New art: Year of the Dragon

New art: Meeting

Still enjoying making art on my iPad. For this drawing, I wanted to try some of the real media brushes in Clip Studio Paint—I went with chalk for most of this piece—and I thought a children’s book illustration style would suit the tools well.

I’ll draw something other than a dragon soon. Probably.

New art: Solstice

I had a couple of reasons for making my newest art. First was that I got an iPad and Apple Pencil and was eager to try out both for art. I also received a free trial of Clip Studio Paint Pro, which I’ve heard good things about and which looked quite promising from the information I’ve read about it. I’ve much more to learn still, but am really enjoying it already.

As to why I painted this picture, that’s a bit longer story. I saw a few posts online a year ago about the origins of the cuetlaxochitl—or as it’s more commonly known in the imperialist West, poinsettia—but only this season did I read up on its true history as a plant cultivated by and sacred to Aztec civilization (along with the sordid personality of its English namesake). Combined with my usual annoyance with the unchallenged sexism, racism, ableism, etc. of many “classic” holiday songs, I decided to make a painting that incorporated as many Christmas symbols co-opted from other cultures as I could (and which my limited Google-fu came up with). And because I’m me, I made it a dragon.

On a more personal level, I have not enjoyed making art this much in a long time. I wasn’t only pleased with how it was turning out, I loved the process of working on it. I am greatly looking forward to making more art on my iPad.

Anyway, here’s the completed piece:

Trilogy finale drops in one week!

As usual, I’ve failed to update this blog or promote myself, but next Friday, the final book of my Sisters of Chaos trilogy, Elderra’s Champion, is releasing.

You can preorder it to have it shipped now directly from the publisher (i.e. me, so you could even get it signed if that’s your thing) or from Chapters/Indigo, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, Amazon, your local indie bookstore, or anywhere else you’d like.

I’m also having a Zoom launch party next Saturday, June 10. It’s an open call so feel free to come in with or without video or audio. It’s just going to be a casual hang out. Details and meeting link on the event page.

To those who have read any of the books over the years, thanks for your support. All I’ll say about what’s coming next is it ain’t gonna be epic fantasy.

Winter sketchbook

September update: Writing

Two months since the last update, and I’ve been distracted by indulging in a few different creative outlets, so I’ll try to do a few different posts rather than lump everything together in one.

First and most importantly, of course: progress on the final book of my Sisters of Chaos trilogy. It’s not for nothing that I’ve been getting distracted from working on it, but I’m in the home stretch for the first round of edits. Four POV characters have had initial edits done and one remains. The last one requires a lot of rewriting – well, writing, as I didn’t even attempt earlier scenes from this character in the first draft – and trying to work out said scenes have had the manuscript untouched for the past two and a half weeks.

Reading was also far too easy a distraction away from writing, as I got through ten books in August (fifteen since my last update here). While reading good books has helped regain some motivation for writing, it’s still time spent not writing, but I have quite enjoyed my selections this summer.

Right now, I’m trying to buckle down on the novel, because there’s always something else shiny grabbing my attention. One of those, in fact, is a number of short story ideas that have taken over my mind of late. Much as I am looking forward to taking some time to work on those once the novel is in beta readers’ hands, I am still forcing myself not to write anything else until this draft is done. Maybe that’s a mistake, but darn it, I’m close and I want it done.

July update

Here we are, halfway through the year. School is out and summer weather is upon us. And it’s time for my (mostly) monthly update.

Didn’t progress quite as much with book three of the Sisters of Chaos trilogy as I had wanted to, but as might be evidenced from the last few posts, I’ve been engaged with art lately. I’m also working on a few bigger pieces at the moment, much as I would like to continue doing quicker sketches. I’ve really been enjoying doing art over the past month plus and it’s a lot easier to sink into when I’m not feeling writing, as I have been a bit of late.

I didn’t accomplish much else in June. Failed to keep myself off YouTube videos. Rarely touched the video game I was playing or either piano or guitar. Still haven’t finished the miniatures I was trying to finish painting. I’ve mentioned before about how I have too many hobbies, but lately, they’ve all been clamoring for my attention more than usual.

On the bright side, my plants are growing well. Last year’s jalapeno plant sprouted a flower that hung on long enough to become a full pepper, which is ready to harvest any day now. The tomatoes that a month ago were maybe four-inch seedlings have now surpassed the height of the tomato cage, and have bloomed their first flowers. The bell peppers are a little behind them, but love the hot weather we’ve had of late and continue to grow as well. One lettuce container is crammed full and has made a few delicious meals already. The other is much more sparse of plants, but those growing in it are quite happy with the additional space.

