Confusion & Pizza

I thought today was Thursday, but it's still just Wednesday, which makes me sad. I thought Riverdale would be out, but now I have to wait another 24 hours, since in Canada it comes out on Netflix the day after it airs in America. In lieu of another episode of Riverdale I'll probably spend my morning writing. I finished a short last night, which ended up 2000 words longer than I thought it would be, so now I'm debating whether to draft another erotic short, draft the rest of Glimpse, or finish up my story I Kill Your Gods.

I'm supposed to have the house to myself today at least for a few hours, which sounds nice. People stress me out even when they're not doing anything, even when they're sleeping in another room making no sound, their presence unnerves me. Sometimes it's nice to have folks around, but mostly I find it very irritating, especially since the folks in question are my parents, and although I know they love me, I also know they judge me a lot and I don't live up to their expectations, so that's stressful. I mentioned to my mom yesterday that I wanted pizza (just an offhand comment about a craving) and when I woke up at ten last night, she'd ordered a giant pepperoni for me and a veggie pizza for her, so that was sweet of her. My dad, weirdly, does not like pizza.

My mom and I are usually more on the same page, and I look like her, but I have my dad's irritant personality and quick temper. He and I fight like cats and dogs, which is insanely stressful, but it's better than when I never stood up to him and just let him snap at or yell at me instead. At least I feel better about myself if I yell back, because then I have a backbone, right?

To be fair my dad works hard and is constantly tired, and he smokes too much and doesn't eat enough, so he probably feels like warmed over crap most of the time. But he quit for years and the new started again, so he only has himself to blame.

With that anti smoking PSA aside, I am going to listen to Grimes and get ready to write. Hopefully I have a cover reveal to share tomorrow! I do have finished works I can publish but I'm waiting until my backlist is longer; right now it's six titles total.

I Want Whiskey When I'm Sick

(Title from the song Thin Line by Honey Honey)

I'm pretty sure in my last blog post I said I'd post the next day, and now it's three days later, but that's fine because I was busy working. Plus I don't think many people read this blog anymore. I used to get 30 or so views per post, average, and now I get like 4 or 5 per post. I haven't published anything new in forever and I don't advertise this blog as much as I used to, so it's fair. I'm sure traffic will pick up as I get back into publishing and start blogging more.

Today I finished another short story and polished up the first chapter of this novella 'Glimpse' which I normally don't do, but it needed a few paragraphs added to really set up the story efficiently. It felt wrong to leave it any longer. Tonight I'm going to write at least three more chapters. I'm hoping I can finish it but I don't want to bite off more then I can chew and intimidate myself.

To be honest I've been very exhausted and on-edge the last few days. I'm a generally stressful and paranoid person and I have no real emotional support network because I find it hard to open up to people or trust them, so I tend to just bottle things up until I inevitably have huge emotional and mental breakdowns. It's probably due to my highly chaotic and abusive early life, but in the past few years I've lost several family members, five pets, witnessed other family members devolve into intense drug addictions that caused huge fights and rifts in the family, lost friendships, had several breakdowns, and relapsed several times with self-harming. For a long time I beat myself up for all my bad choices and failures, but recently as I start to come out of it, get back to myself, and engage in slightly healthier behaviours, I've come to realize three vital things:

1. I've suffered a lot more than I allowed myself to acknowledge and it really took a huge toll on me that I was in straight up denial about. Things hit you one after the other and you put blinders on to deal with them, existing on auto-pilot for months at a time, so you can only see it all as a whole months or years out from the fact. In retrospect everything happened so fast it's insane. 2016-2018 have been the single most traumatizing years of my life so far.

2. I can never be the person I was before all this happened. I've spent a long time trying to be the person I was at eleven, or fourteen, or sixteen, and I have to accept those versions of me are gone and I've gone through permanently life-altering and personality-altering trauma. I have to forge a new identity even if the loss of my old self makes me sad.

3. It's not enough to acknowledge what you've been through. You have to forgive yourself and hold yourself accountable at the same time. The only thing I can control is me, right now. I can't take back my past actions or habits, I can't go back and relive my life or get any do-overs. I have to be better in the present and do things differently, having learned from my mistakes.

So that's where I'm at now. I'm slowly getting back on track with writing and publishing. I'm trying to go outside more even if it's just to walk the dogs for five minutes. I'm cutting sugar out of my coffee nine times out of ten. And I'm being more forgiving of myself and getting better at telling the evil, snide voice in my head to shut up.

I should probably be in intense therapy and on medication, but both of those things cost money, even here in Canada, and I can't afford them right now. Even if I could, I'm not sure I'm ready for therapy and may never be, but I'm making healthier choices and trying to be more mindful, and most of the time I'm able to get through the day by focusing on little things. Writing a certain number of words. Rewatching BoJack Horseman. Doing small chores around the house and escaping into video games. Basically trying to do things that make me feel present in the moment while also distracting me from the things I constantly stress about.

