Spider Bro
Tag: life
Whining
The air conditioner broke. ‘Tis the season of dead appliances, apparently…
And the weather forecast is promising a heat wave for the next few days. This matters because we have to order the part in for repair. Ha ha.
It might be better for me to spend the afternoons out on the patio, where I can turn on the misters to cool down. I have terrible heat tolerance.
Anyway, that’s enough whining for now.
…
Actually, no, it isn’t!
I don’t have any sort of aptitude for marketing. In fact, it’s such a foreign way of thinking for me, that it leaves me so drained and cranky that I end up completely nonfunctional for the rest of the day, then lose all ability to “follow through” afterwards.
I made some queries about how to effectively advertise over the past couple of days, and currently I have e-mails sitting in my inbox that I just don’t have the energy to open. I badly want to retreat to the kitchen to bake something sugary, and forget about the whole subject.
So I’m going to pull back for now. I learned one important lesson about Kindle keywords (use phrases instead of words) that will henceforth be applied to everything I publish, but I’m not going to sacrifice my soul for this. Heck, part of my long term “marketing” strategy was to publish a novel every year, and that ain’t gonna happen if I kill my creative energy.
Not to mention, no one enjoys a cranky mama.
I’ll probably make no-bake cookies to avoid turning on the oven while the air conditioner is broken. Seems prudent.
Anyway, I haven’t finished polishing up Alice and the Warden for official publication yet, and I particularly wanted to fix up the final few chapters where I was *obviously* fatigued when I wrote them.
And I’m working on The Scion Suit MULTIVERSE edition, lol.
I need to stick with what works for me emotionally, since I’m kind of a finicky hyper-sensitive sort that burns out easily. Patience is a virtue, and all that.
Thank you for sharing my work!
May 2021 in Review
I figure that if I’m going to be more haphazard in general, then doing a monthly wrap up is probably a good idea. So here we are, everything neatly organized just for you.
Fiction
Quotes
Souls Can Fragment
Lucky
Enormity
Alternatively
Writing Project Updates
White Space
In the Zone
Adding Romance to TSS
Random Thoughts About Writing
MSG Hartmann
Dishes
In the Wild…
Personal Life
Blogger Recognition Award
Animal Crossing 5/7
Animal Crossing 5/14
Gray vs Grey
New Pokemon Snap
The Internet ‘n Stuff
Baby Summer Dress
Life
The Program
What’s Going on Behind the Scenes?
Currently Reading
The Quarter Percent by Lily Nicole
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams
Also, having tons of fun playing Tamagotchi ON with my 9-year-old.
Thank you for sharing my work!
The Program
I’ve spent the last month or so probing around, and I’m starting to suspect that I’m going to have to let go of my little malfunction.
So that’s it, I guess. It’s probably time for me to get with the program.
Though honestly, with the way everything is going, charging $3 for a book might as well be giving it away for free.
And we did spend 2020 together.
Anyway, I’m not going to make any moves this week. Still processing ‘n stuff.
And the nice thing about books is that they don’t have expiration dates. I could spend the next five years sulking if I wanted.
The thing is, I will write in a vacuum. I will write for one other person. But there’s still a part of me that wants to know what my full potential is, and that’s not going to happen without making some changes. This isn’t 2010 anymore.
Vague griping, lawl.
I guess I can’t help but feel a little bitter about pulling myself together too late to achieve what I wanted. Ten years ago, sure. But not today.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Life
Went to a neighbor’s birthday party yesterday, and I’m still feeling drained. So. Many. People. The children loved it though, so it was worth it.
Also, according to the neighborhood news, some creep was driving around trying to talk kids into getting in his car, so fun stuff going on. I know some people called the police about it, but I didn’t catch what happened after that.
Millennial parents get a ton of crap about being “over protective” ‘n stuff, but I’d much rather sit outside supervising my children playing in the yard, then end up being that parent, you know? An ounce of prevention…
Today my husband and I took the kids out on a mile long bike ride, and afterwards we ate mint chocolate chip ice cream with sugar cones. Then I roasted coffee beans on the porch and yelled at the kids to stop putting mud in their splash pad. Good times.
I started crocheting a stuffed dragon. In terms of technique, I find it boring to only work one stitch over and over and over, but those toys are so stinking cute.
I’m nearly finished sewing some pants that I designed for myself. They have wide legs with an asymmetrical hemline that drape beautifully, and I’ll probably have them finished tomorrow. *So excited*
And that’s why I’ll never be normal, lol.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Dishes
Our house likes to eat dishwashers.
The last one died on Mother’s Day. After which, we discovered that the small business we had bought it from — for that personal touch and guaranteed warranty — had gone out of business because of … you guessed it! Queries proved that it was going to be difficult to find an authorized repairman.
So I bought a bottle of soap just for the new scent, and am now using the dishwasher as a horrendously overpriced drying rack. Because the only thing that works reliably is me.
Especially now that I haven’t had a single migraine since I started taking low dose aspirin. Ha. Ha.
The funny part is, I’m actually better at keeping up with the dishes when I’m handwashing them. I can easily slip into autopilot and scrub away while thinking about other things (usually my writing), and I don’t have to sort through what can go through the dishwasher and what can’t, or make sure that I’m loading everything in correctly, or blah blah blah. I just hate washing dishes. ‘Cause, you know, it’s the dishes.
So the other day I had a pan of cream cheese brownies baking in the oven, the baby was busy throwing cat food all across the kitchen floor, and I was scrubbing away at the sink with a particularly deep train of thought, when it hit me that since I’m writing a story with lots of different branches, I can easily invoke the multiverse and have the branches bleed into each other. Which one is canon? They all are!
Be still, my heart!
