Just a reminder to all members that you can ONLY get your membership content through Dropbox. (This applies only to members. Direct e-book purchases are still delivered through WordPress as previously.)
Members – you cannot log into the old Google Drive folders. You need to use your Dropbox invite.
If you are a current member, you HAVE received an invite to Dropbox.
Stories Members have an invite to one folder, called ATR Stories Member Content.
Premium Members have two invites – one to the Stories Member folder, and one to ATR Premium Member Content.
If you are a current member and you have not received your invites:
Check your spam folder!
If you don’t find your invites there, email me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com
I do not want you thinking you’re not getting what you’re paying for! There’s more Early Access stories available than ever before for all members, new premium serial chapters for Premium Members, e-books, and more. If you can’t access it, please get in touch with me.
If you’re having trouble with Dropbox, or find it’s not working for you as a means of delivering membership content, please also let me know.
And if you’re not already following this site to get updates emailed to you – you should be! It’s the way I keep in touch with members! (I surveyed members last year to see if they wanted me to email them regularly and they said they’d prefer updates to go through the site.)
You can subscribe to updates by using the form below.
A new financial year, and lots of exciting updates for AllTheseRoadworks.com!
Personal update
I feel like I’m finally getting over the bad times. *hastily touches wood*
Australia is *mostly* doing well with COVID-19. Most states are reopening. Unfortunately Victoria (one of our most populated states) has slid into a second wave of infections, resulting in hard lockdowns. That doesn’t directly affect me but it means we all still need to be on our guard here.
I’m writing more – more details on that below – and exercising more and generally feeling healthier.
I don’t think 2020 is quite done with us yet, but for now, at least, things are a little less awful.
What did members get in June?
Early Access
There were 25 new stories posted in Early Access in May.
Story Collections
All members received four new collections in May:
Yes – Stories of Submission (3rd edition) (view in shop)
Star Potential – Stories From The Casting Couch (3rd edition)(view in shop)
Sluts In Training – Stories of Educating Slaves and Other Pets (all new!) (view in shop)
Diana Tells The Truth (member exclusive!)
Other content
Premium Members received four chapters of Hailey’s Training, an unfinished novel-length story themed around watersports, incest and humiliation.
I published a Reality Check: On Gender (link), affirming that trans men, trans women, intersex and non-binary people are welcome and loved in the ATR readership.
Premium Members continue to have access to an extended e-book library.
Premium Member library schedule
As noted in my earlier post (link), there are changes to membership benefits starting in July. The main change is that Premium Members will have access to an exclusive library of 18 e-books, plus the books offered to Stories Members. Six books in that library will refresh each month. Previously they had access to the entire library of almost 30 books at all times. The change makes Premium Memberships more sustainable for me as the library continues to grow, while still offering great value for money.
The following table shows which books will be available to Premium Members in July, August and September. In addition, they will have access to all books made available to Stories Members in those months (which includes all new releases and substantive updates).
How is the site doing?
June profits were down about 30% from May. That’s not great, but May was my best month ever, so it’s a high peak, and I didn’t run a sale, add a premium collection to the shop, or do much marketing in June, which are all things I know drive high sales. July is so far looking better.
The total profits of the site are still averaging somewhere around the Australian minimum wage. I’m working my day job part-time at the moment, so when those sources of income are put together I’m doing okay.
Key referrers to the site continue to be search engines, BDSMLR and MCStories, with small streams from Reddit and CHYOA.
New Early Access features!
Starting 1 July, there have been some cool new improvements to Early Access (which is a perk of ATR membership).
Firstly, all the new Early Access PDFS are now getting an attractive cover page. This makes the folder more appealing when viewed in “icons” view in Dropbox, gives you more information about what’s new at a glance, and gives you something nicer to keep if you’re the sort of member who assiduously downloads and archives everything I release.
