The Whitechapel Project

A few people have asked for a postmortem of the whole Whitechapel project. Now that I’m on “vacation” and able to get some thoughts together, I’m willing to do that. However, this project has been inside my head so much that I’m not entirely sure what kinds of things you guys would find interesting. So, I’ll post my working document, and let y’all ask questions about anything that doesn’t make sense.

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This is a very bittersweet post to write, so forgive me if I ramble a bit.

A couple of months ago, things got busy for me — generally a good busy, but still busy. I figured it was just a bit of a rough patch, so I decided to work through it. I moved some things around with Whitechapel and made it work. No problem — it happens.

Then I got out of that patch of busy into a completely different patch of busy. It was tough, but I decided to put some things on hold until I got through it. Again, I expected it was just a tough spot.

After that, I had a run of computer problems. Okay, that was actually a bad patch. But, chin up, we’ll get through it. I was able to actually get the Q&A episode out, and I figure it would all work out.

Over the past few days, I’ve been asked to take on some additional work responsibilities. It’s an exciting opportunity, and I’m really looking forward to it. However, it does mean that my schedule needs to be a little more flexible, because the days of working weird hours are probably going to continue. Essentially, I’m at a place where I have rebalance my ratio between work and life. So, I had to sit down and think about what things in my life I can reshuffle to make it all work.

Sadly, Whitechapel has to go.

It’s been an amazing run, but the truth of the matter is that my life has changed quite a lot in the past year. I can’t plan around having a run of five days every two weeks in which to write, edit, record, and edit Whitechapel anymore. I can’t even be sure that I can handle just the writing and editing. I’m sure that I’ll be able to get my work/life balance back on track at some point, but I don’t know how long that will take.

So, what’s going to happen to Whitechapel? Honestly, I don’t know. I might sit down and rewrite these episodes, finish it up, and polish it into a novel manuscript at some point. I doubt nothing will ever happen with it, though. It might be weeks, month, or years, but I expect Whitechapel will live again at some point.

Understand that this wasn’t an easy decision to make. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and reexamining for a while, and thinking about very seriously for the past several days. This is just one of a number of overall changes in my life. It’s bittersweet, because I wanted to finish this, and I enjoyed working on it, but the reason why it’s happening is for a lot of really awesome reasons for me personally. There’s just too much good stuff going on for me to be able to give due attention to all of them.

But I do want to take a moment to thank you, my audience. If it wasn’t for you, I probably would have gotten frustrated and dropped this long ago. It’s because of you that this crazy idea that sat in the back of my head became something real. It didn’t go the distance that I hoped for, but it went a hell of a lot further than I could have anticipated because of your support and encouragement. You gave me some constructive criticism, but I never heard a negative word about Whitechapel, which is very rare for an Internet project. You guys have been, and continue to be, amazing.

Thank you.

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After many, many, many delays, I finally have a Whitechapel fix for you — an hour-long Q&A between me and Rob Justice of the BearSwarm podcast. We answered a few questions that Rob had mailed to him by fans, a few question that had on his own, and a lot of rambling about the project, interactive fiction, and the future of fiction on the Internet.

On a related note, I finally have a new laptop, and I’m getting a chance to catch up on the projects that have been building up over the past month. If all goes well, I should be able to start writing the next episode of Whitechapel this week, and maybe (fingers crossed) have an episode up next week. (I do talk about the delays during the episode, but that was before I had my laptop drama, so just take that and multiply it a couple of times.)

Thank you all for being very patient with this, and I hope this Q&A episode will get you back into the Whitechapel groove.

So, last week I recorded the Q&A episode with Rob Justice of the BearSwarm podcast. I had fully intended to edit it today and post it, and start writing Whitechapel this week.

Last night, the main laptop I use for work and recording started displaying problems with the power cord and battery. I spent all of last night getting everything onto my netbook. It was irritating, but not a huge deal, because the netbook was powerful enough to handle it all (even if it was a touch slow here and there).

