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State of the Millennium Address, 2005

Lycanthrope: This by far has been the most active of the storylines over the last year, and the same is true for the past several years. The original story was finished as an unpublished novel manuscript on October 4, 2003, and I was prepared to leave it at that. However, I felt inspired by the growing progress in developing the movie concept "Devoured" into the movie Freeborn, and by the encouragement of Anthony and Megan Brownrigg of Cashel Entertainment, the producers of the project, whom I met in person back in May at A-Kon. I felt that if I had already invested so much time in the novel, the act of getting it published was the right thing to do. People had already been encouraging me to do so for years. So, at the moment, the manuscript is getting another editing run, with the goal of getting it to professional grade. It is also a last minute opportunity to correct some glitches and add in things I feel are important that got left out, such as Selena Hawthorne's fate at the hands of Elodea, previously detailed in a seperate short story. Lycanthrope II: Revelations was started last year during Nanowrimo, "National Novel Writing Month." The editing process was slow-going at the beginning of the year. I felt dissatisfied with the first part of the novel, so I rewrote most of it from scratch. I discovered and participated in a Nanowrimo spinoff, Nanoedmo, "National Novel Editing Month." Once I enrolled, I came out of it with essentially a finished product. While not neccessarily professional grade, I consider it a cut above my standard writing. This year for Nanowrimo, I wrote the initial draft of Lycanthrope III: Enlightenment, taking place far into the future and overlapping with classic Genetic Wars storylines. However, I feel that the first draft of this piece is considerably worse than the one from last year, almost more an outline than a working draft. I expect it to undergo very extensive revisions during next year's Nanoedmo. Finally, I have a short story in the works, that began channelling itself into existance shortly after A-Kon. It is set in the days immediately after the original novel Lycanthrope, and it so far is pretty open-ended, meaning that it is hard for me to know how far it will go once I get back to it. It's been an exciting year for lycanthropy.

The Genetic Wars: At the start of the year I had a concept of a pair of short stories, and a novel-length story set in between. I had planned on working on the novel during the summer, but I found myself quickly getting sidetracked by the before-mentioned open-ended story. The novel is intended to bridge between the newer short stories I have written over the past three years and the classic, Old School Genetic Wars storyline. It promises to reintroduce a lot of old characters, as well as to cover a lot of events, including the often overlooked but obviously significant invention of FTL technology. Most of this work got put on hold because of the attention given to Lycanthrope as well as towards dramatic career changes in my real life. That means I will have to do in 2006 what I had originally slated for 2005, though Lycanthrope will again gain priority once it stands to get published. I am also considering consolidating the previous short stories and revising them into a novel, perhaps for a subsequent Nanoedmo or some other project, though I also want very much just to get the basic storyline done. Given its scope, I could have plenty of future Nanowrimos covered. The working title of the novel-length story is "Genetic Wars: Osiris."

Blackstone: A remake of the 1991 campaigns chronicling Spiritwalker Dreamsail is something I would like to do, but time constraints has kept this concept on the back burner. It would be a fairly drastic re-imagining, since the original run was mostly the work of other people and involved the published Ravenloft setting. Thankfully, Ravenloft in turn borrows heavily from public domain works and has many elements that are fairly generic to the Gothic horror genre. None-the-less, many plot elements centered around phenomena specific to Ravenloft, such as the dark mists that entrap characters into the demi-plane realm. The parody "Ravenlost" also has been toyed with, and about a half a page was drawn fairly early in the year before falling onto the back burner.

Moonstone: Haven and Fahri: Both projects are at this point historic novelties. I have no immediate plans to resurrect them, but I would be happy to do so if I had time enough in my life to do them. At the moment, I am having to prioritize other projects.

Galactic Empire Lykosa: Another back burner project, again having to tread carefully because of permissions. Thomas has given permission to use his works, as has Sheila Svenson, creator of the Thraeti. I have no word one way or the other on the creator of the R'Pannor, but my experiences with them are so limited that a simple name change would eliminate any borrowing. I have considered modifying the unsaid premise that it is an alternate timeline of the Genetic Wars and making it part of the main timeline, well aware that that creates additional timeline anomolies with its future crossover elements with New Moonstone.

New Moonstone: The original short stories, which seemed so cutting edge for me back in 2000, now look pretty crude and awkward. A rewrite would definitely be in order. Like the Tim Leonard Ravenloft games, it has been left hanging on a cliffhanger indefinitely, though I have contemplated through several unwritten concepts of a followup story with the working title "Breaking Point."