Here's a brief list:

• life and death
• the human soul
• relatives I've lost
• friends I no longer speak to
• things I said but wish I could take back
• things I didn't say but wish I did
• relatives I wish I had a better relationship with
• how much I generally hate myself
• how I'll spend my entire life either manic or depressive
• my talent or lack of it
• what if I end up homeless?
• what if the world ends?
• how will I stop from killing myself?
• why don't I talk to X anymore?
• my lack of a high school diploma
• how certain relationships will always be strained because of past abuse
• how I'll never let anyone in again because of said past abuse
• whether or not I'm redeemable
• whether or not any of us are redeemable
• is there an afterlife?
• did my now dead pets know I loved them?
• could I have saved certain people if I knew what I know now?

And the list goes on and on. I imagine scenarios that won't happen and get crazy over them. And even if they do happen in some approximation, worrying about them now only means I have to worry and be stressed twice. So I'm shutting down worries and anxiety and tying to worry about situations as they come. Going with the flow, I guess they say.

The truth is I think I reached such a high amount of anxiety, the part of my brain that handles stress and anxiety just broke or something, and now it barely registers. I overloaded the machine, lol.

Or maybe I'm used to living with such high amounts of stress it's just my new normal.

I wish they would recast me sometimes, like when Marnie from Halloweentown turned into Sarah Paxton/Aquamarine, and Reggie from Riverdale turned into an actor with a less punchable face. If I got to just go away, and someone else had to step into the role of Kai for a day. That would be nice.

Actually, on the subject of Reggie from Riverdale, the actor who played him in season one--who is also in 13 Reasons Why, where I like him better--is caught up in a murder investigation with Kurt Cobain's daughter, over a guitar her ex-husband took in their divorce. It's kind of crazy they do keep asking for the guitar back, though. Her ex sounds like a dick, but if she gave it to him, she gave it to him, and she can't really act like she gets it back now just because she regrets it. Maybe don't give away the last object you have of your dead father's to a man, no matter how much you like him?

Maybe that's just me; I have no problem giving stuff away, including expensive stuff, but I won't if it has sentimental value. I have certain blankets, old stuffed animals, and little ornaments and random statuettes from my dead grandma that I know I'll never give away. It's just too important.

I wish I started keeping a diary when I was younger, but I didn't think my memories would be so precious years down the road.

Anyway, enough of the heavy. I had to get that all off my chest. But tonight is really a good night; I did some good work and now I'm going to make a few little pizzas and do research on Ancient Rome for a fantasy short I might write. I'm excited about the work I have coming up. I stepped on a staple today and squirted blood everywhere and now my foot hurts, so that's not fun, but my dad pulled it out and it's not bloody anymore. Writing will distract me from the pain, I'm hoping.

I've always been very clumsy, especially as a kid, but now it's pretty bad again. If I worked out more my core balance would probably be better, but as it is I run into shit and stumble over nothing and impale myself on splinters. Yikes.

If I hear a weird noise I go explore it, too, so I bet I'd die in a horror movie. The new season of American Horror Story looks like it will be a slasher set in the eighties. The next season the witches come back, apparently, again. So then the show might end. Which is sad. But even if they renew it I think Ryan Murphy is too busy for it, he has a lot on the go, along with his new Netflix deal, so I think he could pass the torch to someone new. I think if he leaves, Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, and Even Peters might leave, but I hope fans would stay loyal while the show reinvents itself into something new.

I guess I'll leave you with my current ranking of AHS Seasons from best to worst:

1. Cult
2. Roanoke
3. Coven
4. Hotel
5. Murder House
6. Apocalypse
7. Asylum
8. Freak Show

And if you've never seen the show, but don't like anthologies and want a normal chronological show to watch, go in this order:

1. Murder House
2. Coven
3. Hotel
4. Roanoke
5. Cult
6. Apocalypse

Some people might debate me on this, but here's my reasoning: Murder House is the first season and a good introduction to show as a whole, it introduces The Harmons and murder house, which are important figures, and prepares you for the craziness of the show, and the mythology of ghosts. Coven is next in the timeline, chronologically, and it expands on the mythology of ghosts to introduce witches, zombies, immortals, and also some minor deities and the existence of hell, which is important to the overall story. Hotel then explores ghosts in more depth, introduces the Cortez, and of course features a returning Coven character in an important plot point for the show overall.

Roanoke and Cult may be controversial here for their placement potentially, since they break up the ghosts/coven ARC, but I think they're important asides to explore the 'human nature in times of chaos' and 'the danger of political turmoil' themes that are present in Apocalypse. You could easily watch them in the same order before Murder House, though. Finally Apocalypse reunites characters from Coven and Murder House, and wraps up many of the fan favourite character's storylines in a better way than Coven did. It's interesting to see the casts of two seasons collide, especially when the fate of the world is at hand.

AHS is insanely good but I don't think it's a hugely accessible show for a lot of audiences, so if you haven't seen it, I hope you watch it. I never finished Asylum or Freak Show because I didn't care for them, but I'll watch them all the way through one day, when I get them all on DVD.

I covet AHS, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, American Dad and Family Guy on DVD. Once I have every season of those shows in my collection, everything will be complete. At this point in my life I thought I would have enough money to buy some DVDs, but you win some, you lose some. I do have season one of True Blood, but some of those episodes skip in places, so.

Anyway, that's enough ranting about depression and TV shows today. I'm going to go cook pizza and figure out what to do with my life.

I Don't Know Anymore

I don't know anything anymore, so I'm going to stop trying to figure things out and just float. I'm a mentally ill basket case so overthinking things is kind of my one and only skill, but I'll just have to work around that.

