I Am A Total Liar (Here's Why) + NaNoWriMo!

 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 Valentine, etc. The more of this classic stuff I find the more Spotify wants to rec it to me. I like Blur and I've loved every Pixies song I've heard over the years, but both Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine are 'classic' or semi-classic bands I've never listened to. I missed those pivotal phases. So I'm going through it now, and loving it. I think Smashing Pumpkin's will be Ophelia's favorite band.

I'm also putting a little Joy Division in there. And the new Melanie Martinez album is iconic, of course. But I'm gonna continue prepping and drinking and getting ready to write! Once midnight comes I gotta get in at least the first few chapters. I know exactly what scenes I want to open the novel with but I don't know fully how to pull it off.

I hope people like this romance. The guy, Gage (his original name was Gunnar, but I think Gage fits him MUCH, MUCH BETTER) is so cute and tragic but so nice, he has a bit of a mysterious broody punk vibe, but he's mostly a good, normal man, not a crazy villain type. Maybe my next love interest will be villainous.

Anyway I ordered something the other day I cannot wait for. It's shipping in two packages and Canada Post says the main one with two books in it will be here April 5th. It's Switched, Torn, and Ascend by Amanda Hocking; the Trylle trilogy. I already have them, because Amanda Hocking is one of my favorite authors ever, and I've read them a billion times already. I have all three troll trilogies, I have two copies of Switched and a paperback arc of Crystal Kingdom. I got Tidal for free back when it came out for doing free publicity for it.

I've always loved Amanda's books, is my point. She's how I learned about self-publishing and I read her books and blog a thousand times throughout middle school and high school.

So it's exciting to me that I can finally own the original self-published paperbacks of the trylle trilogy, the ones with the turquoise/teal covers. I love them so much. It's one of my favorite covers. And I've seen them in pics and videos but never in person. Believe it when they get here I will take a bajillion pictures of them and post them everywhere.

After this the main thing I need to complete my Hocking collection is:

-The original Hollowland paperback edition with the red heart (I don't care about this one but it would be a nice thing to have one day.)

-The Hollows paperback editions with the old designs/Phatpuppy art designs. (I find these fugly but I still want them for nostalgia's sake.)

-The special edition omnibus of the Trylle that only had 100 copies made. (I really, really want this one enough to go feral and bite someone for it.)

I also still have to get Bestow The Darkness (an actual masterpiece) and Virtue/Tristitia in paperback, too. Then I'd have a complete collection and would feel like a total boss.

I'm so looking forward to seeing the difference between the self-pubbed and traditionally published versions of the Trylle trilogy, though. I know in these earlier editions Forening didn't have a name, so I'm curious what other little details were added later. I'm sure either way they're still good, though I'm also equally sure the trad-pubbed ones are probably better.

Anyway, I should get back to outlining my book. Because I haven't finished that, yet.

Also! Before I go, if you don't know, I often (not always, but often) use Katytastic's outline template/structure. It's three acts, each in nine parts, and it has never failed to create a very fun novel for me. You can use it for any genre and it never feels like a template because it's just basic story structure stuff. Like I said, I don't always use it, but I do like it a lot, I used it for Shadows of Ourselves, if I remember correctly, and I'm using it for this book too. I highly recommend it if pacing or plot isn't your strong suit.

Noodles, Red Bull, & Camp Nano Prep

 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 Wanda stans. The truth is people just want it executed in a certain way.

All I know is I'm 6k words in and this story is cray-cray. I have a title for the Camp Nano novel but I'm not sharing it, and I only have a working title for the fantasy novella right now. But I have to go keep writing that.

I'm drinking Red Bull and listening to Crumbs by Rebecca Black, and I will probably spend the entire night on this. I'm 100% okay with that, though. It has an evil talking sword and lizard people! Did I mention the lizard people?!

Yeah, I'm #TeamReptoid all the way. Abduct me, aliens!

At some point tonight when this Red Bull has fueled a couple thousand words and I have scrounged up some beef Mr. Noodles I will post another blog, because for some reason I'm back on my blogging kick. Literally nobody uses or reads Blogger anymore as far as I know, except maybe for porn, but then, humans will use anything for porn, so I guess that's not new.

