Reading: The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly, How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, Limberlost by Robbie Arnott
Finished Reading: Nothing this month. Been busy, preoccupied, and possibly burnt out after finishing four books in one month.
Podcast: Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery
Playing: Beat Saber, FitXR, and Pistolwhip (VR workout baby!)
Making: Zines and Doom levels
Writing: Project E
Word Count: 166641
TLDR: Project E milestone achieved! Time anxiety. PIRACY IS IMPORTANT. CY_BORG resistance. Maggie Stiefvater’s Critique Partner Match Up. *Vomits rainbows* ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
NEW THING*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ progress has been made, a short story has been finished, but now it’s being put on the back burner as I’ve started the first full read-through of Project E since completing the first draft. This is such a major milestone. Reading through this mammoth story which has both plagued me and kept me company for so many years has been a really great experience. A lot of the chapters have really landed and felt good. There is always that nagging worry, when writing, that you are just bleeding words and none of it makes sense or it is boring or any number of nasty shit the attic hag (personal schema) wants to say about your hard work.
I have a couple of fears. One of them is time. It is such a beast, such an eldritch horror. It just keeps tumbling forward, dragging us with it. Sometimes, I feel like I’m running down hill with it, staying upright but mostly just falling forward on purpose. Other times, I feel swept up in it all. As if I’ve been swallowed by a wave and I’m tumbling. Sometimes, it is as though everything is waiting, holding its breath, a gentle monster snoozing. So long is the pause between breaths you fear she may’ve died. Yesterday, I watched Mr Samuel’s Teatime Stories by Yara Asmar. It was unsettling and beautiful and so cosy. I Won’t go into what I think it is about here. Please go watch it.
I want to rant on about something for a bit: I feel very strongly about Piracy when it comes to media and art. I know how devastating it would be to be a small artist, author, game developer, or what have you, and find out that there’s a significant number of folks pirating your media. There will always be people who pirate purely for the thrill of it, but there is a not insignificant number of these people who are too poor to afford much in the way of media. Any media which is pirated for this reason, isn’t lost sales, as the person wouldn’t have been able to support it to begin with. Also, folks who pirate often end up buying media anyway (some using their piracy as a means to test whether something is worth the money) Link to a study from 2015 which discusses this:
The other side of Piracy which I not only understand, but whole-heartedly love is the drive to preserve media. Especially within video games, where a game can be trapped on old hardware that is slowly being lost to bit-rot and failing components. Emulation and things like Archive.org are becoming more and more important as time goes on. As well, we see complete negligence of the art being created the moment it stops making money. Companies abandon their work often in conditions that make it completely impossible to use in the future.
There is a possible route where we could at least stop companies from doing this to their games, which doesn’t involve piracy or reverse-engineering source code for online servers. Ross Scott from Accursed Farms (who I’ve watched since their Civil Protection days) is organizing a fight against this particular problem:
Speaking of fighting the good fight, I finally got to play CY_BORG with my TTRPG group for the first time! WHAT A RIDE. I think my favorite part of CY_BORG’s setting is that it is cyberpunk, and as such, is just a hellish reflection of the world as we have it today… Which means, as the GM, you can choose to let your players fight against it. I discussed this before, but the lack of hope in the written material of CY_BORG doesn’t need to be the law of your sessions. CY_BORG points out that all “rules” in the book are there to be broken (Besides the one about not being friends with cops or corps) and as such, I feel injecting the ability to properly fight against, tear down, and burn the ashes of the technocratic capitalist overlords is something I will absolutely be doing in future one-shots. Oh, and speaking of piracy, I’m planning on running Pirate Borg this coming month, so wish me luck!
Make yourself a randomized punk here and fight the good fight:
Maggie Stiefvater, author of The Raven Cycle and many other beauties, has a resource for beta readers and critique partners. I finally bit the bullet and joined. I’ve even already had a bite for a potential critique partner! There are many genres and age ranges, there are writers just starting out all the way to agented authors. You can find the Critique Partner Match Up at:
Sweet mother of god, it’s June already? You know what that means! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 It’s time for RAMP 2024~!
Also it’s pride month~ Be gay, do crimes!
First time remembering to mention that I have a Patreon where I post art, poetry, short stories, and more (as well as these newsletters). Come check it out here:
Absolutely just a writer and artist certainly not a grave robber
like intellectually i know that you’re supposed to use semicolons instead of commas when you’re listing items that have commas themselves, but damn if it doesn’t look just bizarre
Printed off everything I've got on my #currentproject, promptly threw it all over the floor. #justwriting #justwriterproblems #hardcopy #writerscorner #writersofinstagram #oneofthosedays #kmn
