I finished Chapter 18 of CeleKing2 and made some progress in Chapter 19. I also made progress on an as of yet undesignated chapter of Mr. Starbrite. So, all around a good day for writing. I’m going to make an estimate that I can be finished with CeleKing2 in the next two or three cycles. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? We’ll see if my prediction is right or not. Stay tuned.

You know how I said I had ideas from Mr. Starbrite that I wanted to get out of my head? Well, instead of continuing my work on TBP like I was supposed to, I did a whole week’s quota worth of writing on a single sequence in Mr. Starbrite. (I can’t say where in the story exactly as I haven’t battened down the outline yet.) I tend to get like this whenever I have a new idea I’m developing. You can’t say I’m not being productive, but I do wish I’d at least hit my goals with TBP first. Oh well. It’s time to move on to CeleKing2. Stay tuned.

I made more progress on Chapter 30 of TBP and I also wrapped up the prologue of Mr. Starbrite and wrote a little on Chapter 2. There are a lot of scenes I’d like to get out of my head and onto the page. Can’t neglect the story that’s currently in serialization, though. Though unlikely, it’d be amazing if I could get through Chapter 31 before the handover. Stay tuned.

I managed to at least finish Chapter 15 of CeleKing2 and also played around a bit in the prologue of Mr. Starbrite. Now it’s time to switch over to TG. More fun to come. Stay tuned.

I wrote a little more on Chapter 18 of CeleKing2, but most of my writing time was devoted to what’s probably going to be Chapter 1 of that Else Arc story I’ve been talking about lately, which I’m going to tentatively call Mr. Starbrite. Yeah, the ideas have burrowed too deeply into my head and I’ve already done enough preparatory work that I might as well say it’s in preproduction. A teaser will probably be showing up on the site in the near future. I’d like to round out Chapters 15 and 18 of CeleKing2 before the handover, but we’ll see if it happens. Stay tuned.

I only made a little progress on Chapter 29 of TBP. Don’t ask me where the rest of the time went.

Since I haven’t done much in the way of progress, I thought I might share a bit about the side project I’ve been working on this week. The basic idea’s been rolling around in my head some time and I finally decided to start developing it as a potential Else Arc story. You see, playing Cinderella Girls I couldn’t help imagine Producer-san as an irritable sort who’s lost all patience with the world around him and particularly the nonsense of the girls he’s managing. For instance, there’s this one S Rare card of Kaoru with her holding up her empty bento box looking so proud of herself and I can just imagine Producer-san crabbily snapping at her, “Well, whaddya want, a cookie!?” To which the reply should be, “She’s a nine-year-old girl who made a happy plate, you dillweed. Yes, she’d probably like a cookie.”

Mostly because I ignore the threadbare plot of the actual game, I tend to imagine the character dynamics and I was seeing all this opportunity you’d never see explored in the actual game. For instance, pretty much every girl in the game comes on to you. Every girl. Given that more than half of them are minors, it’s a big problem. The anime plays with this somewhat by having Producer-san spend a lot of time with the cops, but I’m thinking about a darker look at the concept as a deconstruction of harem romcoms. Prodding at the seedy side of the entertainment industry is another part of it.

This ties into a recent trend in my work where I’m setting up fairly unlikeable leads but still trying to make them engaging. Now, I think with the poor talent agent in this story, his life is in such shambles and he’s so pathetic that you’ll probably feel a little sorry for him, but what do I do in the Nell series if the black comedy approach I’m going for falls flat? Well, I’m obviously not going be going anywhere as an artist if I don’t try pressing the boundaries. If something doesn’t work, I’ll just learn from the experience and move on.

Anyway, that’s just a little glimpse at what’s going on behind the scenes. A little more work and I might put up a teaser in the near future. Have to decide if I want it to be a one-shot or a series. Maybe a one-shot with an option for a prequel.

Hopefully I can get my story progress back on track. Stay tuned.