How To Train Your Laptop. Oh, and other stuff.

I really, really need new candles, but the only kind I want are Bath and Body Works 3-wicks and I worked at the local one, so. I don't wanna go back to shop, because, awkward. Also I'm technically supposed to be saving for a new laptop.

Working at a desk is my normal method, but I hate desktop computers. Like, with a passion.

This one is secondhand, really slow, and Scrivener keeps crashing on me. It takes like 2 or 3 tries to restart it, too, which is not optimal. Another thing is, I do all my own cover design, and I have a lot of variations of large files for those, so it cramps up space, but I need them all.

I really want to get into music production, even if I'm just learning basics, and I need a new computer to do that work on. I know this one can't handle it. I think if I tried, I'd fry it.

I want another touchscreen laptop, because I fucking adored that thing, but I need to save a lot if I want one. Plus I'm also trying to find a new living situation within the next few months, so it's going to be tight...

I like to think I'm fairly tech savvy. I mean, I was basically raised by a computer and I learned to use them by breaking a long string of them, learning to fix a few of them on my own. I think I spent more time reading troubleshoot tutorials and computer forums in middle school than I did my actual assignments. I missed like 50 days of school each in the 7th and 8th grades, and most of that time, when I wasn't reading gay Harry Potter fanfiction in a blanket nest on the floor, I was fucking around with my computer and testing it's capabilities and exploring new programs. In a blanket nest on the floor.

And yet, I go through devices like a falling skydiver hitting tree branches on his sorry way down. I'm telling you, I have lost count of how many desktops, laptops, and notebooks I've gone through in the past decade. It's SCARY.

At the same time, it keeps me on my toes having to readjust to new shit all the time.

I've been getting back into traditional art lately. I got my start in art doodling anime and shit in the sides of my notebooks in grade school, because I'm a Mary Sue like that, and I was really into the DeviantArt scene in, like, 2011, and I got fairly decent for my age, but then a bunch of my tablets broke and I stopped doing digital art for like three years. I reverted to scribbling on loose leaf and stopped producing finished pieces, and now that I'm trying to get into it again...

I hate my tablet.

The new one is this little square thing with like, barely any surface space and the pen settings are absurd. There's this shitty double-click feature that makes it impossible to draw in web-based art programs, and Paint Tool Sai is really annoying.

I've been using it to do photo-manipulation and make book covers, which is not what it's for, but I've set it up for that and it's what I know how to do best with it now, so it's not like, tailored toward digital painting for me anymore. And I don't want to fuck up my current settings because I love them so I'm not changing them, but I also can't find another program I like. I despise Photoshop, I just do - it feels very rigid and I don't like the interface whatsoever, but other shit mostly sucks too. I liked Open Canvas for a while but it was only good for like, messy kind of junk art, which was cute enough but not what I was going for...

So what I'm saying is, if you have any good art programs, send them my way and I'll check them out.

Anyway, what it boils down to is that when I get a new computer I'm gonna go nuts downloading music software and synth programs and shit and make a noisy little Soundcloud-bound mess of an ep. I think it will be mostly instrumental, because I don't love my singing voice. I am not the worst singer in the world or anything, but still. I wanna make the musical version of fortune cookies, if that makes sense. Like it's small and simple but you crack it open and there's strange wonder inside. I also like circus sounds. But less Melanie Martinez (although I love her) and more Amanda Jenssen... But at the same time, more robotic? That's not the right word, just more techno trash. Glitchy, that's the word.

~glitchy~

Aside from that I just really wanna get Divinity out. It turned into this strange poetic abstract thing, and it's darker and kind of more mature than I'd intended. I set out to write a fun Kiera Cass-type book, that you could read in one sitting and be like "That was cute, that was fun," and just be light, fun escapism.

Instead I think I wrote one of those, "What the fuck did I just read?" fantasy stories. I still think it will be fast and fun to read, since it's just a bit shorter than Blood of Midnight, so far, but it's not what I expected it to be.

