stick stuff into the narrative that didn't really need to be in there, because I knew that I could just drop easter eggs into the entries, and they'd be canonized that way.

Anyways, I figured better late than never on Fifth Chance, the clydeland fic I published the other day. If you haven't read Fifth Chance, spoilers abound in the read more....

Story Development:

( Read more... )

Story Construction:

( Read more... )

Challenges:

( Read more... )

Where Do We Go From Here:

( Read more... )

 Helloooooo, everyone. I figured it was probably about time to do an update on my works-in-progress! So here we go.

(I did have every intention of making these a monthly thing, but it's, uh, *looks at wrist* March, so I guess that just wasn't a priority for me!)

My "official" wordcount goal for the year is 300,000 words. (I would like to write over 500,000 words, and the actual list of projects I want to do this year comes in at over 600,000, but I'm trying my best to ignore both of those numbers, and focus on 300,000. For reference, last year's goal was 250,000, and I wrote somewhere around 420,000.) So far, I'm making good progress--I did 29k in January, almost 35k in February, and am at 8k already for March. So that's humming along nicely.

I split my goals between work I can sell, and work that I can't--and so far, this year has been pretty seriously focused on work that I can't sell. (Fanfic, y'all. It's fanfic.) I did put 5k into a novel that I'm going to try to get agented, and I'll be working on that one very seriously in April, but I spent the entirely of December focused on finishing a novel up for submission, so gave myself permission to just focus on self-indulgent projects for the first chunk of the year here.

And, as it turns out, I really needed that--my mental health in January was extremely, extremely rough, and I had a hard time getting my feet under me for most of it. (Things have been better since--I have my regular cyclical mental health issues, but they've been at an intensity I can handle, instead of an intensity that I can't.)

But! As you can see from the wordcounts above, February was much better!!

So, without further ado, here's the actual WIP list. I'm only talking about fanfic here--so the numbers won't add up to the totals, and that's fine.

1. Starkiller (22k) - the first draft on this one is complete! It's part of the Come As You Are verse, which is my kylux modern dance/ballet/BDSM/sex work modern AU (I know, it's a mouthful). It's a novella covering a time period about 3 - 6 years before Foxtrot. It's a multi-POV piece, focused on characters who won't otherwise get much for POV opportunities - in this case, Finn, Phasma, and Mitaka (whose POV we've already seen in Reconnaissance). It's very self-indulgent--it honestly feels like it's mostly easter eggs and cameos, and I also don't care...I think the stories that are being told are important to the verse, but it's also a perfectly skippable piece if people don't dig it. It's also an experiment of sorts--if you read Starkiller, you get some major reveals for the upcoming Hux-POV prequel-sequel longfic, Aphelion. And if you don't read it--you get those same reveals at an entirely different point in the story, which should let you have an entirely different experience! It'll be kind of fun, I think. (Same as if, you know, you read Aphelion before you read Foxtrot. Entirely different reveals, entirely different emotional weight!)

2. Reach Out and Touch Faith (33k) - I can't even say anything about this, because anytime I so much as breathe, I am leaking spoilers, but rest assured that forautumn  and I are so excited to share the conclusion of this piece with you once we finish it. That's right--I put thirty k into it so far this year, and we're still not done. But gosh, is it ever *chef kiss*. The things Autumn is doing, wow. I just. I can't even talk about this, I'm so excited about it. (Also, the piece is well over 100k now, which is like--I can't believe we did it! It's so exciting!)

3. old man a/b/o kylux (7.5k total) - this piece is coming along! It's one I keep getting roadblocked on--in a lot of ways, it's a really personal piece about my own struggles with cyclical hormonal cycles, birth control pills, and a lot of other things. But also, it's a story about a canon kylux marriage that started out really passionate, and then ended up really estranged, and whether it's possible to rebuild something when both of you let it get extremely, extremely broken. I think I still have about eight scenes left to draft, so I'm going to keep my head down on that one and keep plugging away on it.

4. clydeland (3k) - this is a story of missed connections, mostly. Of the times that Stensland tried to connect with Clyde, and kept getting brushed off. It's Clyde-POV, which I find a little difficult to write? But I have the framework of the piece settled now, so it's just a matter of keeping up with it, and watching the source material constantly and repeatedly. I think the target wordcount for this piece is around 10k, though if it gets pushed to 15k, I'm not going to be upset.

5. techienician (2k) - I'm doing this one with Deadsy! And it's a goddamn delight, it's raunchy and filthy and fucked up and every time Matt opens his mouth, I want to die of second-hand embarrassment, and it's going to be a really good time. We've got a ways to go on this one, yet, I think. But progress is happening!

6. misc fics - I also did a couple extra thousand words on miscellaneous fics. I'm poking at a couple of twitter fics to get those cleaned up, I have a couple of concepts that I've been adding notes to occasionally, that sort of thing. Nothing here has really developed into anything substantial yet!

I also have some other collabs on the go that I haven't put any significant time into yet -- splinteredstar  and I have another installment in the vampire AU coming up, and Romi and I have a tweetfic that got intense that we need to clean up and stick on ao3.

I'm sure there's other things I've talked about that I haven't mentioned here too.

As always, if you have any questions, or want to chat about anything, definitely let me know! You can comment here, or any of my other platforms or anything.