Blog

Below are all the blog posts I've written, from newest to oldest. (If you're checking here to see any new posts but don't see them, do a hard refresh by hitting ctrl + F5. Neocities is weird like that.)

Making Changes

June 3, 2026

After spending this year mulling it over, I've decided I'm gonna start making a bunch of changes now, in terms of this website.

First off, when my rileykifer.com domain name is up for renewal later this year, I've decided I'm most likely not going to renew it, unless something convinces me otherwise. I really only bought it because my boyfriend convinced me to, because "It's only $10 a year and you never know you could get published someday and it'll be handy to have before someone else takes it for whatever reason! And it's good for using as a professional-sounding email too, which you can easily send emails from your gmail account under it, no problem!" (In which there has been a problem the handful of times I've tried using it over the last decade. Not worth the headache and tears- I have since made a proton email under the Riley Kifer name.) Cue today. Not only is it now more than $10 a year, but over the past couple of years, I've slowly come to the realization that I don't want to be published. I always thought, if I did ever professionally publish, I'd do self-publishing because- creative freedom, cheaper, easier (in some ways), among other reasons. Now, I don't even want to go the self-pub route either. I cannot stress how much I hate marketing and advertising. I've heard so many stories about how hard it is to sell a book these days- so much marketing and advertising just to maybe sell 50 copies if you're lucky. The only real way to make money in it is to write to market. That is, make sacrifices to my stories so that they'd appeal to a wider audience. The #1 reason I'd go the self-pub route would be to avoid people making me do that shit. Instead, I'd be the one making myself do that shit. I already learned the hard way that the fastest way to make myself miserable is to create content based off of what other people want. (If I wanted to do that, I'd actually be using my degree.)

On top of that, I'm honestly not even sure about posting stories on writing sites anymore. I mean, I like sharing my stories with the world, and always hope someone out there enjoys reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. But spending the last year and a half posting stories made me realize something.

It's made me realize how easy it is to lose sight of why I started writing to begin with. It's so, god damn, easy to get caught up in analytics and gaining readership. It is literally no different than any other form of social media. I quit social media long ago because of the negative effect it had on my mental health. I am noticing similarities between now and back then. Only in some ways, it's worse because there's a lot more work involved and pressure to finish a story.

I really, really wish writing sites actually didn't have any analytics- kinda like how Cohost was. Where you can't see any likes or view counts. Then, we can all focus purely on writing the story we want to tell, and spend more time actually writing, instead of getting caught up in playing the numbers game. Alas, I am most likely the minority in feeling this way, and writing sites don't give a shit about the minority.

I'm getting off track...

The good thing about Neocities, is that I can post all my stories, without getting caught up in analytics and shit. It's far less likely that someone will actually read any of the stories I do post, but they're out there to read. Which brings me to my next point.

The internet is going to shit.

With all these age verification laws going into place across the globe, on top of AI taking over everything, on top of nothing on the internet being permanent anymore, I want to put all my work in a place that (hopefully) won't be too affected by that noise. On a site that has similar values and principles as myself. So, I'm going to upload all my past work onto this website. And- I'm going to have fun with it. Currently, I'm starting to upload chapters of Russell and Sal because, why the fuck not start with my first ever novel? But over the next, whenever, start expecting to see my old works pop up on here, chapter by chapter. I might also include fun trivia and things for each story I've written. Also, I'm going to be making new changes to the site that'll make it less of a "professional" author site, and more like a Neocities site? Except nothing at all fancy, because I want to keep it mobile-friendly, and I have a hard enough time keeping it mobile friendly when trying to be professional. Idk how to explain it. The website's style and code will stay the same. But the words and pages might change.

I feel like I had more to say, but I guess that's about it for now.

So done

May 24, 2026

No, I'm not done writing. I'm just, so done with wasting time posting my writing.

It's not the difficulty in gaining readers, or the fact that most readers don't leave comments or likes or whatever. It's not for lack of attention. No. It's the amount of scammers and spammers that flood just about every writing site with their fake comments about how much they enjoyed your story, followed by a sales pitch on making it a comic and/or make a vague mention of an idea they had that they'd love to talk to you about but you HAVE to contact them on instagram/discord/etc! (Nothing suspicious about luring people off a website!)