I think my biggest complaint with so much urban fantasy and paranormal romance these days is that we get this fascinating mythology and world, and it never goes anywhere. Like, it's 300 pages of high school and family life and two straight white teens falling in ~true love~ with a couple scenes with magic or the paranormal sprinkled throughout, and it makes me go, "Is that all?"

Even rereading Blood of Midnight, I see that in it, and I'm like, why did I hold back on this world? And so now in the sequel I get to go back and show it through a more mature, worldly version of Dru's perspective, because it's two years later. So I'm peeling back and showing more of that world and making it less contemporary, less focused on the relationships and more on the world changing around them.

I don't want contemporary with fantasy trappings - I want actual urban fantasy. Whenever I try to write like a simple, straightforward book like that, those magic scenes expand and twist and end up taking the whole of the story.

And I like that, so I've embraced it, and I try to cram as much magic and power and action and strange beauty as I can into the books.

In Shadows of Ourselves, the draft was like 73,000 words, and the finished book that's out now is like, 126,000 something, because in editing so much of what I did was bring the world forth and make it clearer and sharper. I added in new scenes and new locations and went through the ones already there to make them stand out more and add a bit more magik in there. I think when you have that big intense world full of like, hot immortal beings and ancient devices and a big cast of paranormal stuff, you should use that, you know? That's what your reader wants!

I love Leigh Bardugo and Marie Lu and Laini Taylor and Lev Grossman because of that, you know - they recognize that their readers and enticed by these magical worlds, so they let them become characters, they explore them in-depth and turn over every part of them. They don't say "Oh, well we'll have two or three mediocre scenes about the magic so that doesn't take away from the stale development of this romance!"

I love romance. It's where I got my start reading more mature, darker books. But if you hold back on actual plot and world development to force a predictable romantic plot on us, it's going to backfire. It's going to hurt the book and the romantic subplots.

I think very few writers can keep the focus on the romance and have their work not suffer for it. You have to be really good at romance to do that, and that's people like Rainbow Rowell who make masterpieces with the simplest building blocks. (Carry On might be my favorite novel in the world. That still has a lot of magic though, so it might not count. Fangirl is also fantastic.)

Like, when you're reading a Lev Grossman book, you know that's going to be like 300+ pages just crammed to bursting with magic and spell craft and history and the settings come to life. It's amazing.

So of course as I've been writing Divinity, the world has kind of grown up like a hedge form this really basic premise into this strange, creepy, kind of fantastical world, 'cause those are where my heart is, and it gets bigger and weirder the more it goes on. It starts as this kind of predictable, conventional kidnap-romance, like, "Oh no, I'm stuck in this hot billionaires lavish penthouse, but not all is as it seems!" and I try to just really quickly throw a wrench in the way it seems things are going and twist them in a different direction. I'm kind of surprised how my outline has changed since it's first draft, too. Some stuff has surprised me.

Here's a really quick teaser, complete with redacted spoiler and all:

(I think you can click to enlarge it, if it's hard to read!)

And now I'm going to get back to it, and hopefully finish this book tonight or tomorrow!

Instrumental Obligations and Lacking Magic

This past Christmas, I received a guitar. To be clear, I mentioned wanting a guitar once, about seven or eight months before the holiday, as a throwaway thing that I never - never - expected to get. But I did. And I have to learn it.

Why? Because it was expensive and my parents were happy they were able to get me something I asked for, and I feel guilty ever day that passes without me learning it.

Back in tenth grade I started to learn as part of a music course I hadn't even passed the pre-req course to get into, and was only in because they had no other place for me that block, but in the end I lost what little I picked up and spent most of the time in the course fooling around. I was never a good student, but it was still one of my favourite classes. I used to have dreams of being able to plop down on the sidewalk uptown and play and be able to earn some quick cash, or being able to romance some musician guy through my sheer instrumental bad-assery.

Now I will settle for learning the chords to a couple of pop songs to placate my parents and make myself feel like this gift was not a total loss on me.

