I just received my assignment for the Dead Boy Detectives exchange! I can't say anything about it publicly, but I'm happy with the prompts that I'll get to pick from.

This will be lots of fun to write!

Of course, first I really need to start on my Five Figure Fanwork Exchange fic. It's only due in January, but I have a *lot* of worldbuilding that's been brewing in my head and that I need to get onto the page before it disappears, and I need to start shaping the story and the original characters I'll be using. Original characters are always harder to write than just lifting characters wholesale from existing IPs.

Plus I have another couple of projects to either start (that My Hero Academic longfic in collaboration with my daughter), or finish (three WIPs on AO3 that need help, plus two more Gingerpilot WIPs I haven't yet started posting to AO3).

Eeek! that's eight projects!

Lots to do, lots to do!

My teenage daughter has been into anime her whole life. She's pretty good in Japanese from studying it just so she could understand the nuances of the way people speak in anime. She has watched hundreds of titles. She has Opinions with a capital O about different titles. She's an anime zealot, is my point.

She has Opinions about the ending to My Hero Academia. A few weeks back, she ranted to me for at least 45 minutes about what a betrayal it was, what a terrible ending, how they could have fixed it in so many different ways, etc. etc. etc. Then she started talking about how she would redeem the terrible ending in a sequel.

So I suggested that we collaborate on a sequel together. She comes up with the main plot, what characters to use, what they do, etc., and I'll write it.

I've been trying to get her to collaborate with me on fic since May 2023, so this is a long held dream of mine. She was never interested before, but this time she said yes!

So we've been at work. I got her to text me her main thoughts (I made a new Discord server just for her and me to chat about this!), and I summarized them into a high level synopsis. Then I made a character list with the state of their life at the start of the story. I wrote a summary and we came up with a title. We currently have 4 main arcs plotted at a very high level.

Next, the chapter by chapter breakdown. I don't like to work too far ahead on that. I wrote a breakdown for the first 7 chapters of Arc 1, and sent it to her for her feedback.

If all goes well with that, I think I'd like to write the first 7 chapters while plotting the rest of Arc 1, then write chapters 8-? while plotting the start of Arc 2, and so on. We already have the end of the entire thing planned, so it's just a matter of getting there!

If I can build up a good stable of chapters, I'd like to publish 2 chapters a week on a regular schedule. Readers like that.

During all this I still want to stay faithful to Gingerpilot, my beloved ship! I have 3/5 of something new written, so assuming I can finish that off, I can post 1 chapter a week of that after Spanks for the Memories wraps this coming weekend. That gives me just 5 weeks of breathing room...

I don't know if I can keep publishing 1 chapter a week of Gingerpilot into perpetuity. Hmmm. Although maybe a series of shorter fics without the tight plotting might be okay?

Of course, I also have my entry for the Five Figure Fanwork Exchange due in a few months. I'll need to write at least 10k words for that. I feel like my match wasn't SUPER strong, and I considered asking for a replacement match, but then I decided that I'd stick with what I was given. There's actually plenty of scope in it, if I just get a bit creative!

Anyway, I should have enough to keep me busy! 😁😅