And it happens on EVERY. SINGLE. WRITING. WEBSITE. Wattpad, Penana, Inkitt, Royal Road, Scribblehub, Purrfiction, Booksie, ao3. I've gotten those types of comments on every single one of those sites! Some websites are better at deleting those accounts than others. (Royal Road and Scribblehub in particular almost always have them deleted before I can even see what the comment said.) But it is still. so. god damn. irritating!!! Especially when it's literally the only comments you get.

But you know what's even worse?

These scammers are now literally RUNNING WORK INTO AI, and having it GENERATE COMMENTS SPECIFIC TO THE STORY! So that it looks like they read it!!! A few weeks ago, someone made so many in-line comments through one of my stories, like way back in the day when it was a common thing for people to do. Comments that someone can only leave if they were actually reading through the story. I was suspicious at first, as I always am. Especially when a couple of them kinda had that AI voice to them. But... what scammer would put in that level of dedication? Plus, a lot of the comments did sound genuine. Then, they left a comment on my wall saying how they loved it, and asked me questions. My suspicions were raised again when they were acting weird over a piece of worldbuilding. Like they didn't fully understand what they were talking about. On top of that, they kept asking questions about publishing- like they were ready to pull a scam publishing sales pitch. (Those are almost always scams and should be avoided. Legit publishers don't contact writers.) I asked them a question about something that did not happen in the story, with characters that do not exist, and they commented like it actually happened. Proving that they did not actually read the story, and were just running everything through AI! (Yes, I called them out on it. No, they never responded back.)

Now, I just went on Purrfiction for the first time in forever. (I stopped posting there because it wasn't getting any action except spam bots so why bother?) I only went there to change my email address because, long ramble short, I'm seriously considering dropping rileykifer.com because I've officially decided I do not want to get published in any way, so why am I throwing $12(?) a year at a domain name/email when I can buy a meal at Burger King instead? I saw my story had a comment. I click said comment. It was a very specific comment on a very specific scene that, to the untrained eye, would prove the person read it. But in reality, they ran the chapter through AI and had it generate that comment for them. (The confirmation of my assumption is how they ended their comment with a "I have ideas to share plz message me on discord.") And I am just... ready to quit posting. I am so ready to quit posting and keep my writing to myself. The only reason I'm not is for anyone who does want to read my work. (And quitting means the scammers win.) But if I suddenly vanish, that's most likely what happened. I got fed up with scammers, spammers, AI, and depressing analytics.

Whenever I finish up Outcasts and Rebels, which I'm about ready to take a long break away from, due to aforementioned bullshit, future stories are only gonna be posted on here. Because at least nobody can leave spam comments, and I won't find myself getting caught up in stupid analytics that make me forget why I write. Maybe I'll keep posting on Inkitt and Scribblehub cuz I spend a lot of time on their forums anyway, and I really like Inkitt's UI. But other sites? I'm done wasting my time with.

Outcasts and Rebels is on here!

January 23, 2026

So, in addition to posting Outcasts and Rebels on Inkitt, etc, you can now read it on this site! I made the serial its own special section, with a front page and a table of contents to jump in from. I also plan on adding an additional page with more detailed information on the characters and world some day. Today is not that day.

So far, the first three episodes are up. I plan on posting a new episode at the end of every week. (Thursday? Friday? Saturday? It depends on what's going on with me every week, though I'm aiming for Fridays.) It's been a tedious process, but I'm hoping it'll get easier once I get used to it.

So, yeah, check it out here!

Outcasts and Rebels

January 14, 2026

I wrote a big long thing and I thought it saved but it didn't so I lost it and now I have to retype everything!!! So y'all are getting the short version now.

Basically, this week, I've started posting a new story, Outcasts and Rebels. It's less of a novel, and more like a TV series. It's somewhat episodic, with storylines starting up as other storylines end. I wrote a wonderful, detailed explanation on the story itself, but because I lost all that and don't feel like retyping it all, I'm just gonna include a copy/paste of the synopsis at the end.