Updated stories and reblogs (see below) are marked with a flag so you can clearly see what’s new. It looks like this:
The second change is that I am now including reblogs in the Early Access folder. As readers will be aware, a month has 30+ days, and I publish 20-ish new stories a month, so that means that one in three daily posts on BDSMLR is a reblog.
Previously I hadn’t included these reblogs in the Early Access program because they weren’t new – but it doesn’t really cost me much effort to PDF them and upload them, and it gives you more value for your membership, so going forward I intend to include all reblogs in the Early Access folder. This means you can expect to see 30-ish stories a month in Early Access rather than 20-ish. It’s the same volume of content as previous months, PLUS the reblogs.
Reblogs are clearly marked with a red tag on the cover so you’ll know what’s new and what’s not.
The move to Dropbox
As noted in my earlier post (link) all membership rewards are now delivered exclusively through Dropbox. Google Drive permissions have been universally revoked. If you’re a member and you haven’t received your Dropbox links, please get in touch with me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com.
While Dropbox has met my targets over Google Drive in regards to its clearer policies, better security, and capability to expand to larger numbers of users, it unfortunately did not deliver one of my expectations. Unfortunately users of a shared folder on Dropbox can see the account names and emails of other users.
This is exactly the same as the situation under Google Drive, so nothing has changed, but it is disappointing. I urge readers who are conscious of their privacy to use dedicated or throwaway email addresses for accessing Dropbox content. If anyone needs help changing the address they’re accessing their membership content from, please contact me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com and I’ll help you sort it out.
The only way to fix this on Dropbox is to use links rather than invites – which would mean I couldn’t restrict folders to members only – so there’s no way to correct this while using Dropbox.
I’m reluctant to move content hosting again after having only just done it, but I *will* keep my eyes out for better solutions to hosting this content. The site *can* afford a commercial solution now, if it turns out to be necessary. If you have recommendations, let me know, but DO check their content policies first – they need to be 100% comfortable with hosting the content I produce, which is to say erotic stories with soft-porn images attached that deal with topics including misogyny, incest, and non-consent.
Story Requests
Around the start of the month, I finally delivered the last story request from before I suspended story requests. This felt greatly liberating.
As per what I’d previously discussed, I then went out to members who had previously backed ongoing stories and who would have received further requests had I not suspended them, and offered them the ability to request new chapters in ongoing stories.
I’m working through those requests – and you will have seen a lot of new updates to the ongoings in Early Access – but I’d like to also now extend that offer to other members who would have accrued story requests in April, May or June had I not suspended them.
If you were a Premium Member in April, May or June, and you would like to see a new chapter in one of the stories listed below, please email me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com and let me know which story. If multiple people request chapters of the same story, that just means I’ll write more new chapters! I like all of these stories but I’d prefer to be writing stuff that people are excited to read.
Abby’s Identity
Arth-Keros
Amy and the Feed
Ariana’s Song
Ask Dr Degradation
Average Availability
The Bonuses
Brea Comes Home From College
Bridgitte’s Choices
Candy Girls
Decisive
Destiny Stories
Elle’s Stepmother
Emma’s Policy
Etrebor Stories (general)
The Etreborian Exchange
The Great Council
Hellfire
Nicole Says Yes
Persephone Nine
Pop World: Sisterhood
Small Town Values
White Pineapple
Wife Review / Essential Nightly News
If you’re not keen on these stories, then hold on. Once I’ve caught all requests for ongoings up to the current month – or close enough – I’ll come back and offer member a chance to spend their suspended requests on new stories or sequels to things that aren’t ongoings yet. No promises on when that will be, although I’m certain it won’t be in July.
What platforms am I on?
In June I started an official presence on CHYOA.com, a Patreon-funded site for branching choose-your-own-adventure style erotic fiction. I’m not posting anything new there, just some of my older multi-part stories, and they’re still linear, I’m afraid. People following me on BDSMLR won’t see anything there they haven’t already read. You can find my official profile here (link).
