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 |  A hub for the "Book of Masks" universe. |
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The Interactives "The Book of Masks"  : A high school student discovers a grimoire that can make magical disguises."The Wandering Stars" : Sequel to "The Book of Masks.""Student Bodies" : A high school student is turned into a blue goo that can possess people.For non-WdC Members "The Book of Masks: Archives" : Dodges the "Servers Busy" barrier!"The Book of Masks (Abridged)" : Introductory storylines for new readers.Community "BoM/TWS Message Forum" : Community for readers of the interactives."BoM/TWS/SB Wiki" : Notes and documentation for authors. Spoilers!Current Polls None The Latest 7/1: Interactive: "Solving Other People's Problems" 7/1: Public: "Solving Other People's Problems"
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| A general head's up to anyone who had been corresponding with me before my last vanishing act: If your name is not Nostrum, bickuribox, or ThePrussian, then I have likely flushed all your old emails away in a giant inbox purge. If you have important business with me please get in touch. If your name is Nostrum, I think I have all your emails going back to September '23. If your name is bickuribox or ThePrussian, I think I have all your most recent correspondence but a few emails might have gotten deleted by accident. |
| ... I ain't dead. There was no crisis or anything, it was just another one of those damnable collapses. But I am so disgusted with myself over this most recent one that I am determined not to disappear again. In future, even if I find my enthusiasm curdlng, I am going to do my best to resist the temptation to crawl into a hole offline. I'll do my best to grin my way through and be neighborly and helpful here. I've got a bunch of emails to get thru, will do that tomorrow. I do know that the email box was full, and it's cleaned out now, so if there's stuff you want to email me about, you can. Anyway, there's no real story to tell about what happened. It was just hitting the wall again, and I just found it impossible to get back onto my feet. I'm still having trouble with it. Usuallly I can pick up momentum again after restarting the writing. But though I did restart writing back in October, it just petered out again real quick. Depending on what I think of the chapters I wrote when I revisit them, I will probably start posting the thin backlog I've got in a few days. We'll see then how much I have recharged. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "A Rescue and Retreat" * Public: "A Rescue and Retreat" —ends the current branch. A short-and-sweet commentary post can be found here: "Re: Making a Fourth Maskateer" Tomorrow I start fulfilling another commission, with a short sequel to "Meet the Welches" . Background:Will and Caleb have accidentally petrified Will's dad, and the two of them are trying to find a cure. They need a secure place to work, and Will has just hijacked the body and identity of one of the school's tutors, Shannon Welch. They have just arrived at the Welches' house, to take care of Shannon's husband. * * * After that, I will tackle the Will-and-Sydney-and-Caleb storyline I've been polling about. I've just closed the second poll, and I don't even know why I bothered to poll you people. It was obvious a mile away what routes you would want to see the story go down. Anyway, "Will should impersonate Caleb's mom" was the runaway winner, both in the free votes and the GP votes. I didn't even bother to calculate what the final vote would have worked out to, but it probably would have been 75-15-10. [EDIT: Okay, while figuring out dividends, I did have to calculate the final vote. It as Will-64%, Sydney-25%, Golem-11%] At least some people were smart enough to GP-vote for some of the losers, so that there will be a GP dividend distribution this time. |
| The current storyline continues with: * Interactive: "Mickey Martin Makes Her Debut" * Public: "Mickey Martin Makes Her Debut" Meanwhile, the last poll is now closed, with "Start with Caleb's mom" the decisive winner, both in terms of free votes and GPs. In fact, someone could have made a killing by voting GPs for one of the losing choices. If one person had voted 10 GPs for "Start with Caleb" they could have gotten almost 45,000 GPs back. But no one voted for one of the losing choices, so all GPs go back to their original senders. Next poll is now up, asking: Who should impersonate Caleb's mom? "BoM Poll: Caleb's mom" Same rules apply as before. This will be only a 3-day poll (practically all voting in the previous round was done in the first 72 hours), and will close at noon ET on Wednesday, June 26. |