Miscellaneous: I contemplated back around 2003 a story bringing together it and some of my oldest character concepts, the crew of the ship Conus. I gave it the working title "Quest for Survival: the New Voyages," a title I had no intention of keeping, but one that played tribute to one of my oldest story concepts, one Alicia Vogel and I developed as brother and sister more than twenty years ago as kids. This was the first time I had done anything with them since I had drawn a sketch of them in the mid-90s, and the first time in their 25 or so years of existance that I ever had put their stories to writing. Anderson Conus, the ship's brain, was indeed brought back in 2003 with the Genetic Wars prequel stories. His great grandson Iston Conus, along with a sister named Helen, have appeared in several short stories from 2004. Other characters are still in the concept stages right now, but I have contemplated a story featuring Anon, a praying mantis anthro, and Mederan, a reptilian being, facing off and eventually joining sides. The original "Quest for Survival" also contributed the name "Cozalien," though the original "Cozaliens" were nothing like the modern ones--they were more your classic campy sci fi villains, mostly various arthropod anthropomorphs, with a smattering of aquatics and reptiles. This was long before the crew of Captain Archer's Enterprise faced off against the Xindi. The new novel Lycanthrope III: Enlightenment brings back the Cozalien "nova gun," a weapon that supposedly causes a star to nova. I refer to it now simply as a mass-generating weapon that rapidly destabilizes a star until it supernovas. Such technology is part of a larger picture of their collossal formidability. I'll try to avoid getting too technical, as doing so makes it easier for nitpickers to explain why it can't work. I'm still ironing out fitting it into the story, but I promise they're not just going to use it as a plot device to demand a great, cosmic ransom.
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Free lycanthropy to any survivors!

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I've decided to leak out a few bits of stuff from my current revision, version 70.4.1, of my novel. (Version number is in no way related to any Dysonian civilizations with a thing for genetic engineering of werewolves.) Coming next month is Nanoedmo, "National Novel Editing Month," and rather than trying to fix Lycanthrope III, I'm using it to get this first thing finally ready to send to a publisher, so it can not only get finished but stay finished this time.

The parts I'm leaking are based on a previously distributed short story, so it's not neccessarily new material. But, it's been edited to integrate better with the main story, and it might seem new. It shows Elodea redeeming herself to Alicia.

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Scott and Selena looked at each other. For someone witnessing a werewolf shift for the first time, Selena stayed remarkably calm. She trembled, and Scott could feel her vibrations through her hands. But, she remained centered.

“You’re handling all of this better than I did,” Scott reassured.

Selena answered with a stutter, “that’s because I’m just an observer.” She took a breath, centering herself. “One last kiss. Then I’ll have to let you go.”

“But, the saliva—it could be spread to you.”

She reached up and placed her arm around his back, leaning into him. “I know. That’s the reason.”

Scott hesitated. “You’ve never wanted to be alone. Even if you can’t be with me, you’ll be with someone. It will come up. Would you want to spread it to him? And from there, where else could it go? If it becomes an outbreak or epidemic, we could destroy humanity.”

“Then we’ll have to be careful.” She pressed her lips into his, and he responded.

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Two days had passed, and Selena was not yet sure whether or not the kiss had affected her. She sat by a stream along a nature trail, hoping the serene landscape at sunset would inspire her first sense of lycanthropic perception. She took a deep breath, noting to herself that the air’s scent did seem unusually vivid. However, her imagination was notoriously overactive.

Then, she heard rustling. Selena turned to see a dark form approaching—a black wolf. “Scott?” Selena asked. The wolf sped up, darting over to her.

Once in front of her, the creature stood upright, her fur-covered form looming over Selena. Selena backed away nervously. “Elodea?”
The creature grabbed Selena’s blouse, pulling her up and pushing her against the nearest tree. She shifted into something more human, until Elodea’s face was discernable. “About that last kiss…”

Selena, unprepared for confrontation and finding herself face to face with an angry lycanthrope, found her heart clinching and stomach twisting and rolling. “I was just…” She felt a need to run, but she knew doing so would be useless.

“He may be a bit naïve, but I’m not,” Elodea demanded. “He’s mine now. You can’t have him.” Her breath brushed against Selena’s face.

“I just…” Selena gasped, quivering. She collected her thoughts enough to realize that Elodea found out about her and Scott’s recent kiss. “…It was innocent…”

“Right,” Elodea answered, looking at her with pointed teeth and feral eyes. “This had nothing to do with mating rivalries.”

“I just thought with the kiss… I wanted to become… like you and him… a were…”

“Really?”

