When I first discovered furry, I was smitten. I liked the people, I liked the fandom, and it was tightly knit. Before I found furry, I had mostly written Star Trek fanfiction. It was short, rarely longer than a few pages, and pretty bad. I don't even know if I have it any more.

For a long time I plotted furry stories that I never wrote and wrote stories that most will never read, and just created this universe around my characters. I worked on them for a long time, but it seemed like I would never even be close to getting very far with completing them since they large in number and each turned out to be about 13 pages.

Sometime around 2006 I created Lauren for one of those universes, and she started out as a side character. She grew in two stories to be a regular, and then a series lead. Within a year she was my fursona, and since then I have never had the inclination to change that. Crafted from inspiration from Joss Whedon, the realization that I liked stripes and hooved creatures, and the 'duh' revelation that this was everything I liked in one package.... I moved forward with her.

I decided somewhere around 2010 or so to reboot her story, and instead of 8 interwoven universes I'd never use, I thought I'd try to write some novels. To that end, I took a story treatment I'd worked on to about 13 chapters or episodes and fiddled with it. I was excited to work on a new concept, one that hadn't been loosely fit together like the last universe. This time I would figure it out from the ground up, and be as realistic and arc based as I could be.

I rewrote the story several times, changing several characters roles and functions in the narrative, and refining it so that it made sense. In the original version Lauren was a club owner unaware of her abilities. The flow of the narrative was completely different with one character being neutral that later became a villian. Side stories that I didn't need were included, and finally I decided that I needed to stop constantly inventing new universes and using the same characters, and focus on some definitive narratives.

Back to the novel thing. That said, I picked four ideas of four different genres that I liked and wanted to do. Existing characters I had would go to one of these four universes, and no longer interact at least, not on a canon basis.

Lauren and the Talwyn mythology were developed for my scifi/fantasy story, and I finally settled on a definitive four arc plot to tell her whole story that would become her canon mythos. This would at last be her 'true story' and if anyone asked I could point to this. Chris, Kyle, Topaz, and a few others joined her in this the most complex and epic of the four. Kathris and Arandis, two of my characters from my teen years, survived the reboots and new versions and would stay with this story, the only two of my original groups.

Diana and Ethan were my fantasy novel, with Rhodes and Captain Weathers joining the story. This was planned to be a one off, but I later got an idea for a sequel. This changed my plans for Captain Weathers and provided a path to be moving towards.

Sierra was chosen to headline my post apocalyptic story. I had played Fallout and Fallout: New Vegas so many times I just loved the setting, so I created my own, with fresh elements and a rich setting from which to tell a story.

Finally, Kate and Lucy. They were together from the series that I originally invented Lauren from, a firefly like series with my own inventions, but I decided I wanted one 'modern day' story, and so I recruited my earliest lesbian couple for it. While the previous incarnation of Iridescence had split them up, this felt wrong to me, and their return to a series together felt like it was how it was meant to be.

I revised the story I had been working on, and set about working 40 hours a week on my writing. I did this for two years, focusing on submitting stories to furry publications and working on what I hoped were good novel concepts for the fandom.

After some time, I started to despair. I found it hard to get feedback, and I had no idea if I was improving or not. I had sold a couple short stories, which was great, but I was nowhere near finishing one of the larger projects. I started to dislike my heavy and rigid writing schedule, but I already felt I was so far behind that I could not afford to slow down.

Finally, after 2 years, it broke me. At the fall of 2012 I had the worst anxiety attack I had ever experienced. I knew I wasn't feeling right but I went to work anyway. That day I ended up in the ER all day, and was given some pills to help me sleep and function. It had been building, but finally it had boiled over. I started to dread tomorrow, and hardly did anything for a while. I didn't want to game, I couldn't bring myself to read, and lord knows writing was out of the question. For six months I couldn't even sit down at my work computer without a rapid heartbeat and the urge to do anything else.

I decided for my own health that I was done writing. I wasn't going to touch it ever again. I still wanted to tell my stories, so I thought about doing them in comic form. I suspected more would read it that way, and it would finally allow me to get moving. I started doing book reviews, but I admit I slowed down on that when I needed a three month break that became six. I am still working on the Wilderhom review for part 2, and then I have some others to do.

Finally, after two years, I felt a desire I hadn't felt for a long time. I wanted to write again. I actually wanted to do it. I'd hoped to be able to launch three projects, but with two still less than halfway done, I'll start here.

I'm back.

To introduce my return to writing, and to kick off the reorganization of my writing on my FA, here is the story of Topaz's first lesson, and a prequel to the Iridescence comic.