| For the next two weeks I'm booked with chapters that fulfill two commissions, but I'm already looking past that. I got poked enough times from enough people about "Vengeance on an Ex-Friend" that I knew that would be the next one to continue. I'm at work on it already. My plan is to continue all three branches with at least 5-7 chapters each (maybe more, depending), but I don't want to publish all three back to back. So I'm running a poll to see which of the three that readers want to see published first: [Poll completed and deleted] As the poll emphasizes, this is not about seeing which choice gets taken. It's about which of the branches will be published first. So, do you want your favored choice to be the first one? Or would you vote for a less favored choice, so you'll have a chance to savor the anticipation? Poll closes on Sunday, June 23, at 12:00 ET. In the meantime, today's chapter is now up: * Interactive: "A Sex Change at School" * Public: "A Sex Change at School" |
| I've built up a bit of a backlog by finishing of some commissions, and tomorrow I'll start sustained daily publishing again. It will start here: "Three Little Maids Are We" That's the branch where Will, Caleb, and Keith have been playing with the masks; have crafted some female personas for themselves; and have acquired a fourth partner in the sophomore girl Teresa MacNeil. Separately, I've been having fun with AI-generated images again ... "Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Reference Photo Carousel" |
| As I said I might in my last update, I'll be adding odds-and-ends chapters here and there for a little while as I start writing new BoM storylines and building a backlog. These will mostly be appearing in the same few areas, but don't expect any sustained storytelling from me, though some of them might get a sequel sooner rather than later. |
| Lord help me, I'm writing a script again. Anyhow, that seems to be the reason my BoM brain is seriously distracted by non-BoM stuff. Distracted enough that although I've been negotiating some commissions, I'm just going to have to put off doing them, or anything else BoM related, until I've got this other itch scratched. I'm not disappearing (he says, like all the other times he's said he's not disappearing before disappearing), and every couple of days I might even publish some one-off chapters I've accumulated. We'll just have to see. But I do intend to check in here every day. * * * Oh, and the most recent branch? That's concluded now: * Interactive: "The Family of Heather Dow" * Public: "The Family of Heather Dow" It was for a commission, only five chapters. There's a commentary thread: "Commentary: "A Trip Past the Supermarket" aka "Heather Dow"" |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "For His Love" * Public: "For His Love" —suspends the latest branch from a cliffhanger. But even if not a lot has happened on the page, this branch has canonically advanced the overall plot of BoM and opened up a new kind avenue for shenanigans--and for other things. A commentary/discussion post on the branch is here: "Commentary: You or Blackwell? " .Coming tomorrow, another commission. This one also takes place in an area that hasn't been visited in a long time. In "Crap to the Future" Will, who was trying to get rid of the book, put it in the school time capsule. But it seemed afterward to have vanished from there, or perhaps it never made it in. At any rate, Will (and then Carson Ioeger) become increasingly convinced that something gamey is afoot: that people at school are being replaced with doppelgangers who have subtly altered personalities. Carson's best friend, James, seems to have been a victim.In "A Collision of Conspiracies" , Will has the chance to tell Caleb of his and Carson's suspicions. In the road taken, Will chickens out. Tomorrow will show what happens when Will talks to Caleb.Some of these chapters may not be familiar to readers of the Archives version of BoM (the non-interactive version), because the Archive branch petered out with "The Biggest Secret in the School" . The missing chapters have now been added, so that you can catch up to where interactive readers have been able to get. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Some Will Act Where Others Dare Not" * Public: "Some Will Act Where Others Dare Not" —rounds off the latest branch. I hope you all liked it. I did, because (among other reasons) it finally gave me a chance to write for Adam Dortch, who has been rattling around inside my head for a long time without ever getting onto paper. Not that he emerged fully formed, even my imagination. But he did surprise me at a few points. (I had no idea, for instance, that he was one of the assholes who makes social media such a sewer.) But having got him introduced, he at least feels more real to me. As for the mystery of Clover Mystery, feel free to speculate in the commentary thread: "Commentary: Clover Mystery" The last few branches have been written for commissions, but tomorrow brings something I chose for myself. I will be returning to an ancient part of the interactive, an area so old that I don't dare look to see when it was written. It is also an area I made no contributions to until now. My point of divergence comes here: "Casting for a New Part" . (And if you don't recognize that chapter title, it's because I changed it. Way back then, chapters were usually named after the choices.) But the roots of it begin nine chapters before: "Third Thoughts" , and you can go a little further back than that, if you want.