Whee, feeling quite a lot better now. As per usual on these things, I'm going to give a small update about King of Diamonds - for those who edit, check the master document in google drive for the link to the unfinished yet readable chapter. I'll be sending pm's soonish, but since it's coming on 2am I'm not going to do it now :3

what does the scouter say about its word count? IT'S OVER 9000!!!!111

hehe, 2am posts are the best.

I've also got a couple of one-shots I may post soonish, if I can get them to come out the way I want. One is a sequel to Midnight Run, another is... actually I forget what the other is, but I'm sure I had more than one story. Oh well. Thank you for your patronage! More readable blogpost another day! I hope you've all been enjoying the long summer of no pone so far!

Antibiotics are wonderful things. They stop you dying, but you shouldn't take them if you don't need them. Contrarywise, if you need to take them, take them all. Half a dose will let evolution ruin things for the rest of us and develop into wonderful beasts like MRSA and Necrotizing fasciitis. I'm not sure if the second one is due to overuse and poor control of antibiotics, but I do know it's a bitch to kill with them. No, I didn't have that.

Anyway, I'm getting back on my feet, but got slapped with another disease straight after, a good old flu. Utter joy.

Other than that, I'm fine... once the coughing up phlegm stops, the muscle ache retreats and I can breathe again without wheezing. I've started writing some again, the sky is brighter than ever, the weather is warmer and summer is on its merry way. Life is... better.

So, this is just a reminder to go outside occasionally, take long walks, get exercise and take time off from your computer screens. Once you get old enough to have to support yourself and then others, that time you used to have will evaporate, so use it whilst you can.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks. It is the browser, and the text is like the sun...

— Nobody, ever

“It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful.”

— A man after my own heart (lol)

Okay, so, you want to write a story. It's pretty easy, really. You put pen to paper, write, and then stop. Somewhere along the way, you hit "publish" and your words are available for the world to see.

What not everybody knows, though, is that there should be a pattern to these things. A long time ago, a very wise man once said "A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end". His name was Aristotle, and he's one of the greats. That pithy sentence is zen-like in its obvious truth, but a lot of big modern blockbusters don't pay enough attention to it.

It sounds obvious – go on, laugh about it – but I bet you can name a few well-known stories, movies and shows that fuck it up. Anyway, you think it's easy, right? Well, you're half-right, because those patterns exist for you to take advantage of, but actually making sure you get all your pieces squared away by the last line is trickier than you may think.

I can't sit down at the moment because it hurts to sit - or stand - and so writing is pretty much out of the question. Probably not going to die, but a semi-extended leave of absence is pretty much assured. Let's see if things flip around. It may be I just go fucking bug nuts over here and find I have to do something to pass the time.

Have fun kids.

Whelp, since I'm not on the homestretch (ish) for King of Diamonds, I thought it about time I created a blog post specifically for speculation and chit-chat with those interested about the timeline of the world I'm still building here. I won't kid myself that others want to write side-stories, but I guess some sort of official timeline couldn't hurt, no?

Note that this is still subject to revision, but as I won't be giving exact dates (I'm not that anal about it), it'll mostly be shuffling things about as the characters themselves may be incorrect about their own history, and not all characters know everything that ever happened.

In fact, a lot of the storyline falls under how ancient facts have been distorted, turned upside down and just plain mangled or forgotten thanks to around two thousand years of history.

So, I'm going to start in pre-history, and work forwards. I will leave out certain occurences because I don't want to explain all of the book before I've written it, and for you guys to work out just what's going on is surely half the fun (just so long as you understand what I've written, of course!).

I spent about a half hour writing this blog-post, and then clicked on the £%!"ing X and closed it. Shit.

Well, now you'll have to have the condensed version.

Basically, my muse visited my long enough for me to eke out chapter 19 of king of diamonds, and it is now ready for my faithful pre-readers to rip to pieces. According to google, it's some 7.8k words, whereas fimfic thinks it's 8.2k. Weird, but either way, I'm relatively satisfied.

Now, you guys have been waiting for it for some time, and whilst I'd like to post it Sunday (or, rather, this weekend), you've been waiting long enough for it, that I think you can wait longer for a better outcome. It's only a few days here or there, after all.

Once again, I'm not quite as far along as I intended, but I am definitely far enough - shit's about to go down, by the time this chapter ends. Internet cookies to whomsoever can work out what I'm referencing without using google! You'll know it when you see it, and hopefully you'll grin like an idiot the same way I am.