Y'all probably have no idea what I'm taking about, which is cool, because neither do I half the time. But lately I've been really stressed out. I've relapsed with self-harm, I've been basically having an emotional breakdown a day. I don't think I'm alone in that regard because everybody has been stressing the fuck out for...a long time, honestly.

Still, I'm at a point in my life where I never thought I'd be. I don't really recognize myself, know who I am or who I want to be, or where I'm going.

So, I guess...I'm in my early twenties?

I don't know. I didn't anticipate being this person. I can't say I hate myself, I understand certain reasons why I am the way I am, why it's so hard for me to connect with people or let anybody in, why I'm such an easier target for addiction and destructive behaviors, but understanding doesn't necessarily absolve me or make me feel any better, you know?

At the end of the day, all of the questions we ask ourselves - Am I a good person? Do I have a soul? Is there a God? Am I wasting my life? - are all in our heads, and they'll stay that way, like they always have, until we die. So it doesn't really matter.

But then again, knowing it doesn't matter also doesn't make me feel better. Or make me any less guilty for existing.

I read in this Grimes interview recently where she said something like, she's sorry she can't do anything more useful to society than sing or produce, and I can relate to that. I've never really felt useful/necessary. I never didn't feel useful or necessary growing up, but I hadn't fallen into a void of depression, apathy, and emotional trauma at that point, either, so I don't know.

This post isn't meant to sound as angsty and whiny as it does, but I find it really fucking crazy that there are people who wake up and go through their day and don't have to contend with the constant urge to end their own lives and/or do fucked up shit, that people get through a day without having an intrusive thought or purposely chasing down their own darkest memories even though they know it isn't a good idea.

I don't know what it is to not be in the middle of a crisis, because everything is a crisis for me. The fact that I exist, in this universe, in a physical human form, is a crisis. I am not equipped to deal with this shit.

I'm also not equipped to kill myself.

I mean, yeah, I want to on a daily basis (awkward lmao) but I'm not about to rush out and do it. I don't know what stops me, if it's just fear of physical pain or a natural survival drive, but something does. I'm not going to act like I don't self-harm, because I feel like hiding it does more harm than good and, honestly, I'd rather be open about the fact that if you want to even try and recover, you're going to fucking relapse a few times. I relapse. At least I'm trying to do better for myself. Which is all any of us are in a position to do, honestly.

All I'm saying is that a lot of people tell me I seem like I have things figured out, from an outside perspective. But I don't.

I'm stoned every day, I have literally one friend, who I rarely see, and 99% of my time is spent in one room, in the dark, writing or beating myself up for not writing.

I'm 21, I still live at home, I'm borderline and ocd as fuck, I'm not happy with my career, and I have zero close personal relationships.

But I'm still here. I'm counting that as a win even though I don't particularly like myself or my life, because I'm alive and I'm fighting and I'm pretty sure I'm going to look my demons in the eye and kick their asses, any day now.

I don't believe in happily ever after. I don't believe I'm going to wake up one day a month or a year or five years from now and magically be happy. But I do know that if I do wake up a year or five years from now, it's going to be the same way I do now - fighting. I know that I've been through some of my darkest moments and woken up the next morning even though ever fiber of my being was screaming that I wouldn't, or that I couldn't.

I want to be a better person, I'm fighting to be a better person, and I'm serving paranormal romance escapism realness along the way. That's all I know how to do, so I'll make it work.

The truth is I'm not writing this post for anybody else. I'm writing it for myself, to let myself know it's okay to keep moving.

Blur

I haven't posted in a while because I've been trying to work on stuff (and mostly failing) when I'm not in bed bingeing Sense8. I'm super lazy.

They say depression makes you sleepy, that it gives you physical fatigue, and I understand that, but I also still kind of blame myself for it. I hate not getting things done or being able to focus on anything. I hate feeling like an invalid.

I've mostly been spending my time designing and formatting book covers because it's the easiest, funnest part of my job. At the same time, I want something to put out.

The other day I wrote the first bit of Beacon book two, finally. I think the Beacon trilogy probably will be my next release, if I don't hop over and finish something else first, which could always happen. I'm trying to finish book two by Saturday the thirteenth, which is scary considering how close it is, but I haven't been setting deadlines for myself recently and I'm determined to get back on track.

Tonight before I start work on that I'm going to free-write a bit to try and get myself back into the writing groove.

 

(This is the deadline face...)

I have no idea what the hell I'm going to write about. People think the hardest part of being a writer is the long hours or the pressure to write something great. For me, it's picking out which paranormal creature to make the hot dudes in my books.

I love stuff like the Trylle Trilogy or the Paper Gods Trilogy, books where the paranormal aspect is something newer and original. I like stuff you don't see often.

The market is flooded with werewolf books and I'm sure there's always a market for them, but as much as I love them I'm not sold on them. I don't know if vampires still have a market. My vampire book doesn't sell well, but I don't market it much and it is kind of a niche title. I still can't tell if it's urban fantasy or paranormal romance, really, and I wrote it. (I still love Blood of Midnight, I think it's a good book, it's just not an easy one to sell >.>)

Need by Carrie Jones has pixies, which is cool as fuck. I've written about those before, in a vastly different way, so I don't want to do that. I can't write about faeries because I'm not in the mood. Gargoyles? Not right for this project. Genies? I'm too white and Canadian to pull that off respectfully without a bunch of research first, which I really don't want to do with a 'just-for-fun' project.

