Midnight Rising/C&C update: April showers may bring May flowers... · 4:02pm May 2nd
But of more interest is the emergence of 17-year cicadas in my area. Big, ugly, red-eyed insects that are the size of your thumb but basically harmless, as long as you can get past all the shed skins they leave behind on leaves and the everpresent and disconcertly loud background sound they produce as a mating call. Fortunately, the outbreak in my area seems pretty limited. There's a few around, definitely, but they're not everywhere, and the noise is basically a low hum instead of a constant, near-painful whine.
https://www.fox41yakima.com/mapping-the-2024-cicada-double-brood-which-states-will-feel-the-buzz/
They're ugly and obnoxious for the few weeks every 17 years they're active, but you're not here to learn about them. You want to know what the latest update is on my stories as we reach the month of May.
Midnight Rising:
The two Lemon Zest chapters have reached a combined 18,300 words as of this writing with several thousand more at least yet to go. I wasn't able to finish a draft this past weekend as I hoped, but they're definitely taking shape. I'm aiming for a second-weekend-of-May chapter launch at this point. Among other things, expect a renewed secondary focus on the already-punished Shadowbolt girls and some hints about who our favorite two school heads actually are.
Here's a hint I’ll give now: they're actually just as old as their pony princess counterparts, but their nature, origin and backstory is much different and much more in line with the EqG universe/human history. And yes, they definitely have powers of their own, but you'll have to wait until the end of Nightmare Night to learn them, and why they do their best not to use them. The reveal is intended to be epic, if I can ever get there!
Continuation and Chronicles:
I'm working on C&C in the evenings right now, and it's also coming along, having reached 15,500 words. I'd honestly rather not break it up, since it's intended to not just show the overall progress of the Cloven invasion of the Kingdom and how it was carried out, but also what they're going to be doing about it on both small and large scales. So as long as I can keep it under around 20,000 words, I'll release it as one large chapter.
This will once again not have any form of adult content, since that's not what it's for, though there will be some hint of potential future funtimes. The purpose is to give Gilda—and the readers—a firm picture of what both the Kingdom in general and Aricia in particular faces, and what operations they're going to be planning and training for in the near future. I plan to follow the course of the original story's chapters 11-20 somewhat loosely as we go forward, and to that end, expect me to lift large amounts of text from the old story to repurpose here. You'll be seeing a lot of the original Feathered Heart chapter 11 in this coming chapter, actually.
Best guess on a release date is the third weekend in May, but that's only if I can find enough time to work on the graphics, which I haven't started yet. I probably won't until the written chapter draft is complete and off to prereaders, letting them chew on it while I go to town in Photoshop. I'll be starting from a map of Europe, which is what the griffon continent of Aresia basically is.
I'll also try to provide another teaser eventually, since the chapter will end up being big enough to support a second preview. Give me a few more days on that, though. In the meantime, thanks again for your patience on both stories as I try to get them right.
We're about to get canon borders! Woo!
Remember: Humans and Griffs breathe oxygen!