New Year's update

Hi all,

Well, it's the start of a new year, and perhaps like a lot of you, I'm glad to see the back of 2020, a year full of personal tragedies and missed opportunities, but I'm still standing, trying to stay optimistic and look at the positives.

The biggest positive being, starting this Patreon page, after years of reading other people's work and writing the odd short story, not believing anyone would actually be interested in reading what I wrote, I took the plunge last summer. 

I want to thank you all for the incredible support, I've been blown away by your reaction to my stories,  it's such an amazing feeling seeing people continue to sign up each month and enjoy my content.

This has motivated me to work even harder in the coming months to provide you with the content you want to read. To make this possible and not kill myself trying to do it, I'm going to make a few changes:

CHANGE 1) - The biggest change will be, instead of one fully written story released each month, I'm going to post regular story updates every 2 to 3 days, like I've been doing for the last month, when complete I'll put it all together as a PDF. there are a few reasons for this:

1) People really seem to enjoy the regular story updates, as I've seen a lot more likes, comments and fewer people leaving (this, of course, helps me tremendously, as on top of the 22-23% Patreon takes, if people leave and then rejoin each month, Patreon can somehow justify taking even more)

2) I'm still working full time, and the last few months have been quite stressful having to come up with a story concept, write it, make images and edit it, it was taking all the fun out of writing, and also impacting my health.

3) I've really been enjoying writing again the last month and having a few days to work on the images and write the next part of the story gives me more balance in my life.

CHANGE 2) - Fangirl tier

I made this tier to provide extra content for stories past and future, and in the last month, I feel I haven't provided enough content, so for that reason, starting soon I'm going to write a spin-off story in the People don't take trips, trips take people universe, I'll release updates every 3 to 4 days.

I'm also going to let the people in this group suggest names for the characters in up and coming stories, more information on this soon.

CHANGE 3) - Diva tier

I've been playing around with realistic changes to photos again recently, which is something I really enjoy, but writing short stories is time-consuming and it's difficult to come up with a good idea without your input. I realise this is not something everybody wants, but if you are interested in commissioning a story, there will be 2 positions available each month, and I've reduced the price by £5.

Finally looking ahead

1) I will finish off Rent or forfeit - not sure how long the story will be as it depends on your decisions, but I feel it's winding down now.

2) The next story up will be one involving realistic photos and two transformed protagonists. At the moment it's looking like having around 12 to 15 parts, so will all be posted over a few weeks.

3) The project after that is still in the early planning stage, but the images used will be different from any story I've written before.

4) After that I hope to write another interactive story like Rent or forfeit, as coming up with the story based on your decisions albeit challenging also quite fun, the problem is, it's difficult to think up with a good concept, where each chapter ends in a choice, if you have any good ideas, please comment below or send me a message.

Well, that's it, sorry it turned into a bit of an essay. 

I'm feeling really positive about the coming months and it's all thanks to the wonderful people in this amazing community.

Stay safe everybody and here's hoping for a better year.

ds1000 xoxo