o/` It’s coming o/`

It sounds like I’m going back on my plans to say that the next Therapist book is almost done, but here’s the truth of it: I really am working actively on the next Healers book, but Therapist 8 was already in the pipeline at the time. While my Fearless Alpha Reader read through a draft of the first ?half? of Strangers, I finished my second draft of Therapist 8.

The cover is in the works by the same artist as book 7 (and I LOVE IT), I’m doing my own last edits before getting any beta readers involved, and I hope to have it out within the next couple of months if all goes well.

After that, full steam ahead on Strangers, with my own suspicions about the outline confirmed: the pacing will fit into two years rather than three, as I’d originally outlined. (Yes, the same timeframe as Healers 1, leave me alone. The “oh wait, this person I hate is a human after all, and I’ve been a jerk” moment comes after ~6 months instead of ~3, for starters)

It’s an unusual feeling for me to be energized and optimistic about two projects at once. Riding it out as long as possible. Besides, over the last two years I’ve tried to develop better habits so that I keep writing even if “inspiration” hasn’t struck. It helps.


Still waffling on joining the fall group sale. It’s a great sale, and they keep building on it; that’s not the issue. I’m waffling on whether I belong there. The more I read of the other books that have been in the sale, the less commonality I see between them – they are truly a range of storylines and tones. So I’m having a little bit of a Bilbowhyshouldn’ti.gif moment about it. If those other books can vary so much, is mine close enough to that range to fit in?

But that’s further off. Don’t worry, I now have a page-long writing-related to-do list to keep all of these projects moving. Self-publishing and plate-spinning go hand in hand.

Unlock skill: Outline

Still working on Strangers, still going well. Yay, I was able to organize my thoughts after all, and it has helped make the process easier. See, I learned something on my writing vacation that I was then able to bring back to my first series. Hero’s journey, or something.

I’m also trying to learn about newsletters. How they work. What might make one worthwhile. In the long run, what I think I might do is take the sort of chatter I’ve been putting on the blog, edit it to be less scattered, concentrate it into two channels, and form that into a newsletter for each of my series. Not that often, I think; maybe monthly once it gets going. Then this blog would be more for straightforward updates and maybe some progress notes. I do like to reassure people that the wheels are still turning.

That also means I have to write some interesting extras that will make it worth people’s while to sign up, which is challenging. So it’s not happening yet, but I hope it’s in the future somewhere. I will warn everyone on the current list and give them a chance to jump ship if that’s not what they want.

So that’s what’s happening. Moving right along.

Internal screaming, mostly

Quick note: The Therapist omnibus edition is paused in print for now, just to attempt to switch it to say “Vol. 1-4 Omnibus” instead of “The Complete Series.” Because it’s not the complete series anymore, and I don’t need Amazon banhammering me for false advertising.

(Did I just this weekend come across a lovely boxed set of a “complete” traditionally published series that went on after those volumes? Yes, I did. Am I slightly salty about this? Yes, I am. I write horrible characters because I am a horrible character; this is not a secret)

Long story short, fiddling with the cover text led some odd resizing issues that are going to take some more time to hammer out. The ebook cover was fine, and so that continues.

You know what else continues: work on Strangers, which is less frustrating than this.

Behold: paper!

Just got back from the local science fiction / fantasy / horror literary conference, Confluence — as a fan / reader, obviously, and as an aspiring something-or-other, I suppose. The event continues — it’s a 3-day conference — but since I didn’t know what to expect or whether I’d be wildly out of my depth, I just went for most of one day.

And I had a great time. Attended some panels, watched some concerts, shopped in the dealers’ room:

More print books than I’ve bought in the last two, maybe three years combined. Feminist SF anthologies, solarpunk short stories, Things I’ve Heard About A Lot But Haven’t Gotten Around To, a nonfiction book my spouse handed me with a comment like “this looks like it would be up your alley” (it’s the plague one), another nonfiction book, and a writing prompt workbook from a local literary organization. Oh, and a cute little resin dragon figurine, one of two we picked up there. (Chibiterasu already lives here. The other dragon went on our Nerd Wall in the dining room.)


