2016, Year in Review (For Reals This Time)

Okay, so 2016 was a pretty awful year, all things considered. But it did have its moments of brightness, and I like to think my skills have improved from the oodles of writing I accomplished. I could have done without the habit of getting the stories up right in the nick of time for the monthly deadline, though, some wiggle room would be nice. :B

Completely by coincidence, it has been exactly one year since I looked at how I did in 2015, so I would say that means it's time to do my annual round-up, Tasties!

January
Eric, Milo, and Anne: Just Between Us Siblings: The year gets off to a promising start with a tale of the Thompson siblings celebrating Milo's birthday, leading to Eric and Anne indulging the gentle-natured shepherd in a particularly delicious sandwich. It's always fun revisiting the Thompsons, and this was a lovely opportunity to expand on canine culture, as well as showing Eric and Anne in a more laid-back mood, less prone to teasing Milo (which he greatly appreciated, let me tell you).

February
Satisfaction Guaranteed: A relatively short story, particularly by my ever-increasingly lengthy standards, with a straightforward premise about a horse gentleman being seduced by a female bear employee at a department store, and the fun they get up to in a changing booth. Not much to say here, this was just a fun, smutty short I thought I'd use to take a break from all the longer stories I'd been writing. I did like the mild twist, I must say... n_n

March
Services: Escape Clause: Finally a proper revisit of 2012's spectacular Services, this story sees Colton the nervous Mokaji and Kenrai the Dragon merc getting to know each other better as they plan out their strategy to free Colton from the forces conspired against him. Naturally, it isn't long before the historian's past starts catching up with him... Coming back to this particular story of Rilodell was an intimidating but ultimately rewarding task, I really enjoyed letting the personalities of such different characters play off each other and build up the steadily growing warmth between them.

April
Her Number One Fan: Inspiration: To celebrate my 1000th watcher (on Fur Affinity), I wrote this sequel to the story that celebrated my 100th submission to the site (also on FA), Her Number One Fan. After finally hooking up with the attractive brother who inspired her taboo tales of 'cesty fun, Sophia "CheekyWinter" Adair finds her ability to come up with new concepts severely compromised, and fears she's become too happy and satisfied to be truly creative. Writer's block is something I know all too well, so this was an interesting story to write.

May
Coming Together: A commission for

AvaBun

, this is the third and so far final tale of Yori Hartmüt and his tribal friend Running Water, now all grown up and dealing with adult things, like Yori's fledgling boxing career... or Ran's deep-seated longing to become closer to Yori than just friends. Writing adult characters I'd previously written as children was an interesting challenge, and I find I quite enjoyed it.

June
A Spirited Night: A commission for

TuneCharmer

, this story sees his fursona Crisp dealing with a rash of public embarrassments and rather vivid wet dreams, culminating in the realization that his new toe rings are haunted... and the affable otter ghost who dwells in them finds the wolf extremely appealing. I don't really have anything clever to comment on here, sometimes a commission is just a commission. :B

July
Between the Lines: A commission for

Irreverent

in which we are introduced to Mike Bridger, a human trying out an interspecies relationship for the first time, and the fun he gets up to when his new zebra girlfriend Bailey reveals that he's actually been dating both her and her identical twin Hailey, and that the two mares intend to share him. This one was especially fun to write, I must say, and was an interesting new dynamic to work with.

(Unfortunately, due to Mike's weird and gross species, the post here on Inkbunny is just a placeholder. You can actually read the story on Fur Affinity or SoFurry instead by clicking on those links)

August
The Nighthawk: A commission for

sdsmillar in which his doe character Cara takes her fox boyfriend Jason on a flight to a small, cozy town so they can spend some much needed time together... and they don't even make it to the fancy restaurant where they've got a date set up before they find they can't keep their hands off each other. Doing character development for someone else's characters turned out to be exceedingly difficult, but fortunately I found a way to make it work in the end.

September
FAIL: Yes, that's right, for the first time since 2011, I failed to get anything released in a month at all. I look on the bright side, in that I had four solid years since the last one, and I missed five stories in 2011. Not to mention, The story I was working on really did benefit from being delayed into October instead of being rushed out to make it in September. And hey, if nothing else, it fits the mood of the rest of the year, eh? :P

October
The Road Less Travelled: This commission for

Psyphix

represents the most leeway I've ever been given in a commission, in that he said he wanted a brother-sister incest story, and I could do anything as long as the brother was the one who made the first move on the sister, and the characters were red pandas named Patrick and Jill. This one took a lot of work, and it almost made me crazy in parts, but I'd say the end result is one of my better works, and I happily stand by it.

November
On the Beat: A commission for

BronsonTwist, telling the story of Australian cop Bronson and his new partner, Comet, as they go out on patrol to keep the city of Melbourne safe and crime-free. Naturally, things don't quite go according to plan... This was an interesting one, partially because I knew almost nothing about police procedures, and partially because I was writing about a foreign culture. Fortunately, Bronson was able to provide lots of handy information about both issues, and he seemed pretty pleased with the end result.

December
Curse of the Shieldfall: The Lord of the Swamp: Just like 2015, we finished the year off with a shiny new chapter in this fantasy tale of noblewoman Ariella Shieldfall and her companion, the wizard Thaniel, as they come ever closer to breaking the curse that lingers on Ari's family. This time, they discover that the evil magic on the gauntlet they seek has created a horrible creature that stalks the bogs of Milgram's Marsh... and confronting it may be the only way they'll ever find the Midnight Hand. It's always fun writing banter between the characters in this story, and it was nice to expand a little on the mysterious Ben Calhoun.

While celebrities were dropping in droves and the world seemed to be on the verge of tearing itself apart, at the very least I can take comfort from the fact that I got a lot of solid writing done in 2016, which surely improved my skills. I only missed one month out of twelve, I satisfied a lot of commissioners, and I got three opportunities to write combat scenes (in March, November, and December), something that's normally very rare for me, so that's good practice. All told, I'm not sorry to see 2016 go, but at least it wasn't a total wash. Now, of course, the time has come to look forward, so here's hoping I can keep writing stories that all of you Tasties can enjoy, and that we all work together to make 2017 a much better year than its predecessor!

Happy belated New Year, you lovely bunch of people. n_n

ANNUAL RITUAL OVER.

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Added:	7 years, 3 months ago 16 Jan 2017 00:43 CET

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