I am active (posting new content) on the following platforms. Note that BDSMLR gets everything – there is nothing on non-BDSMLR platforms that hasn’t posted to BDSMLR.
I am inactive on the following platforms. (I have an account and content available, but I’m not posting new material, largely because of their linking, monetisation or moderation policies.)
If you see me on any other public site right now, it’s not me, and it’s not an authorised posting of my work. Please don’t repost my work to new sites without asking me – although please do link to it and tell others about it!
I am keen to find new subreddits, Discords or similar spaces that might be interested in my work. To meet my criteria they must be: * active; * with a reasonably large membership (ideally over 500 people); * clear content policies that accept my work and allow me to link to my shop; * NOT filled with real (non-fantasy) misogyny or racism; * zero tolerance on posting of child porn, illegal material, and revenge porn.
Let me know if you’ve got somewhere that might like me to post some stories!
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 $120 AUD (about $84 USD) to a registered charity providing free legal advice, advocacy and representation to women in crisis.
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, book purchasers and readers for your continuing enthusiasm and support for my work. You are all amazing.
I continue to be committed to offer you a good product and genuine value for money. There are far too many dodgy porn sites out there. I want everyone who spends money at my site to feel like they got their money’s worth, and I am happy to offer refunds on request rather than have anyone leave feeling cheated.
I wasn’t a graphic designer before starting this, or a website designer, or a retailer, and I’m learning to do a lot of things on the job. I think that I’ve succeeded in making the e-books, the early access stories, and the site generally look more attractive and more professional with every passing month, and I hope you do too. I look forward to how the All These Roadworks brand might continue to grow in the future.
Remember – buying my products is great, but you can also support me by: * reblogging my content on BDSMLR; * upvoting and commenting on Reddit; * talking about and linking to my stories or website in communities of consenting kinky adults; * spotting typos in published stories or e-books and reporting them to me by email or on BDSMLR.
Plus if you have a professional skillset that could help me or improve the ATR experience, I’d always love to hear from you.
Okay, so earlier in the year we discussed options for making memberships more sustainable given the increasing catalogue of e-books and the relative value of a Premium Membership ($20) versus buying everything included in the membership individually (currently over $120).
But then 2020 happened and everything got put on hold.
With the start of a new financial year about to hit, and the change to Dropbox implemented, now is the time to get around to making the foreshadowed membership changes.
The short version is that if you’re a Stories Member, nothing is really changing. If you’re a Premium Member, you’re no longer going to have access to the entire e-book library constantly but you’ll still have far more than $20 in value available to you in a given month.
As of July 1, here’s what’s included in the memberships.
First – thank you for your support
Since the start – way back on Patreon – the core purpose of memberships was to give people a way to support me in the creation of new free content. Your membership dollars allow me to keep releasing new free stories on BDSMLR – thank you!
Stories Membership
Early Access – Stories Members will continue to have access to all new stories released on BDSMLR before they go live – and usually a week or more in advance. These stories are delivered via dropbox as individual PDFs using the same art that accompanies them on BDSMLR. I release at least 20 new stories each month. Going forward, I will be keeping the last two months of stories available at any given time, so you’ll have at least 40 PDFs sitting there at all times.
All existing Guide to Arth-Keros content – I still don’t have a date on resuming the creation of new Arth-Keros content, but Stories Members will retain access to what currently exists.
Four Story Collections per month – You will get access to four story collections each month. This will include all new collections and substantially updated collections as they are released. If I don’t release or update four collections in a month, you’ll get a collection that hasn’t been released within the last six months to make up the numbers. (I have released 4 collections every month this year except in April.)
Reality Check – Stories Members have access to the archive of Reality Check articles.
Priority Access to Me – Almost no one takes advantage of this, but I prioritise responding to emails or chats from members and have never intentionally failed to reply to a member. This is not an offer for sexting, but I *will* respond to questions.
Premium Membership
All benefits of Stories Membership – Premium Memberships include all benefits of Stories Membership.
