What’s that?

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The last couple of days I have been busy working away on a few things. Today has been the most important. I got the edits back for Dragon’s Flame, put up the pre-order, and started working on the revisions. It is up for pre-order for 99 cents right now, and will be released on the 29th.

The edits are going well, and there are only some minor reworking to do, but over all I’m pretty happy about this novel. Then back to working on Dragon’s Blood.

I’ve also been finishing Costume Shop, my first children’s story. It will be a chapter book, with an R.L. Stine feel to it. And it will be out in time for Halloween.

I’ve also been updating a lot of my covers. A few months ago I did a complete over-hall of my Illicit Gains series, I thought it was about time to redo the text on my Small Bites short stories series. The text just looked so boring next to all the other ones. With the new text I think I’m happier with the covers.

Smashing the Cookies 

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There is only so much room in a cookie jar. Oh sure, you bought macadamia, chocolate chip, peanut butter, oreo, and about fifty other varieties… But there is only so many that you can actually fit inside that cookie jar. The rest will have to wait their turn. Or you end up smooshing all the cookies to crumbly messes as you shove more and more inside.

Just the same, there are only so many hours in the day, and so many things you can focus on at once. The more you cram in, the more you split your thoughts, the worse things become.

And different things will have different weight for each person. Work, children, money stress, people, etc…. We each deal with them differently so we have to weigh them for ourselves and figure out how many we can fit in our lives before we smash the cookies.

For me, people are draining. Don’t get me wrong, I love people, but the more people I talk to in a day the more I want to go home and shut off my brain for a while and not think. This is not good for my writing. I work in a call center, I talk to literally hundreds of people a day, helping with their tech issues, listening to their personal lives, and getting a small glimpse into each person’s world for half an hour at a time.

It’s draining.

So I have had to cut down on contract with people in every other aspect of my life. I don’t go out as much. I don’t listen to as many podcasts, or go to social media as much. I try to guard what energy I have left so that I can keep my creativity.

Balancing a life isn’t easy. But I’d rather not have smashed cookies.

5min – Smoke

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There are a lot of forest fires going on in the USA right now. And a lot of flooding in the other half of the country. Water or fire and smoke, either way, it’s a miserable way to live right now.

I feel guilty complaining about my problem with the smoke, after all there are hundreds of fire fighters out there trying to get it under control, and waiting for the rain just like we are. Only they are in the middle of it.

But I also have friends that are equally effected by the smoke. One friend who has a little boy with asthma, and a pregnant wife struggling to just breath. And I’m right there with them.

I saw a thing on twitter a few weeks ago when we had the first round of fires saying “Why are you complaining about the smoke, there are people out there risking their lives,” and I have to say it’s a bit of a false equivalency. Yes, they are out there risking their lives, and I’m grateful that they are trying. I don’t think they’re going to be able to stop the fires, but maybe they can slow them down. Maybe they can put out a few of them until the rain comes. If the rain ever comes.

But there are people who really are effected by the smoke too. Children, elderly, pregnant women, and people who have to work out in this stuff day in and day out. People who have legitimate reasons to share their hope that the fires will pass. Their frustration with the smoke. And their struggle to just live a normal life.

Just because someone lost a whole home doesn’t mean the person who just lost their garage isn’t also hurting….We each have our struggles.

And that’s my five.

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I did zero writing today. And I’m not going to make excuses. I actually set it up, got ready to maybe write, walked away to help Gregg with something,  then chose not to come back. 

Choices. We have a lot of them. Sometimes they are as simple as which jelly do you want,  grape or strawberry (the answer is Apple butter, of course) and sometimes they are life or death. Writing is somewhere in-between. 

What causes a person to sit down and write? What motivates them? I’d like to know. Sometimes I think I have it, then I’ll take a few days off and it’s gone. 

But right now I’m exhausted. It’s 5am and I’ve stayed up far too long. 

To be fair, I did get a few things done. I put more items up on redbubble, and ordered a dress. So that will be fun. 

