Way back when, I did a giant poll where readers could vote more than once on a topic.  I’m doing this again, only this time, you can potentially vote up to two times in a day (with 12 hours between each vote).  My advice?  Focus on one to two topics out of the list and stick to those.  The more you vote for something, the more likely it is to be chosen!  The top 7 winners will be the next bonus updates!  They will be written and posted in order of popularity, the most popular being the first.

Click here to see the poll.  Tell your friends, tell your family, and get the votes up!

VOTING CONTINUES UNTIL FEBRUARY 29th!!

Check out Eikasia’s 4th edit (coming soon to the main site) on fluffyseme!

Thank you all for understanding.  I hope your Christmas was wonderful and that all your dreams come true in the new year!

Ah, and it’s my birthday!  Do me a favor and give Eikasia a review/rating?  Donations are swell too!

To rate/review Eikasia, go to: Web Fiction Guide – http://t.co/oEUpa40e OR Muse’s Success – http://t.co/cSxquL4W

To donate click here.

To add to what I said in the video–

It was fully my intention upon writing 29.1 to have a much more physically intimate scene between Elmiryn and Nyx, but after starting 29.2, I realized that not only would that be implausible (because of Elmiryn’s immaterial state) but the timing was just plain bad.  I really didn’t think it felt natural, as much sexual magnetism as there was.  I thought it much more interesting to focus on Elmiryn’s growing inner turmoil over her changing state, and showing how her feelings towards Nyx have become increasingly complex as a result.  I’m going to try and get a head start on resuming the story.

The real problem with my story outline is that it only focuses on major plot points.  Sometimes, I have big spaces in between those where I assume I’ll have enough plot fodder to churn through before I hit onto the next major event.  This time around, I lacked the inspiration needed to forge ahead.  It won’t be the same this next week, I promise!

I posted this yesterday on YouTube as part of a new vlog series I’m trying to do.  I seem to have trouble finding the energy to type up blog posts, so I’m giving this a shot as I’m pretty content to run my mouth, even when exhausted.  There’s a few other videos on Eikasia’s YouTube page if you haven’t already checked it out.  From now on, I’ll be cross-posting vlog entries here, just to make them more available.

Gonna finish 28.3, then post.  Hopefully within the hour!

1.  Got married to the awesomest person on the planet.

2.  Did a road trip honeymoon through the American South that was equally awesome.  (Vegas, San Antonio, New Orleans?  Oh yeah baby!)

3.  Moved into new home.

4.  Started online classes for Full Sail University’s Creative Writing BFA program.

5.  Started a new part time job.

So that’s what’s been going on with me (and in some cases, is still going on with me.)

I talk a bit about Eikasia this week and what happened last week in this new vlog I did. I’m considering doing 1-2 minute vlogs every week. Lemme know what you guys think!

Doorways carved from conflict led to new ways of thinking.

She was fretting over the ideas of freedom in the face of the materialist reality, where the senses were just the slaves of perception, and emotion was but an aftertaste of sensation.  It was philosophical conjecture that had marooned on the shores of her mind, a castaway of a noble education.  Idealism versus materialism. Materialism believed that there was an objective world that existed outside of the mind and spirit, not only known through senses, but through tools and science as well.  Idealism believed the opposite, and stated that nothing existed outside of the mind.

The first time she’d heard of the concepts at the age of seventeen, she remembered feeling the sunlight and savoring it.  She’d only stopped dozing when her instructor had used a burning home as an example for that day’s lesson.

What if they (the students) had walked through the door of a burning building?  They could feel the heat, see the brilliance of the fires, smell the smoke…but was it all really there?  Was the environment and the dangers therein illusions of the mind?  The objective world was a thing of sense, but reports had come of individuals capable of ignoring such physical tethers through sheer willpower.  Magic, too, was always reshaping the environment–was that part of the material world, then?  Or was it further proof that their world was just a projection from their animus, and they could shape it to their will if only they could find such control?

Elmiryn remembered feeling intrigued, though her only question had been–

“And what about death?  When you die, do you vanish, or does the world cease to exist?”

Her instructor–she had forgotten his name now–only chuckled and said, “Well I suppose it depends on how strongly you believe your own perceptions?”

The next day, her instructor had been dishonorably removed and replaced by another man, who went on talking about Halward’s supremacy like he were reading from a script, and the redhead had resumed her adolescent apathy towards her studies with zeal.

Imageless memories blurred into her present and confused her momentarily.  Elmiryn gave her head a shake and her mind cleared enough to take in the scope of her situation.

She and Sedwick had gone to the first place they thought they could help–A half-timbered house that billowed smoke and flames with a woman screaming hysterically outside.  Kind folk tried to comfort her, to take her to safety, but she fought them, screaming, “My family!  My family is in there, dear gods, please!!“

Elmiryn was deep in the reaches of that very home, aware on some level that it’d been dangerous and foolish, but it had drawn her there.  She could hear Sedwick shouting at her further away as he sent his water into the raging flames.  She…had hardly thought about it this time.  She’d just approached the inferno and pushed the flames aside with a thought, moving through the destroyed facade, a feeling like a fresh breeze greeting her before the notion was swallowed in the fury of the fires.

The ruined buildings around them were solid, real, and stark.  The gutted giants of mortar and metal were stained hot by the fury of great big beasts, creatures who were too enthralled by their larger-than-life dramas to stop and take notice of the little skulls they crushed beneath a deadly step.  They had weight.  They were mammoths of life.  Did might make right, here?  Was their spirit stronger than the collective belief?  Could she withstand such a reality?

Also Eikasia will be entering a HIATUS starting May 23.  The tentative return date is July 17th.

Cheers!

But my bashful toe-stubbing aside, what I REALLY wanted to talk about was the the REALLY unofficial playlists I have now made available both on the Eikasia and Susie Swordfish websites.  They’re pop-ups, so don’t fret about being rudely interrupted.  They’ll only come up when you click on the playlist button, and it has a stop and pause button.  These are songs that in one way or another jump started my writing (and believe me, there were ton more, but I tried to stick to tracks that followed major themes or rang true for the setting).  They’re nothing important, just lists I did for fun and are meant to be seen as such.  The thing is, I’m the sort of person who can listen to music with lyrics when writing or reading–but if you’re not that sort of person, then perhaps you can’t really listen to these songs whilst reading Eikasia or (in the future) reading Susie Swordfish.  This certainly isn’t background or ambient music.  A few notes:

You need Flash 7 for these players to work for you.  Second, if you’re pop-up blocker is on, it could potentially stop the window from opening, so be sure to check that.  Lastly, to adjust the volume, my fiancee and I found that we had to click and drag.  If you’re confused as to where the volume bar is, it’s at the top in the right corner and looks like cell phone signal bars.

…Aaaand, that’s pretty much it!

Take care everyone!