Access to a rolling collection of 18 e-books – There are currently 32 books total in the ATR library (including the fanfic, premium collection and novels). In any given month, there’ll be 18 available. Each month, six of them will refresh. This will be in addition to what’s offered to Stories Members, so you’re guaranteed to get copies of all new releases and substantial updates. I’m going to post what’s available each month in advance – see below for the July, August and September selections. This represents more than $70 in value for these books alone. (Note: This is the major change in memberships. Instead of getting ALL e-books, you’re now getting 18.)
Weekly chapters of an ongoing novel-length story – Premium Members have been getting weekly chapters of the incest/watersports themed story “Hailey’s Training” for the past 10 weeks. I’m making this an ongoing benefit of membership. If I run out of Hailey’s Training, you’ll get chapters of something else. I may need to intercut between several stories as I write new chapters, but you’ll get a new chapter of something every week, and it will be exclusive. These stories will be along the lines of my novel length stories Titcage and The Lesbian Debt – darker than what I publish to BDSMLR, and including themes such as watersports that I don’t publish there. (This is also a new benefit.)
These changes will not be implemented till 1 July, so Premium Members have a few days to download the current full catalogue of e-books if they haven’t already.
Also, as mentioned, from 1 July 2020 member content will be delivered exclusively via Dropbox, so if you haven’t received your Dropbox invite yet, or you’re having problems, please contact me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com. I’m keen to make this work for everyone so if you have any difficulties at all please get in contact and let me work on them with you.
Requests?
Astute readers will notice that neither tier of membership includes story requests.
I am still not in a position to reliably deliver on story requests, and am therefore not offering them. You’ll hear about it here when that changes. Sorry!
Premium Library
See the table below for what’s available to Premium Members in July, August and September. Remember, this is in addition to books released to Stories Members, so it will be these books plus any new releases or substantive updates in that month.
Conclusion
These changes are as discussed with members and surveyed on earlier in the year. (At the time we discussed only getting 12 e-books but I’ve decided to go with 18.)
If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com. Thank you all again for your support.
Earlier this year I surveyed members on a range of potential changes to membership content and delivery. I’m now ready to move forward on those, starting 1 July.
I’ll talk more about the changes to member content in a couple of days – the short version is Stories tier is unchanged, Premium tier is going to move to a rolling library of 18 e-books, plus all novels, plus all premium collections.
But today I’m talking about moving to Dropbox.
If you’re a member, you should have already received your invitation to Dropbox at your primary email address. If you’re a member and you haven’t received your invite, please email me ASAP at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com, give me enough information to identify you as a member, and let me know what email I should send it to.
Up to now, member content has been delivered via Google Drive, which had a number of shortcomings: * It required a Google account to use. * I was eventually going to run into an upper limit on how many people I could share to. * It wasn’t great about protecting the privacy of users vis-a-vis other users. * Its system of invites for those without Google email addresses wasn’t very transparent for me in managing access to the content.
Therefore we’re moving to Dropbox.
For the remainder of June, I will be mirroring all content to both Google Drive and Dropbox. You should be able to find all relevant content on both services.
From 1 July, I will terminate access to Google Drive. All member content will be delivered exclusively via Dropbox.
Here’s what you should and shouldn’t be able to do with Dropbox.
You SHOULD be able to: * See all content you’re entitled to. * Download any content you can see to your own computer and keep it.
You SHOULD NOT be able to: * Edit, delete or move content within my Dropbox folders. * Upload new content to my Dropbox folders. * Grant access to additional users. * See any information about other users.
Please let me know if you find any exception to any of the above so I can rectify it ASAP.
If the change to Dropbox impacts you in some way, I’d like to hear about it to make sure you’re not out of pocket. Please contact me if you are in this situation.
If experienced Dropbox users have any tips or tricks to help me use Dropbox more efficiently or attractively, I’m keen to hear those too.
