September 17, 2000 NEW STORY with brand-new character: "A Little Nipple Play". Meanwhile, I've got two more stories about Mazruar and Palin in progress, plus new chapters of Precious Cargo coming up. August 15, 2000 Two good pieces of news: "The Bargain" is, as you can see, finished at last. I'll be posting it on Usenet shortly as well, as a multi-part story. I'm also (at long last!) returning to Precious Cargo, with a new chapter under construction. No promises at all about when it will be up . . . August 12, 2000 All of Precious Cargo is now redone and properly numbered, folks! Better yet, I've polished a chapter I had in storage and put it up. Other news: Yes, I am *still* polishing "The Bargain". It's more than 19,000 words and will doubtless have to be posted on Usenet as a multi- part story. It's mostly fine-tuning now, with my able assistants helping me catch minor errors and confusion. I hope to have it ready within the next two weeks (knock on wood . . .). And, I've just written out the rough draft for a new Mazruar- Palin story, about which no more can be said at this time. August 1, 2000 I've got all but four chapters of Precious Cargo reformatted and slightly rewritten now. Other than that, there haven't been any recent updates, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. On the contrary, I hope to have the final version of "The Bargain" finished within the next two weeks (crossing fingers . . .). From a relatively modest tale it's bloated up to 18,800+ words, which is a pain in the ass to rewrite and polish; thus the lack of updates. We're talking major epic here, folks.:-P I also am completing work on a non-sexual story that will be put up here but not posted on Usenet. Why a non-sexual story here? Well, it's Raven's origin story, and this is really the only place it belongs. I've had one or two people ask what on earth his motivations are for what he does in "The Price"; hopefully now it'll all become clear (and it will be clearer still once you've read "The Bargain"). June 4, 2000 NEW STORY! "The Pear", a non-furry story. It's short, but nasty - - it features a real torture device and *severe* pain (but the victim is willing). Okay, all plaintext files are now in the text folder, and you've already seen the index pages are all nicely HTML'd. Hopefully this new format will be easier for non-Unix users to find their way around in. May 22, 2000 "WHAT'S GOING ON HERE, WITH ALL THESE FILES MISSING AND STUFF?" Scroll down to the bottom of the index and you will see a new folder, "text". What I'm doing here is transferring all the text files to this folder. This is in preparation for setting up a *proper* Website on Velan, one with nice html'd pages and all. The plaintext files WILL CONTINUE TO BE AVAILABLE, but because I do not have direct FTP access to Velan, this has to be done in a special way in order to keep the contents of the account visible. When I'm finished, when you visit here you'll be presented with a proper Web page instead of a list of plaintext documents with dubious titles. However, there will be an in-site link to a folder wherein all the plaintext files are stored, so that you can browse them that way if you prefer. There will also be links to the individual plaintext documents, though . . . Well, you'll see when it's done. Hopefully it will make the site easier to peruse for those of you who aren't comfortable with plaintext archives. Yes, FurNation IS up and running again . . . but at this point, I don't trust them any more. Besides, they have a firm all-furry policy, which means some of my work such as "Shameless" simply cannot be presented there. So I am setting up an html'd Website here instead. May 9, 2000: NEW STORY! "Shamelessness", a non-furry story. May 2, 2000: THE NUMBERING PROBLEM WITH PRECIOUS CARGO: Two helpful readers have aided me in tracking down the sources of the problem. Chapters 10 and 16 are apparently duplicates of the chapters before them, which screws up the entire numbering system. This will be fixed within the next few days; in the meantime, the chapter guide in the readme file will be totally unreliable. Once again my apologies for this screwup -- whatever the quality of my writing skills, I win no prizes for basic arithmetic. WHAT'S IN THE WORKS: Well, I have another new and unique non-furry D/s story that finally appears to be *almost* ready for release; plus, two more stories about the Dark Warrior are in the process of gestation. (No bets about when the latter will be ready -- one -- "Darkness Descending" -- is still being debugged and polished, the other -- "The Bargain" -- is only now getting down on paper. Don't hold your breath. I swear, I could be blackmailed with the drivel I come up with on a first rough draft . . .) April 7, 2000: "WHERE THE &*#* IS THE NEXT PRECIOUS CARGO CHAPTER?!" No, I have *not* abandoned Precious Cargo. What I'm doing now is putting it aside for a little while. Both real life turmoil and the need to carefully plan the remainder of the story have conspired to force this. I need to take a step back from my creation so far in order to go on any further. Also, a series of inspirations has struck me, leading to a mess of other material, mostly non-furry. I'm going to put up as much of it as I can here at Velan, but beware: it is mostly much darker than Precious Cargo and may not be to everyone's taste. Read the readme.txt file AND the warning notes at the beginning of the nastier pieces for further information before just burrowing right in for the spooge. Meanwhile, I've at last set up a real Website on FurNation for Fodessa. This has given me an excuse to do what I've long wanted to do: rewrite and fine-tune the chapters I've written so far, making them more internally consistent. Also, I've at last learned how to force Micro$oft Word to produce REAL plaintext documents! For the details on this process, see: http://www.asstr.org/files/FAQs_and_Information/Converting_ Word_Docs_to_Text_2-1.txt I have heard a complaint or two about the dreaded little black boxes appearing in my text files, etc. The chapters will now be reformatted one by one as they are rewritten, so hopefully they'll now be true plaintext visible the way I intended from absolutely any platform and browser. Then, each chapter will be put into HTML and this Web version placed in the FurNation account, for those who prefer to read their stories in that format. -- Maureen Lycaon, maureen_lcn@yahoo.com