A quick jaunt, all things considered, but thought-provoking and interesting. For as long as I’ve been writing and as much as I love it, talking about it has almost always been an online-only phenomenon for me. Social anxiety is a huge part of the reason, of course. But that’s one of the things I wanted to test today: observing and soaking in some atmosphere without having to talk much with anyone. And because books and/or writing are things I could listen to people talk about literally all day, the fascination outweighs the fear.

We’ll see what the next steps are and how those feel. I’m glad I tried it out. My TBR pile will feel it, but hey. Worth it.

We’re doing this: The Book Catch-up

I’m in the middle of a book that I’m dying to talk about — no suspense here, it’s Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle — but then I thought it would be weird to ramble about that, I only really talk about books at the year-end round-up when I dump out all the graphics from Goodreads and talk about all the books I read that year at once.

And then I thought, why in the world do I do that, anyway?

So I’m going to catch up on what I’ve read this year so far, more or less (rounded down to an arbitrary point, so I can pick it back up next time). It’s been a more themed year than usual, which has been kind of wearing; I usually jump around genres more than this. But it’s also been interesting in its own way.

Here we go.

Opinions.

4 books from now, maybe we’ll be in business

  • In the new project, we’ve reached the “Protagonist Realizes She’s Kind of a Jerk, Decides to Try to Be Nicer Despite Not Knowing How” point around 48,000 words. Healers 1 reaches that point at around 60k. This might seem like progress, but the fact that this book has this sort of moment in the first place continues the frustrating realization that I Cannot Be Normal.
  • We’re fully in the summer 2024 anime season. Kind of a thin one in this house, so it’s half backlog.
    • Suicide Squad Isekai. Still pales in comparison to Harley Quinn, and I don’t care one bit about the otherworld, but it’s fine so far.
    • Senpai is an Otokonoko. Kiddo, you are in love with your childhood friend, and the longer this series drags that out, the shorter my patience is going to get. But it’s cute.
    • Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines! Like the meme says: I love mess. I truly do. Only one episode in, and I wonder if this will end up being my favorite this season.
    • Spice and Wolf continues. Coincidentally, I started listening to the audiobook recently, as a toe-dip into audiobooks overall. It’s fine, enjoying it quite a bit, but this makes three iterations of an identical story in a row for me (since we watched the first anime adaptation just before the reboot started). Had to stop for now.
    • Backlist: Tearmoon Empire. It’s on the verge of losing my interest about halfway through. It’s not bad, it just isn’t grabbing me.
    • Backlist: Natsume’s Book of Friends continues. It fell out of our “last show of the evening” slot when it started getting more intense, so it’s been slower going lately.
    • Backlist: Komi Can’t Communicate. OK, so the first episode of this show had me in tears, and predictably, I am here for Golden Retriever Nonbinary Goofball. But out of the other side characters, one is a complete void, one is grating, and one is so odious that I consider noping out every time she appears. (Oh goody, two of my absolute least favorite tropes, the Predatory Lesbian and the Yandere. Great. Hilarious.) And I have mixed feelings about Komi herself and how she functions more as a projection screen for the other characters than a person in her own right, which is so frustrating. I wonder if some of her interiority is lost because Netflix is doing a terrible job translating all the onscreen text. It seemed like she was, you know, a person at first, but now she’s more of a moe object that gets dragged around and fawned over.
    • Since my last delve into All of This Stuff, we started and finished Tomo-chan is a Girl!, which was delightful. The premise-joke wore thin sometimes, but beyond that was a cast of sweet dumbasses and secret schemers. Good times.

Anyway. I was reminded in a writing discussion recently that admitting you’re a weeb will drive people away from your fiction, something something cringe something something. Thanks, I’ll put it on the list of advice I’m ignoring.

Anatomy of a quiet fall

The CTDA sale continues for another few hours, and I will have my price stick for another few days, as I originally noted. I want to thank the organizers and volunteers who put the sale together; they’ve been unflaggingly kind and patient with this noob and their questions. And I heartily endorse the sale as a reader. I got a ridiculous haul of books the first time, and a few more this time around (going light because I haven’t finished the first batch yet).

It has been a humbling experience, trying to reach the level of the other, more successful authors in the sale. I will point out that they have allowed me to participate, which they did not have to do, and for that I’m grateful. But after today, I don’t think I’ll try again. It did not work out. I don’t think this has anything to do with the sale; the other authors did much, much better. The more charitable reading of the situation is that I’m just not a good fit for this audience.