Sometimes life throws you a curveball. I don't actually play baseball, but I am reliably informed1 that a curveball is

1) by which I mean I haven't even bothered to google it, I just have this idea that a curveball is a bitch to deal with.

a) unexpected

and

b) difficult to deal with

That sums up my life as it currently is pretty well. There's nothing major by any scale that has meaning, but it's definitely 'curveball territory'. The last major thing was my grandad dying at the end of last year and my being completely unable to make it to the funeral. The fact I felt it necessary to type those words indicates even to me that there might be more to it than that, but what can you do?

I guess I could give you some other reasons, and you can judge for yourselves the impact that they have. It's hard for me at the moment to tell if I'm just being whiny or whether I truly do have a problem. Since I'm only positing (at the moment) a 2-4 week break, I'm guessing it's very much #firstworldproblems in here.

I find myself without the energy and drive I usually have. It's been missing for quite a while, but just right now, I feel exhausted. I think it's down to losing one job and then getting another one again, as has been happening yearly on the dot since 2008. I don't think I need to elaborate what that feels like, but it ain't nice. This time it's more serious, I guess - I'm working for a whole nother company. I've been traded like cattle in a bait-and-switch which is apparently legal but no less unethical if you ask me, and the writing is on the wall. Not because of my work, but because of reasons I don't want to state here.

I also had a relatively short holiday, a week of being sick and I haven't been sleeping. All of the above means I'm feeling a pressure to perform at something which should be fun and what just feels like a pile of reasons to procrastinate. Putting these fears and feelings into writing helps to shape them, label them and hopefully minimize them, but it hasn't made them go away.

So, just thought I'd let anyone who cares know. And maybe if I don't think there are people out there hanging on every last word because they know I'm taking a breather, I can get back to it being fun.

I didn't think it was a good idea to mention April 1st because no matter what I said on that day, people would be all yeah yeah, pull the other one it has bells on about it, so... April. Ish.

Okay, so, semi-coherent blogposts aside, I can assure you that the post I made earlier today actually made sense if you know four things about me, one of which was true at the time of posting and is visible in the post.

Internet cookies to whoever works it out, the connections are there for the astute or for those who have their own bonafide wall of crazy about me.

It's 01:35am and I'm awake again. That means it's time for another semi-incoherent, semi-profound, mostly bizarre blogpost from me again.

Relax, though. I don't bite. I'm not some maddened guru with an overlong beard, claiming to have the keys to the secrets of the universe. I just have a pretty sweet hat, an internet connection and too much free time on my hands at an ungodly hour in the morning.

See, I want to share two things with you. The second one is the fun one, and neither of them involve you telling a therapist where on the doll you were touched, so it's quite safe, I assure you.

Firstly, as you do at 1.35am in the morning, my mind went to the idea of famous last words. Quite apart from funny bullshit like "here's my impression of a dead person" or "oh my god it's coming right for m--", or even "don't eat the wobbly green bit", the mind turns naturally to the profound, and the true meaning of life. And here's the thing:

We are - to all intents and purposes - alone on this little blue/green rock floating through space, in an uncaring universe. Our time here will be brief and, apart for the lucky few who are monetarily gifted, almost entirely sub-optimal. In the grand scheme of things, we have no tasks, no masters, no great beard in the sky which can demand anything of us more important than to fulfill our own self-made destinies.

That's right, folks: the only thing you should be compelled to do is whatever makes you happy. Find out who and what you are, and then be it with all your heart. Let your individuality shine through, whether that means liking my little pony, littlest petshop, or whatever. And then, when it's no longer fun, stop. There's no hidden meaning there, no hidden statement from me. I'll be posting again soon, it's just the natural counterpoint. When you are hungry, eat. When you are tired, rest. And when you want to do, then do.

This will get scoffed at by plenty of folk, especially so because it's true. It's the most important thing any dying person could say - live each day to the fullest, with the maximum amount of joy. It's also the hardest to actually do, for all it is the secret to complete contentedness. It is the tao of zen in its most unadorned state.

But don't worry, it was 01:35 when I wrote this, so you're free to drift off and do what pleases you, but if you're stuck with this, then take one last message away: being good or bad doesn't matter, either one gets you noticed as either an example to emulate, or avoid.

And seeing as we are (so far) alone in this uncaring universe, then the best of us leave a net increase in joy. If we all strove to do that in our own special way, then who knows where it could lead.

And so comes the second thing (the fun one, for those keeping score):

I shall therefore leave you with a song. Enjoy, and I hope this made your day a little bit better.

You might not find this interesting, but as a scifi buff, armchair critic, layman scientist and general knowitall, I do.

And this being my blog, I'm going to write about it... maybe you'll stay for the ride?

EDIT: Apparently people miss the word "AS" in the title. This means it is speculative, suggestive and exploratory, it's NOT supposed to be "things ARE this way", more "they might be this way" or "what if they WERE this way"