I didn't get "Peeping Tomcat" done by the end of June so I could spend July working on "One and the Same" during Camp NaNo. I won't be able to spend this month starting the polishing process so I could have OatS up by October before people got bored and move on.
HOWEVER!
I did spend pretty much every free moment last Tuesday editing my final chapter of "Peeping Tomcat." By 9pm it was up, and I was done.
I officially completed my first multiple-chapter story. I completed my first novel-length manuscript. I completed a long-running project. I completed my first ever "Miraculous Ladybug" story, even if I have posted about half-dozen shorts before I concluded the story.
I hit a new milestone. It may not be much in the grand scheme of things, but it is a step in the right direction. It was proof to myself that I can do this. It's a new level of understanding and determination when it comes to my craft. It showcased that all the trials and tribulations I dealt with - the feeling of silliness for dedicating so much time to this project; neglecting friends, family, and house cleaning so I could write; losing my writing not once, not twice, but three times; the worry that I wasn't good enough compared to established ML fan-authors, etc - none of it would stop me. I felt what it meant to have a story grab you and push you to complete it.
Aside from flitting moments with Amara or the X-Future gang, I had never felt that compulsion before. It was intoxicating, and I now know what I need to aim for.
I also learned that I need to find a less demanding schedule until I can figure out how to write and edit faster. My home is a disaster and I greatly miss my husband and friends.
All of it was worth it though.
All the struggles.
All the learning.
All the sorrow.
All the worry.
All the joy.
All worth it, because I learned so much about myself and my writing. I earned a much larger readership than I ever did before. I have so many more dedicated fans. This milestone is BIG, you guys!
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You can read the penultimate chapter here:
And you can read the FINAL CHAPTER of "Peeping Tomcat" here:
Now, I did have a double post update, and each refreshed view - e.g. reading two different chapters - does count as individual views. So the numbers are a bit skewed since each reader would, in theory, have two views as opposed to their normal one.
Then again, so many people were used to my Friday updates that I don't know how many checked AO3 or DA when I posted on Tuesday. Those who were following on FFN would have been notified, but no one else would have.
Anyway, here are my FINAL "Peeping Tomcat" 24-hr stats!
Okay, so before I get into anything else, can I just note the oddity of four new followers on FFN? If someone bookmarks a story on AO3 it makes it easier for them to re-find it later. I do it a lot with fanfics I like so I can re-read or share them easier. For AO3 a bookmark is basically the same thing as a fave on DA or FFN.FFN: 1526 views! 5 new faves, 4 followers, and 6 reviews
AO3: 446 views, 15 kudos! 2 new bookmarks, and 3 comments
DA: 24 views (19 for chapter 16, and the other 5 for chapter 17)
Total Results: 1996 views, 20 faves, 6 followers, and 9 reviews
Tumblr Notes: 19 total - 12 likes, 3 comments, 4 reblogs
Reviews:
1. Awesome ending. Though 'Claws out' is a nice way to end it, word wise, this does take care of a few plot holes necessary for this book. Looking forward to a sequel.... (review shortened for relevance)
2. I really enjoyed this one! glad that Adrien got to enjoy the festival. looking forward to their talk so now I'll go read it! (Chpt 16 review from marauderluverz)
3. oh wow... I can't believe it's over but i did love it so much! even though I wanted to see the full confession, I'll take this happily knowing you are planning a sequel. looking forward to it! (Chpt 17 review from marauderluverz)
4. Omgosh, that was so sweet, I really look forward to your sequel! (from cassy1994)
5. This is spectacular! You are an amazing writer and I can't wait for your next story. Take all the time you need to make it just as wonderful as this one. Lots of love, your fan. (A guest review)
6. (semi-lengthy review; please see below)
7. You did so wonderfully on this story! Thank you so much for writing it, and I hope to enjoy the sequel just as much if not more. :) (review shortened for relevance)
8. You did great! I really like leaving the reveal where it is- he had a good character arc in this piece, and the reveal would set off another one. Fantastic!
9. How dare you. To write something so. Frustraitingly. Gorgeous. Thank you. Million times thank you. I can't say how much this story captured my soul.