I’m saying all of this in the spirit of transparency, I think, and also to explain why I’ll probably promote the sale as a reader going forward, but not submit my books for it. It’s not a judgement of the sale itself. I continue to recommend it if you write in that genre. It looks like it will continue to be tweaked and improved, and they’re hoping for huge turnouts for fall. I wish them all the best.


This does give me serious pause about continuing the Therapist series. This was its big chance to find an audience, and it did not do so. So I don’t think there is one out there for it. I love it dearly and have had a wonderful time writing it, and after all this time, who knows — maybe the Healers audience has evaporated as well. Maybe the takeaway is to let go of the hope of finding an audience at all, and keep sailing messages in bottles out into the void, the way I started. There are worse ways to spend your time.

I certainly won’t stop writing entirely, because it’s too much a part of me. But how much energy I spend in trying to get it out to people is something worth examining. I had been fired up about learning about newsletters, learning about advertising, learning about ways to give my work the best chance it can have. But this experience brings up another possibility. Maybe this is as good as it gets.

People push back against negativity, and that’s understandable. I think it’s easy to misinterpret why I dive into it: to pull apart a bad situation and see what I can learn from it. To figure out the takeaway for next time, rather than running away.

There’s a lot to pull apart, and some of it is private: what writing means to me, what it’s done to take something so close to my core identity (considering that I’ve been doing it consistently since I was ten) and hold it up for external validation. But I’ll also consider that I might be wasting my time trying to keep up with my betters. That just because I’ve been writing for a long time doesn’t make me any good at it. To have some humility.

Three months ago, when the last sale was going on, I was standing in line at the closing weekend of a beloved local ice cream shop, watching numbers tick up. I was still waiting for a chance to get the medical stuff resolved. I’d only published my last novella a couple of weeks prior, and didn’t know yet that it would slowly amass a small audience of people who hadn’t read the rest of the series (thank y’all <3).

Who knows where I’ll be three months from now, but I hope to come back as a reader. Having finished my backlog (lolsob) and ready to cheerlead. There’s always something that can be learned.

Hooray, I’m in the 19th century

We’ve almost reached antibiotics! — Anyway, today’s milestone is that I set up an Amazon ad for Healers book 1. It’s a very limited one and only on the US storefront, but I’m still learning the setup system. I have never done a cost-per-click ad or any advertising on Amazon. I’ve never had anything against advertising, it’s just that I know very little about it and didn’t have the energy to learn about it.

Honestly, the “why now” of it all is that a program I’m already using to research keywords (the kind in the store metadata, which help people find the book) added a more robust system for helping you figure out what ad keywords might work for your book, too. Because I certainly didn’t know where to start. We’ll see how it goes.

I had planned on not promoting Healers at all until it has a new cover, but then I thought I could fiddle around and learn more about the process/system in the meantime. I don’t expect the world, but my spending is low enough that it couldn’t hurt.


All of this is not very interesting, but in the back of my mind I’m also thinking about a podcast episode I listened to today — mostly about AI art and how it has swamped social media, but also about reminding people that creativity can be messy and take time, and that we (waving vaguely) are humans. And YES.

I respect authors who can turn around a book every month (or more often); I worry for them a little bit, but they are adults and can tend to their own work/life balance. I do know that it literally could not be me. I do want to write more than one book every six years, that was deeply frustrating. But it’s not going to be one per month. It’s just not, and I won’t apologize for it anymore. That’s fine if that’s what you do, but that’s not what I’m capable of doing.

Anyway, this is me, back on my anti-grind culture bullshit. <3 Good night, humans. Off to write about my new set of cranky protagonists for a little bit.

This is all sounding oddly familiar

Full of energy now that the Health Stuff is resolved, and trying to use at least some of it to continue some projects.