(And if you read the public version, the line of chapters after "Third Thoughts" will likely be new to you.)But basically, here is what is going on: Will, being freaked out by this book he bought, tried to return it to the bookstore, where he met Professor Aubrey Blackwell, the academic who accidentally lost the book and wants it back. He offered Will a great deal of money for it, but Will (not liking the man's looks) declined. He instead kept it and kept investigating it. That led to the creation of masks and mind bands. But Blackwell has not been quiet. He tried again to buy the book, and was again rejected. There followed a burglary attempt at Will's house. Now Will is worried—scared even—of what else Blackwell might get up to. And he becomes terrified when he sneaks into one of Blackwell's lectures, and discovers that Blackwell has turned Lucy Vredenburg—sister of Cindy Vredenburg—into a golem. He also knows that Blackwell has a spare mask or two of his own, which he can use to impersonate one of Will's friends. |
| After a number of hiccups along the way, today's chapter— * Interactive: "Three Little Maids Are We" * Public: "Three Little Maids Are We" —rounds off the latest branch. ThePrussian has already kindly got a commentary thread going: "Commentary: Keith Does It Again" Tomorrow I return to a recent area: the Mystery of Clover Mystery Clover, or whatever you want to call it. This time we back just a little further up the chain, to "A Trap of One's Own Making" . Will is being badgered by a mysterious person named "Clover Mystery" who has been catfishing him thru fake DMs, and he has also had some mysterious encounters, most recently with Maria Vasquez. He has set a trap for "Clover," arranging to meet up with the various fake IDs that have been DMing him at a coffeeshop. He has arrived to find the real girls, and some of their friends, there. Also, Maria and Chelsea Cooper are there.In the road taken, Will barges over to Maria's table to talk to her. Tomorrow we'll find out what happens when he just keeps to himself. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "What Laura Had to Say" * Public: "What Laura Had to Say" —stops a branch cold. I will be coming back to the "Clover Mystery" section in a week or two, in another area, but tomorrow I start fulfilling a different commission. This one is in a relatively new part of the interactive, the "Conspirators Three" section, where Will and Caleb have brought Keith in to study the book and the masks. Rather than continuing the branch that already appears there, though, tomorrow I will branch off a midpoint: "Faces All Around" . There's not much backstory to give. Keith made a mask that mixed his face with Stephanie Wyatt's, and now he has a mask that contains Jenny Ashton's form. The last time this branch got continued, they sealed it up and got in trouble when taking "Jenny" out in public. Tomorrow we'll find out what else might go wrong if they try something else. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Dreams and Temptations" * Public: "Dreams and Temptations" —brings this branch to a halt. There's already some fun speculation in the forum about who is who and what is going on: "Commentary: Clover Mystery" As I mentioned last time, I was commissioned to write 20 chapters in this area, and the just-suspended branch gave you 7 of them; the others will come in the form of two new branches, at other points in the storyline. I don't want to leap directly into one of those other branches, though: I like to give people a palate cleanser between closely related storylines. Trouble is, I don't have anything to give you as a palate cleanser. I do have another commission I'm supposed to be working on, but I don't have anything written for it yet. I haven't even found a divergence point to graft it on to. So I'm going to take a short break and not publish anything for a few days. (Probably three days; no more than a week.) That will give me a chance to get ahead in my writing (I've been day-by-daying it, sometimes writing a chapter in the hour before publishing it) and to also catch up on some other, too-long postponed chores. It will also give readers a chance to clear their heads. And to further help you all clear your minds of recent developments in the Clover Mystery storyline, I'll tell you where the next branch is going to appear, so that you can review the chapters that lead up to it without (I hope) getting confused by events that happen later. The divergence will occur at the end of "Face-Time with a Cheerleader" . Will has been badgered by Clover Mystery and by mystery dates, and he lately made a fool of himself in front of Chelsea Cooper and Maria Vasquez at a coffee shop. But the next night, when he returned there with Caleb, Chelsea made a point of telling him that she wanted to talk to him. In the main storyline, he did sit down to talk to her, and we've seen what came of that. But what happens if he bolts the coffee shop without talking to her? |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Minding Jessica's Business" * Public: "Minding Jessica's Business" —brings the current line to a close. There's a commentary thread on it in the forum: "Commentary: "The Third Time a Charm?"" Tomorrow I initiate another commission, and return to the Clover Mystery storyline. The story thus far: After showing the book to his dad, Will decided to get rid of it, but instead of putting it into the school time capsule he sold it to Jack Li; then, when his dad asked for another look at it, Will was told it had been sold to Christian Padilla as a prop for the drama department. There the trail petered out, as it could not be found. But while searching for the book he became reacquainted with Laura MacGregor, a drama student who was friends with him earlier in high school. Through Laura he becomes better acquainted with Jack's group of friends, including a bunch of girls who take turns flirting with him: not only Laura but Elle Moore and Leah Simmons; and Will even hangs out with Maria Vasquez (the cheerleader) at a dance club. Confusion sets in, however, as the various girls deny meeting up with Will, and he quickly gets a reputation as a fantasist who makes up stories about girls being interested in him. Worse, he is being taunted via text by a person calling themselves "Clover Mystery." This person took a video of Will and Caleb digging up the time capsule so that Caleb could retrieve his contribution. These texts have a teasing, but undeniably threatening, air to them. Things reach a pitch when Will is invited by Chelsea Cooper, of all people, to meet her after school. The upshot is that Will finds himself violently switching bodies with Jack Li, and the two are forced to impersonate each other. Of course, they know that Chelsea must be responsible—and Will now has good grounds to believe that she is "Clover Mystery"—but she denies it, and even sends her goon boyfriend to beat them up. That leaves them stuck for a way to force her into confessing her guilt, and forcing her to switch them back. The story will pick up— But wait a minute, I hear you interrupt: Didn't the story continue beyond that point? Yes it did, but it's been going in a straight line for forty-five chapters without so much as a glance to the left or to the right. I've been asked to write twenty chapters, and after some consultation with the commissioner, I'm going to divide them between a couple of new branches, so that there will be some variations. The story will pick up tomorrow with what happens after "A Message from Chelsea" , when Will goes with Jack to meet Chelsea ... |
| In case you couldn't tell from the bumpy posting schedule, this was a hard one to wrap up. I had a target—get to the point where Michelle has six masks, and Will is ready to move to another spot—and by the end I was pretty grimly set on getting to it. It wasn't much fun for me, because I wasn't giving myself room for surprises. At any rate, today's chapters— * Interactive: "Ambition from a Surprising Place" * Public: "Ambition from a Surprising Place" —have got it done. There's also a commentary thread: "Commentary: "A Junior Partner"" Tomorrow I start working on a commission: a return to the story of "Laurent and his gang of sports clowns," as the commissioner put it. (I love that description, and I'm going to repeat it as often as possible.) It will pick up here: "Thimbleriggery" . The background:Will needs money to continue researching the masks, and so he has shown them to Laurent Delacroix, the captain of the wrestling team, and to some of Laurent's friends. They all think the masks are hilarious, and are having great fun copying girls and then playing around as girls inside the masks. There have been some shenanigans involving Jessica Garner, though: At least twice, Will has had to put on Jessica's mask and sneak into the Garners' house, and each time he has managed to mess something up between the Garner siblings. And wind of things has apparently got back to Jessica, for she has shown up on Will'd doorstep with the news that she knows all about what's going on. Meanwhile, someone has been using Will's mask to get him in good with Eva Garner. Now, hang on just a moment, I hear you guys cry. The link above is pointing to "Thimbleriggery" as the place where the story resumes. But wasn't there a chapter that came after that. Yeah, and I'm going to start things off tomorrow by posting a new version of that chapter. It won't change the fundamental direction of the story, and in fact only parts of the chapter will get a revision. But I need to change it if I'm going to continue the story the way I want to continue it. |