Now, while a follow on FFN does put the story in a little side category for easy re-finding, favoriting a story does the same exact thing. The only real reason to follow a story is so you can get alerts when the story is updated. As opposed to DA or AO3 where you have to physically check in on the story/author to see if there's an update.
I had noted in multiple different places that chapter 17 was the final chapter. No more. Story was done. It just seemed weird to me that NOW is when people start following me. If anything, I was expecting to lose followers. I mean, I DID lose a couple, but still... EARNING some?
Oh well.
Let's instead focus on the 1526 views I got on FFN! This is by far the most I've received within the first 24-hrs of posting. The number of views is second only to the previously "last chapter," before I realized I needed more than 15.
And what's more is chapter 15 had 2034 views after BEING UP FOR A WEEK! THAT is what these last two chapters are second to. On top of that, the next runner up is chapter 13 with a WEEK-LONG view count of 1449 views!
Granted, it WAS 1526 views for TWO chapters, so if we divide evenly they both had about 763 views, which is much closer to my normal 24-hr count.
Regardless.... WOW! I'm excited!
Aaaaand then I randomly have that large viewer discrepancy on DA... Why did chapter 16 get 19 hits, but then the next and final chapter only got 5????
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I also got 15 new kudos on AO3!!! And I can't even attempt to minimize how awesome that is by stating "yeah, well, two chapters" because you can't leave kudos on individual chapters. You leave kudos for the whole story, that's it.
How amazing is that!? Fifteen new people enjoyed my story enough to leave me kudos - WITHIN THE FIRST 24HRS IT WAS UP!
Then again, going back through those nine reviews, I have to admit that perhaps I truly did earn those kudos! I'm still humbled to see reactions like those. Like, it's me. I was the one who wrote that story. I'm so used to BEING one of those reviewers who was moved so much by a story. I'm not used to being the one provoking those emotions.
Speaking of, let's look at that one semi-lengthy review I left out of above:
My mind is indeed blown.unholyconspiracy: Sending all the love to you right now! And although my fanboy side was waiting for some kind of ultimate Adrienette scene at the end, my logical side thinks this is actually a perfect ending. Not too obvious, yet gives the story a feeling of completion. And it was wonderful to read all the fantastic chapters, see the characters develop while being true and believable compared to the original ones. Thank you for the entertainment and for dragging me deeper into this fandom, but I guess that was inevitable anyway.
Loved loved loved this one!
And if you say there's going to be a sequel... see you in winter then!
I mean... going back up to the last review listed with my stats: "I can't say how much this story captured my soul"?
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| Maki Natsuo from Love Lab by Ruri Miyahara |
Hopping over to those Tumblr notes, well, in truth we can ignore the 3 comments. I had a gif in my post that the commentor had a question about, I answered it, and then they responded. That equals 3 comments; none about PT. Still, they had to have SEEN my post in the first place so... win?
And the reblogs were actually a sort of "reblog war" between me and my one reader skyeribbon. She reblogged with a nice comment, I reblogged her reblog with a mushy reply, she reblogged my reblog with her own reply, and then I reblogged her reblog of my reblog. So... four reblogs.
You can see the full chain here: FINAL CHAPTERS OF “PEEPING TOMCAT”!!!!
Fair warning, Skye does use the f-bomb once or twice.
Anyway, the love kept pouring in throughout the course of the week. Here we are, nearly a solid week later:
So first and foremost, good old Chibi chimed in with a comment on my Tumblr post, and someone other than me and skye reblogged my announcement, so that's cool.FFN: 2661 views! 11 new faves, 4 followers, and 9 reviews
AO3: 803 views, 32 kudos! 4 new bookmarks, and 7 comments
DA: 28 views, 4 faves, and 1 comment
Total Results: 3492 views, 47 faves, 8 followers, and 17 reviews
Tumblr Notes: 21 total - 12 likes, 4 comments, 5 reblogs
Reviews:
1. Yes! Yay for fluff! Great job of writing as always! Your description of the akuma fight & the festival was downright awesome. I don't know Gambit, but I love Kirito so it's kind of cool that Adrien partially based his superhero from him. (I don't love him as much as I love Chat Noir of course, haha.) (review of chpt 16 by pkk)
2. This story is great, and I'm very happy to hear that there is going to be a sequel! Your writing, both descriptive and dialog, is superb, with just the right mix to keep everything so entertaining. I certainly look forward to reading more of your work in the future. (review of chpt 17 by pkk)