And once again – if you’re a member, and you haven’t received an invite, please email me ASAP. All feedback, issues or other comments can reach me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com
PS: Sorry about any confusion arising from the Dropbox emails referring to “Abnagarth Frustell”. One of several old fake names attached to accounts that I hadn’t realised was still hanging around. Fixed for the future.
Good news! For those who prefer to read ATR e-books in EPUB format, there are now new books available in EPUB!
Converting the entire existing library into EPUB will take some time, but as of this writing you can enjoy nine books in EPUB. The books available are as follows:
These are NOT new editions – just EPUB versions of the existing books. (Although I did fix a typo in The Ternish Betrayal along the way and add series numbering to those that were missing it.) Versions of these titles available to members on Google Drive have been updated accordingly.
If you have previously direct-purchased these books from the shop, you can download the updates and EPUB versions for free, using the email you received when you made your purchase. If you’ve lost the email, or have any trouble downloading the EPUB, send me an email at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com and please include as much information as possible to help me identify your order.
All titles continue to be available in PDF, and I recommend the PDF as the most attractive format to read, where possible.
If you find a problem with an EPUB version or have advice on improving the EPUB formats, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
I will continue to convert old titles into EPUB over time, and all new books and editions will launch with EPUB versions available.
Typo Bounty on E-Books
In addition, until 31 July 2020, I am offering a bounty on spotting typos and other errors in my e-books. Spot any typo, report it to me, and win a voucher for one standard e-book of your choice in the shop! (Or a $3.99 discount on Golden Sins or Titcage.)
Here’s how to claim it:
Step 1) Find any eligible error in the most recent edition of an e-book. Step 2) Contact me by private message on BDSMLR, or by email to all.these.roadworks@gmail.com Step 3) If I confirm the typo, I’ll reply with your coupon code. Step 4) Use the coupon code in the All These Roadworks shop to claim your free book!
What counts as an “eligible error”?
It must be either: (a) a typographical error (e.g. “dbor” instead of “door”); (b) an obviously misused word (e.g. “his” instead of “her”); (c) an obvious error of phrasing (e.g. “just desserts” instead of “just deserts”); (d) a significant continuity error (e.g. use of wrong character name, reference to wearing of clothing that has already been removed, etc); (e) a significant publication error (e.g. missing paragraph, story starting on wrong page, missing carriage return, etc); or (f) entirely at my discretion, any other fixable error brought to my attention.
It must be from an e-book. Pointing out errors on BDSMLR is appreciated, but I’m particularly looking to clean up the e-books right now.
It must be from the latest version of the e-book. Check your cover matches the version displaying in the shop.
You must be the first to report it. (At my discretion I may reward several people for the same typo, but I’m only promising a reward for the first.)
Rewards for this competition may be transferred to friends or followers if you don’t want to redeem them personally. So if you are already a Premium Member or already have all the e-books, please let me know about typos anyway!
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
A difficult 2020 continues being difficult.
Australia has done pretty well with COVID-19, and the particular jurisdiction I’m in has done even better. Like most places that instituted sensible lockdown protocols, we are now coming out of the first wave (no active cases) and beginning to relax lockdown.
However, history and science tells us that a second wave is on the way, and it will almost certainly be significantly worse, even before taking into account that the southern hemisphere is now heading into winter. Please remain vigilant – particularly if you’re in the United States, which largely did *not* handle the virus well, and has not flattened the curve, and which is likely to still be seeing high numbers of wave 1 cases when wave 2 arrives. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones, or has been infected, or who has struggled with the financial and psychological effects of lockdown.
I’m still struggling myself. I’m definitely not producing anything like a week of full-time work in a week, and I’ve had very few occasions of my mind and my libido being aligned in the necessary way for writing new stories. I’m hoping to see some improvement as external stresses dissipate, but no promises.
I’m basically taking the approach of “this is a difficult time, do what you can do, and don’t beat yourself up about what you can’t”, and accepting it’s okay if I make less money as a result. Although, as it turns out, site profits have gone up steadily throughout COVID-19, not down, so that’s nice.