In the garden, of the seeds I planted, only the zucchini took off, but boy did it. Each plant has several eight-inch leaves and is sprouting a lot more. A little bummed that I won’t be getting pumpkins again this year, but not overly surprised that nothing else grew.

I didn’t quite reach my yearly goal of reading 30 books by halfway through this year, but I’m only one short, and I certainly want to start reading more. Summer holiday means checking out plenty of books from the library for my daughter, and as they’re middle grade books, I’m quite interested in reading them as well. Perhaps one of these days I’ll also get back to the many ebooks I’ve downloaded or least sampled.

For this month, I’d really like to kick my perfectionism to the curb. It’s been taking time out of everything I want to do. I can’t just do something; I have to do it well. I have to do it right. This makes everything feel intimidating – such as the video game I’ve been playing, which feels like a huge time commitment, yet when I sit down and play it, it’s just a fun story to sink into, and there’s even frequent enough save points that I don’t have to devote an hour or more to play. The end result of feeling so intimated, however, is it’s easier to just watch videos than do something productive.

I’m tired of doing that. I can just sit down and play a few minutes of my video game. I can open up a book and read a few pages without having to devour the entire thing in a night. I can pick up the guitar or sit down at the piano and just practice a few bars of a song. And even if I only write two sentences in an evening, at least it’s progress.

And I really want to finish this novel. I’ve almost finished my first edit of the third POV character’s scenes. That only leaves two to fix up afterward, one of which is only going to have an handful of scenes. If I actually sit down and work on it, maybe I could even have my edits done by the end of this month.

So, here we go again with the same goal from last month: just do more. I’ve seen plenty of memes and threads and inspirational quotes about perfectionism, but right now, taking a cue from Disney’s Luca, perhaps a simpler message would help me just do the things I want to do: Silenzio, Bruno.

April wrap-up

Been a while. What’s been going on? A bit, and I don’t feel like going into details, so I’ll summarize.

• After over 140 hours of game play, I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While I don’t anticipate wanting to play it again anytime soon, I dare say it beats out Ocarina of Time as my favourite Zelda game. It was an absolute joy in so many ways and terribly addicting.
• Editing on book three of the Sisters of Chaos trilogy progresses, if not quite as quickly as I had wanted. Had a bit of writer’s (editor’s?) block in the past two months, but I’m finally starting to get some momentum again. I am close to the end of the first character’s scenes.
• I’ve been completely absorbed in reading middle grade books, and as a result I have now read 26 books of my 2021 goal of 30. My belief has also been proven that they are my favourite type of book to read.
• I played and recorded music. After many years of following Dwelling of Duels, a monthly themed video game cover competition, as well as s l o w l y learning guitar, I finally talked myself into submitting to April’s Free Month contest. It turned out to be one of the biggest and highest quality entry months in DoD’s history, and I got third from last place, which was honestly better than I expected. The encouraging comments from the community have also inspired me to work harder at music, and my pattern of the last few days has been alternating days of practice on guitar and piano.
• Japanese lessons have been a little less productive, in a way. As I drew near to level 5 on Duolingo, I found myself increasingly frustrated that I haven’t seemed to be retaining anything for quite some time. So I went back to the beginning of level 3 and have been re-taking lessons to try to actually learn the words being taught, rather than just get it good enough to pass Duolingo’s multiple choice method and moving on. It hasn’t been easy, as I often find I max out the levels in a lesson before I fully retain everything it taught me. It’s also slow going, as I go back to previous finished lessons every few days to ensure I still remember everything. However, it feels better knowing that I am learning these words now. It’ll just be a while before I actually progress with my knowledge.
• Planting has begun. The tomatoes I started have taken off very quickly and need to be transplanted into their final home; bell peppers have sprouted nicely; and I started broccoli seeds, though they haven’t been doing quite as well and I’m still not sure if I should restart them. I picked up other seeds from the grocery store and after the frost we got yesterday morning, I’m hoping we’re in the clear enough to start planting the outdoor garden. Also, the tulips I planted out front last autumn are coming up and that makes me happy.
• Art? What’s that?

I think that’s pretty much my last two months in a nutshell. That and waiting, Disney princess-style, for my COVID-19 vaccine to come…

February wrap-up

I meant to write more blog posts about my endeavours in January, but, well, now it’s March.

First, of course, is writing. I didn’t make a lot of progress with the third Sisters of Chaos book in January, as I spent much of the month rereading my draft from last year and making notes on how to begin my edits. I also cut fully a third of last year’s writing, 30,000 words, from the draft. By the end of the month, I had just finished rewriting the opening scene of the book.

