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!