What does my output look like right now?
This is an update using the same structure as last month’s update.
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’ve gotten through a couple of the remaining requests. I currently have two undelivered requests to go. Both require a little more thought than the average story. It’s frustrating, but creativity simply won’t march to a beat.
Unredeemed story requests / ongoing series – When the last current requests are finished, I will reach out to anyone who was backing an ongoing story about continuing it. They’ll take first priority on new requests.
Other new stories – I still have many old Tumblr stories to republish. Some of them are getting rewritten or expanded as I put them up – improving an existing story is generally easier than writing a new one. Also if inspiration hits me for something that isn’t a request, I’m not letting it go to waste, so there have been a few entirely new stories over the last month.
Story collections – Putting together story collections is easy. Doing the new “bonus” material at the end is harder, and is the primary thing slowing down new collections at present. I aim for at least three collections in May, and hopefully four. Two have already been delivered – Daddy’s Girl and The Milk Industry – so that leaves one to two more to go, of which one will definitely be a new collection rather than an update.
Arth-Keros – The Guide to Arth-Keros remains suspended for now.
Reality Check – There’s a certain level of artificiality in talking about real-life kink while everyone’s stuck at home. I’m searching for a topic that’s relevant to where we are right now, and will put up an article once I have one.
Bonus Material – The chapters of Hailey’s Training will continue going up on Google Drive for Premium Members at a rate of one a week until those are exhausted.
What did members get in April?
Early Access
There were 22 new stories posted in Early Access in April.
Story Collections
All members received three new collections in March:
Crime and Punishment – Stories of Law and Authority (2nd Edition)(view in shop)
She’s Got The Look – Stories of Exploited Models and Erotic Fashion (view in shop)
The Ternish Betrayal – A Novella of High-Fantasy Degradation (all new!) (view in shop)
Other content
Premium Members received the first chapters of Hailey’s Training, an unfinished novel-length story themed around watersports, incest and humiliation.
How is the site doing?
Purchases on the site continue to go up. In April, the site paid me a little shy of a full-time minimum wage for the month. It’s hard to tell if that represents sustained growth or a COVID-19 effect, but it’s nice either way.
(EDIT: A little shy of the full-time minimum Australian wage, which, after currency conversion, is nearly twice the minimum wage of the US.)
Thank you to everyone who’s purchased an e-book or membership over the period.
E-books now comprise about 75% of the site’s total profits, with memberships being the other 25%.
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 $130 AUD (about $84 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.
Hi all. As you’re probably aware, the COVID-19 crisis has gotten pretty severe worldwide.
I’m safe and healthy, but my city is entering lockdown. I have food and internet… and this should be a great time to work on new stories.
Unfortunately, I’m finding erotica to be the furthest thing from my mind, and specifically finding it hard to write for the longer periods necessary to fulfil requests. I’m therefore making a couple of announcements to communicate realistically about my output for the next little while.
No new story requests will be accrued until further notice.
I have disabled the purchase of individual story requests in the shop.
New purchases of Premium Memberships will NOT include story requests until further notice.
If things haven’t changed by May, existing Premium Memberships will not accrue new story requests in May.
Existing requests will be honoured – but delayed.
All existing accrued requests for March and April – whether redeemed or not – will be honoured.
However, this will probably not occur in a timely fashion. Stories will be late.
I cannot offer an ETA on delivery at this stage.
Arth-Keros content is suspended until further notice.
I do not have a timeline for publication of new Arth-Keros material, including the well-overdue February update.
What can you still expect?
I expect to continue to publish 20+ new stories a month.
I have a large backlog of non-requested stories and old Tumblr stories that should keep Early Access full of content for at least two months even if I don’t write anything new.
The release of collections should continue.
I expect to release a new edition of “Jessa Stories” and another entirely new collection in March, and April should see the same schedule of two updates and two new books.
