What's New

21 Jul 11

Time's running out and the mascot leads junior mascot in training to the extraction point. I was going to make a running gag of the little cartoon from Chapter 9, but it's too much of a pain without my tablet. Here, at long last, is Chapter 12 of Tico2. I apologize for the delay, but stuff came up. Said stuff didn't quite play out as planned, but it kept me preoccupied for a while.

Those of you who've been eagerly awaiting the latest installment will probably be angry to hear that what little time I could spare was largely devoted to putting together a full roster for the crew of the Ticonderoga. Yes, all 10K of them. It's crazy, I know, but so am I. Maybe I can focus more on storytelling in the near future. I also plan on buckling down to get the 2.0 update put into effect. I've let myself get distracted for far too long. We'll see what I can get done now that things are settling down for me a bit. Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 23:12:28

01 May 11

Happy International Ayame Jellybean Day! No, I don't have anything special for you today. Just taking a moment to commemorate the birth of the world's greatest mascot. We'll see if I can't get something up next week. Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 20:36:33

30 Apr 11

Having explained that we aren't leaving yet, the mascot is taking life easy.

I don't have a new chapter of of Tico2 out this week, but I do have the debut of a whole new Arc of stories. Those of you who've glanced at the forum since the upgrade have already noticed it. I present the If Arc. For those of you familiar with Marvel's What If series, you have some idea of what I'm going for here. Basically, I take stories from the canonical Four Arcs and then spin then in new and interesting ways. For instance, in Kanaim, I take the premise of the undercover mission in Tico1, only what Lydia coined the 'fake-true' identities are the characters' real identities. Ergo, Matt is actually the accountant Martin Ramus and the crew of the Kanai are real small-time pirates looking to make it big. Right now I just have three stories slated, but more will follow, I'm sure, and I'll see that something gets posted there in the near future, most likely the short "Hell in the Saturnian Sphere". Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 03:24:10

22 Apr 11

The mascot is packed and ready to go. Little does she realize that she's not going anywhere for another couple weeks. Also, I don't carry a purse, so she's going to find herself traveling in a completely different direction. Anyway, getting to the main event, I have Chapter 11 of Tico2 for you, the last in my little spurt of creative energy. I highly doubt I'll have Chapter 12 ready by next week, but I'll try to still have something for you.

In other news, something has come up and you may not be seeing much of me from about mid-May to July. I make no promises regarding any updates to the site, but depending on how things go, I may be able to pop in every now and then. Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 20:36:05

15 Apr 11

The mascot stares out into the distance, pondering the fate of the Ticonderoga. Find out for yourself how things are going in Chapter 10 of Tico2.

I'm happy to report that you can expect Chapter 11 next week, but it may take me longer to produce Chapter 12. It's proving difficult to script and I have my many end of the semester concerns to deal with. We'll see if two weeks is enough time to get it all together. A few other things are in the pipe as well, but we'll get to that later. Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 21:07:40

08 Apr 11

Ally hulks out in Chapter 9 of Tico2. Or perhaps not. Imagine it, though. Compare Bruce Banner to the Hulk and apply the same formula to Ally!Hulk and she'd be a five-foot, hundred-pound juggernaut. ^o^ (I kid, of course, as those numbers are just a smidgeon above Ally's actual stats. To apply the formula accurately, Ally!Hulk would at least be 5'3". :P )

I certainly wasn't expecting to get another chapter out so soon and I've actually been sitting on this one for a few days. And I'll tell you something more, I'm almost done with Chapter 10, so you can pretty well be assured that it'll be here next Friday. If I can keep up this pace, I'll have a regular update schedule again. It'd be nice, wouldn't it? Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 16:39:18

02 Apr 11

You may not have realized it, but the mascot moonlights as a film critic. Take her review of this sampling of my battle buddy's DVD library...

It didn't quite meet her high standards of cinematic excellence. I blame the lack of any of Kurosawa's repertoire in the selection.