See how hard this is?

What kind of paranormal beings can my hot gay heroes fall for? It's an eternal plight.

I'd love to write about the undead or zombies, but I have no clue how to make them hot and not gross and/or mildly horrifying. I have some ideas, but I'm not sold on 'em.

This is the struggle.

I'm gonna go brew too many coffees for one person, which is what I usually do when I'm stressed, and never helps, but does taste good. Maybe I'll find the answers I'm looking for in a human-sized vat of boiling coffee...

~

You can buy my books here or follow me on Twitter.

Down In Atlantis

If I haven't been blogging as much as I want to lately, it's only because I'm trying to break out of my weird writer's block. I have plenty of projects to work on, but I'm not sure if I'm in the right place, so I have to force myself to sit down and hammer out words every day, and most days I'm only hitting 500 or so before I call it quits. For comparison, I usually hit 4k a day at least while I'm in the middle of a project.

But that's not what's really depressing me. The fact that nothing ever changes has been what's depressing me. The fact that I live in the middle of nowhere with little human contact is what's been depressing me.

At least now it's summer. I deactivated my Facebook the other night, and I think I'm going to spend a lot of the next two months taking daily walks down to the river or other nice little areas around my house.

Back in summer 2015 me and Kuma were out running the roads a lot, and it felt like where I was supposed to be and everything was okay and the future looked good, so I'm trying to get back to that, because lately most days when I picture my future there's nothing but suicide or a big black blur. We walked to a nearby lake one day back then, and it took three hours but it was so worth it.

And now I can't believe it's been two whole years, that it's 2017, and I'm in the same place. We were planning so many big things back then that never happened, and I'm worried to let myself start living or planning things again when I know that those hopes might just crumble too.

I'm trying to keep my head down and work my way through whatever this funk is, and at least come out on the other side of it with a heightened wordcount. But it's been hard.

Which is why this blog has been drying up.

That, and I spend most of my days inside, sitting at the same spot, and don't have much to talk about. Like I said, though - winter is gone, and with the nice weather here maybe I won't be such a hermit.

Another big problem that keeps me from, you know, being me, is that every day I convince myself I'm dying of a terrible disease. I wake up like, "Oh my god, I think I have bone cancer!" And everybody else is like, "Kai, shut the fuck up."

And they are probably right.

But logic does not apply to the mass of writhing black gunk, toxins, and mental illness that is my brain. Meaning I spend my day imagining symptoms and worrying for nothing.

Or maybe I'm right, and one day soon I'll keel over of some undiagnosed monster tumor or something and you'll all be like, "We should have listened!" Either way, we're all cool. I am at peace with the void. Or if not peace, then like, a level of familiarity where the void and I could go shopping together without a third friend to be the buffer and it wouldn't be awkward, you know?

#TightWithTheVoid

Outside of all the gross personal stuff, I've been drinking as much coffee as I was before I said I wanted to try quitting caffeine. I'm still sleeping weird hours. I'm still outlining more projects than I can possibly write.

My brother really wants me to go see his new house, to the extent that he's holding my birthday gift hostage there, but I honestly never get a chance to go. I probably won't go until he gets a dog, and then I'll never go back again because I'm not welcome, because I tried to steal his dog, even though I have three of my own.

Although we may have to put our dog, Kota, down--she's really old, and her back legs are going and have been getting worse and worse for months.

Honestly, once I move out on my own I don't think I'll own pets. If I do, it will be like, a goldfish or two. That's it. Animals get too close to you and then they die. And they shed all over your house and keep you sneezing daily.

I'd love a little puggle, but I don't think I'd be a good pet owner on my own. Especially in the city...I wouldn't want to walk a dog at like 3 in the morning in the winter months. Plus I have strings of days where I don't shower, or brush my teeth, and I can't get out of bed, and I walk around in three-day-old pajamas with tangled hair and hiss at anybody who tries to talk to me. I don't know if the responsibility would be great for me, and I'm not one of those people who thinks the mere presence of a furry body is going to magically induce a cure for my mental illness or personal problems.

I think most animals are a lot of work, and I'm still trying to work out how to exist as a human, let alone a responsible adult. So. No pets. If I can show the self-restraint not to impulse buy a rabbit or some shit...

Aside from the threat of me someday coming home with a tortoise or a hamster I don't know how to properly care for, the most pressing issue for me has been my lack of finished work. We're just under halfway through the year and I still haven't finished a single book. I've barely done any work on the new edition of Iceblood, I just realized that Deadheart is going to be a four book saga instead of a duology (if I want to do the story justice, at least) and I'm feeling overwhelmed.

I also haven't been reading much at all, because nothing can catch my attention. Last night I finally gave up and started rereading Switched by Amanda Hocking, which is an old comfort read. (I think I've read the Trylle Trilogy six times since the first time I finished them in eighth grade, honestly.)

There really is never enough time. Especially not when I spend it blogging instead of peeing, making more coffee, or writing a chapter, all of which I have to do right now. So that's that.

