How to Waste a Week · 11:11pm Aug 30th, 2015
This is as good a way as any.
Although I haven't faced a T-Rex yet, I had a very similar encounter with a Carnataurus. At any rate, ARK: Survival Evolved is preposterously entertaining and I have blown a lot of time playing it. Sadly, my 7-year-old computer doesn't have the graphics capacity to play the game in its full glory, but eventually I will have the funds I need to fix that problem. Who knows, I may even abandon my anti-online-multiplayer antagonism and join a tribe.
But you guys don't even care about that, do you? No, you want to know why the heck I'm not writing like I'm supposed to be doing. Shame on me, I suppose, but I was in need of this break. It's already proven immensely beneficial, because just the other day I had a "eureka" moment in which I realized what to do with the next couple chapters of OoS (something that was giving me a lot of trouble). With any luck I'll be able to jump back on the saddle and churn out chapters like I was before, although I'm still seriously considering changing my updates to once every two weeks.
For those of you who are supporting me on Patreon, I have completed a Potential Stories GDoc full of stories to be voted on for September's "Patreon Story of the Month" as explained on my Patreon page. Starting one week from today (the 6th), I'll be opening up votes from my supporters on which story I'll work on at the end of the month. In the meantime, if a patron has a story concept they'd like to see written, he or she may PM me the story concept and – if I consider it worthwhile – it will be added to the list for voting.
Last but not least, I have a new story leader! After *stops to check* 18 weeks being at the top, The Gentle Nights has finally been toppled as my highest-rated story. Replacing it is part three of my No Heroes series, For Dreams. In truth, For Dreams has been sitting pretty at a 100% rating since its inception, but I don't count perfectly-rated stories in my lists because I honestly think any story with a 100% positive rating simply hasn't had enough views yet.
This leads me to a question of the validity of such things, though. Considering that For Dreams is the third of four books in a series, it stands to reason that people wouldn't be reading it unless they already liked the two preceding it. Therefor, just how legitimate is the rating of a sequel in comparison to the ratings of the stories before it?
At any rate, I intend to continue my break, at least for a little bit longer. The good news is that the next chapter of OoS is about halfway finished as it is. The bad news is that the folks at work have conceived of a new way to handle certain things on Mondays and Thursdays, with the unfortunate effect of me having to stay at the office much longer than normal on those days. With this new system biting even further into my free time, the threat of more serious steps regarding my updates has become very real. I'll keep you all posted on any decisions I may make, of course.
Whelp, that's all I've got for today. If you'll excuse me, I'd like to have a raptor tamed and saddled before I go to bed tonight. 
What? Oh, fine, I'll try to write at least something tonight. 
Order of Shadows Book II Chapter IV: Saturday, September 5 or Sunday, September 6
Stats
Total Word Count: 1,372,000 (+8,000) over 31 stories
Average Words Written Per Week: 9,400
Total Words Read This Week: 189,108
Follower Rank: 302nd (+8)
Overall Ratings Average: 93.72% (+0.05%)
Highest-Rated Story (Not Counting Stories at 100%): No Heroes Book III: For Dreams
Story with the Most Votes: Tyrant @ 2114/62 (38 Weeks)
Story with the Fewest Votes: Paul's Peculiarly Puny Practice Pieces @ 13/0 (9 Weeks)
Longest Story: Trixie vs. Equestria @ 144,000
No thanks, I already know how to do that well enough. :B
img.pandawhale.com/75424-my-body-is-ready-gif-Imgur-oOCP.gif
Sounds like you might be interested in my new service, paid bad reviews. You have a story that is too good? For a mere 29.99 I'll give it a downvote.
Hope you find a good balance to things. Getting burned out is never a good thing and we'd like to see more stuff from you over the long term. As for rating later books in a series, seems perfectly okay to me that people might like a later book better. Maybe the first two books had cool ideas but didn't quite gel for a reader?