By the end of February, I rewrote the next three scenes from that character’s POV and then reviewed them again. Despite the trouble the same strategy left me with the second book, I’ve decided to focus on one character’s scenes at a time for the time being. (And really, the problems with doing it this way with the second book mainly equated to fitting all the scenes together, and I’m going to have some reshuffling to do with this book anyway.) While I have plenty of editing to do on following scenes, I at least don’t have to completely rewrite these next ones.

I still wish I had made more progress in February, though I have been fighting seasonal affective disorder in the first part of this year, which has affected my motivation for writing. It’s also had me throwing myself into media escapes—namely, reading the Wings of Fire books and continuing to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Of the former, I’ve read the first eight books, and of the latter, after more than forty hours of game play, I’m not halfway through yet. Both have proven incredibly addicting, so after deleting my latest mobile time-waster game, I tend to spend free time when I’m not feeling writing or don’t want to get completely lost in a book or game watching YouTube videos.

I want to spend more time working on my book, however. I know it needs a fair bit of work still, but I don’t want this first round of edits to take as long as writing 120,000 words did.

As for updating this blog more often… well, we’ll see.

Here we go again

My early adulthood flew by at high speed. Weeks passed in a blink and years blurred into each other. It was, frankly, a little scary, particularly with what I heard from those of previous generations that the older you get, the faster your life goes.

Once I had my daughter, however, time seemed to slow down; or rather, I felt the passing time much more keenly. After all, there is a big difference in a year of a child’s life, and looking back, it certainly felt like a significant period of time had passed. It has been a blessedly ongoing state of mind.

Now, however, as I look back on 2020, I’m feeling the same sense of disbelief that it’s been so long as I felt in my twenties. I was there, obviously; I lived through it all, suffered the same stress and know that I did so, but now that the year has finally turned, I’m amazed that it’s already gone.

And, despite that my family and I were homebound for much of the year, it’s not as though nothing happened. I released eight new books, twice as many as the previous best year for Brain Lag, one of them my own, and wrote the first draft of a new one. I doubled my reading goal for the year, played through several video games, and continued learning Japanese and guitar. Celebrated birthdays and my fifteenth anniversary. Got a kitten and watched her grow up into a crazy little cat.

Some things did fall by the wayside, of course. All my in-person events planned for the year were cancelled. Rarely got out into nature or took photographs or, of course, interacted with other people. While it has been nice to have nearly all my weekends free, I have missed conventions, and the number of photos I took with my good camera this year dropped steeply.

But, I am here, I made the best of it, and I and my family are safe. I can’t complain in the face of that.

So, looking back at last year’s new year post, did I achieve my goals for 2020? For my reading goal: yes. All I really wanted to do was get through my physical TBRs, and I did that by summer. With conventions suspended, I bought only a handful of new ones, so I fully caught up with those, and began going through the ebooks I have collected over the years.

I also finally kicked the habit of playing pointless mobile games in down time and drastically reduced the amount of TV (read: YouTube) I watched in the evenings, giving me more reading time. By the end of the year, I surpassed my goal of 23 books to finish 46. (Again, not counting the books read for Brain Lag.)

My only other main goal of 2020 was to finish the first draft of the final book of my Sisters of Chaos trilogy, and as I posted here a month ago, I finished that in November. I should have spent more time working on the story last month, but I rode the success of having finished the draft too much, and barely added 1,000 words. Also, I baked a lot of cookies after hours instead of writing. And read, and played video games…

I did a fairly good job of maintaining other healthy habits this year. I’m closing on a two-year daily streak on DuoLingo for Japanese (minus a handful of cheat days). I may not feel very proficient in the language, but it’s learning, anyway. I had a bit of a lull with guitar practice in early fall, but I have made further progress with it. I even learned a new song on piano, which I hadn’t touched in many years, though lack of good instruction kept me from progressing any more with it.

Overall, I’m pretty content with my progress for last year. Pleased, even.

I’m not really in competition with myself, so for 2021, I’m going to set my reading goal at a nice even 30 and see where I end up.

Writing is a little trickier. I don’t anticipate needing to, and don’t want to, spend a long time in the first round of edits, but it’s hard to guess at how long it’s going to take. Perhaps by mid-year I can get the draft out to beta readers, and given a couple of months for them to go over it, I should hopefully be well on my way to a final draft by the end of 2021.

For everything else, again, I don’t really have progress goals, I just want to maintain habits. Thanks to a sale on my preferred guitar instruction app, I have more time with which to practice, and intend to continue doing so. Japanese I’m content with trying to reach my daily goal; I’m just learning it for fun, not really out to master it or reach any particular level of proficiency in any given period of time. Perhaps I should make some goals for finishing some of the video games I’ve had piling up over the past couple years. One a month should be doable, and will make a good dent in the pile.

2020 was a pretty messy year, but we can only do what we can do, and vow to do our best going forward.

I’m ready for it. Let’s do this.