Thank you to fans, customers and members for your continued support of All These Roadworks writing! Here’s what’s happened over the last month.

Personal update

(This one is longish, so if you just want to know about the new content, feel free to skip to the next heading.)

2020 is a hell of a year, right? Here in Australia it has literally been non-stop emergency since well before Xmas. It’s… overwhelming.

We’re in lockdown where I am. No non-essential travel, no inter-regional travel, no public gatherings, all non-essential services closed. Basically it’s just me and my partner treating our house as a bunker.

On the plus side, there have actually been very few cases in my city, and (touch wood) the authorities seem to have it fairly well under control, by comparison to the nation as a whole. And “the nation as a whole” is doing very well compared to other places.

My heart goes out to people in the worst affected countries. I know a large percentage of my readers are from the US, which is looking nightmarish right now. I’m not a praying person, but you have both my thoughts, and my most passionate advocacy for sane, compassionate disaster response now, and evidence-based proactive measures to mitigate the inevitable second wave later. Much of what’s happening in the US right now can and should have been avoidable.

How am I doing?

Anyone who’s doing lockdown right now knows that it’s tough. I’m naturally inclined to staying at home anyway, I’m not poor, and I have a wonderful supportive partner with good communication and relationship skills, so I’m in a better position than many.

But it’s still not easy. Changed routine, changed conditions, and sensible decisions about likely availability of medical services have led to a decision to make a change in my ASD/ADHD medication, which is likely to give me better mental health over this period, but has dramatically decreased my libido, concentration, and both motivation and ability to write.

The constant background stress of a world on fire doesn’t exactly help either.

Also there’s significantly less work available in my “day job” at the moment, which means reduced income from that source.

What that means is I continue to be (probably) safe, or as safe as anyone can be at the moment. And I’ve got tons of time to do the “administrative” side of All These Roadworks – updates, formatting new collections, processing memberships and sales, etc.

But I’m struggling on the creative side at present.

What does my output look like right now?

I’ll do this in dot point so you can easily see what this means for you:

  • Administrative work on the site / sales is unaffected. I will still be publishing news updates, processing memberships, and responding to support requests.
  • Story request backlog – I am *slowly* getting through this. New requested stories are going out, but not fast. More will be completed this week. This is the main place where I am having trouble, as these stories are generally longer and more extreme, requiring a combination of concentration and libido. All received requests *will* be honoured… eventually. (I currently expect them to be caught up by the end of this month, but no promises.) No one’s membership will be terminated while they have an undelivered story in the backlog.
  • Unredeemed story requests – All unredeemed story requests right now are technically void, per my previous post on this topic, and I’m not accepting new ones. However, I am still tracking them, for two reasons. The first is that when I am caught up on the backlog, I would like to honour as many of these voided requests as possible, given a realistic assessment of how I’m going at that point. The second, and most important, is because of ongoing series.
  • Ongoing series – If you’ve been backing an ongoing series, I *do* intend to accept further requests in that series in order to allow the series to be completed – but I will do so only once the current backlog is complete. Stories like Emma’s Policy and Abby’s Identity *will* be completed.
  • Other new stories – There is *still* a pretty huge archive of stories from the Tumblr era that haven’t been re-released on BDSMLR. I’m mining them for new content at the moment, and they form the bulk of the new Early Access material. I’m reprinting some exactly as they originally appeared. Others are expanded and improved. On top of that, I have a small archive of original stories saved up for a rainy day that I’m slowly adding to Early Access and the BDSMLR queue. And then there are a few completely new original non-requested stories, because if I get an idea, sometimes I just have to write it.
  • Story collections – I expect to deliver two new collections and two updates in April, just like every month. The administrative work of collating, formatting and proofing the books is easy. The only thing slowing me down is the creation of new content for the exclusive bonus pages. The first collection for April will be an update of Crime and Punishment which should go up in the next 48 hours.
  • Arth-Keros – The Guide to Arth-Keros remains suspended for now. Of all my new creative work, it’s (presently) the hardest to write and least popular. I’ll return to it when I’m able. If you have a Stories Membership specifically because you wanted new Arth-Keros content, I am happy to discuss refunds or alternative compensation. (However, for those who like the high-fantasy degradation genre, you can expect a conclusion to “The Ternish Betrayal” storyline in the very near future, followed by a release of that entire series in a dedicated collection.)
  • Reality Check – I expect to deliver a Reality Check article for April.
  • And finally – In the event that I get to the point that I’m not able to deliver 20+ new stories a month and four new collections, I do have some fairly lengthy unfinished novel-length stories on my drive, and if necessary I’ll publish chapters of them to make sure members are getting their money’s worth.