3. This was an amazing story. Can't wait to read your sequel.
4. A semi-lengthy review by JustMeMusing; please see below.
5. Loved it (review of chpt 16 by KorrieChan)
6. I am a anime fan too! What else would we do with our lives if there was nothing to waste time on XDD (review of chpt 17 by KorrieChan)
7. A semi-lengthy review by BunniElyse; please see below.
8. The cyber punk headphones yes!!!!!! I do want a big shot noir hoodie lol. (comment on chpt 16 by Seirenpoison)
As for those views! Well, again, it was a double-post week, so we should probably cut that in half to see what the views would have been if it was just one massive chapter. Even so, that's 1330 views, which is in the higher average for what I've been doing. I'm just dumbfounded with how many people come to read my story! Like, seriously!?
Slicing the AO3 views in half as well still keeps it in the higher average there too with 401 per chapter.
And SEVEN reviews!? That's the most I've ever gotten in one week over on AO3. Granted, two reviewers double-reviewed: one for chapter 16 and one for chapter 17. Still, that's five reviews, which is back to the top average. Chapter 15 is the only other chapter that got as many as five reviews on AO3.
Same with FFN and the NINE reviews. Weirdly enough, chapter 14 managed to garner SEVENTEEN friggen reviews somehow. Ignoring that outlier, this past week has the highest review count. Doing the same as with AO3, and removing two reviews because two people reviewed both chapters 16 and 17, that's still seven reviews, which is the high average.
Oh, and speaking of reviews, here are the two lengthy ones:
JustMeMusing: I’m not very good with 1st person stories, but this is well written, in character & had me waiting for updates. Someone like Adrien would be shocked & in turmoil over his behaviour and I can also imagine his need for friendship & happiness, even if vicarious. I’m glad you wrote a concluding chapter, even though the story isn’t finished - I look forward to the next part of the series. Can’t wait to find out GA’s reaction to M’s folio & whether or not she can relax enough to truly befriend A. And how will he reveal that he knows her secret? Will M discover him before she finds out he knows? So many musings to ponder - please continue soonish :D
EEEEE, these are just too sweet! Also, I did link to Bunni's story. It's her take on what happened after the season 2 episode "Dark Owl" and it is adorable. It started off as a one-shot, but reviews inspired her to keep going with the story.BunniElyse: You always review my chapters so I just had to come over and visit your works! I don't have a lot of time to read fanfiction (sadly), but I just HAD to read this! So I've spent the last few days staying up too late after my baby's gone to sleep and sneaking chapters at work! (haha!)
I am so in love with this story and am so excited for your sequel. I wanted Adrien/Chat to confess so bad that I kept looking at the scrolling sidebar to see how much more there was to this chapter - and got disappointed every time I was closer to the bottom.
Thank you so much for this story and my new head cannon! Rarely does a fanfiction work influence my memory of canonical works to the point that I forget what is canon and what is fanfiction, but I can tell you that "Peeping Tomcat" has thoroughly affected how I remember Miraculous Ladybug. (lol!) It was all so well written and the characters were all so believable.
Likewise, I loved reading your interpretation of how Adrien connects Marinette to Ladybug via their personalities as I am currently in that state of mind for "Sneak a Peek." I want Adrien to start to piece together who Ladybug is and he does so by subconsciously comparing Marinette to her. Your chapters on his thoughts were nearly mirrored to my own writing (which made me a little nervous because I don't want to unintentionally copy you!), but it did give me a ton of inspiration!
Thank you for reading my fic, "Sneak a Peek" and I absolutely LOVED reading "Peeping Tomcat!" I can't wait for "One and the Same" so I'll keep my eyes peeled!
Reviews matter, guys!
Anyway, I guess I didn't need to be so nervous, huh? All this encouragement is really going to help me stay motivated for "One and the Same" and that is fantastic.