Anyway, that’s my five. Good night. 

5min – Branching Out

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With novels and short stories I’ve been writing a lot, but it isn’t all I do. I’ve been an artist just as long as I’ve been an author. I have a deviant art from way back when, and I’ve sold things on etsy and other places before.

Lately I’ve been drawing a bit more because it’s easier to doddle during work while I’m on a call than it is to write. You really can’t write anything while you’re talking to someone. But doodling? Easy. And I have TONS of these pictures sitting on my hard drive, cluttering up my house in sketch books and other areas. So I finally decided to do something with them.

I started a RedBubble account, and started listing some things. I’m even going to start ordering some of them so I can test the quality and see what they look like in person. So far I have a half dozen pictures up with various ways to buy them. Stickers, posters, cups, and even a few dresses with nice patterns. I am definitely ordering myself a dress once I get the right pattern.

I’ve also been doing more with leather, and a few other projects in between books, so I’ll probably be reviving my etsy store soon.

Here’s the thing, diversifying income streams is important. Most authors that are making it work aren’t just making money from their books, they are also talking at conventions, selling merch for their books, or writing courses to sell on one of the teaching websites. I’m not very good at teaching, I’m much more comfortable just writing, and doing things rather than showing people how I do them. But I can draw. I can make little things. I can create in other mediums, not just words. So I think that’s where I’ll be diversifying.

And that’s my five.

5min – Just keep swimming

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It’s been a while since I started these five minute writing excersize, and I’ve learned that taking some time off is a bad plan.

A rolling stone gathers no moss…right? So if  you keep moving, keep progressing toward your goal, it’s less likely that you will stop and start growing moss, or in my case, procrastinating.

It’s so easy to procrastinate though. You have games to play, movies to watch, meals to eat. You can even procrastinate by cleaning the house. You need to clean the house, of course, but when  you’re looking for anything, even the little tiny things to clean just to get out of doing something then it’s more than cleaning. It’s procrastination.

The last couple of weeks since I finished “Dragon’s Flame” I started working hard on the procrastination. Games, mostly. A minecraft pack that I wanted to try, and West of Loathing (which is a WONDERFUL game and I highly recommend) were great distractions. Talking to my children, spending time with Bjorn when he took a moment from his own work. And so much more.

But I suppose it’s time to stop procrastinating, and start writing again. I am half way finished with the next book in the Half Blood Sorceress series, and it’s time to get to finishing it. I still haven’t gotten the edits back for the first book, but… that will come.

And there’s my five.

Rising from the darkness

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Today has been a day to recenter myself. I needed to.

And here is where I get a little personal today, and talk about some of the personal things that effect me.

I haven’t had issues with depression in years. Maybe a day here and there where I feel down, need to lay in bed and cry then get up and get back to the grind stone. Not like before. Not like the days when I use to sit in my bathtub praying to a god that wasn’t there that he would just let me die. That sort of desperation, that utter lost feeling that the world was closing in on me and I could not escape it, that I haven’t had in almost a decade. Thankfully.

But I do occasionally have those days where I wake up and it’s just so hard to get out of bed. So hard to turn a light on, or find my clothes. So hard to find that desire to just…move. It would be easy to never leave the house, just be a hermit and never speak to another person outside my home. But I know I’d eventually spiral down into that pit of despair, and drown again.

So when I do have those days now I force myself to get up. Force myself to tell Gregg that I’m having a problem. And like today, I take a mental health break and surround myself with people I love, who love me, and who support me in my dreams. I also missed my girls and spent some time just walking around the mall with them. By the time I got home I was exhausted, but so happy.

This wasn’t an option all those years ago in the bathtub. It wasn’t possible to draw my family to me and focus on their love. I am so, SO, grateful that it is possible to do so today. My daughters are grown, and they understand the darkness that lurks inside of me. My boyfriend has had to deal with it himself, and also understands. I have friends that also have had to deal with it on occasion, and friends who love me regardless.