  • Ballad of the Bardbarian is sitting aside for now, but it’s always there as an alternative day to day. It’ll get done.
  • About Strangers’ Crossroads. I’m not a great outliner, which is why Healers 1 and 2 took a hundred lifetimes each to finish. So as an experiment, I started outlining Strangers to see if outlining could smooth the whole process. The outline is now 31 pages / 16,000 words all on its own, and unless I decide to break this into multiple books, it isn’t done yet. “Outline” is possibly not the right word; it’s a summary of each chapter including the “what happens” and “what does the POV character think about it” elements in a kind of stream of consciousness ramble. But it lets me get the basics down, and know what’s coming next. I hope.
  • It’s increasingly clear, though, that Strangers has the same starting point as Healers (depressed and withdrawn boy, smart and angry girl, they hate one another). Everything else about the story is different — setting (albeit within that same world), backstory, personalities, goals — so I’m hoping the commonality is an advantage and not a drawback. (Okay, and the MMC is a member of the same God of Justice and Order church Keifon is, but I swear I’m not copying myself argh)

  • Games corner: Enjoying Palia but not playing at the moment, because my brain has been eaten by Graveyard Keeper. Take the “one more day” gameplay loop of Stardew Valley and combine it with a pitch-dark sense of humor, and you have Graveyard Keeper. I’m kind of glad I didn’t pick this one up until after I got back to my everyday routine, because it’s a time vortex, and one that’s more hectic than the extremely chill Palia.
  • It’s between anime seasons, more or less, and we haven’t shaken out the full summer lineup for this household yet. We’ve started Suicide Squad Isekai because this is a DC-television-series-respecting house. Spice and Wolf is continuing; I’m ride or die with that series. Will probably try Senpai is an Otokonoko unless it screws up its premise; we’ll probably try that deer series out of sheer WTFery; I might try Dungeon People on my already-canceled Hidive subscription. That’s probably enough, but I’m open to being surprised. In the backlog, I’ve barely started Tearmoon Empire and have enjoyed it so far (boy, that opening theme!).
  • (edit: I don’t know what Nokotan (the deer show) is doing, after the first episode. I think it’s that “anti-humor” thing where you’re supposed to laugh at the fact that it isn’t even trying to be funny? Because the heyday of “lolrandom” humor was 10+ years ago, and that’s the only other guess I have. Anyway, this is not for me(tm).) [Edit II: From reviews, it seems like this is either a case of cultural humor not coming across, or a questionable translation. Either way, not for me.]

And I think I’ve mentioned it before in the main posts as well as the sticky post, but Therapist book 1 will be on sale about a week from now as part of the July 12 Cozy the Day Away sale (the sale is on July 12, but I will have mine up for a bit before and after).

They now have a page specifically for the sale: Cozy Fantasy Sale (promisepress.org) (cozyfantasysale.promisepress.org). The list will be revealed on July 12, but I can say that I got a ton of books last time and have been enjoying reading them ever since. Lots were free or 99c, too.

That’s it for now; gotta actually write something about Sadboy and More Feral than Agna But Not Entirely Different Girl. <3

Enforced chill, week 3 of 3

Almost to the end of Recuperation Times. Apart from a little cabin fever, it went quite well.

  • Assembled 3 small to medium Lego sets; I still have 3 Animal Crossing ones un-assembled
  • Did a jigsaw puzzle early on, which is a prime Calm Down my Frazzled Brain activity
  • Some crafting for Christmas presents, ahead of time for once
  • Watched 3 one-season (so far) anime series, mostly while walking on the treadmill: Villainess Level 99, Fairy Ranmaru, and Chainsaw Man. The latter I binged over two days, which is not something I normally do.
  • Writing: The rough/first draft of Therapist 8 (Ballad of the Bardbarian) is done, though it’s one of those drafts that feels like it’s going to need a lot of added chapters to feel complete. It’s currently sitting aside while my alpha reader reads it. Also working on the Non-Agna-and-Keifon-Healers-world project, The Strangers’ Crossroads, which I think is unstuck now, and has a fighting chance of existing before Healers 4 does.
  • Gaming: Played all of A Little to the Left, most(?) of Strange Horticulture (though the dour music and atmosphere is getting to me), and a metric ton of Palia. I started Palia a month or so ago knowing that I would have a lot of downtime this month, and it worked. There is some jank, especially on the Switch, but it has been an effective diversion. I’ve gone as far as connecting a keyboard to my Switch, but not as far as buying a fancy outfit yet. I probably will eventually, just to throw a little money at the devs for all the time I’ve spent on this game.

Back to work on Monday, and back to a new, hopefully more energetic normal. Feeling pretty good.