I plan on posting a new "episode" every week, broken into 2 or 3 parts. (Because each episode is anywhere between 4.2k and 7k words.) I'm gonna keep doing that until I stop having fun with it. Then, I'll write up a proper ending.

Also, I'm thinking of dedicating a portion of this website to it. Like, posting the actual episodes on here every week too. It seems like it would be kinda fun. But I'd have to figure out a system for it, and how I want to do it. Or if I even want to commit to something like that... It'll depend on how complicated such a thing would be to do on a regular basis.

But for now, you can read it on Inkitt, Royal Road, Scribblehub, and Purrfiction.

Synopsis below:

Ordinary people with ordinary problems living in a future the US is headed towards.

They might not be able to overthrow the government, but they have their unique ways of rebelling, even at the expense of becoming outcasts.

Quitting Wattpad

January 10, 2026

I've got quite a bit to talk about right now. But first off, Fantasy in the Office is now fully posted and completed on all the sites I posted it; Wattpad, Inkitt, Royal Road, and Penana. Not much else to say about that, other than I'm happy to finally be done with something I started damn near ten years ago now.

Now, for bigger news. After much thought, I have decided I'm done with Wattpad. I plan on keeping my profile and all my current work up on there. I might log in a few times a year to see what's up. But I will no longer post any new stories there. For a couple reasons.

First off, they've made a lot of changes over the years I've disagreed with. And I've never gotten over the fact they nuked their forums. Not only did I have fun talking to some cool people on there, but it was the way to find readers. For me, I would go there to find open book clubs to join, which, basically, members of a book club would take turns reading other member's books. People would advertise openings for their book club on the forums. Now, if you want to join a book club, you have to actually try digging through the book club tag and see if there are any actually active, much less open to new members. Which, good luck! (There were also other ways to find readers that can only really be done via forums, but I don't remember how. I was always doing the book clubs. I don't know how the hell you're expected to get readers on Wattpad these days if you're not already popular.)

Now, I should jump in and say I've long stopped caring about gaining readership and watching analytics and I don't plan on getting published ever. (The reasons why deserve its own blog post.) I'm happy to get the views and readers I get. I like it when people read and like my stuff. But I loathe the crazy amount of effort and advertising you have to do to gain a following. It's not worth it to me. I'd rather spend that time actually writing. And writing the niche, unpopular things I like writing. To get readers, you often have to watch trends and write accordingly. Which sounds depressing as fuck. This is just a fun hobby for me.

I'm starting to veer off topic... But this ties into my main reason for quitting Wattpad. I get next to no reads on Wattpad and the only comments I get are from people trying to sell me (likely AI-generated) comic book art. Now, I've always understood that if you want to get reads on Wattpad, you have to work for it. Which I was able to do well enough, back when they had forums. But the fact is, on other writing sites, I can throw a story up, and get a few reads without trying. It's not a lot of views, but it's a lot more than I get on Wattpad. So, compared to my experience on other sites, posting on Wattpad feels like a waste of time. It's kind of sad, because Wattpad was the first writing site I joined, and I have a lot of happy memories with it back in 2016-2018. But those days are long over, so it's time to move on. (Maybe I'll return if they bring forums back.)

Speaking of leaving sites, I'm less sad to announce I probably won't post on Penana anymore either. Although I do get more reads on there than on Wattpad, the spam comments were out of control on FITO. Almost every chapter I'd post, I'd get 1-3 spam comments advertising comic book/art services, or how they can help my work reach an audience, or some AI-sounding comment about how good my story is and can I please talk with them more on Discord~ (Obviously a scam, especially when one is pushing me to create a Discord just for them.) Although the problem seems to have died down on FITO, I don't know if it's because more action is being taken against them on the site's behalf, or if they just like targeting books with less chapters. Regardless, I don't feel like dealing with those. But I will say, I am more likely to post a new story on Penana than on Wattpad. But I'm not planning on it anytime soon.

With those two sites scratched off my list, and something new coming soon, I signed up for ScribbleHub, and PurrFiction. I don't know what to expect with either of those sites, but they seem to favor long, ongoing serials. I am currently working on a long, ongoing serial. So I'm gonna give those two sites a try. And I am definitely going to continue posting on Inkitt and Royal Road. (Especially Inkitt! I like it the most, even if I do get more reads on Royal Road.)