I’m not sure how long this reduced output will last. It’s not (at this stage) anything to do with the physical limitations of the COVID-19 crisis, and entirely to do with my headspace arising out of it.
I would ask members for their support and ongoing membership in this difficult time. However, if anyone would like a refund of their most recent month of membership due to the changes in what is being delivered, I am happy to oblige – please email me at all.these.roadworks@gmail.com
In brief: The world is a bit rubbish right now but I’m safe and (relatively) healthy. However, with everything going on, I’m having trouble keeping up with new writing at the moment. I’ll look at membership extensions where necessary when things are improved. I know that there’s still no February Arth-Keros update, and I think it’s unlikely I’m going to complete the March workload by the end of March.
Basically I’m just having trouble keeping up with the world at the moment, and haven’t managed any new product in the last seven days. There’s still a couple of weeks of queue on BDSMLR that will keep publishing (all stuff that’s already available in Early Access).
I expect I’ll get a couple of new stories available in the next couple of days but they may represent stuff that’s already written but not published rather than new work. (I keep about 10 to 20 finished stories in reserve for times like this, plus I still haven’t republished all the stuff from the Tumblr era, although many of those old stories are just one or two paragraphs.)
TLDRfor those who just want to know I’m safe: I am physically safe, I am likely to continue to be safe, but I’m back in a position where work on All These Roadworks erotica may be impacted. Please anticipate some delays.
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The shape of the situation:
As I have posted previously, Australia is experiencing unprecedented bushfires on a scale which is, frankly, apocalyptic. I am in Australia, and while I have not been in direct physical danger – and am still not in danger – I have been heavily impacted by the fires and their associated effects.
We’ve had a few good weeks of clean air and no immediate fears, which has been great, and has let me get through most of the January work for the site. (And when I talk about “we”, I mean myself and my primary partner, who is wonderful.)
However, the situation has changed again.
In the past I’ve talked about being on the Australian east coast. At this point I need to say more specifically that, right at this moment, I’m in the Australian Capital Territory.
For those who aren’t Australians, the ACT is a commonwealth territory located in south-western New South Wales, which contains basically two things: (1) a large swathe of heavily-forested and largely inaccessible national park, and (2) the nation’s capital, Canberra, a city of some 500,000 people that directly abuts bushland and farmland.
Over the last few days a substantial bushfire has developed in Namadgi National Park and the Orroral Valley, to the south-south-west of Canberra, currently burning an area of some 3,000 hectares. Strong winds are driving it north and east. The semi-rural township of Tharwa lies directly in its path, and beyond that it’s only a few kilometres down the road to the first urban suburbs of Canberra.
All of Canberra’s southern fringe is on standby for full evacuation. Firefighters from the ACT and NSW are cooperating with the Australian Defence Force to combat the fire, but the nightmarish combination of strong wind, high heat, dry atmosphere and a heavy fuel load mean that the fire is likely fundamentally uncontrollable.
Even under the most hopeful forecasts, the fire will continue to burn for many days, while the remainder of the local area remains at high risk of new fires starting. The fire is clearly visible throughout Canberra as a pulsing red glow on the southern hills, spewing a long plume of smoke that merges with the cloud layer. It’s honestly a bit like living on the fringes of Mordor. (The banner image from this post is of the Orroral Fire yesterday afternoon.)
Personally, I am currently located in Canberra’s north, and am not at immediate risk of danger or evacuation from this particular fire, which means I have some bonus capacity to absorb the stress and worry of friends who *are* under threat. We remain on alert against the possibility of new fires.
However, Canberra is once again choking in a thick miasma of smoke. The sky is yellow. Visibility is impacted. We don’t go outside without filter masks. We have used rubber seals to block breezeways through doors and windows. If it continues as it did last time, it is likely some public services such as postal deliveries will shut down.