Later :)

The Everlasting Weirdness of Self-Promo

I'm blogging two days in a row. Surprised? If not, you're probably new here...

I planned to do some promotional blogs for Dreamseeker this week, since, in case you didn't know, I just put out a new edition complete with a beautiful new cover:

Are you not in love with that?

Only when I sat down to write it, I remembered I hate self-promotion and decided to get out of my responsibilities by talking about how much I loathe them, instead.

I have an anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder, and it's always made it hard for me to socialize. As a kid people thought I was really bossy and assertive, but as I got older that reckless, impulsive behavior become more dangerous and problematic, turning self-destructive, and it only got harder and harder for me to make friends among my peers or communicate with people in general.

When I'm talking to people outside my closest friends and family, I'm usually playing a character. I wake up for the day and, if it's a normal day where I get to stay home and sit around in my underwear writing, doing photo-manipulation, and burning chicken nuggets, then I'm my regular nerdy self. I don't filter, and I manage to do that mostly by just keeping silent. But if I have to go out and be in public, I put on a character or a mask.* I know everyone does this to some extent, but with me it's gotten to the point where it's like I'm shrugging armor on and off for battle, and as much as I hate it I know it will probably always be that way. Letting people in and making personal connections is something I want, but at the same time it's probably the thing I spend the most time in life avoiding.

(*I'm not like some kind of emotionally manipulative mastermind or master actor out here pulling multiple personalities out of a hat every day for the performance of my life or anything, so that sounds bad, but I switch between different personas based on who I'm with or where I'm at; my go-to is the sassy, flamboyant, funny gay friend, even though I'm way more low-key and introspective than that, because it serves the double purpose of matching what most people perceive me as (a funny, unserious, fairly confident cis male who can always make you laugh) and because if I'm busy being the funny gay sidekick who just cracks jokes, the laughter keeps people at arms-distance, emotionally, and things can't get serious and painful and I won't get invested or hurt, so everybody wins.

Over the past few years another direction that's emerged is the friendly, approachable local indie author hipster, which is where I go when I'm talking to someone about books or when I'm talking to people who are a lot older than me. It's my best public face, essentially. Sometimes it's the place I speak from when I'm writing these blogs. But not this particular post, obviously, since I'm in my underwear at 2 am drinking coffee and listening to Last Dinosaurs, and can't be bothered.

Yet another is more quiet, slightly bitchy, independent loner persona that I take on when I'm, say, on a night out with friends or in a situation where I need to feel stronger and more confident than I actually am. I think this one is closest to my actual identity/personality, but it's also probably the most anti-social, as well, so that's not great.

Basically the gist of it is that I feel very inadequate in social situations, so it's easier for me to slip into a 'character' either to handle things differently or just to keep the people around me emotionally distant for me own well-being, and theirs, because I'm pretty sure I'm cursed. I don't know if this is a symptom of my bpd or just part of my personality, or both. I do know that most people switch moods/actions/thought patterns when they're in different situations and with different people, because it is human nature, but I also know it's worse for me because of my mental illness.)

Which means self-promotion is pretty much torture for me. If I'm able to accomplish something, it's immediately knocked down a peg in my mind, because I suck, so if I can do it, how cool is it, really?

Before I was writing, books were these magical things, and authors were rock stars. When I finished my book and kept finishing others, I was like "Wait, is this it?" People tell me how impressive it is that I write books and I shrug and and don't care because I honestly don't think anything I do is impressive.

Self-promo kind of only works if you can really sell your book and how awesome it is. I get through it sometimes mostly just because of the enthusiasm I have for my work - but even Shadows, the best book I have or may ever write, got fucked over on publicity because I was going through a poor mental health phase when I put it out. That's why I'm not publishing books until the whole series is done, anymore; I just can't cope with the feeling of stage fright when people are waiting for books or the reader's voice is in my ear.

The point of all this downer shit is that putting myself or my work out there is a daily challenge for me, which is why often this blog is inactive; if I'm not in a black well of depression, I'm usually just not motivated to talk about myself or my work, because outside of the obvious factors of nerdiness and pop culture being awesome, I don't know if or why anybody would even care. So.

Actually, that's a lie. The point of this is that I hate self-promo so much I'd rather publicly air-out all my personal demons and embarrassing secrets than do that. So this is me procrastinating in the form of over-sharing while also talking down about something I hate.

Being an indie author is 99% stress, and for me most of it comes from the promo. Also formatting, but we're not going to talk about formatting right now, because if I bring it up for too long I start screaming, tearing at my hair, and climbing buildings to swat at planes like King Kong himself.

I can't talk to bloggers because it's excruciating trying to push my own books, which are not famous or widely-read or even have that many reviews, either positive or negative, because I feel like I look like one of those people parked on the side of a dirt road in their minivan, selling 'fresh' seafood and oysters out of the trucks of their vehicles. Except, it's worse, because you can't even eat my books.

Note To Self: Invest in chocolate books.

I don't know what it is, since when I was a blogger myself I loved all free books and I also loved approaching publishers despite my anxiety, because I thought the arcs were worth the mortification of sending letters asking for them. I also know I have books on the Kindle app on my phone right now that are self-pubbed by unknown authors and have few if any reviews, and I'm still so excited to read them it hurts my brain.