In more positive news, I've been working on a long-running web serial called Rebels and Outcasts. I like to think of it as a dystopian soap opera. I have about 20 "episodes" written so far, and I plan on continuing it until I either get tired of it and come up with an ending, or if an ending naturally crops up. I'm trying to write it in a way where you can jump in and start reading at any chapter, because this thing is going to reach a point where it'll be overwhelming for new readers to catch up. It's got over 117k words so far, and there's so many other storylines I plan on adding in, as I wrap up other storylines. I hope to start posting it early next week on all four sites I just mentioned, so stay tuned!

Fantasy in the Office

October 1, 2025

I have finally, FINALLY, after damn near 9 years, posted the "sequel" of Runaway with Faye. It's called Fantasy in the Office.

It was originally supposed to be an ongoing, episodic slice of life story featuring characters from a fantasy world trying to fit in to modern day America. I started it back in 2016, I think? But then I stopped it because, I decided to write the backstory of these fantasy-world characters instead. Partly to help me write this story, and partly for a fun prequel for people who would enjoy this main story. Instead, I got depressed halfway through posting Runaway with Faye, and it took me three years to get the whole thing up. And then, I stuggled getting FITO done. Since it was originally supposed to be a never-ending slice of life type of story, and I did not know what I was doing back then, it ended up being one big mess of problems I couldn't figure out to fix. I left it untouched for a long time, but finally figured out how to fix aforementioned problems. And now, it is done! The first two chapters are up on Wattpad, Inkitt, Royal Road, and Penana. I'll probably post two more chapters this week, and next week I'll start posting one chapter twice a week.

Since it was originally supposed to be one, big story, and RWF the prequel, it can be read on its own. It's also a little different from Runaway with Faye, with a new cast of characters. (Though one of the two POVs is Jyri's. Faye and Ran are also present, and a few characters from RWF make appearances.) There's more humor in this one, along with office shenanigans. It's more slice-of-lifey, but nowhere near as much as originally planned. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope people have fun reading it.

Also, fun fact: The first nine sentences of this story have never changed after all these years and edits. And the entire first chapter is pretty much the same chain of events with a few edits. The same goes for chapter 3 and chapter 4. But everything else has gone through lots of changes over the years.

What's kinda funny is that some of the ideas came from my last job, which I quit 7 years ago! And I first started writing it on a laptop I haven't used in 8! Time flies.

Update

September 19, 2025

So, tonight I posted the last chapter of "Runaway with Faye" up on Inkitt and Royal Road. While I haven't edited the sequel as well as I would have wanted to, because I've been distracted with a new WIP, it's good enough to start posting. I've got a cover and a blurb in the works. I'm taking a trip next week. Assuming I survive the plane rides, I plan on posting chapters of the sequel when I come back. So, the week of September 28th. I might drop four in the first week, and then upload twice a week after that, but it'll depend on when I officially start uploading. (There's two scenes I want to align perfectly with the week of Thanksgiving.)

It's (probably) going to be called "Fantasy in the Office," and it can be read as a standalone. It's going to follow Jyri, Faye, and Ran (characters from a fantasy world) struggling to blend into modern-day America. They manage to get office jobs. There's a couple of characters who try to figure out where they came from. They all get a new, asshole boss who makes their lives hell. The portal they went through that they thought was closed, actually wasn't closed... Lots of nutty stuff happens. Stay tuned!

Posting Runaway with Faye

June 08, 2025

Yesterday, I posted the first two chapters of Runaway with Faye on Inkitt. And today, I remembered I have a Royal Roads account that exists, and decided to post it there as well. The only problem with Royal Road is, they take time to approve stories. And if you've posted a story somewhere else you have to put a note in the description of the story on the site you posted it on. Very understandable and smart, honestly. I did that though, so hopefully there won't be any problems with approving it. I might start posting future stories there first to avoid having to do that, even though I never use it and I don't even think anyone's ever read the one story I have on there. (Then again, the site's audience apparently favors fantasy so maybe RWF will have better luck than Russell and Sal did.) Also, I made some minor changes to the story here and there. Nothing major, and most of it is in the earlier chapters. I'm probably going to replace the chapters on Wattpad and Penana with these updated versions.