What did members get in March?

Early Access

There were 22 new stories posted in Early Access in March.

Story Collections

All members received four new collections in March:

Note that Titcage is novel-length – 231 pages. For those who have read Titcage in another format, you will be excited to know that in addition to typo fixes throughout, this edition contains a new author’s foreword, minor rewrites and improvements, two bonus “alternate chapters”, and a gallery of posters showcasing the “grades” referred to the in the story. This edition is available in the store at a premium price ($9.99 USD) but is available free on Google Drive to all current members, and will remain available all month to new members.

Reality Check

March’s Reality Check article was “Aftercare for Degradation Porn“, available as a free post on this site, reposted to BDSMLR, and collected in PDF format for members on Google Drive.

Other work

E-books are now sequentially numbered, for the benefit of those who like to “collect them all”. The full list of e-books, and their numbers, can be found at the back of any collection released since the start of March. I’m slowly adding these numbers to the covers of the older collections, but this doesn’t constitute a substantive update of these titles and won’t be counted against the collections for April.

The purpose of this numbering is to facilitate the changes to membership plans I discussed last month, but given everything that’s going on, I haven’t felt like I’m in a position to institute those changes right now, so for the time being memberships are continuing as before. The Premium Membership will still give you access to every e-book available for sale on the site. The Stories Membership will nominally give you access to the next four collections released after the date of your purchase, but practically speaking right now gives you access to all collections released in any month for which you are a member for part of the month, plus I’m leaving the March e-books available for all of April as thanks for your support in this crazy time.

I’m also putting a pin in my (long-delayed) plan to transition membership content to Dropbox. I don’t think anyone needs the inevitable teething problems of a platform transition right now.

How is the site doing?

The short answer is, it’s paying me about a week’s salary per month. March profits were broadly comparable to February profits. It’s not a full-time job but it’s very appreciated in a period where my day job continues to be less profitable.

Thank you to everyone who’s purchased an e-book or membership over the period.

Top referrers continue to be MCStories and BDSMLR. Diversifying my referrals continues to be a project for when I have the time and energy. I’m still open to recommendations of places to get readers but *please* check the site’s content policies before doing so. The vast majority of places people recommend either (a) don’t allow something that’s a core part of my writing, such as non-consent, and/or (b) have fairly hard no-monetisation / no-links policies.

Donation

As part of the process of writing gender-degradation and non-consent erotica in a responsible way, I have committed to donating at least 5% of the site profits each month to a women’s charity combating domestic violence, unsafe housing and/or sexual assault. (See this post for more info.)

This month I donated an amount of $100 AUD (about $60 USD) to a registered charity providing domestic violence crisis support to women.

COVID-19 lockdown is putting a lot of pressure on domestic violence services right now, due to new stresses in relationships, and increased impacts on victims in abusive relationships having to spend more time with their partners. Now is a great time to make a donation to a domestic violence charity in your area if you have the ability to do so.

Conclusion

Thank you to all members for your continued support in a difficult time. I value you all immensely, and I hope you still feel like you’re getting good value for your memberships.

Thank you also to direct customers, and thank you to all fans, whether you spend money or not. The idea of monetising my work was always that the people who *did* have a disposable income to spend on erotica would subsidise my creative output for those who don’t, and I appreciate feedback and love from all my readers.

Remember – you can also support my work by:
* sharing your enthusiasm and links to my work in consenting kinky communities (but remember it’s high impact, so don’t put it anywhere where someone who doesn’t want to see it might be offended by it);
* reblogging my posts on BDSMLR,;
* catching typos in BDSMLR posts or e-books and reporting them to me;
* sharing your fanfiction or fan-art – I’ll even re-post it if (a) it falls within my range of kinks; (b) I’m satisfied you hold copyright to all elements; and (c) you give me explicit permission to do so.

Thanks again! And keep enjoying!

– All These Roadworks
April 2020

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