Before I tell you about new stories, I'll let you all know about some other new 'stuff' available on the site this week. We've added an Art Gallery section. You can find it under the Main Menu option for "WA Universe" and then the Secondary Menu button labeled "Art Gallery".  In order to get something added to the gallery, you'll need to work with someone with author approval to get your art added to the site/folder. Elrod has offered to manage/oversee the Gallery... so if you need help getting images loaded or approved for use, please contact him. He also is aware of the restrictions (we cannot post anything that is 'adult' without losing our Google ads funding, for example), so if he says no... please respect his call. 

For story releases this week; we have a little something from Joe, filling in some more of the year 1 Outcasts Corner details "Small Mercies" ... and a second piece, from Morpheus: Part 1 of "A Little R & R" ... ENJOY!

I was going to say fun... but then realized that I might get some gum-protecting lawyer after me. But we really do have twice the fun to share with you for today. Between JG's return and hyperactive muse, Heather's participation, E.E. recovering some from his surgery; the canon author side of things around here has been busier than it has been in a long time. And that's quickly turning into readable, shiny stories. We're not quite at the point where we're going to shift 'full time' into a two story per week release mode, but while we have a larger collection of ready works; we're going to go ahead and push a few double story weeks.

For today? We have a follow up chapter from JG. This is the second part of the Outcasts time in Australia, "The Book of Darwin" ... and for our second piece, we've got a collection of scenes from Morpheus centered on a certain new Fall 2007 art teacher's initial experiences at Whateley in "Quick Imp-ressions".  Enjoy!

And... since everything is ready to go... going to go ahead and toss this stuff out there instead of waiting for 5:00. Have a good evening!

Setting this up to release a little early today. I may do this again a few times moving forward, while we have a release queue. Generally, if we don't have a lot in the queue or if there are still final reviews and edits coming in for a piece; there's not a lot of value in my cleaning up the file and doing final formatting work until the last minute. That's why the release of new material is Monday evenings, as Monday is the one day I typically have off work... and by setting the release time in the evening of that day off, I have time to work on even a completely unformatted piece and get it cleaned up for you. Or time to badget authors into coughing up something for me to release, sometimes. But, as is true today, there are times when the queue has enough in it that a piece has been sitting in wait of going out for a month... so even late, last minute edits have been done for at least two weeks... and in those cases, I can do the clean up work at my convenience. That means, little to do on Monday (yay, I get my day off to relax) and I can let things out the door a little early.

So... don't consider it a permanent change. My target deadline is still going to be 5 pm Monday (PST)... but while I have stuff in the queue for release long enough that I'm not worried about doing work twice? You might see things come out earlier. 

What do we have in the queue? Well... that'd ruin the fun of the Baked Goods gambling ring... but I will tell you that since returning, JG's been hardcore... even giving Elrod and Morpheus a run for writing speed champion. That means, at least for the near future, you can expect to see a number of things from his corner. I 'think' we'll manage to keep it from being all JG all the time, but we'll see. And let's start getting some of that out to you now... and to do that, we need to step backward in time a little. Not long 'in universe' but several years of publishing time for certain, to the middle of the Gen 1 first year... with Chapter 1 of "The Book of Darwin"

Sometimes you have to wonder what people are thinking when they make choices on how to do things related to their jobs. I've got someone at my theatre whose responsibilities are primarily financial. It's her job to find donors, grants, and sponsors... to bring in contributed income for the company. So today, I get an email saying that she wants to know if its possible to add house/lobby music for our cabaret performances like we did for our holiday show. Never mind that its a different space, different type of show, and that we've done almost ten years of these shows without having house music before the performances. Theatre convention suggests that you don't use recorded music prior to a musical, because no live performance ever really matches up to the 'finished' quality of a studio recording so its unfair to your performers.

And its a lot of extra work for something we're going to use for five performances compared to a show that runs for five weeks, with eight or more performances per week.

So... 

Anyways... you don't need to hear about life in grumpy sound land. What you want to hear about is life in the Whateley Universe. For today's bit of insight into that place, we're going to delve into the follow up (part 2) of E. E. Nalley's story "Boys of Summer" ... Enjoy!

I hope everyone's Christmas was warm and wonderful and that, whether you celebrate it as part of your religion or just enjoy it as a day off work; that it went well this year. For those of you who had to work (food service, entertainment venues, and those few other industries that tend not to get holidays in the normal fashion), I hope you get a chance to make up for the insanity of working while the rest are celebrating. My own New Years gets absorbed by shows this year... we have them on both Eve and New Years Day... but at least we had Christmas day off. In fact New Years weekend is going to be especially nuts for me as we not only continue our holiday show through Sunday the first, but we are also in technical rehearsals to open the next show this weekend as well. I could reeeeally use cloning technology right now, if anyone's got a lab working on it?

Here behind the scenes in Whateley land, we seem to have kidnapped a few of Santa's elves and have quite a few stories ready to go out the door and more than a handful in the works. Part of that, of course, is JG's return and the excitement of chatting with him behind the scenes again. Part is just the timing, as a number of projects that have been in the work for a while now came together at the same time. 

In the WhatIF author group, we see to have a bit of a bottleneck on stories asking for review before their authors feel ready to release them to the public. If you happen to have time and are willing to work with authors by offering constructive feedback (not being insulting or telling the author how you would write it, just explaining what works for you and what doesn't), I'm sure the WhatIF authors would love to have you. There's always a shortage of people willing to help with edits, if you're willing to help out the WhatIF crew. If you want to help out with this, PM me for access to the WhatIF section. That's especially true if you have any interest in at one point working with the canon team as either an author or editor, we definitely have a history of tapping new members from the non-canon writing group.

Of course, the reason everyone's dropping in for their weekly visit: new content. For this week, we have a bit of a holiday related piece from Bek. I know there are people who have been waiting eagerly for this one to roll around... so, here we go... "Silver Ghost, Golden Angel" Part 2. From Bek D. Corbin. Enjoy!

And for everyone, no matter your religion or background; have a warm, safe, and wonderful winter holidays. I won't name them all, but let's remember their common elements... the recognition of Light over Darkness, the affirmation that Winter will pass and Spring return. Celebrate your survival and the renewed hope that a new year brings. Grab yourself a cup of coffee, tea, hot cocoa, cider or mulled wine and join me at the fire.