This isn't even the first time I've failed to learn an instrument - the one I'm honestly in love with, and always has been, is the piano - but I failed to learn to play keyboard in ninth grade, as well.

Okay, I didn't entirely fail - I learned a bit of Seven Devils, by Florence and the Machine, but it quickly fell apart and now I have no idea what I'm looking at when I sit down at a keyboard.

The thing is, I'm not sure I have the passion in me to develop another love like that. My love for things I used to enjoy - reading books, walking, partying, socializing, art (both digital and traditional) has all been slowly but steadily fading away over the past year, and it's been a struggle to get back into it.

I had a really bright (challenging, but bright) spot for a while, back when I was working and earning money and I felt productive, but my seasonal was coming to an end and they decided not to keep me on after it did, and after I stopped working I went into a downward spiral.

I'm hoping once I'm in school every day it will get better, and being out and getting things done everyday will be beneficial, but at the same time, I'm skeptical. I'm always skeptical when someone says something might offer some form of happiness of fulfillment these days. Because I know how it feels, have been through it time and time again, to start to feel yourself resemble a fully formed human being again only to have that happiness and stability and sense of identity start to slip away from you again.

But, at the same time, if I don't try, there's just the guilt. So I've been doing it, very, very slowly, with other things. I went for a walk a few evenings ago, even though it was snowing, because I knew I needed to get out or I would lose my mind. I've been working my way through a few books, trying to gain momentum in my reading life again. I recently finished The King's Games and Language Lessons, by Amanda Hocking and Jay Bell, respectively, and I actually fell in love with the Magicians, by Lev Grossman, although it may have made my depressive state a bit worse, if I'm being honest. It's a bleak book.

Soon I need to get back into language practice and try picking up this guitar for the first time.

I don't know, I suppose it feels like my life has stalled and nothing is happening, every day is the same, and I'm very isolated. A lot of old friendships simply dwindled into nothing once I left school, and it just feels like the magic has drained out of everything.

But at the same time, I know that it is up to me to seek out happiness. Nothing might change if I go for it, but if I don't there's not even that tiny chance.

So I'm trying to perk up. And in the meantime I'm trying to pick up on my workload and get more things out there. I've been looking at different marketing tactics and options to get my books out there, and, I don't know, it all seems really difficult and . . . well, ineffective.

Like, I had a LibraryThing Giveaway where I sent out twenty copies of Frenzy in exchange for reviews, and got zero reviews. I made the book free on Kindle for several days, and scours of people downloaded it, but it only got one new rating. It was a five-star rating, which was very nice, but it was still one rating, and no reviews. With Souls of Salt & Seawater, I figured things would be different - why? The book was born of reader demand. I had 200 followers on Tumblr, when I wrote a single one-off scene in response to a prompt on my dash, and almost overnight my blog grew to over 900 followers and I had dozens of people demanding I write a full story, or put a book out. And I love mermaids, so I did. And I sent out free copies, and ran a free promotion on Kindle, and again, easily over a hundred downloads, and zero ratings, zero reviews.

To be absolutely honest, I don't even need my books to sell well. I would be perfectly happy finding another source of income. But I do want my books to be read. I could care less about the money, as long as they foster discussion. As long as there's feedback.

All writers crave feedback. But there isn't any, and it's hard to gain any, because not only am I an indie author, I'm an unknown indie author. Not many people have taken a chance on my work, since they have no idea who I am, and nobody is going to take a chance on it until someone else does, so me and my work are both trapped in this eternal waiting phase.

To be honest, I'm trapped in waiting phases in most aspects/areas of my life, so I'm used to it, and I don't really expect anything else at this point, but it would be nice if things could start happening. 'Cause at this point, even if they were bad things, they would still be better than this insufferable monotony that's taken over my existence.

So, that's where I've been at, lately, and that's partially why I haven't been posting here - because there's really nothing to post about. And not a lot of people read this blog.

As soon as that changes, I will probably be posting a lot more than I do now, which is already quite a bit, considering that most of my posts get few to no views.