And that's what it boils down to: even when things AREN'T mortifying and they're really just everyday, normal, no-big-deal communications with other people, my brain freaks out for no reason and starts blaring sirens at me, and I'm smart enough to call its bullshit but not smart enough to figure out how to override the system, and the panic causes me to lash out and act recklessly, without thinking. It's probably why I cope with unhealthy amounts of weed and caffeine.

Anyway the long and short of it is, Dreamseeker is out, I can't do it dirty by not promoting it enough, and since I can't let this series flop because I am literally poor and scared about things like not having enough money to pay my bills or eat, you will all have to watch me shoot myself in the foot trying to get word about this ebook out there. Sorry in advance.

I'll probably be posting a self-interview centered around the book sometime tonight (if James Franco can interview himself, so can I, bite me) and more posts about it and the writing process this week/month! And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write a promotional short story :)

Your Existential Dread Is Showing

I feel like I spend too much time poking at my own wounds, making them worse, instead of doing things I know I need to in order to improve. I waste hours, days, months, beating myself up for shit as opposed to actually working to do better. I don't really have a point with this, I'm not going anywhere special with it, it's just that it's hard to work as a writer when you aren't earning much income at all and people aren't really finding or reading your work and you're drowning in an ocean of mental illness.

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there with problems, so I hate complaining and I usually just bottle all my shit up until it overflows and ruins my life, usually in the form of doing something really self-destructive or starting a fight with someone I care about.

Actually, a lot of my personal relationships and friendships have deteriorated over the past two years. That's probably my fault for continuously isolating myself and distancing myself from people. The thing is, it feels like I should constantly be working, so there isn't time for a social life, and at the same time I feel convinced these people are better off not knowing me so I withhold my presence and emotional involvement with them and end up burning bridges. It's probably definitely not healthy, but it is what it is.

Basically what it means is that I have very few friends left and I'm unhealthily obsessed with my work, namely the fact that I can't stop not doing it and procrastinating or going on like twenty hour work sessions where I lose track of time and nearly kill myself.

Earlier this year I got into a car crash, and the day after I was attacked by a dog. My anxiety has been getting worse and worse, and it only increased when I started to fear physical danger and have intrusive thoughts more and more often after these experiences. I stopped leaving the house much, or at all, going for weeks and weeks at a time without going farther than my own back yard. I've spent days on end in bed, staring at a wall or drifting in and out of sleep. I'm basically a depressed collection of aches and pains, depressive tendencies, and pop culture trivia, blaming myself for every problem in the world while tweeting obsessively about American Horror Story. And I beat myself up for that too.

It's crazy to me, because so many people in this community are open to talking about their mental illness and how it affects their work, and I really only talk about mine when I'm mocking myself and turning the situation into a joke.

If I do let out a cry for help or let on how bad things are, I either delete it hours later or it just goes ignored, and instead of trying to fix the issues I stew in them, alone. I feel like it's not healthy that I haven't acknowledged how much I'm struggling, but the fact is there's a lot of pressure on me from every person and direction in my life, and I've already let so many people down that the thought of disappointing them even more by focusing on how much I'm struggling instead of trying to advance my career actually makes me wanna bury my head in the sand. Yeah.

A large part of it is that I have no routine and no healthy habits. I exist primarily on a diet of frozen foods, pot, and black coffee (fairly sure I have stomach ulcers or something but am I cutting down on coffee? Nahhhhh) and I have a totally irregular sleep cycle. It's normal for me to spend five hours online, pass out and sleep for like twelve hours, then wake up and spend the entire day on the internet again.

To put things in perspective, I've got six series on the go right now as well as countless standalone titles and things I haven't announced yet, I'm dealing with anxiety, depression, paranoia and self-destructive tendencies largely alone with no support system, I'm poor as hell and my career isn't where I feel it should be, and I compensate for the insane amount of responsibility I'm carrying on my shoulders...how? By bottling up all my emotions, blocking people out, and refusing to deal with anything or acknowledge the hand I've been dealt in life. Of course.

Has anyone found out why this generation is so unhealthy yet? I'd really like to know what's in the water that we're all anxious depressive fuckheads like this, but as of yet I have like zero solid leads. Is it internet porn? Copious drug use? Doomsday fears? Radioactive tap water? Cell signals rotting our brains?

I. Don't. Know.

What I do know is that I need to work on blaming myself less. There's this line from episode 3 or 4 of the Shannara Chronicles that I've been thinking about for days now, where someone tells one of the main characters something alone the lines of, "All of this isn't happening because of you. It's happening to you. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be."

So every day I've been trying to remind myself that all of this-all the pain and trauma and bullshit-is happening to me, and it isn't my fault.

I didn't ask to be born. I don't know why I was or why any of us are here. I don't know what comes when we die or if there even is anything after we die. And that's not a personal failing. It's an abjectly horrifying fact that we all, in some way, have to deal with. And I have not been dealing. I've been sweeping my problems under the rug and hoping they go away. It isn't working.

I don't know how many times I can do the same thing and expect different results. So this is me doing something entirely new and actually talking about the fact that I've got problems and issues and that most days I end up crying before six in the evening, and hoping that looking my demons in their glowing red and yellow eyes makes it a little easier to carry them on my shoulders all day.