Anyways, I plan on posting two chapters a week. I haven't decided what days, but this will mean I'll have the entire thing posted on Inkitt (and probably Royal Road) by the middle of September. By then, its sequel should be either ready, or close to ready, to being ready to post. Actually, that time of year would probably be the perfect time to post it, because the story takes place in November! Okay, I'm going to aim for the goal of posting around then. Maybe October. There's a Thanksgiving-related scene in it and it would be kinda neato to have that scene get released on the week of Thanksgiving... I can't believe I up and made this decision in the middle of writing this post! (Assuming I don't end up making a major change that leads to me deleting the scene altogether. But that probably won't happen because it's actually very relevant to the story. Plus it was very fun to write!) Actually, I just checked and the scene is all the way in chapter 20 so maybe I will have to post it in, like, late September. (The stars really are lining up perfectly with this.) That goal is very reasonable for where I'm at in the editing stage.

Yes. I have made the decision in the middle of writing this blog post. The sequel will be posted in late September!

Update: It's now been approved on Royal Roads as well!

First post!

June 06, 2025

I'm trying to test out how I'm going to blog on here. And organize posts. Without having to do any complicated coding. So here we go!

I'm dumping wordpress.com for this place. Apparently there's also a wordpress.org which is supposedly better but I really don't care. I've enjoyed using Neocities as a personal website (though I never blogged on it). And it just feels more my style. I don't know how to make it so people can comment on here, but nobody ever commented on my Wordpress and I doubt that would be much different here. Maybe it'll be better I don't make comments a thing on here. That way I can express myself here as freely as possible without worrying about people posting mean messages about it.

I already feel a bit better posting here instead of Wordpress. Like, Wordpress kinda feels a bit too professional for my tastes. I know authors are supposed to have professional websites and junk. But I write mostly for me. For fun. For free. I don't feel much of a need to actually get professionally published. It would be kinda neato to see my books on a bookstore's bookshelf. But bookstores are dying these days. We just lost a Barnes & Noble here a few months ago. Getting money would also be neato. But it also costs money to self-publish, and I'm not good enough to sell enough copies to break even, much less profit. And traditional publishing sounds kinda meh cuz then I might not have full control over my stories. Or feel pressure to make changes I don't want to make. And I might have to go back to acting professional!

Back to the point. Right now, I'm making each blog post its own page. But that feels like a hassle to make people click a link to each post. It's, like, I want it to be a continuous line of blog posts like on traditional blogging websites. But then it'll be too much scrolling unless I split it into pages. But then how will that work unless I manually move blog posts all over the place? I'm sure here's code out there that does the job for me. But I'm not advanced enough for such things. I had a hard enough time making this site look nice on desktop while being legible on mobile. I'm not good at coding! Like, when I was doing my personal Neocities website, I had to look up solutions to so many problems I came across. And I swear. No one knows how to explain this shit like I'm five. They'll be like, this line of code should work. Or, edit this to be this. And I'm just, like... does that go in the CSS style sheet or the actual page??? What section on the page do I put it???? I have to play guessing games and end up making everything worse! And then pull a miracle out of my ass that gets it working. God, people who actually know how to code would probably laugh if they saw what my code on there looked like! Shit's being kept simple here though. I'd like for mobile users to be able to read all this.

Anyways, I think I'm going to have a system where, I post each entry in its own html page. But I'm also going to copy and paste the post over to a sort of master page? Where I'll have all my posts show up on one page that people can scroll through without having to click on anything. But I'll sort it by year. So, one master page is going to have all the 2025 posts on it. And when 2026 rolls around, I'll make a new master page for all my 2026 blog posts. If that makes sense? I'll list the years for people to click on in the main blog page. Or something. If I even need to do that. I don't do a whole lot of blogging. Or, I didn't on Wordpress. That could change on here. Which is why I'm being so prepared. I'd hate to treat this like I'm only posting once a year, only to end up posting once a week! Or worse- day! (Strongly doubt it'll come to that though!)