And maybe, MAYBE, if things go well, I will be able to post a quote from one of these WIPS later.

In The Trees, The Air, Everywhere But Here

 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 could carry.

I would love to work on a space union crew exploring the galaxy, having adventures, sure (who wouldn't, right, it feels redundant to even say so) BUT I know I would have bad luck and would be stuck wearing a color I don't like. Like, the green jackets on the Orville look amazing. And that one general in a purple jacket? Stunning. But the red and blue look a little patchy and cheap to me. And I'd never wear the yellow ones, I'd mutiny if I had to.

I made a playlist the other day for Atrocity, the sequel to Divinity, and I'm excited to start working on that. I do have a couple other projects I'm going to finish first, including a round of edits on Divinity. I don't know when the new edition will be out, since I've only edited half of chapter one, but it's already so much cleaner and more professional than it was.

I don't think the book was bad before by any means, but it's amazing I figured it was publishable with so many clunky sentences and fragments and weird phrasings. I am having a lot of fun giving it more professional shine. My writing and tastes have levelled up since I published this book back in 2017, but then again the entire world has changed so drastically since then that kind of figures. A plague and a war and a bunch of other stuff happened. Is happening. That's the crazy thing; it feels like it's in the past but we're all still living it, it's just become the daily reality so we barely second-guess it. It's hard to fathom totally.

This morning I made a list of author things I have to do today. Most of them revolve around Digital Demon (which is still available on Wattpad here!) and formatting the ebook for it. I have to spruce up my personal template and watch a couple of tutorials on ebook formatting.

I see such a big difference in quality between my formatting and the stuff in other ebooks so obviously the goal is to bridge that gap. Figure out how to add illustrations/images for my chapter breaks so I can include exclusive art, figure out how to space and format the margins better so it doesn't look as compacted or jarring on-screen, that sort of thing. They're fine details I'm sure a lot of readers don't pay much attention to, but they add up quickly.

My dream is to afford Vellum, but that's very expensive software, at least when you're broke, which I am. It sure looks intuitive and fun, though. Intuitive software suits me best, anything that looks ugly or too complex for no reason is instantly off-putting, but if something is designed with a very nice intuitive layout and I can learn it by using it instead of watching a billion tutorials, then we're rolling. Vellum seems like one of those programs. Design and user experience need to be focused on as much as function when you're trying to create a tool for mass-use.

Anyway, that's what I'm focusing on today; making Digital Demon more available in more forms to more people. And I figure part of that is singing its praises, so I might have another post about it later, because I want more people to read it, because it took a long time and I think it's good.

I put off editing that story for so long but I like the way it turned out a lot, so maybe that's a sign I should stop listening to my writer's block so much and just trust my own voice, right?

I watched Kiki's Delivery Service for the 30th time today and I cried again, multiple times. It just gets me like that. It's a quiet movie but so relatable. Kiki losing the ability to understand Gigi leaves me sobbing every time.

When Kiki says to Osono "I'm still a witch in training, so if I can't do magic I've lost everything!" it hits so hard because I've totally been there, as have most people: when you rest your entire identity and personhood and purpose of existence on one thing, and then it's taken from you? That rocks you to your core and can truly be such a hollowing and shocking experience you really feel like all is lost, all hope has fled.

For me that was placing my entire identity and personhood on being an artist, an author, and then when I got writer's block and stopped writing for years it basically gave me a nervous breakdown. I had no clue who I was or what worth I had without writing and being successful at it, and I felt like I'd failed utterly on every level. So I had to relearn who I was and develop my sense of identity and worth in other ways. But writing again definitely still feels like flying again, especially when I get into the all-encompassing flow state where you're flying by the seat of your pants, or I guess by how fast you can type, and you know nothing can ever slow you down or touch you. That fire. That's magic.

I'm gonna go try to write something and cook up some magic, but then once I get my daily words in, it's time for formatting and watching tutorials and the likes.

Oh, and Digital Demon is good and you should read it. It only has like 26 reads as of this writing compared to Shadows of Ourselves which has 80 thousand, so obviously that's a pretty big discrepancy. Of course Shadows is a much longer and much better book than Digital Demon, but I still want Demon to have its moment! So please check that out here.

Or keep an eye on this space for free epub/pdf downloads to appear later!