Well, it’s time, I think, to introduce Knives, the serial fiction project formerly known as The Fantasy Novel I’ll Likely Never Write. It has its own place now, knives-the-novel.net, where you can see the first five (improved) episodes.
At this time, I would appreciate a few people checking it out, and letting me know what they think of the organization, the theme, and the experience in general. Please leave your comments here on Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas — finding a good discussion forum for Knives remains stubbornly on the incomplete list.
Also, I would be Super-Duper grateful if a couple of folks who are so inclined could report back on the Patreon Experience. Of course that means pledging support for the story; I sincerely hope some of the regulars here see fit to toss a bit into the tip jar.
Once I work the kinks out of the system, I will be exhorting you all to spread the word about Knives, but for now, let’s keep things modest.
And, once more, faithful readers, thank you!
I liked the first chapter of “Knives;” nicely done. I liked it well enough to click the Patreon link. The first click required my permission to allow the Patreon script. That’s well and good; so I let my NoScript plugin open the door. Nothing. A blank screen. Then I see that NoScript is listing another SIX jscript sources that have to be authorized.
At this point my PAW kicks in. (I’m borrowing this phrase from a great story over on storiesonline.net called ‘Flight of the Code Monkey’ by Kid Wigger) My PAW is my “paranoid ass-wipe” brain-stem alert system. Sorry, ‘Knives’ seems a lovely story and I did want to know what was waiting on the other side of the window he dived through, but my PAW is far more concerned with what may be waiting on the other side of those jscript sites.
And I do lots of business through my PayPal account, and the wife groans every time the UPS/FedEx/USPS Parcel Truck pulls up and stops in front of the house … but PAW hates an excess of jscript links! Sorry.
Thanks for the kind words!
No worries about Patreon. At first I was trying to implement a straight-up PayPal solution, and I was surprised at what a PITA it turned out to be. And conceptually I like the ‘patronage’ model. But all them fancy sites have lots of scripts.
Out of curiosity I took a look under the hood to see what all the scripts were.
It looks like Patreon pulls its basic scripts from CloudFlare’s cdn (a sensible move), then they host their own custom scripts on amazon’s s3. Also reasonable (though were I them I’d build all those scripts into a single minified package). The analytics script comes straight from Google, which is… well, you know. Intrusive but ubiquitous.
Then there’s dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com and their script called merely j.js. I might have to look into that one.
Except for that one question mark, I didn’t see any ad trackers or spam sites or anything not directly related to them doing their job. I found that reassuring, at least. They’re making their money honestly (by skimming off payments) rather than augmenting it with back-channel trickery. For now, at least.
Yeh. That Google Analytics thing. Ewe-bic-quit-us. Fugit. If noscript had a “forever exile” button I’d click it. I love that noscript is an ‘opt-in’ choice, tho; analytics never gets the nod. Fugoogle. I use duckduckgo. Thank goddess it don’t quack. Barking squirrel, eh… ok. Duckduck don’t nag. Gotta love it. Google is a klepto-rabid squirrel, forever diggin’ fer yer nuts. nags? it shrieks!
Bird feeders hangin’ from tall iron rod hangers, stomped into the lawn. Whidbey Island squirrels outnumbered three-to-one by raccoons. They divide the turf: squirrels raid by day; coons raid by night. Tree rats climb skinny rods, dump contents of feeders. I greased the poles with Vicks VapoRub! Bwaahaahaaha. Ever hear a squirrel scream n’ curse at the same time? Betcha they be cuttin’ a deal with the coons in the night to intercede.
Pardon. 76 in July. Brain farts & mood swings. Trump overload; Cruz control overspeeded; disintegration to follow. Big shrapnel cloud when we implode.
You write good, but you knew that already. There’s a great site called Finestories.com. Great guy, Lazeez in Canada runs it. Family clean. Sister site, SOL, not so much but it diverts the stroke kiddies. FS is good place to share; has an author blog, too. Ever see it? Laz even lets me, graybyrd, dump stuff there.
Rambling. My PAW* arose when Google marketed my space; FaceBook commandeered my email; and Microsoft used security trust to insinuate hidden triggers to replace my Win7 OS with Win10 malware. My PAW resented being overruled by my purchase of kid-proof X130e w/Win7 for field-tough outings. PAW chortled/screamed when “Upgrade to Win10!” flag popped up with said X130e first power-on. Crap!
No, Sparky, this diatribe comes courtesy of Desktop Debian 8.3 ‘Jessie’ OS & Iceweasel. But all Finestories & nanowrimo insanity performed via Macintosh ‘Pismo’ book w/G4 card, pair of 150GB firewire drives, & Tiger 10.4.11 with Scrivener 2.5. Almost as obsolete as clay & stylus. ’tain’t great no more; just insanely good at what it does. Neither Win nor Linux can match it, yet, nor does it look like they will. Apple moved on to the happy hoarding grounds of the eGregious Golden iSpigot (you buy, we sell, don’t bitchaboutit). I jumped ship.
PAW says we’ll submit to Patreon (tentatively!) but g.analytics stays exiled! See you on the other side.
*PAW=>paranoid ass-wipe brain stem function.
No difficulties at all with Patreon, running Adblock Plus (and an irrelevant-here flash blocker). I like that you found a model that mimic’d my pay-to-play suggestion; I don’t like that another $1M idea I had has been lifted from the paper I couldn’t even be bothered to wipe it on.
I’m all-in on this story. I want to see it finished, and if the goals stay modest, I’d pay dozens of dollars to keep the lights on. Consider this the first of several nudges.
Thanks, Mr. Baxter! I think I should fudge my $1/Episode goal and make it $0.99/Episode and get Chapter 6 out there.