Selena’s eyes widened as Elodea’s form shifted back into the creature in mid-transition between human and wolf. She opened her gaping jaws and clamped down onto Selena’s neck and shoulders as she flailed reflexively. Then, she spat on the wound as she shifted again towards a human form. “Now you’re a werewolf.”
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Free lycanthropy to any survivors!

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It's been awhile since I have posted any updates into the status of the storylines in the works. Since I have little finished work for which to show, save for a few short stories that trickled onto The Pack maybe a year or two ago, one might have thought I have finally given up on this thing. (Sorry, Alicia; I haven't.) Here are how the storylines presently stand:

Lycanthrope: Awakening, the key story to the "Lycanthrope" franchise, remains an unpublished manuscript, with the first round of query letters having gone out and met with rejection a year ago. No new progress to report. It is the novel about Scott Gardener's introduction to lycanthropy.

Lycanthrope: Singularity is currently in the idea bin, with one completed story that could see revision. It chronicles several people who go to become early adopters of now public lycanthropy, only to get caught up in the political turmoil of the threshold between today and tomorrow.

Lycanthrope Zero is still mostly unfinished and lacking definite direction. It will deal with Elodea's arrival on Earth and joining the Taylor family, while Operation Lucy in their pursuit of the paranormal events surrounding her arrival gives rise to Blue Sentinel.

Millennium Dawn is sitting in the concept bin at the moment. My 2008 Script Frenzy experiment produced a draft written as if it were a TV series, chronicling paranormal rag journalists stumbling upon real paranormal events in present times, but set in the Lycanthrope/Genetic Wars universe.

The Genetic Wars remains an enormous idea bank, though my attempt to write it from beginning to end at the early part of this decade stalled out a few years back in the 2200s. My first stab at Script Frenzy in 2007 produced a rough draft for "The Millennium War," presenting the years 2100 to 3000 as a movie. In Old School Genetic Wars, the universe ended around the year 100,000; though a restoration of the universe was postulated less than a year later, the restored universe has barely been covered, though recent meditations have given me ideas for an unnamed story set around the year 3.5 billion, in which the decedents of the mindgrid ship Wolven One wipe out an evil force, ushering in a new era of peace. Rather than being about the war itself or the superpowers involved, I'm thinking it would make for better writing if it were about less super-powerful main characters.

Galactic Empire Lykosa got treated to a Nanowrimo novel draft in 2008, combining elements of Thomas' first and second play-by-email runs of "Galactic Empires" in the early 1990s, as seen from the perspective of my civilization. I've omitted a lot of the races I did not encounter very much, eliminating the problem of permission, since a lot of PC races like the Scora were the works of other people. Thankfully, I've got permission to use the R'Pannor and Thraeti, and I think I do the Avery, should I ever decide to get this thing going. Originally interpreted as an alternate timeline of the Genetic Wars, it's been retroactively fit back into the main timeline, since the Protective Anarchy era has an enormous gap over 60,000 years long, plenty of time in which a civilization can evolve from a wayward colony.

Moonstone: Haven and Fahri remain archival for now, though Haven would certainly welcome the rise of the Steampunk genre, though it would need some serious editing and rewriting. Many of the PC characters from the games would need to be replaced, again because of the permission problem, though many of those characters are probably, with all due respect to their players, probably better off replaced anyway. Don't feel too insulted; my own work as a GM would need an even greater overhaul.

New Moonstone finally got some new action in 2007, with the Nanowrimo first draft of Breaking Point, the first forward momentum of Gardener's latest incarnation in six years. It remains in draft form, though in addition to editing it, I'm contemplating a precursor story to detail the birth of Danit's and Nialle's daughter Crystallia. The story is set largely in the Genetic Wars universe, 500 years after Galactic Empire Lykosa.

Blackstone: the Dreamstealer represents a dramatic overhaul of the early life of Spiritwalker Dreamsail. The problem of permission with Tim's Ravenloft campaign dwarfs any other permission issues, since not only are most of the players in that game long outside my sphere of influence, but the game itself was run using a pre-published and copyrighted setting. Stripping out references to Ravenloft forced significant re-thinking, and the adventuring party got treated to a substantial overhaul, replacing the familiar "Ravenlost" cast with a fairly different lineup. I kept the name "Elswich" for an elvish character, since the name itself was already stolen--it was a guy in high school whom one of the players knew. But, Elswich is now a lady elf, rather than a ninja with a paper bag over his head.
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Free lycanthropy to any survivors!

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