Category: Random Author Babble

January 16

Calendars!

Finally shipping out the Demon Bonded calendars today! Ugh, had so many weird things happen mid production, one of them being the print shops printer broke for a day, they thought it was done once it was fixed, but they had magenta ink all over the calendars. @_@ What a mess. But it’s all fixed, the calendars look gorgeous, and they should be arriving soon. So sorry for the wait, babes.

I feel like the weekend steals my writing flow away. Mondays are even worse because I’m back to my preferred isolation but the day is spent cleaning up the mess of the weekend. It’s this lie of getting my life back only to realize it won’t happen for another day.

Oh, and if you missed it, you can find the 2019 Demon Bonded Calendar here.

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January 14

Hmmm…

I may be poking at the new subscription site through the week to see how to transfer stuff. No promises. This shit is like a pebble in my shoe. Once my mind is on it, it’s frustrating to not finish things up and just complete it. I’ll probably be fiddling with it late at night when I’m too tired to actually write…

Obsessive as fuck? Who, me? Nah. 😛

I feel good, peeps. I feel like this health thing is going to last, and I finally have a future laid out before me. And maybe that’s idealistic as fuck given my track record, but I don’t care. Gonna get shit done.

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January 11

Shipping options…

Huh, you can apparently map out shipping options out of country, country by country, all the way down to the damn zipcodes. This is both awesome and totally disheartening, cuz I know one day in the near future, likely around the time I’m designing a t-shirt, I’m going to have to go through and make each zone and figure out shipping costs for the size/weight, etc. @_@ On a day I’m feeling totally neurotic, this will be an interesting task…

Ooh, or maybe I can outsource that task. That’s what normal people do, right? Hire people to do the shit you don’t understand instead of learning every fucking thing you can about everything. Must be nice. XD

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January 10

Back On Track

I think the website is as good as it’s going to get for now. I want to change over to another subscription software, but I’m going to give it a few more weeks when I have less to do. For now, back to writing and Demon Arms!!!

I’m actually digging having the story broken up into ‘events.’ It’s less pages to keep track of on the website, for one, and you get this nice chunk of story. I could even do exact links to scenes in the page… I’m thinking about it. I want ease. I have a lot planned and I want a system that can grow instead of one that needs to keep catching up with me.

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January 9

New Year, New Design

I figured since I was doing all the work to integrate a cart system into the website, I might as well give it a little makeover too. Something a bit brighter and more cheerful than the wall of busy black. I liked the wall of black, don’t get me wrong. It had a crazed, falling into the dark woods kind of feel. But hey, color for the win and cute, quirky diamond plaid.

Sorry if things are loading a little slow. I’m working on it. I had to add all these new plugins and for some reason my image optimizer decided to turn itself off, etc. @_@ Ah, words…

Oh, fuck, if you missed it, I did a Demon Bonded calendar! I’m only making a limited run, so if you want one you should snag it now.

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January 7

Website Stuff

Hey babes, I’m in overwhelm at the moment as I try to set up a shopping cart on the website. The cart, oddly enough, easy enough. The shipping bullshit that goes along with it is a whole other mess. Ugh. Buuuut it’s happening, slow as it is. Sorry for being MIA so long–how is it the 7th already?! Shit.

Anyways, new stuff soon. Announcements to make. Gonna get a newsletter out on a weird day cuz I’m playing so much catch up. But yeah, good stuff. I’m just in that bad mental place of staring at code for 3 days straight and wanting to burn the world in response. But other than that, sunshine. XD

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January 4

New Look: WIP Charts…

I’m hoping this will help people follow the updates easier. What’s done, what’s being worked on, what will be done, etc. All the links are in there for ease. Eventually I’ll make these for all the WIPS, but until then, here are the ones I’m focused on.

So, as you can see, I work in ‘Events.’ It’s the serial format I find the most useful. When you’re writing long story arcs that span several novels, it can be easy to lose tension, lose focus. I started solving this problem when writing serials like Demon Bonded where I attacked each thing in ‘Episodes.’ Each episode was a book, but it wasn’t always an event. It usually had a little cliff that broke an event right at the most suspenseful moment, and then the second half of the episode would be the beginning of another event that would pull a reader in to wonder what would happen next. Even if I had months between each episode, as long as I kept track of my ‘events’ (Ky facing the Aeternum is up next, for example,) I’m able to pick up and ensure the tension works moving forward, even if I can’t remember everything that came before.

Initially, I didn’t plan as much as I should have when writing. It was a lot of just seeing what worked while finding out the hard way what didn’t. Being sick was a wonderful excuse not to organize and just hope things would work out. @_@ Now that planning is part of my process (thank fuck XD) I don’t expect these levels of rewrites. When you have things figured out in the outline and keep nice notes, things flow so much easier. I actually have the third PATB novel completely outlined. I can’t wait to stop playing catch up and just flow with the writing once again.

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January 2

Soooo…

I’m seriously thinking about hiring content writers for the website. Seriously. Just bang these outlines out and then get other people involved to do the grunt writing, then come back to clean it all up and ensure it fits. I’m tired of being just one person trying to get way too many things done at once. @_@

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January 1

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I know it’s an arbitrary point with no actual value. I mean, the planet isn’t even aligned with the stars exactly as it should be to mark the passing of an actual ‘year,’ whatever the hell a year means outside of the seasons changing and our calendar system. Time just moves forward; it doesn’t come back to 0. That said, I’m psyched to be alive and I’m enjoying my resolutions to be more productive and love life more. So, yeah, any excuse to love what you’re doing.

I wish you all great happiness, health, and prosperity for 2019. <3

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