| There have been a few hiccups over the past few days with my posting schedule, you might have noticed. Nothing serious. Just hiccups. It's been a couple of things: A few bad nights that destroyed my ability to concentrate, so that I didn't have anything prepared. Yesterday I did have a chapter for you (the one I published today) but I got in deep writing something else, and the time got completely away from me. And this storyline is evolving in ways I couldn't have predicted, and sometimes that means I'm stuck for an idea, because I've wandered into a cul-de-sac. So there's a chance of a few more hiccups. But I've no intention of doing a weeks-long fade. |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "From Plan B to Plan C" * Entry: "From Plan B to Plan C" —is a cheap bait-and-switch, I know. The choice was to "circle back" to previous choices, but the story shouldn't reward procrastinators, so any reader who won't go for the first four choices offered deserves to be pitched into something quite different. Next up: I closed a poll yesterday, asking if you wanted a story where Will worked as the senior, junior, or equal partner with someone else. The victory narrowly went to "Senior Partner", by 40% - 30% - 30%. So tomorrow I'm going to return to a storyline where Will is in the most senior position possible: "A Junior Partner" That's the "doppelganger" storyline, where Will has replaced half a dozen classmates with duplicates, and aims to replace a lot more after getting himself some junior partners. So, disguised as Chelsea Cooper, he has recruited ex-cheerleader Michelle Estrich as a partner, and they have replaced Christine Miles, an arrogant bitch in the junior class who has it in for Michelle and her friends. Michelle gets to pick two more people to replace, while Will (as Chelsea) is going to pick three. Michelle has just sent Will the names of five people she wants to replace, giving Will the chance to steer her to one of them ... EDIT: I have a few authorial notes about the just concluded storyline, in "Re: Commentary: "Just the Typical Hollywood Story"" |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Theater of One" * Public: "Theater of One" —continues the Hollywood arc and it ends in a choice, but I'm not going to post a poll. My original plan had been to end today's chapter with five possible choices, but I didn't have time to set up five choices without just doing an exposition dump. So I'm going to string things out over one or two (or three?) more chapters. So tomorrow (if things work out) should bring a sequel on the "Just envy" choice. I'll suspend this branch once at least five choices have been set up. |
| I think today's chapter— * Interactive: "Hook and Haul" * Public: "Hook and Haul" —is going to bring the "Party of Five" branch to a halt, at least temporarily. Tomorrow I hope to have a sequel to "School Survey" Oh, right, there a poll that went with that one. "Snag a student" had a solid lead for most of the time, but GPs and a last minute surge gave the final victory to "One of Gianna's outside friends." Final tally: * Outside friend: 43% * Student: 41% * Teacher: 16% So, now I have to invent some outside friends for Gianna Johns! * * * A few weeks ago I polled readers on what kind of story they wanted to see next, but I forgot to do a follow-up poll. Well, the follow-up is finally up. You can find it here: [Poll completed and deleted.] |
| Today's chapter— * Interactive: "Party of Five, Chapter 18" * Public: "Party of Five, Chapter 18" concludes the "Party of Five" story-within-the-story. It was fun to write (well, adapt). I hope it was also fun to read. I should have posted another "Hollywood" chapter before concluding "Party of Five," but some scheduling conflicts and one night of insomnia destroyed three consecutive days of writing time, so I had to fill it with "Party of Five" nonsense, and by the time I'd recovered my footing "Party of Five" was so close to concluding that it just seemed best to finish it off. But tomorrow will bring another "Hollywood" chapter (as voted for, the "Wait" option, which won with a GP-adjusted 44% of the vote) along with another poll. Then my plan is to follow with a few more sequel chapters in the "Party of Five" branch that will extend Will's shenanigans vis-a-vis Sean, before capping the Hollywood branch with one last chapter. And after that? I'm not sure. I'll have to look around. EDIT: There's a commentary thread on the story in the forums now: "Commentary: "Party of Five"" |
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