greypatch3 on 10/12/2008 at 23:10

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Holy crap...just saw the login which stated the last time I was on here was October 24th of 2002. I'm assuming very few people on here now remember me (if you do, then hello), but I wanted to post this up here before I do anything on TheCircle.

Back in 2000, I frequented this board practically everyday, as well as thief-thecircle.com. I had read through numerous short stories posted there and I had noticed something...very few of them were comedic. I got the (probably terrible) idea to contribute one of my own. And so was born "Unlicensed and Untrained," a very short (and spelling mistake-ridden, if you go and check) story about three thieves, Henry, Pete, and Jack, who unsuccessfully try to steal from the foppish Lord Farnsworth. After receiving about two or three e-mails from people saying it made them mildly amused, I decided to write a sequel. The first half of that story, "A Contest of Fools, or, When Zombies Attack!" went up in 2001.

Then, for awhile, nothing happened. In 2004 (I think, according to the last date mentioned on my copy), I posted up the second half, completing the story. I thought that would be the end of it.

But then I thought these characters had one more story in them, based on a slim idea I had while writing the second half of "Contest of Fools." At that time, Thief: Deadly Shadows had not been released yet, and I had the idea that my three thieves would rob from both the Pagans and the Hammers, and from this they would accidentally bring about the End of the World, as the Builder and the Trickster fought for supremacy.

Then Deadly Shadows came out, and I played the first three levels, where Garrett robs from both the Hammers and the Pagans. I thought to myself, well, nuts.

But, unfortunately for all of you out there :cheeky:, the idea didn't die. Having begun the novel in 2004 and letting it fester for awhile, I finally got the stones to finish it throughout most of 2008. It's a much longer story than the other two...Unlicensed is a little over 2,000, Contest of Fools is about 22,000, and this one is 89,000+ in its pre-edit form. The ending is quite different from above, though, so don't think I just gave everything away. ;)

The plot revolves around Henry Cresswell, noted incompetent thief, who reads a newspaper, finds out about Garrett's recent theft of the Hammer and Pagan artifacts, and decides to steal that idea and one-up him. Unfortunately, his two buddies, Jack Roberts and Pete Williams, have since given up on the thieving game and gotten 'real' jobs. He manages to sucker them back in, so that he can finally fulfill his dream of being a master thief, but will his schemes all be worth it in the end?

The novel is a very satirical, broad comedy with plenty of violence, moderate swearing, and some sexual dialogue (though I'm guessing it's not much worse than your average primetime sitcom). Though a stand-alone story, I make a lot of references to things in the earlier two stories as well as Deadly Shadows (the story occurs at the same time as Garrett's journey, but they don't really intersect except at a few interesting points), so if you haven't read them or played Deadly Shadows...well, you probably won't be lost, but a few jokes may be missed and some minor spoilers revealed. I'm guessing that since the game's been out for four years, though, that there's very few of you on here that haven't completed the game. If you haven't, then my story is probably not going to be the reason you finish up. If it is, thank you from the bottom of my heart.:cheeky:

I still have to go over it a little to make sure I actually check it for grammatical mistakes this time (unlike the other two stories), but in this instance, I have a small request. When I wrote the story, I had it take place over seven days. I was originally going to post the novel in a serial format, with the first day to be followed by the second day after some time, and so on and so on.

But, when going onto TheCircle, I found out that the other novel, Correspondence of Thieves, which has also been in the works for about 4-5 years, had the same idea of releasing it serially. Now, I had heard of CoT way back when, but had never read any of it, and I don't want to get in the way of another author who not only posted the idea of a serial novel before I did, but has a far greater fan base anticipation than I do and a nice blog site to boot.

So, I ask, should I go ahead and release it in the manner that I had originally wrote it, or should I just kindly ask the nice people at TheCircle to put the whole thing up at once? Or should I just burn my hard drive and erase the story forever so no one ever has to be bothered with it?;) Any feedback at all would be great.

P.S. Also, if anybody is up to reading through this beast for editing issues, please respond below. The story is pretty much done and though I probably won't be up to making any creative changes unless absolutely necessary, grammatical and spelling help would be greatly appreciated.

ercles on 11/12/2008 at 07:46

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If you need help editing, I can help out

greypatch3 on 12/12/2008 at 19:18

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Sorry I didn't respond right away. I updated my e-mail address and for some reason my inbox hates receiving messages from forum accounts; I couldn't post or send e-mail to anybody for a while.

All righty, I will send it along in short order. Thanks again.

ADD: I can send by e-mail, but if you prefer another method (I don't have an uploading account anywhere), contact me. My e-mail should be on the contact page.

Digital Nightfall on 7/2/2009 at 04:51

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Good to hear it! Who is helping? I may need to pester them later. :D

Digital Nightfall on 3/3/2009 at 01:14

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Post'd!

(http://www.thief-thecircle.com/shownews.asp?id=2098)