Doing Great!

As evidenced by this post being three days late. How are you, friend? Anyway, I’m in the midst of an experiment, and I shall tell you about it because it involves you too. So, every so often, we here at TDP sit down and look at what we’re doing, and whether or not what we’re doing is successful, and what we could potentially do to be more successful, etc., etc., et al. One of the things we looked at recently involved our free shorts here on the website. We’ve been doing free shorts since we launched in 2010, to middling usefulness. So we looked at the shorts and how they were doing, and the data says that serial parts have, almost across the board, performed better than the stand alone shorts. So we’re trying a move to just serials, and no more stand alones. We decided that instead of mixing and matching serials, we’d have one person who would be the serial person for the year, and they’d write and then release a serial over however months were necessary for the story. So that leads me to here. (I volunteered to be the guinea pig.) No, this ain’t my first serial rodeo. But I did decide that, this time, I’d write the whole story at once. This is new. Every serial I’ve ever written I write the needed part as necessary. I’ve never done the whole thing before parts started going live. The thing about writing a serial as you…

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New Friend

Surprise! IT’S ME because I switched weeks with Siri. HaHA. (I have not been sleeping well and I think it’s starting to catch up to me. Does it show?) In the continuing saga of buying random crap in a sad and misguided attempt to improve my life, I have bought a new friend. (Well, technically I used a gift card from my birthday to buy a new friend. Is shopping therapy more or less affective if it’s not actually your money you’re using?) Anyway, here he is. Aw, look at that! He’s so happy to see you! OR NOT Anyway. I saw these advertised as tools to help neurodivergent children who might otherwise have difficulty properly displaying, communicating, or understanding their feelings. (They sell different expression combinations.) Now, I am not a neurodivergent child (that I am aware of) but they’re super cute and it also seemed like maybe I could use it as a writing tool. Hear me out. The project I’ve been working on has been a bit slow going, because I’ve been working on it forEVER and now it has emotional and mental baggage attached to it. And something that can help when you’re running into issues is designating a trigger object, whose basic use is to tell your brain that it is Writing Time and since the object is present it is time to Be Writing. So, I thought to myself, here is a trigger object I can use. It’s cute, it’s small, it’s distinctive. ALSO…

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I Bought a New Water Bottle

Hello, friends. I’m trying to take steps to become more healthy, and the first thing I’m doing (one thing at a time, so as to not overwhelm myself and to make sure I’m actually making new habits before adding new things) is working on my hydration. I tend to be a binge hydrator–not drink any water for hours and then drink a couple glasses at once–which makes me feel sick. Also, I’m likely not getting enough water in general. So, to take steps to remedy this, I bought a new water bottle. It looks like this: You’ve probably seen these before. I’ve been using it for two weeks now, and I’ve got to say, it’s working great. I’ve more or less stayed right where I’m supposed to be according to the markings every day, or if I’ve had to leave it for a few hours, I’m still aware of where I am for the day. And I do feel better. Like, just generally better. More energized. Better mood-wise. Less achy. Like my parts are well lubricated and working better. Step 2 is eating more vegetables, which I’m less sure about how to manage, but we’ll see. Anyway, I highly recommend regulating your water intake. I’ve seen such a good improvement in such a short time. Maybe after a month everything else will fix itself too. Thoughts on vegetables, friends? We normally have them with dinner (and hence sometimes with lunch, which is often leftovers) and I’ve been trying to eat…

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Why Does My Brain Hate Productivity?

Howdy, friends! How’s the new year treating you? We’re supposed to have a massive snowstorm starting tonight, so that’s fun, she said sarcastically. I think I told you guys this at some point, but at the end of 2021 I sat down with myself and had a heart to heart about what I was doing with my life, and I came out of that knowing that a lot of the things I’ve been working on for the last decade have been to either avoid or to justify a story I’ve been working on for literally ever. (Decades.) Because it’s scary, to put something you’ve put a lot of time and heart into, in case it fails. Because sometimes it’s hard to separate what you create from yourself, and if something you worked really hard on does badly, you can take it as a reflection of yourself. Anyway. I have, traditionally, set many different goals, normally on a monthly basis. Writing goals, drawing goals, reading goals, video game goals, workout goals. We’re talking, like, twenty goals per month. But what I’ve found, recently, is that I do these other goals instead of working on the above story, because hey, I’m being productive still! But I’m also still avoiding the main thing for the same reasons. So, for January 2023, I set just a single goal: work on my revision. Surely putting all my focus onto my main goal would make me do it, right? Well. I mean, I am working on…

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Who Designed This Thing?