Oh, also, I can now do something I've been dying to do for months now: OVER-ALL STATS FOR "PEEPING TOMCAT"!
These stats are from the minute I posted the very first chapter until now. I'm still amazed by them. Dumbfounded I found so much love and appreciation in the process. This whole thing truly is humbling, and exciting, and uplifting, and.... EEEEEEEEEE!
Going all the way across the board - all three sites from day one until now - I had close to 28,700 views! I mean, how!? I'm this little nobody in the fanfiction sphere. This is my first "Miraculous Ladybug" fanfic. Yet I garnered over 28,600 views! Granted, the most popular stories on AO3 have a couple HUNDRED thousand views each, so my measly 6821 views is nothing there.FFN: 21,420 views! 138 faves, 212 followers! and 89 reviews!
AO3: 6821 views, 265 kudos! 38 bookmarks, and 30 comments
DA: 454 views, 37 faves, and Seirenpoison commenting on 3 chapters
Total Results: 28,695 views! 440 faves, 250 followers! and 122 reviews!
FFN doesn't show view-count outside your own notifications for your own stories, so I can't really check there. However, I can say that the most popular ML fics on FFN have around 3000 faves, and 2000 followers, and over 1500 reviews. So, again, I have kind of measly numbers in comparison.
But still.... there are stories that barely get found. Barely get noticed. Barely have any likes/faves/kudos, or reviews. So, to earn as many as I did?
Those numbers are HUGE to me. And that's what counts, right?
And as for Seirenpoison and her comments? Well, two weeks ago I showcased her "rough draft" fanart sketches of the gang for chapter 15 and 16's Chat Noir Appreciation Festival. To conclude the story, she also did an Adrienette pic that she posted this past week.
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| For a full-size view of this pic please go to her DeviantArt page Seirenpoison |
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Actually, more than 17 emails, because a couple of people both favorited and followed me.
I even have one person who favorited "Peeping Tomcat," and then faved and followed me, and then faved and followed X-Future: The Second Generation Begins!
Whoo! What a ride, huh? I still can't believe it's over. I wrote what eventually became the chapter "Truth" during the tail end of last year's Summer Writing Challenge over on Writers' Huddle. I then expanded it in November during NaNo. I spent most of the winter editing, only to need to keep editing a chapter per week to stick with the schedule I had set up for myself. Something I need to really re-think when it's time to start posting "One and the Same."
I have been with this story for the better part of a YEAR. A year of near-constant work. If I wasn't writing it, I was thinking about it. Plotting it. Re-reading it. Grumbling about it. SOMETHING.
And now I'm starting almost from zero.
I have the bare-bones for "One and the Same." I even had such withdrawal symptoms from PT that it only kept me until August 2nd before I wrote out the rough draft of the Full Confession scene. I'm still struggling to figure out where it should go in the story, though.
Monday I wrote the side-story for the first akuma to be presented in OatS; how she became akumatized. I keep writing little scenes here and there. I'm trying to build up steam, but I am STILL going through withdrawal from PT. Not knowing where to go without it.
I'm hoping to be re-centered by next week. It doesn't help that my "withdrawal" symptoms are coinciding with a nasty head cold. Well... chest cold? I've had a nasty cough for the past week where my throat is dry and scratchy no matter how much I drink. Just Sunday night I coughed myself into such a fit that the pressure caused a migraine.
I need this cold to either go away or transition into something less dry.
Anyway, I've been a bit dazed from the cold medicines and my body just fighting the cough itself, which doesn't really help with the plotting portion of writing.
Which means I've mostly shifted from writing to reading, and making up for my long hiatus from books.
I've gone through about two or three new short fanfics, read the latest chapters of the ongoing ones I follow, I breezed through Ali Luke's latest "Not So Imaginary," and I'm already about half-way through a book Spink suggested to me.
It is pretty much non-stop reading both at work and while on self-appointed bedrest to try to get over this cold.
So, I have two new books to add to my reading challenge! It's almost full!
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| I had to take off "Fall release of 'Trials of Apollo'." I didn't read correctly. The next ToA book won't be out until fall of 2019. |
It was awesome. There were a few snafus, but I alerted Ali, and she'd going in to tweak one last time before the official publication.
