Hello, my fellow Simlies!

Although I have been posting a lot, I thought it was time for a quick chat and update.

I am always finding ways of improving my blogs. Since I am doing self-hosted ones, there are a lot more options at my fingertips than I had before, which I love. This means I can add more cool features and make the sites look unique. There is always something new to learn; each new discovery thrills and excites me.

With that said, I want to give a huge thank you to Kymber who turned me on to an excellent plugin called Comment Luv. Basically what this plugin does is it gives an option for people who comment to share a link to their blog and display a link to a recent post. As SimLit authors, I believe we should support and encourage one another, so this gives a great opportunity for that. For those interested in the plugin, you can find it here.

Please Note: It’s worth mentioning that, unfortunately, plugins aren’t available for WordPress.com users unless they want to pay the exorbitant price for the Professional Plan for more bells and whistles for a website/blog. When I was considering making the switch to the self-hosted (WordPress.org) sites, this the final thing that sent me running. Yes, I had to build the sites from the ground up (frustrating but fun, too, in many ways) and bucks were involved, but it was much, much less than WordPress’s professional Plan.

I realize this is probably more technical than most people care to read, but I felt i should try to save you some disappointment before realizing the hard way that you can’t use plugins on WordPress.com’s Free plan.

I would also like to ask a favor. If you could please comment below and tell me if you see this (and possibly my other posts) in your WordPress reader if that is the method you use to read blogs. It seems they weren’t showing up before, so I did some twiddling which, I hope, solved my issue. If you are willing, I’d certainly appreciate it. 🙂

For those who play TS4, are you ready for Island Living? I haven’t gotten into it yet (am waiting for it to install as I type this) but plan to spend some time with it a little later. As you already probably know, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Sims 3 fan, so I don’t play Sims 4 nearly as much. Also, all my stories are done with Sims 3. However, I am not adverse to fiddling with Sims 4 to come up with something, even if it’s simply a couple of short stories. I’d have to bone up on how to use poses (from what I gather, it’s a lot different than posing for Sims 3), but it shouldn’t be too difficult…I hope. 😀 It might be a while because with s new EP comes outdated Mods.  If this is something you might be interested to see, please comment below and share your opinions.

I want to give another huge thank you to Kymber, who graciously honored me with my being the subject for her latest Author Interview. The questions she asked were awesome, and i had a total blast writing up my answers. The questions were thought-provoking, so it gave me a lot to consider as I wrote my answers. Thank you so much, Kymber. I loved how it came out and can’t tell you enough how excited and honored I was to take part.

For anyone who is interested, you can read the interview here.

As for my stories, I’m still reworking the previously written material that was on Blogger to improve the quality. Here is a list of status updates for each story.

Forever in Time – Things are going to get very intense very fast. I’m at a point right now where I’m actually rewriting (and scrapping the old) what will be happening. I feel I can give it much more depth, tension, and action with the rewrite. I’ll probably be able to use the screenshots I took for the original Blogger posts, so that will help in my being able to et the posts up quicker. Still, revamping does take time, and I don’t want to rush it. I want to provide a good quality work of SimLit rather than a half-baked one. We’re getting there, folks, so please bear with me. Just as a heads up, you’ll see that there will be a lot of hankie warnings, so be prepared.

Serenade – I’ve reworked a lot within the past 2 or 3 chapters and added material that wasn’t there in the original when it was called As Tears Go By. For those familiar with the original, you will see that the improved version has Simon playing the situation very differently. I think the rewrite gives it more layers and makes for a better read. I hope you all agree with my assessment. We’re nearing the end of the “old” material though (just a couple chapters more for revamping), so completely new material will be coming up shortly.

Heartsongs & Enchantments – As in Forever in Time, we will soon be getting into some intensity with coming up events. As mentioned before, this is a companion story to Forever in Time, so we we will see some character and event crossovers as well. Again, I am reworking the material from the Blogger site to make it a better read. I’m still dealing with those chapters, but it shouldn’t be long before totally new material will be coming up.

For my stories, The Castaways and Passion’s Strange Magic, those have just started, so no reworking needed. I would also recommend reading Ileah’s Bachelorette challenge before you begin Passion’s Strange Magic because doing the opposite will give away spoilers. From time to time, you will see characters from other stories appearing in both of these. They are standalone stories, though, so not much prior knowledge is needed in order to enjoy them.

I will be continuing my Diary of Sims series as well. As of now, I have only one installment, so I’m sorry for sorely neglecting it. These are all “one-shot” stories totally independent of the bigger works, and multiple platforms can be used. This means I can give Sims from multiple games some screentime, which allows me to show other creations that don’t make it into my main stories. Please consider reading this post about my gal, Emily Crebs, to give you an idea of how this series works.

I’m still involved in The Pen Pal Project although, admittedly, it’s been rather slow for everyone lately, myself included, as a couple of my Sims owe letters. This is where our Sims write letters to another person’s Sims. It was organized by the wonder CathyTea. Feel free to take a look at that forum thread (linked above) and see if it carries some interest for you. If anyone has any Sims interested in writing pen pal letters to any of my Sims, please comment below, and we can get something going. How I work my pen pal saves is that I have separate saves than the ones I use for my stories. This way, the Sims won’t age up and die as quickly as they might in a story save when played constantly in order to get chapters out. This avoids a situation where, in one letter, you have a young adult. Then, some time passes between letters and boom, your Sim is an elder in the next. Pen pals just don’t last long that way. 😀 I mention this because I like to keep my Sims around as long as possible so there’s more time for lots of letters and a friendship to develop. You won’t have to worry about them dying off after the 3rd or 4th letter. 🙂 With that said, events from my stories will and do play into the letters, so I add spoiler alerts whenever needed. So again, if you have a Sim interested in pen palling with any of mine, let me know.

With that, I’ll end here by wishing you all a great (and dry) rest of the week (it’s been raining incessantly here). Enjoy your Father’s Day, and Happy Simming!