I'm gonna drink some water and try to do physical activities and interact with other human beings for once. I'm gonna not keep convincing myself that I'm literally the devil and some unseen force who governs all our fates is condemning my soul or whatever, like some cosmic elf on the shelf shaking its head and smacking its gum at me from beyond the veil. I'm going to stop purposely looking for marks against myself to write on my karmic scoreboard and just let myself float.

At the end of the day we're all sad, confused, bitter little children running around on this rock crying out for whoever left us here. I'd like to think that I'm hardly responsible or even capable of being responsible for every bad thing that happens in the world, so I better start acting like it.

Awkward In The Woods

The other day I went on a walk and learned that I'm even awkward in the woods. There's a river I like to go to near the house, and it's maybe a twenty five minute walk. Right next to it, though, there's this nice house where these two tiny, angry dogs are always in the yard, barking, and when they bark at me their owners come out and like, snap at them, and it makes me so awkward. Like, let your dog bark itself out without reminding me of your existence. Human interaction messes me up.

I think mainly I just wasn't prepared to see so many people out, since it's the middle of nowhere and I was in the mood to be alone (hence the walk to the secluded river and all) but overall it was still nice, even if walking by people doing yard work is cringe-worthy to me for some reason. And I worked through some plotting issues while I was walking, so that's a plus.

When I got to the river I was walking across the rock wall that stretches across it, like a damn or something, and someone had caught and decapitated a fish and left it's head there, and a swarm of flies was buzzing over it. It wasn't exactly pleasant. But it will probably make it into my next book, nonetheless.

It's weird to think it's almost summer again. Like, it's been an entire year since last summer. I am twenty. So much has happened - I've put out my first couple full-length novels, I've started on anti-depressants again and quit drinking. I've lost a lot of weight. At the same time though, things are mostly the same.

This winter was really hard in a lot of ways - there were a lot of times where I honestly didn't expect to make it through.

But now that the warm season is here and things are slowly but steadily getting better, I feel like I'm reclaiming pieces of my identity every day, and coming back to myself. It's nice. And I keep reminding myself that I'm not in that place I was, but it hasn't fully sunk in yet that I got through it.

The thing is, every time you fall into that black well of depression, there's a part of you that doubts you'll make it out.

I'm learning to tell that part to shut up.

And, in other news, writing a bunch. I want to do a blog every day in X one of these months, I just haven't picked the one yet. I meant to blog a lot more once Shadows of Ourselves came out, to promote it, but I haven't had the time as I jumped right into drafting the sequel to Blood of Midnight. The thing is, Shadows has been doing pretty well on its own (thank you to everyone who's bought the book!) and it's even gotten some good ratings on Goodreads, which is nice.

I actually just got a new writing desk the other day that I kind of love. It's made the idea of sitting down to work a lot more appealing actually.

So when I haven't been being awkward in the woods, I've been listening to Astrid S and writing this vampire book. You can check it out on Pinterest here if you like pretty pictures, and I do: https://www.pinterest.com/writerlyprince/tears-of-sunrise/

Why?

Why is my room built on a slant like this? Why am I so good at cutting my own hair? Why do I have an obsession with candles? Where can I buy more great candles? Why do I hate screamo so much? These are all questions that need to be asked.

Today I've been finishing up an edit on the first ten thousand words of Dreamwalker, because I switched it from first-person to third. It fits the book better, and it will be easier to write it back to back with its sequel this way.

I also, as you may have guessed, cut my own hair. Now I'm getting ready to do the cat box while I wait for my vegetarian pizza to get here.

It's been a good day. Every day has been a generally good day lately. I mean, I'm really, like. . .I don't know if the word is anxious or if I should say I'm kind of falling into some unhealthy thought patterns. There's a gap in my vocabulary where the word for this feeling should be, but whatever, I'm not worried. At least I'm not depressed, anymore. I've just been obsessing over the idea of death the last few days, because, you know, death anxiety is a part of my core personality at this point.

That said, I've been getting good work done, Shadows is coming out in two days, I've lost a bunch of weight, and it's finally nice out outside. Warm days, sunlight, no snow or ice. It's just really nice being able to spend time outside lately.

Also, there's a new Ariana Grande album out, so. Yes. Now I'm just waiting on Lorde, honestly.

That's me, that's my life: an endless wait for a million albums to come out. I'm okay with it.

A Little Bit Dangerous, But Baby That's How I Want It

Did the new Ariana Grande song nearly kill anyone else?

Aside from listening to this on repeat I'm getting ready to go to my cousin's house and planning Shadows Of Ourselves release stuff. Because I'm really excited for it to come out this month.

I'm going into workaholic overdrive trying to finalize everything. I wanna get paperbacks out within a few days of putting out the ebook because I want to host a few giveaways. I still need to sort out royalty info with the paperback distributor first, so I'm gonna stop by the bank today and deal with that.

Overall I'm just excited to have a longer book out. The longer the book, a better. I love really big stories, and Shadows of Ourselves is the longest book I've written to date. Blood of Midnight (which is free today!) and SOSAS are both novel-length, but they're still short books.

Also I genuinely think Shadows of Ourselves is the best book I've written, yet. I think it's got a nice flow and it's a pretty exciting adventure.

Plus, there's hot boys.