The story has chapters short enough to read in small bites - if you don't have a lot of time - but since it's a novella, you can still read the whole thing in one sitting if you wanted to. The pacing has a slow start that still brings you in with nagging questions you want answered. Then, as the questions are answered, they are replaced with a quickened pace and a sense of dread and doom. My heart really did race quite a bit in later chapters. I would be frantically flipping pages... except it was a digital copy, so I had to settle for frantically scrolling....
While it is a completely stand-alone story that doesn't require anyone to read the Lycopolis trilogy, it very much has the same feel. To the point where I was half-expecting Kay, Seth, and The Prince's Forest to make cameos. Ali did confirm it is the same universe and stories with such crossovers are in the works, which just gets me even more excited!
I will warn my more sensitive readers that Flint - much like my character Trish - has one HECK of a foul mouth on him. So, while it is a very enjoyable read, you will have to weed through quite a few course words and lewd language. It's very fitting for his character though.
Anyway, I'll let you all know when the story is officially out, so keep a watchful eye. It will be well worth it!
As for the book suggested by Spink? Well, after a long conversation that can more-or-less be shorthanded to "You like Miraculous Ladybug. That show has a lot of puns, so you must like puns. Have you heard of the Xanth books? They're deliciously filled with puns. Here, read the first book in the series," I ended up with her copy of "A Spell for Chameleon" by Piers Anthony.
Either it doesn't have nearly as many puns as she implied it would, or they're so subtle they're going over my head. He is really good at the "subtle pun." There is an entire page about the main character "sowing wild oats" that all feels so innocent. He talks about the "sea oats" - since Xanth is a magical land and plants come in all varieties - and their local wild cousins that are native to the area. He then comments about planting a crop of the wild variety. He took great care to grow them until his mother freaked out upon finding the crop. It wasn't until then - about five or six paragraphs into this mini-story - that he used the phrase "My son? Sowing wild oats?"
And that was when the pun finally clicked.
I'm a bit slow. Leave me alone.
Anyway, there seems to be a great deal of meandering and focus on world build with the story. Much like Lord of the Rings or the Odyssey. Actually, VERY much like the Odyssey with the strange lands and seductive sorceress with ulterior motives for her hospitality. Sorry, minor spoiler there....
The story was sort of drifting me off to sleep in some of the more meandering places, but that could also be because of my cold. All in all, the story is good, as evidenced by me tearing through 156 pages in three or four days. I know, that doesn't sound like much, but remember, I'm a horrendously slow reader, especially for a writer....
"A Spell for Chameleon" is about Bink. His 25th birthday is a month away, and he has yet to showcase any magical talent. Anyone who doesn't possesses even the slightest bit of magic by the time they hit 25 is exiled from Xanth, the only magical land in a world otherwise classified as Mundane. Yes, it is capitalized.
Bink sets on a journey to try to find out if he really does have the ability to use magic - therefore allowing him to officially become a Xanth citizen - and what that magical talent could be. On the way, we meet a cast of unique - and named - characters that only journey with Bink for a few pages before seemingly disappearing again. I keep waiting for them to make surprise appearances, but they seem to be like anyone met in real life: you may find out their name but only know them for about 15minutes your entire life.
At the pace I'm going, unless I interrupt myself with writing, I should have the book done by next week, and I can give you a more complete review.
Oh, and speaking of interrupting my reading with writing: Hubby and I started up "X-Future" again. Well, to be fair, we're finishing up a scene between one of his "mystery characters" and Trish that we abandoned over a year ago. Once that scene is FINALLY done we'll have a time jump and THEN he'll attempt to start up the game again.
I have missed playing on X-Future, and it's evident in the length of Trish's first post since forever.
To be fair though, last August I wrote her fight scene with Devon - which I still need to edit - so it's really Willow and super really Lia who have been on the back burner. I haven't written for either of them for about TWO years. It will be interesting to re-find them.
In the meantime, I'll focus on Trish, and the restart of the game, and my reading, and outlining OatS, and recovering from this nasty cold.
Until next week!
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