Chaotic Array

*Title from Lose Your Head by London Grammar I haven't been blogging in forever. Nobody really reads this blog, but that should make it more fun for me, not less: frankly I'm here for me, doing this for me. It keeps me on-focus and keeps me feeling like I have some momentum behind me. It helps me orient myself and remember what my goals are. Honestly, I know it's all about vlogging on Youtube/Twitch these days, but I'm never going to stop writing/blogging. It may be retro, but whatever, retro  used to be cool. I used to love reading Amanda Hocking's blog back in the day. Writers write, so it makes more sense for us to blog than vlog.  I do love a lot of authortube, though, don't get me wrong. Liselle Sambury and Katie Wisemer and Kate Cavanaugh, Alexa Donne, stuff like that. They're great. I just also love blogging. Even though I don't read any other blogs any more. But somebody needs to become a blogger icon and bring it back. I miss the vibes, I'm ...

Loki season 2 is finally here! Well, the first episode. And it was spectacular. Best Moments: "I need a Loki Who Remains" from Mobius - this line will launch a thousand fanfics, mark my words   Did you kick each other through time doors simultaneously?   Mobius writing 'Skin?' was hilarious   and it coming back with plot relevance in the following scene was a great idea!   The wholesome dumbass working at McDonald's in the end. No thoughts head empty, would you like to try our new McNuggets?!   The split-timeline convo between OB/Mobius/Loki and the way it played out.   Hunter calling out the TVA for their atrocities and how they weren't as justified as they all thought. She's fully ready for the masquerade to come down. Gotta be hard to admit you did a bunch of fascist genocidal stuff for no reason, I understand why some of them are in full denial tbh.   OB literally writing the book on that.   Tom Hiddleston's being gloriously sexy in every fram...

  The other day I posted some pics of our new puppies Henry & Luna, but back in October we lost our old dog Bella. She had an impacted/infected womb and it was going to rupture, she was so old and weak we were all afraid surgery would kill her anyway, and made the choice to put her down because her womb rupturing was inevitable and would be a very painful death. Instead she went to sleep very peacefully with us holding her, petting her, telling her how much we loved her. We made sure Bella had a very good final day where we spoiled her with lots of love and treats. The truth is though that was every day, she was my best friend and we did everything together. I miss her every day, but I was looking through some of the pictures I took on her final day and seeing that even on that day she was happy and there was love and contentment in her eyes is everything to me. I figured I would share a few photos I took that day of us together and her final walk. I look like a mess because I ...

 My parents and cousin decided it was a perfectly sane idea to surprise me with puppies the other day, so now we have two new little angels in our family! Meet Luna and her brother Henry! Henry is playful and a little dumb, Luna is feisty and hyper. So far as names go I've been calling him Honeydog and her Lily-Luna. They're adorable and I would die for them. That said I cannot wait until they're a little bigger because they keep pissing on my floor. I also might not survive this NaNoWriMo. I've written like almost 40k this month but none of it was on my NaNo novel. Well, 1k was, but that's a pittance. Right now this superhero romance is serving me better anyway.

  How To Write Your Book in 8 Easy Steps (My Personal Method): 1) Download fifteen different new fonts. Try out every one of them. Don't forget to fool around with the color, too! 2) Design five different book covers. None of them looks like the one you're imagining in your head. 3) Drink five cups of coffee and watch Werewolf By Night on Disney+. You wish you had a werewolf boyfriend. You can't prove werewolves exist. Back to the drawing board. 4) Break the first two chapters in half and give them all new titles and ending hooks. Add a few extra lines of dialogue. Change the font color again. 5) Write a blurb for the story even though it's not fully finished. 6) Edit the last chapter you wrote and try to figure out who knows what and why they aren't saying it. 7) Actually manage to write 500 words. Wait, why is your coffee mug empty? The dog is crying, too, does the dog need to pee? Why do I agree to babysit people's dogs again? 8) Repeat all of the above in a ...

But I felt safe there painting orange teapots outlining women in Texta with the mysterious green eyes Some days I could even feel that my soul was still alive Such a crappy small town  FINALLY SOME GOOD FUCKING FOOD. Seriously though, I've read a lot of poetry today and a lot of it was really bad. This broke the mold and gave me a shot of something fresh; a unique, strong voice, a genuine personality and identity, a distinct artistic sensibility. This is an actual person and an actual artist with opinions and a personality who is not trying to be like everybody else or to be an airbrushed version of themselves, and that is so fucking refreshing these days. The poems in this collection, and Gemma White's voice in general, were so enjoyable and refreshing for the same reason Ethel Cain's music and lyrics are: she provides a reality, a look at something true, not a glamourized ideal. There is a genuineness and an honesty and a refusal to polish the truth or airbrush out every ...

Absolutely beautiful. During the first poem I was worried I wouldn't like this, that maybe the author was the type of poet who just writes poems to hear the sound of his own voice, but then by the end of the poem when it took what I felt was a sympathetic turn towards the spider I figured there might be something here, and boy am I glad I stuck with it. My favorite poems in the collection are: Leaves (for Shinayo Matsumoto) (which was a beautiful memorial poem), Zombie Fires, War Crimes (which disturbed me greatly), Ash (simple yet beautiful), Spine of Dorian Gray, and Oak. The photos and art accompanying the poems was special too but truly the voice and sensibility on display here and the lens through which Pollock chooses his subjects, what values, fears, and musings seem worth writing about to him, is the true specialty. There is something immensely relatable and nostalgic, maybe comforting, about his voice even when I think the subject matter is disturbing or ugly, there's ...