A couple of hours ago, I found out that there’s a huge crack on my screen. I have no idea how it got there, but nearly a quarter of my screen is now gone. I talked it over with my family, and we decided that I needed to get a new laptop. That done, I opened up the netbook to see if I could get my files off of it and start the process.

In booting it up, the netbook now refuses to accept that my copy of Windows 7 is genuine (even though I paid for it separately from the computer). I’m not sure how long that will last, but it’s possible that my netbook might just stop working at any point.

So I have no idea what’s going to happen, but things have gone from “slightly irritating” to “trying to find solutions to mission critical work.” I had gotten things mostly caught up in my life, and then this happened, which means that I’m going to be falling behind again while I wait for the new computer to show up and then get it back to the shape I need it in (the usual dance of transferring files and installing new software). At this point, that’ll probably be early to mid June.

I’m going to try and see if I can get at least some stuff onto my wife’s old Mac Air so I can not fall too far behind, but I have no idea how well that’s going to work. I can probably get the writing done, and I might be able to get the recording done through GarageBand, but I can’t guarantee anything.

Rob at the BearSwarm podcast is working with me to try and produce another Q&A episode. If you have burning questions about Whitechapel, my process, the project, or even just about me, feel free to check out this link:

http://www.bearswarm.com/the-whitechapel-project-question-and-answer-session

It sucks that I have to do this yet again, but I have a ton of paying work I have to deal with after my vacation, and that has to take priority over non-paying writing like Whitechapel. I hope I’ll have things on track in a few days, but rather than giving another deadline and then blowing it, I’m going to just say that Whitechapel is going to be on hold for a bit while I get caught up on everything.

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Previously on Whitechapel

Six killed Liz while under the influence of Jack. During a desperate search of her home, he discovered that she was really Rachel Parks, an agent for the mysterious organization Lacuna. His escape from Liz’s home was interrupted by the arrival of one of Lacuna’s agents. Six took Liz’s appearance and tried to bluff the recently arrived Agent Timm into believing that he was the female agent. Six convinced Timm to put him in contact with the head of Lacuna, Zachery McPhearson. Unfortunately, McPhearson wanted Six to come out to the car parked outside and speak to him directly. Six was left with a handful of bad options, and all while trying desperately to keep Jack from taking over again.

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So, I’m still crazy busy, but episode 16 was pretty quick to write, all told. Part of that is because I tried out a new process.

Previous, I would write every draft of the episode in OpenOffice 3. I would write the first 1000 words the first day, and then the next day I would go back and edit that 1000 words before finishing up the episode. While initially this helped me to get back into the swing of writing, more often than not it meant I would dick around with revision, and just when I was getting into the swing of that, I would have to write again. More and more I’m coming to appreciate that my brain really works in different ways when I’m writing and when I’m editing, so I decided to look into options to help me keep those spaces separate when I’m writing.

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Previously on Whitechapel

While under the influence of Jack, Six murdered Liz, the mysterious woman who helped him back in the hotel. In searching the house that Liz brought him to, Six discovered that Liz was working for Lacuna, the secretive government organization that had some connection with the Whitechapel Project. Six discovered Liz’s cell phone in her pocket, which still had a line open to someone named Zachary McPhearson. Someone had heard everything that happened during the murder. Just as Six discovered this, he heard a door open, giving him only moments to make a decision. Continue reading

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve had a nasty sinus infection for a week and a half now. It’s slowly getting better, but I’m still struggling with symptoms (at the moment, it’s a runny nose and difficulty in hearing). Further, I’m in the process of packing my house to move near the end of April, and I have to catch up on the work I missed during all of this, while juggling a company-wide trip to Mexico at the end of April. And, of course, it’s at this point in the narrative where I’ll have to start juggling guest voices again, making the recording of the podcast more challenging. (And all while I have to release on certain dates coming up to account for a side project.) So, in order to make it all work, I’m going to give myself two weeks to write episodes 16 and 17, and hope that it gets me back on track.

At this moment, episode 16 will be on Wednesday, April 7th and episode 17 will be on Tuesday, April 27th. As always, keep an eye on your RSS feed, Twitter, or however you get your Whitechapel news.