So if you’re in a dark place, and life is starting to weigh a bit heavy on your shoulders…reach out to someone. Talk to them. Tell them what’s going on inside you. You might not know what to say, the words might be hard to come out, but please…try. It does get better. And depression is a lying bastard.

5min – slacking and change 

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Nothing about life is as true as this: everything changes. In a moment, in a month, or in a life time. It changes. 

I have been reminded of that a lot lately. From me jobs, car accidents, new cars, and more, I’ve had a lot of changes in my life. And just turn on the news to see the hurricane, or the latest protest, and realize that change is happening all around us. 

I think the harder thing to do is change myself. Even when I need to. Even when I want to. Realizing I need to excersize as I get older is easier than actually getting up and moving. Realizing I need to eat better is easier than putting down the candy bar. And knowing I need to write is so much easier than actually doing it. 

Change comes from doing, not just thinking. It’s a lot harder to do it, and that’s why there are so many people out there who say “I always wanted to write a book”  instead of “here’s my book.” 

And that’s my five. 

Review – The Defenders from Netflix

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I loved Jessica Jones, the first season of Dare Devil. I even liked The Iron Fist (even though I thought it wasn’t well choreographed, and didn’t hold up as much as the other three.) Luke Cage I found a bit boring, and I never got into the second season of Dare Devil.

So I thought I’d take a chance on The Defenders. I liked the four characters, so it had to be good, right?

Parts of it were. They had a decent plot going with the conflict escalating between the four super heroes and The Hand. They had Jessica doing her detective work, and Dare Devil trying to stop her from getting too deep. Because I hadn’t seen the second half of Dare Devil season two I kept wondering how Matt got to the point where he stopped fighting. Stopped trying to save his city. But I digress.

While the plot was interesting, and I loved Signorine Weaver as a villain, I thought some of our super hero’s were a bit on the angsty side. “I don’t want to risk my life, but I do, but I don’t” The back and forth wishy washy nature was annoying.

The choreography for fights left something to be desired. My favorite part of Dare Devil was the long hall scene where they are fighting, being thrown in and out of view of the camera. That was awesome. In the Defenders maybe more of it should have been off camera too.

The other character I absolutely couldn’t stand was Misty. She kept getting in the way, but kind of wanted to help them, but kept trying to brow beat them into telling her what they knew. Her character was so poorly written. I think they were trying to show she was stuck in between advancing at work, and helping the people who could actually do something, and it showed up as more indecisiveness.

I ended up liking parts of it, and hating other parts of it. I actually yelled at the screen at one point for a particular character to get the hell out of the way. But the overall plot was an interesting one, and the ending tied up everything nicely. It was the character development, and some of the angstyness of most of the cast that really did not help.

 

5min – Writing

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I’ve started cleaning up what I’ve already written for book two in my Half Blood Sorceress series. A lot of what I’m doing is just remembering what I’ve already written so that when I start getting to the chapters that aren’t finished yet I can keep everything on the right track.

That is the one problem with the way I write things. I tend to do things in a scattered way, switching from one project to another, skipping to the scene that is interesting me at that time so I can get it finished, then moving on to another. Linear is not part of my makeup. I use to drive my art teacher insane that way. I’d skip around on the paper, drawing parts of if here and there before actually finishing anything. She couldn’t figure out how I could draw like that and still get a coherent piece of art. But it worked for me, always, and I often had some of the most technically accurate work in the class, though maybe not the most creative.

My creativity was more in tune with writing. I could build worlds, expand them, add new creatures and dimensions to them. Explore ideas and themes that I couldn’t in real life. I had more mobility with writing then I did with painting. But still no ability to work in a linear fashion.

I suppose I’m better about it now. I do tend to write a plot line for the thing before rambling. It might not be a whole plot, but it is definitely something to keep me in check. I throw away a lot fewer words because of that.

And that’s my five.