I Fixed It! · 4:31am May 21st, 2018
The "It" in question being the earlier chapters of Desert Spice.
Some background:
I'd first started writing Desert Spice around the end of 2013. A good number of people (likely you included, if you're reading this blog) enjoyed it, and I had a good time writing it. I've continued to write more of the story (slowly) over the years, while alternating work between it and other stories.
It's a bit more than four years since I started writing it, and I've grown as a writer since then. I can confidently say this because when I was rereading this fic from the beginning so I'd have context for writing chapter 7, I noticed that a lot of the early stuff I'd written there was really clumsy, underdeveloped, or poorly thought-out. My editor, SirNotAppearingInThisFic (whom I will henceforth refer to in this blagpost as "SNAF") agreed wholeheartedly and took it upon himself to help me fix it. This took us a few weeks.
Some edits were heavier than others. In some chapters, a few lines got tweaked. In one instance, I ended up replacing an entire character and scene. In later chapters, it mostly amounted to SNAF going through them and fixing the quotation marks and apostrophes to all curl the right direction. One of the end results is that it no-longer hurts me to read those early chapters, and I can go back to thinking about how awesome this stuff I'm reading is (like I do when I'm reading Monster Hunter: Equestria). Another end result is that Soothing Balm (aka Zooming Bomb aka Deadpan Murderdrop) is more consistently characterized, and that the way she speaks does a much better job of getting her character quirks across. A third end result is that we don't have randos violently shipping the protags together on first sight; I leave that job to myself and to you readers. 
By the way, SNAF is a boss and is awesome and all-knowing, even if he can be at times inscrutable. Best editor I've had, and I've had a few.
I didn't do any changes that were terribly plot-relevant. That is to say, you won't be any more lost if you picked up chapter 7 (when it eventually comes out) than if I had spent an equivalent amount of time doing nothing rather than making these fixes. That said, I would really appreciate it if people would reread the older Desert Spice chapters (especially 2-4), and let me know how you like the changes. Or just let me know how you like the story; I (almost) always enjoy getting comments. Maybe just stop by and say hello?
Anyway, once I finish writing a Planet Mercenary job to run for my friends (complete with an encounter inspired by a fight scene from VikingZX's upcoming book, Shadow of an Empire (available for purchase June 1!)), I'm going to write chapter 7 of Desert Spice. I hope you're looking forward to reading about Blue Aegis, the Tornado Trio, Old Stories, and everybody's favorite fluffy unicorn chef!
I know I'm looking forward to writing about them.
Oooh, sounds like I need to reread this!
EDIT: And (doh!) thanks for the plug!
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Please do! And please let me know what you think.
You're very welcome for the plug. (And I bet you know exactly what scene I'm pulling inspiration from for my RPG session.)
Ah, thanks for the update! I don't know if or when I'll get to that rereading (though possibly actually listening to the computer read it to me), but it's on the list. :)
Neat! I'll have to give the refurbished chapter a look.
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Thanks. There's no rush, so get to it when you will. Can't say I've used TTS to read me a fic before, but I hear it's great for finding spelling and grammar errors that your eyes gloss over.
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A few chapters, but yes. Newly refurbished. Like a Falcon 9 first stage. Here's hoping that it doesn't need to be entirely replaced every other use, and is more like a Block 5 instead of a Block 4.
Also, thanks!
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"Thanks. There's no rush, so get to it when you will."
Heh, thanks. :)
"Can't say I've used TTS to read me a fic before, but I hear it's great for finding spelling and grammar errors that your eyes gloss over."
Oh, really? Hm. Don't know if I've encountered that, but it sounds plausible, at least. Of course, there are also some kinds of faults it makes it harder to find, so it'd still be a bit of a tradeoff.
Now I
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Just as planned...