I know, I get excited over some pretty weird things.
BTW, the brownies were amazing.
Thank you for sharing my work!
The internet ‘n stuff
Lately I’ve been wondering how much blogging matters.
You see, I’m old enough to remember Neopets, Gaia Online, and LiveJournal, and the internet sure as heck ain’t what it used to be.
I’m pretty convinced that certain monoliths suppress literally everyone, then select which individuals they want to become popular, and there’s nothing organic about any of it for anyone.
‘N stuff.
But don’t worry, this isn’t my “farewell forever” post. If my calculations are correct, I’ve got about 11 real live actual people who come here to read, and I’m not going to up and abandon you just because of something as silly as stats.
Actually, I’m getting tired of trying to be structured.
And if I get the impulse to post a random pun at 10:43pm, I might as well do it without explaining anything.
I’m also tired of pretending like I’m not as cynical as I am. After a certain amount of bullying and ostracism throughout my childhood, I made the conscious choice that fictional friends were considerably better than real ones — 90% of everyone will go out of their way to hurt you purely because they can.
Hell, five years ago I tried to get out and be more social with the assumption that adulthood changes how people interact with each other, and it ended up mentally fucking me up pretty badly. Conclusion: adulthood has made the bullying even worse.
And let’s face it, modern fashion trends are purely an experiment in how far people are willing to debase and humiliate themselves for the sake of fitting in. Yes I said it. If you don’t look at yourself in the morning and immediately feel good about yourself, then you should trust me when I say that *you* aren’t the problem, it’s your fucking ugly clothes. Change your style. Just do it already.
Aaaaaanyway.
I’m gonna do what I want for awhile.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Gray vs Grey
An on-going playful debate between my husband and me is whether to spell it gray or grey. I like the ‘a’ and he prefers the ‘e’.
My reason is that ‘a’ looks more solid, decisive, and strong, while the ‘e’ is more timid and weak. Mind you, ‘e’ is actually my favorite vowel, I just don’t think it works in this particular case. My husband’s argument in favor of the ‘e’ is that he has no aesthetic sense in regards to letters or spelling (ha ha, just kidding. I love you).
In my mind, this is gray:
And this is grey:
I prefer the former.
And yes, I know, we’re pretty weird.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Navigating Fantasy and Sci-Fi: Finding Your Unique Niche
I actually have a hard time knowing how to classify my writing. Oh sure, there’s the big picture ‘fantasy/sci fi’ tag, but I get a little lost in the subgenres.
For example, my concept story “THEM” is my idea for a time traveling romance. Only, it features a nebulous alien invasion versus sorcerers, and the main love interest travels back in time to coach the main character (who was brought forward in time after her original was killed by the aliens) on how to seduce his contemporary counterpart, except she’s a reluctant introvert with social anxiety. All while she’s nannying a 4-year-old prince. Cue gothic overtones.
Maybe I’m just not well read enough, but I haven’t seen any hints of other books that are remotely like that.
Am I my own niche?
Which is one of the reasons why it’s so easy for me to put off that whole “marketing” thing (not to mention, I don’t want to mentally drain myself so I can’t spend time writing every day, ’cause it’s the writing part that I love the most).
I also have a malfunction.
But sometimes I feel lost in the noise. There are a lot of danged writers these days, and sometimes I think it’s harder to convince people to read something for free than it is to get them to buy it. Like, da hek ppl?
Am I going to find more readers by demanding money? Is that what you want out of me?
Anyway
My husband thinks I’m better at writing sci fi than fantasy. It is true that I was exposed to fantasy first, and there is a possibility that I might have stuck with it out of habit, despite the fact that I don’t actually like “sword and sorcery” type stuff all that much; hence why my Order of the Magi all use the internet and conduct their business with electronic tablets. I also prefer to explore human nature, instead of ‘world building’ or any of the typical fantasy tropes, but I also don’t like Star Trek type stories, or “technology is the magic” sorts of things either. I guess that I’ve got a nerdy enough bent to me that I like a solid foundation in reality. I’ve probably just illustrated that I’m actually a very picky reader.
So … the sequel to The Black Magus will very likely have a more sci fi atmosphere instead of fantasy. Heck, I established that magic is mostly just learning how to muck around with reality’s programming code anyway.
The hilarious part is, I have zero intuitive understanding of today’s trendy technology. Smart devices and I don’t get along. At all.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Time Management
I often think to myself that I ought to treat writing more like a part-time job than a hobby, and make some adjustments to our routine so I can write in the mornings when my mind is sharper. The benefit is that I’ll be able to work much faster than I currently do.
I’ve given myself the goal of publishing a new novel every year, which is a perfectly respectable pace all told, and in that regard I think that I’m doing just fine. But I’m also interested in exploring creative writing in different formats, and that’s going to take up more time. A lot more.
Which means that I need to manage my time more efficiently.
Which is a bit of a trick with a 10-month-old crawling all over me. >.<
So, in addition to writing novels, I’ve decided that I want to turn The Scion Suit into a text-based game.
i dunno why im such a nerd.
That means writing a multi-pronged script, and learning basic programming (which has my husband tickled). You’d think that I have enough going on, but writing the script for a video game is one of my bucket-list items, and there’s no time like the present.
We’re probably not going to be spending every weekend at the pool this summer anyway.
Besides, as long as I stick to the adage that “Progress is progress,” even just an hour a week will eventually add up. I’m pretty certain I do everything in 10-20 minute increments.
So I plan on starting off with a “choose your own adventure” format, but I want to get stats worked in as well.
I’m also looking forward to when the New Pokemon Snap comes out at the end of the month, so I’m probably going to have to quit watching movies and youtube. Frank James will just have to continue on without me. XD
By Autumn Rain 