Today’s productive(?) procrastination: researching cover trends to decide whether I want to overhaul the Healers covers. The promo didn’t work; therefore, something must be wrong that keeps people from clicking. I honestly still like covers 1 and 3, but I have to face the fact that they don’t look like the other covers out there in the cozy/literary fantasy space. That’s a hindrance.

If I do end up doing this, then all my agita about print editions is out the window; I will, in that case, redesign the interiors too.

I find this all kind of fascinating to research, but wildly out of my wheelhouse (I am not a visual person at all). It’s also exhausting to have to make decisions about it. But hey. That’s the fate of self-publishing.

Listened to another podcast episode that got me to buy a book: Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?

Likewise, this kind of analysis is fascinating to me and wildly outside my wheelhouse, as someone who is not visually oriented and has never taken to social media that is visually oriented. Have not read the book yet; I’ll get to it soon.

Recent reads/recommendations include the entirety of Greenwing & Dart (the series feels unfinished, but I loved it up to that point), Wyngraf’s Valentine’s Day 2024 special (adorable) and the first couple of omnibi of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (sad and adorable; will have more to say about this once I read the whole series).

Look at that, we’re halfway through the Winter 2024 anime season. TIme might be linear after all.

• Delicious in Dungeon: Love it. Characterization is a breath of fresh air in a world of stale tropes. Opening theme is a banger. Calls on fantasy/RPG nostalgia without mindlessly copy-pasting. Only one notable female character so far (the other one is languishing in a dragon’s colon), but she is great despite being the party’s constant naysayer. We’ve been on the verge of cancelling Netflix among our raft of streaming services, and now I’m kind of mad that this has dragged me back in.
• Mr. Villain’s Day Off: I think it’s accomplishing the “one joke” better than Too Cute Crisis did, which is why I’m still watching it. Not perfect — I’d like to dig six inches deeper on the characters they’ve established rather than just throwing in more and more new ones — but it’s refreshing to have a show that focuses on achievable work/life balance instead of throwing its hands up and saying “welp, the only way out is to die and get isekai’d, lol.”
• ‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess — this season’s “this is so silly, and yet I’m still watching” pick. Nothing makes sense, but it’s oddly charming. Also not perfect (see the game of pervy chicken they’re playing with the paladin character), but mostly harmless. There is a large cast of adorable demons who take excellent care of each other and their prisoners, and I’m a sucker for that.
• Have not started Sign of Affection yet; I’ll tackle it in the backlog later.
• Backlog we’re still working on: Natsume’s Book of Friends, Isekai Izakaya, The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent, Revue Starlight. I had to pause RS for a bit when I didn’t have the stomach for drama, but I’m back in. Hidive, your days are also numbered. Sorry. Akiba Maid War was fucking fantastic and I’m glad I finally got through Penguindrum, but there are only a few more series I want to watch in your lineup.

edit to add: ooh, I forgot one! I started a Zoom guitar class. Having loads of fun. It seems like some of the general concepts I learned with the ukulele are carrying over, which is nice, but the strings are SO much sharper!

This past weekend, I spent an afternoon in a car, midway through a family trip from the eastern US to the Midwest, reading through and making what are probably my last edits to Therapist book 3. And I think my work might be best suited to moments when you’re a captive audience, like car trips — assuming you don’t get motion sickness, of course. (I’m very lucky; I wouldn’t have survived childhood without reading in cars. I remember reading one sentence at a time as we passed under lights on the highway.)

Similarly?, I started reading Wyngraf issue 3 — a literary magazine focused on “cozy fantasy”, and one I highly recommend — in the middle of the night, on vacation, kept awake by acid reflux. Which are precisely the conditions under which I started reading issue 2 last year. There’s at least some rhyme and reason to that; short stories are nice when you aren’t sure how long you want to keep reading, and when you’re cursing your own body’s mundane failures, something cute and soothing hits the spot.

The latter is also why I read large stretches of the Dreamhealers series in my first few rounds of a style of insomnia that I can look forward to “enjoying” for the next ten years or so. (Maybe. It’s complicated.) Now I’ve settled into slowly reading through a nonfiction book which I only pull up under those conditions.

So sometimes it’s not just a matter of finding a book that matches your taste; it’s a matter of finding a book that compliments your situation. Not necessarily matches it, but compliments it.

Or maybe it’s just how my broken brain works: I remember where I read some particular books more than the details of the story. Over lunch, in a particular room at my day job: that’s I am Livia or The Thief or The Goblin Emperor. One park bench is Winter Tide, another is Glitter Up the Dark, a picnic table in the same park is Cryoburn. I also remember reading a lot of Song of Achilles while awake in the middle of the night due to stomach problems. At home that time.

Who knows. Moving on.