Argus

Chapter 063

Life is almost impossibly hard sometimes.  I'm sorry it's taken so long to get this done.  I don't really have an update schedule for the future, but I'm not giving up until at least what I'd call "book one" of the story is done.

I don't have much else to say here.  Thank you all so much for your support getting me this far.  You really do keep me going.

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“Alright, everyone ready to go?”  Alanna asked the assembled group.

Bags ha...

[Writing Prompt] The apocalypse is imminent. The Ark was constructed to save the world’s 50 best and brightest to restart civilization and preserve humanity. You were selected but you have no idea why. Your whole life you have been thoroughly average.

Just something I wrote to try to get my creative energy going today.  Thought I'd share it here as well.

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"If you're reading this, then there's good news, and bad news."  Was the first thing I saw when I crawled out of my stasis capsule.

Well fuck, that's never reassuring to see.  No one, and I mean no one, in the history of humanity, has ever said that when the good news actually made up for the bad news.

I read on.

...

Chapter 62

Nothing to say this time.  Just a chapter.  Neat, huh?

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Alanna's first instinct was to reach for the phone.  It was a corded desk phone, the kind of thing that really only existed in offices these days.  Greyish black, cheap plastic that was functional enough but would probably give under one good crowbarring.  And it was also currently ringing, which was disturbing, to say the least.

The noise was clearly digital, a warbling two-tone beep...

Chapter 61, and an Update

Okay, first, housekeeping.  I've been updating slow lately, and this chapter is only 2k-ish words.  This is mostly due to a relentless onslaught of personal problems that has left me, more often than not, incapable of basic human communication, much less storytelling.  It's not great.  So, for the rest of this month, I'm going to try to push out 2k-ish chapters when I have time, instead of killing myself going for 10k chapters every week, and failing.

In related news, this ...

Chapter 60

Hey guys.  Sorry this took so long.  I've been...pretty sick, for the last week or so.  I'm actually still sick, but it's not stopping me as much anymore.  Anyway, here's chapter 60.  Hope you enjoy it!

Also, I'd just like to say, I'm glad for the people who noticed that the whole thing about Theo has just been that she's played rugby the whole time.  I've been waiting fifty chapters to deploy that joke, and, for me personally, it was quite enjoyable.  So tha...

Chapter 59

Hey.  A short one today, but I didn't want to take another fortnight just to leave another cliffhanger.  So, just a little bit of plot stuff here, along with an introduction.

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Theo was having one of those 'bad day' things that she'd heard so much about as a kid.

Growing up, Theo had been an energetic twerp.  Always smiling, always bouncing off the walls, always ready for the next school assignment or art project or whatever.  Her parents, to th...

Chapter 058

It's been a while, for which I apologize.  I need to remember sometimes that I actually enjoy writing, even when there's a whole bunch of life stuff getting all up in my face.

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"Suffering."  Was offered up.

"Can't do that."  Came the instant counter.

"Why not?"

"I'd die, I think.  So, I maybe could do that, but I'm not going to."  A good reason, but not the end of the road.

"Okay, how about hunger?"

"Can't remove a ...

No New Chapter Yet

Hey friends.  I'm aware that I've been a bit slow on the update this fortnight, and I apologize for that.  Progress on TDG is a bit slow, and I'm personally not doing super hot, so it may be a bit before the chapters resume.  If anyone wants to suspend or cancel their Patreon subscriptions for a little while, I totally understand.

In the meantime, I've got a few things that I wrote mostly for fun, or as starters for projects that didn't go anywhere, that sort of got stuck withou...

Chapter 57

This weeks chapter, more or less on time.

The geography of this one got a bit difficult to keep track of.  I hope it's not too confusing, but let me know if there's anywhere I really NEED to clarify.

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Holding tightly to the rope, James was surprised when his feet hit something solid not more than a few seconds into his descent.  He'd expected to be dropping from the ceiling; a minimum of forty or fifty feet above the floor level of the labyrinth proper. ...

Chapter 56

Oh my goodness, this took too long.  This one was written in stolen spaces of time over the last week, and it's been too long coming.  I don't know if I'll have more stable time to write more coming up in the near future, but I'm sure as hell going to try.

_____

 

James woke up before his sister did, which was both difficult, and rewarding.  It meant he got to avoid the kid for a little bit longer, and honestly, he was not looking forward to playing verbal def...

Chapter 55

Half boss fight.  Half victim.

This one was a lot of fun to write.  I finally get to start tapping into my favorite style of action scenes, which is to say, "anime as all fuck".  I hope you guys enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing it out.

For those interested in providing criticisms on this draft; if you see any places where transitions happen too quickly, that's what I'm looking to shore up, and I'd love to hear if you see points like that.  I can always add mor...

Chapter 54

The atmosphere around the living room table was dense, and grim, and no amount of warm light or comfortable couch cushions was going to alleviate it.

"No."  JP was saying, chopping his hand down onto the table.  "No!  Worst idea!"

That table was currently covered in... a bit of everything.  Anesh's efforts to keep things organized had cut out about an hour ago, and so, the copies of notes, plates of food, candy wrappers, laptops, pens, loose orbs, books, ...

Chapter 53 (Really, This Time) And Some Notes.

This one took me a long time to write, and is paradoxically quite short.  I hope no one is too disappointed by the lack of output lately, but I would understand if anyone wanted to cut their contributions.  Though on that note, you guys literally covered the gap in my actual bank account, and the cost of rent this month.  So, thank you all so much.

On another related note, I'd like to do a little something extra as a thank you for you guys.  I've already settled on posting ...

Chapter 52

Here's the link to the early draft of Chapter 52!   I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out, but I feel like the end may have been a bit abrupt?  Please let me know if it's too bad, and I'll fix it.  Otherwise, I'll dive into that subject at the end in the next chapter.

Chapter 51

As mentioned recently, Patrons will now get chapters a couple days in advance.  So, with that in mind, here's the link to the final draft for Chapter 51.  It's still subject to change until the moment it's officially posted, but by and large, I think this is what's going to be going up, and this will be the format it's announced in.

Thanks again to ...

A couple updates

Today marks the fiftieth chapter of The Daily Grind being uploaded.  Wow.  Quite a lot of that is thanks to everyone on here, so, thank you all so much.

That said; I've been falling behind on the audiobook updates.  So, while I still plan to get caught back up on those, in the meantime, I wanted to give my patrons a little something nice.  Going forward, every chapter of TDG will be posted a couple days early for Patreon subscribers, before general release.  This has b...

Chapter six of the audiobook

Getting stuff done!

Audiobook Chapter 5

I've been a bit lax in these recently.  I know some people prefer them over the written version, so I'll try to do some quick catchup today.

Cheers

Chapter 4 of the Audiobook

It occurs to me that I don't think any of have had consistent titles so far.  I see no reason to change that trend now.

Audiobook Chapter 3

Wow, this one really took me some effort to actually get out.  Not the recording or editing, but actually just getting Patreon to let me upload it.  Something, it seems, has gone horribly wrong with my internet connection.
Regardless, it's here now.  Hope you enjoy.

Chapter 002

Chapter two, out loud. 

Chapter 001 - Audio

And here's the first chapter, spoken aloud, for those of you who like listening to words.

First Lol

Hello to everyone who's been supporting me!

First off, I'd like to throw another 'thank you' at you guys. I've said it a few times, but really, the support is so important to me, I feel like I should repeat it at least once.

Now, on to the meat of things.  Starting today, I'll be releasing audiobook versions of The Daily Grind.  If you are a patron, and you think this sounds cool, then I've got good news!  You can have it a month before public release!

The first two ...