My home office is unfortunately one of the rooms that we can neither smoke-proof nor heat-proof, which means that my capacity to spend time writing or doing administrative work for the site may be limited. We may be even further disrupted, if things worsen. Also, a lot of the time my head just isn’t in a sexy space right now.
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Impact on All These Roadworks:
There may be none. The fire may stay where it is, and the wind may change to carry the smoke away. That would be nice.
More realistically it may mean that my work output will decrease for a while. That means that some of the last remaining work for January may be delayed until February. As I’ve said before, if it means people don’t get their full membership benefits for the month, I’ll contact you and discuss solutions, including, if necessary, a refund.
My BDSMLR account is currently queued three weeks ahead with a combination of the stories you’ve seen already in Early Access plus re-posts of past stories, so it’s unlikely that that queue will run dry.
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What’s left to do for January?
Story collections are done for the month. There are two brand new collections and two substantial new editions with new content. That’s covered.
There are more than 20 stories in the January Early Access, so everyone has generically had their dose of content there.
I haven’t done the Arth-Keros update or the Reality Check yet. These *will* come, but they may need to come in early February, or as soon as the conditions allow me to write them.
I have the following story requests outstanding (still to write). If you’ve made a story request and haven’t received it AND don’t see it here, please get in touch with me. I’m not naming names – your requests are private – but here’s the topics in the pipeline.
Outstanding for January: – Advice Column (Dr Degradation) – “How to get my boyfriend to rape me” – Diana Tells The Truth, Part 5
Upcoming for February – Diana Tells The Truth, Part 6 – Average Availability, Part 2 – Abby’s Identity, Part 6 – “mother/daughter incest story” – Persephone Nine, Chapter 2 – new Jessa story
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What can you do to help?
If you want to help me personally, mostly I just need a bit of understanding if some of the January content rolls over to February.
But you can also buy e-books and memberships. Remember, the larger the total of a single purchase, the more of it goes to me rather than Paypal, so I love it when you buy multiple books at the same time! (But you’re most welcome to buy them one at a time if that’s the way you enjoy doing it.)
Sales for January have been very good already, so thank you all for your generosity and/or interest in buying erotica. It’s *still* not a full-time job, but it *has* filled the hole in my finances that would otherwise have existed due to the similar impact all this is having on my day job.
If you want to help the victims of bushfires, please consider donating to:
* Australian Red Cross – for bushfire victims and communities * WIRES – for rescue and care of bushfire-affected animals
Please note the Australian Red Cross is a *different* organisation to the Red Cross in other countries. Please also ignore media about the Red Cross’s handling of donations – there’s a local political context here, and this isn’t a venue where I want to discuss that – and accept from me that they are the best of a number of large aid organisations directing their efforts to bushfire victims.
And more broadly, *please* support organisations, parties and politicians that believe in human-caused climate change and are willing to implement bold policies to address it. Scientists, firefighters and emergency services are united in their firm position that these fires are unprecedented, they are not part of our natural weather cycle, that they are the result of human-caused climate change, and that without direct action the situation will continue to worsen. We can’t survive much worse than this. Please, help.
I’ll try and update on the situation again when it gets much better, or much worse. If I manage to get an Early Access post up in the next week, or anything else, it doesn’t necessarily mean things are either better or worse.
Since back in the Patreon days, I’ve been using Google Drive to deliver content to members, including Early Access stories, story collections, Arth-Keros content, the Reality Check archive, and the two long-form stories.
However, there are some upper limits on Google Drive, both in terms of storage, and in terms of how many people I can share content with. We’re not likely to hit either of them in the next few months, but it’s something I need to start thinking about. There are also some other concerns I have about the suitability of Google Drive for this purpose. It’s not really designed for what I’m doing with it.
The obvious, and most likely, solution is to use Dropbox – possibly via its paid tiers. (Paid on my end, that is.)
Does that present any problem for my current members? Does anyone have an even better solution?
I’m looking for legal, reliable, reputable storage solutions that offer strong and flexible access control, and good privacy and security for users.