Moving right along, I've made some changes that are worth mentioning. Recently, Angel has rebranded herself as "Lynn DeRiso", so I've started to adjust her piece of real estate accordingly. (Knowing me, I'm probably going to start referring to her as Angelynn.) Her company e-mail is still angel@palidormedia.com, but if that changes, I'll let you know. If you go to her section, you'll note that I've added a link to her new Wordpress blog, where she's been doing some of her literary experimentation lately. Check it out. She's doing some interesting stuff there.

Now for some news on What's New. Originally, I'd clear the home page at the start of each month. Back when we were having two updates a week, that made sense, but with updates being as sparse as they are lately, that leaves new visitors hanging a bit. (All two or three of you.) I've decided to change policy and now there will always be the ten most recent updates posted on the home page. If I start to pick up the pace again, that'll be roughly equivalent to two month's worth of material, but as it stands right now, you can see all the way back to last August. Maybe this'll make trips to the archives a little less necessary.

I've updated the forum to 3.08, something I probably should've done months ago. It's actually what prompted me to go ahead with the updates to Angelynn's stuff. (I told you I'd start calling her that.) I've also gone ahead and removed all Steff's stuff from the site. If you were a fan, hold out in the hope that The Closed World gets published one day. I'd like to think she hasn't given up on the dream, but she's the captain of the ship of her destiny, so it's up to her.

If you drop by the forum, you'll notice something new in my Story Discussion section. More on that in the near future. Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 23:14:55

30 Mar 11

The mascot is trying to be covert, which is fairly appropriate for Chapter 8 of Tico2. It's been a long time coming, but I managed to get it out before having a second update-free month. Believe it or not, I've actually been doing a lot of work on the peripheral materials, but you don't really see the fruits of that effort, so I'm sure it doesn't interest you much.

I'm going to tell you in advance that April is going to be intense for me, so I can't make any promises about updates. However, by May I'll be free and clear, so that means plenty of time to work on content, get the 2.0 redesign together and start being active in the writing community again to draw more people to the site. There's a lot of promise waiting in the wings. Let's see if I can deliver for a change. Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 22:38:47

27 Jan 11

Our favorite fighter jock odd couple is here to ring in the fourth anniversary of Palidor Media. I know I was telling you that Palidor Media 2.0 would debut today, but, you see, here's the thing...

The mascot destroyed the plans. No, actually, I didn't really get to it during the break and now I've got work and school in the way. What I'm thinking is that I'll just be revamping the underlying code for the site for 2.0 and then start looking into some aesthetic remodeling for 2.1 and beyond. I'm trying to shift the site from the current table-based layout to all CSS and throw in drop-down menus for the global navigation. What little time I've invested thus far has been met with some unexpected bugs, but I'll get them ironed out in the near future and get everything up to speed. As you've no doubt noticed, I've fallen behind on the writing front as well. Scripting Chapter 8 has proven more difficult than I originally expected, so I can't get you an ETA on it just yet. Stay tuned, though, as I'll be getting content to you as I can. I've got a lot on my plate, but once this semester's over, things should be opening up quite a bit.

Another thing you may have noticed is that the global navi has been pared down a bit. The biggest point is that Steff is no longer associated with Palidor Media. Her stuff is still on the servers for the time being, but I'll be removing it along when I do the 2.0 upgrade and will be dummying out all the links in the archives to her pages. Next, until we actually have a functioning store, I see no point to having a link to a "Coming soon" page. Lastly, I've decided that we don't really need a links page, so it got nixed as well. In the event that we become associated with other sites, I'll most likely put those links in the right margin. Keep an eye out for more changes on the horizon. Until then.

Posted by: James
UTC 20:24:52

06 Dec 10

So blessedly close to drop-kicking another semester... Well, while I'm busy wrapping things up, you can enjoy Chapter 7 of Tico2. I'm not going to make any promises on Chapter 8, but maybe I can get it out in a week or two. Plotting the next few chapters is going to be a bit tricky, but I'll have more time to write. Maybe I can even pick TWC back up while I'm at it. Stay tuned.

Posted by: James
UTC 02:09:02