But for some reason it's not happening. The idea of writing just sounds so gross right now. I sit down to work and feel put-off and annoyed by it. I feel anxious and sort of depressed, which may be because I have anxiety and depression and am not on my medication right now, but may also not. I don't know. I just need to have more confidence in myself. I need to sit down and just write and put everything out of my head, but I'm struggling with it. -me, 2015 I was looking at my old old old blog from 2015 when I was back in high school and my pen name was still Oliver Urban. I cannot believe how much things change and how much they stay the same. I was struggling so much back then. I'm not taking Prozac anymore, but depression and the cycles of it will always play a role in your writing if you have it. But I'm so happy to be in a creative bright spot now, where I am writing every day and having fun with it, writing what I want, how I want, not to prove anything to anyb...

  I outlined a new story last night, but I did it entirely on paper, which is curious for me. I am such a digital writer. I need a laptop or a computer or something, or I cannot get a novel done. A journal entry or a short story is fine to write on paper, and I like taking copious amounts of notes in journals and notebooks and a sketchbook or two, but I never have the urge to like write a novel entirely by hand. Who am I, Zoe Marriott? No, I am not, and that's probably a good thing because I could never pull off being a British person anyways. The point is I was surprised how fun it was. I feel like this story is very pink/purple and so I used a bright pink pen and I outlined the entire first story out of a duology. I have vague ideas about what the sequel could be, but I'm not sure what the theme is so a lot of it is cloudy. I may be saying too much, but it's either an engagement or a birthday party. But the first story is more of a seduction/trap so I'm worrying about...

Here's a neat little peek at what I'm currently writing. It's paranormal romance/urban fantasy with a really cool cast of characters and a lot of fun elements and a beautiful cover and a protagonist named Minerva/Mindy who I really love. Mindy is a down-to-earth meta, sassy kind of girl, but not mean sassy, very good-natured sassy. It's fun. Quote: “I’m sorry,” I said simply, fumbling for words. It was all I could come up with. “So am I,” he whispered. He stepped closer, his gaze deepening. “I never meant to hurt you, Min. You know how much you mean to me.” Butterflies rose in my stomach, comforting old friends that reminded me of the excitement of falling for him the first time. Not much had changed, truth be told. I was as much his as I’d ever been. “You know I’ll always love you, no matter what happens,” I assured him, gravitating toward him. The inches between us were rapidly shrinking. “Right?” His eyelids shuttered as the folds of our clothes brushed, tantalizingl...

  I wrote a blog post the other day where I totally just lied. I THINK I said my NaNoWriMo project this year was probably gonna be a dark contemporary. Or at least I said I was working on one. And it was gonna be my NaNo novel. That book about wildfires/grief is still in the works, but I'm not working on it this month. I'm gonna write a good old paranormal romance for NaNoWriMo instead. It's called Lovely Omens and it's about witches and that's all I'm gonna say. It also has lots of cute animals. But that's it. I think some of the ideas and vibes and stuff I'm putting into this book are ideas I've had in some form since 2013, so it's been a decade of wanting to write a witchy romance just like this. I have written witchy romance before, Shadows of Ourselves, anyone? And I will do it again. But this one is unique as fuck, if I do say so myself. So. That's my NaNo vibe. The playlist is mostly Smashing Pumpkins, Blur, The Pixies, My Bloody Valen...

  I was supposed to reformat Digital Demon and do some research/studying last night (according to me, myself, and I) but I cancelled my own plans and spent the night writing instead. I semi-outlined my Camp NaNoWriMo project, which looks like it's going to be a dark contemporary about grief, trauma, and forest fires/wildfires. And then there's also the short story/novella project I wrote half of last night that I cannot even begin to describe. Or I guess I can describe it by saying it's Zelda: Twilight Princess vibes with a dash of Jim Henson type goodness thrown in? And maybe a sort of multiverse twist, which isn't so much of a twist because multiverses and many-worlds stuff is popular in the mainstream right now. Or maybe not, depending on how Marvel's multiverse movies are getting responded to. But that's not people hating the multiverse; it seems like the multiverse stuff in Dr. Strange was most of what people liked about it, aside from Wanda stans being Wan...

  I'm still committed to bringing this blog back to life. Today at some point I want to edit and reformat some of my book pages with updated information and stuff, but for right now I figured a new post would be much better than nothing. Being an author is weird; I really don't like doing admin stuff but if I don't I feel weirdly restless and frustrated, so, there's gotta be a balance to be struck there. I've been watching The Orville and while I can understand why season one got some harsh reviews (some of the jokes go on too long or feel too pointless, some of the worldbuilding details are too unspecified and unexplored) but for the most part I love it. The episodes with Liam Neeson (just a cameo) and Charlize Theron (carried her entire episode) were fantastic. Pria was an amazing character, it looks from TV Tropes like the fans wanted her to return but she never did, I figured throughout the entire episode it felt almost like a backdoor pilot for a spinoff she co...

  I somehow didn't post for an entire year. It was probably for a million reasons. I had big plans, but most of them fell through. I didn't have anything to talk about, or so much I wanted to talk about I got anxious and psyched myself out of it. I had a billion dumb thoughts that I posted to Instagram stories instead of blogging about. People and animals died. Life lost its meaning for a while, and I lost the threads. Lately I've been reminiscing about how much I used to blog. I really loved it. It didn't matter how many or how few people read it; a blog post could get two views and I was still getting joy out of it. I still love reading old blog posts from years ago. I am writing. In little bursts here and there. And I did publish a novella a while back, called Digital Demon. Which you can read on Wattpad, right here! The basic premise is that a demon comes out of a guy's computer and tries to eat him. It took me two years to get around to editing that story; I wr...