07 25 2018

Damn, that took freaking 'forever'. Again my apologies for the delay. I'll try to get something more done before school starts back up in September but I can't make any promises.

I actually had nothing written for the Wave arc until today, which is now up to almost a whole 200 words as I write this. Most of what I have to finish up Book 1 is for the Chunin Exam arc and there's about 8,000 words there, some of which predates the original publication date for 'Gifts and Friends: Book 1'. Part of the problem I have is that when I first started reading fan fiction I encountered numerous and horrible stories for the wave arc and I pretty much detest that segment of the story. I've pulled out my copies of the Manga and will go over the original before I go too deep into it.

--ooo--

Well this is embarrassing...

I had the misfortune of having three hard drives die on me from September to November last Fall. The really aggravating part was I thought when my primary drive was dying that it was my computers motherboard and I didn't feel any concern that I had lost my backups, until I scraped up the money to basically replace my whole system. I had also lost one of my backup flash drives to my dismay. I was able to get the unedited versions of chapters 1 through 6 for 'Gifts and Friends' off of an older flash drive and through some recovery software. I have started poking around a bit with what is published so that's a small plus.

In other 'bad news for writing' I'm back in college, part time which means 8 credits for Spring 2016, planning 4 credits Summer of 2016 and then 11 credits for Fall of 2016. Hopefully as I'm starting to recover some sort of schedule after all of the insanity of my 2015 I'll be able to squeeze some writing time in on a more regular basis.

Thanks for the patience of those still patiently waiting.

'Gifts and Friends: Book 1 - Beginnings' - Currently all of my active writing is happening in this one.

This story that starts up about a year prior to Naruto becoming a genin. This one is very much AU, one of those 're-write' stories, I guess everyone has got to do one right? Although it will roughly follow the canon timeline up until sometime during the Chuunin exams, just don't expect to see much of the 'Wave Arc'. I am planning on exploring a Fuuinjutsu skilled Naruto in this one. Although 'skilled' isn't really going to be completely accurate.

Seriously Thanks for everyone's patience.

REALLY Thank you for everyone's patience. I'm hoping to get more writing done as some things have settled the past month or so but hoping to take two classes next semester so will see how that goes, one class last semester was rather time consuming despite only doing roughly half my homework. Pretty sure I won't be able to get away with that for Pre-Calc and 101 Chemistry.

Hopefully I'll get chapter 11 out before September.

Gifts: My story that 'Gifts and Friends' is derived from. It is meant to stand on it's own. The whole point was to address the issue of Jiraiya being Narutos godfather and why he wasn't around when he was supposed to be taking care of the kid. It was meant to be a stand alone that could fit easily into 'canon'.

That said the one story I'm doing the most work on is 'Gifts and Friends' it's something of a sequel to 'Gifts'. Basically chop off the last three paragraphs of 'Gifts' and use the rest of the story as the intro/prologue to the new stuff. In fact the next three below are going to be tied together under the banner of that story. It will eventually become a Naru/Hina story in Book 3. At least that's the way it's looking now.

'Gifts and Friends: Book 2 - Uzumaki Travels' - (also current working title, same as above). No outline, mostly vague concept a bit over 900 words now, covers Naruto and Jiraiya's training trip. I'm trying to write in some of the other Jinchuuriki into this one. Nii Yugito is already in what is written so far but I'm planning on tossing Fuu in as well.

'Gifts and Friends: Book 3 - Shippuden Redirected' - (also current working title, same as above). This is the one I've done an outline for, still with 11 chapters outlined so far. It should still go to somewhere between 15 and 20 chapters total. This one will still be something of my 'Mary Sue' story. It'll primarily be an action/adventure story but this is where the Naru/Hina theme will kick in. I've got one really cool fight scene so far, that is the bulk of what's written. This one starts up shortly after the 'Rescue Gaara' arc. 24116 words right now.

I've got a rough idea for a possible Book 4 and maybe even a Book 5.

Dark Endings: On Hiatus still but will continue and be completely non-compliant with canon when it does.

20th: Also on Hiatus -No significant changes- Chapter 4 is up around 1900 words now but some of that simply has to go. I would like to go back and re-write the beginning someday since it feels very rushed to me. Side effect of expanding what was originally a quick little one-shot.

Nine Tails Fury: Again, Yes I am still sticking with the decision to start working on 'Fury' again but don't hold your breaths. Malix2 put up some very valid criticisms about the last few chapters of 'Fury'. Although I just haven't been able to really get into it I do plan on continuing the story and attempt o straighten it out. Looking back after all this time I still believe that Malix2 was on the ball but part of the problem is for some reason I don't seem to actually like 'Fury', in fact that is in all likelihood to the fact that I let it basically fall apart those last few chapters. As of February 2012 I actually had the next chapter open along with going over the original story.

As I keep saying, again and again, rest assured I have no intentions to stop writing. Having two children and owning a home as well as all that other typical life type stuff like going to work, married life, eating, reading and although less than it used to be, sleeping has put a good ding in my writing time.

The 'two children' part of life is probably one of the more difficult things I've had to 'adapt to' ever in my life. Definitely has taken up pretty much all of my so-called 'free time', lol. Definitely worth it but I wouldn't recommend anyone under the age of 28 or maybe 30 having children themselves, hahahaha.

'Uzumaki Tears: Valentines Day' is still my favorite of my own stuff, although 'Gifts' is a very close second The 2nd and 3rd 'Tears' stories are 'o.k.' but I feel that they lack the emotional impact that the first has.

In case this isn't checked often I'm keeping this up. I wrote up a short scene for Matthew Schocke's 'Team 8' Omake contest number 2 and was very happy to see it be the most popular of the submitted stories. I felt that I rushed it and I'm sure that some minor errors creeped into it, in fact I know there's at least one but as I said I was in a rush, I was trying to pack up for a drive from NY to FL for a short vacation of sorts when I wrote it. Matthew's whole story can be found here:

http://www.fanfiction.ws/s/2731239/1/Team_8

The short scene I wrote is at the end of chapter 16. If you haven't read any of Matthew's work before you are truly missing out. In my opinion he is the best fanfic writer here and his writing is not to be missed. Some of his fans may notice some influence from his stories in my work. I dislike the way Shino is portrayed in the Manga/Anime and I tend to think of Matthew's Shino and Teal'c from SG-1 when I write Shino.

- later

T.J.