It's also set in my home town, Saint John, because it's a pretty magikal city, and because we need more books (especially hot New Adult romance books) set in Canada. The book is set in November, 2016, and it's a big romp through the city and a bunch of magikal landscapes.

It's also got a really diverse cast, because I wrote the book I wanted to read, and I'm sick of reading a book where everyone is cisgender and white and able-bodied. I want to write diverse characters in a way that they're not just coming out stories or coming of age or learning to cope with being othered by mainstream society - I think we should be able to see ourselves in books about werewolves and superheroes and detectives. Genre fiction where diverse characters are allowed to just exist and have stories and go on adventures.

I really loved City of Bones when I was fifteen because it was the first book I'd ever read like that with gay characters in it - not even just gay main characters, but gay characters period - and I think there's something wrong with that.

I really adore Amanda Sun's Ink trilogy because it has a gay character in its main cast, and I devoured half of the House of Night series in one week when I was sixteen because there were gay characters. (Token-ish ones, albeit, but still).

Rainbow Rowell's Carry On is (in my opinion) a masterpiece and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is brilliant. 

In real life, non-white teens and kids in wheelchairs and queer youth, they all do extraordinary things and there are so many facets to their lives - they deserve diversity that isn't shoe-horned in or gimmicky, and those are the books I want to write. Books where genderfluid kids get to take on super villains and teens in wheelchairs embrace their magical bad-assery and save the day, just like their counterparts do in other ya and na genre books like these. Because if stuff like giant robots and evil mermaids really existed, that's exactly what would happen.

It also deals with some pretty dark stuff like mental illness and substance abuse and, you know, death and murder.

I just didn't want to write a perfect, well-adjusted main character with a good attitude. I feel like there's so many young adults and college aged kids who are sick of seeing perfectionists who never mess up in their books. So many of us deal with mental illness or trauma or abuse, and even aside from those things, so many of us are a bit jaded and bitter, or emotional withdrawn. I wanted to write about and deal with those issues. Sky is pretty damaged.

I'm really fond of the book, though, and I'm hoping some other people like it, too. I'm just excited, in general.

Thinking Your Way Back

Earlier I was reading old posts from January, which is only two months ago but feels eons ago. It was eons ago, because time is relative and time doesn't exist, but I'm not here to blow your mind or lose my thought process talking about weird time jumps. There are shitty B movies that can do that for you better than I ever could.

I'm here to talk about thinking my way back to when I felt, for a while, like things were really looking up. I wasn't in the greatest place, but the world still felt brimming with possibility.

And with my birthday coming up, I've been freaking out - you know, that old paralyzing anxiety about aging and death, right? And I had a bit of a breakdown for a month or so, there. I'm back now.

I'm not going to lie and say I'm fine when just the other night I was talking about mental illness and suicidal thoughts, but I feel like I worked some stuff out of my system and I'm in a slightly better place after a day of reflection and calmness.

I'm still stressed about nineteen million things, but I can't change any of it, I know I can't, so I have to stop blaming myself for things I have no power over and just take it as it comes, because that, how I react to it, is something I have power over. I'm gonna use that power.

So that's how I'm feeling today. I'm dealing with school stuff (stressful) because after easter I have to go and get my diploma. I was originally going to go for an adult diploma but I think I'm going for my GED or equivalency now, because I know if I go back to that school not only will I not learn anything I need to, but I'll also A) have a relapse with my mental illness and B) get into a fistfight with one of the various racist, sexist, and homophobic students there. I'm not even joking - I have an inability not to start a fight if I see a wrongdoing. But basically I just need to not go back into the Canadian public school system, ever.

I started outlining a new project the other night and I have a cover for it, it's gonna come out a few weeks before Shadows of Ourselves, I think. It's longer than a novella but probably not a novel. I think it should be around 35 thousand words, but I'd like to stretch it to 40k or so if I can. I know there's enough story there, but I refuse to add words unless they're needed for the story to function, so we'll see.

It has the best cover of any of my books, ever, in my opinion. Better than the cover for a (possible) sequel to Shadows of Ourselves, which nobody has seen yet. Better than the cover of Maelstrom, which no one has seen yet. I just love it. Not sharing yet, but I love it.

But the book has a Pinterest board, and you can find that here for some glimpses about it. You should also check out the boards for my other books, and I dunno, maybe follow me? For reasons. For science.

And, for fun, some facts about the book:

• It's inspired by magical girl animes.
• And some mythology I love but feel is underused.
• It's paranormal, and the main romance is a lesbian one.
• It's standalone for now but there's room to tell other stories in the world that would also stand on their own.
• MONSTERS.
• A private academy.
• Long lost family members.
• Biracial main character! (Kat is white and Japanese.)
• FANCY BALL GOWNS GALORE.
• Did I mention the monsters?
• Romance!
• Slightly odd romance - or just more realistic? I'm going for a kind of Rainbow Rowell angle on the romance, so while there's a bit of romance genre cheese, for the most part the romance develops in kind of lowkey, average, everyday ways.
• Dragonflies.
• Magic weapons.

So yeah. I'm excited. I'm taking a break from SOO editing to draft this over the next four days, then I edit Shadows in around a week or two, edit this, do my copy edits on Shadows, and then put them both out around the same time. Maybe a week apart?

I have no clue, nothing's official right now, but I'm excited.

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.