Hello, friends. I am broken. I slipped a disc in my lower back, and said disc is pressing on my L5 nerve, which runs down the outside of my right leg. This is such a stupid problem. My leg thinks it’s getting stabbed constantly, when in reality it’s just got a bit of…(quick break to Google what discs are made of)…cartilege or gelatinous goo or something pressing on the nerve, nowhere near the leg itself. Plus my back hurts where the disc is out of place, and now, randomly, my hip also hurts, no doubt because I’ve been doing something dumb to try and minimize the pain from the other issues. It’s been three weeks now, and, if anything, the problem is getting worse, despite regular chiropractor and physical therapy appointments, exercises, and me taking things easy. It is ungodly frustrating. I feel like I can’t do anything, like my own body has betrayed me, yet, on the other hand, I feel like I’m being a huge baby, that lots of people live with chronic pain, and here I am, with a single point of inconvenience when normally I’m fine. Who designed these bodies? I have complaints. About the brain parts too. The whole pain system is stupid. In the great scheme of problems, a slipped disc is hardly anything. It’s not actually doing anything that bad. I still have most of my range of motion. Nothing is actually wrong with my leg, despite what it thinks. And yet it…

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noooo the holidays cometh

Do you know what’s in a week, friends? American Thanksgiving. Do you know who hosts Thanksgiving and hasn’t ordered a turkey yet? If you guessed me, you’re absolutely correct. (In my defense, the place I always order from went out of business about two months ago, and now I don’t know what to do.) It feels like as soon as November hit everything went full-bore toward Christmas and, for the life of me, I am not ready to do Christmas. Let me enjoy November! Let us at least get through Thanksgiving before we worry about Christmas! But, alas, it seems not to be. For example, the small-ish, mobile one’s school is having their Holiday Market, where they can buy presents without us parents knowing what they’ve gotten us, tomorrow. And I don’t know how many emails I’ve gotten that are titled something like “Haven’t gotten your Christmas cards yet?” I can only imagine how irritating this season is for people who don’t celebrate Christmas. The Christmas market downtown opens Saturday, as do a number of other Christmas-themed activities. Please. Please can we just wait until after Thanksgiving. I don’t even have a turkey. It also adds unnecessary stress, you know? I haven’t done my Christmas cards or bought presents or anything, and quite honestly I won’t until after Thanksgiving anyway, but now I have to worry about it. Thanks, commercialism. Any tips for keeping Christmas at bay for another week? Any tips at all? (help me)

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Playing Catch Up

Hi friends! Like Siri, I too love autumn (and am an autumn baby), and October is my very favorite month of the year! I just…feel very exhausted this October. It’s hard work, getting a book ready and then out! I’ve essentially done almost nothing but Hallowed Hill since, oh, May? June? Goodness, I don’t even remember. But I had to get the book ready, and then I needed to do marketing, and publishing, etc., and it was A LOT. And now the book is out! And aside from generally poking it (and fighting with Amazon, which keeps losing bits of things) it doesn’t require a lot of my attention anymore. So now I can move on to all the other stuff I should have been working on, right? I mean, in theory. But generally I am just tired. MileHiCon is this month, which I’ve been doing for, oh, eight years or so. I’ve got copies of Hallowed Hill ordered, and I’ve submitted my permits and have my panel schedule and all that jazz, but there’s still stuff to do. I need to figure out a card reader, and do panel research (maybe–I’ve already forgotten what panels I’m on. I had to drop the dinosaur panel which was devastating), and I’m pondering maybe making little booklets with the excerpt, or the first chapter, in them to hook people into buying the book. Or maybe I’ll just do bookmarks. But I’ve got to figure that out. And I’ve got a big volunteer…

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This is My Emotional Support Game

Hi, friends! I’m deep into the preparation for Hallowed Hill’s release on Oct 1, and so I’m also operating with more stress and anxiety than normal. Yay! Life is fun. I don’t know if you remember, but in the depths of lockdown (late 2020/early 2021) I was playing a lot of Among Us. I mean, a LOT of Among Us. I joined a Discord server specifically for that, where we played for hours a day, and I even did a few tournaments (and placed). At the end of March, Among Us released the long awaited Airship map, and–the whole thing fell apart. As lockdown restrictions lessened, everyone went back to work or school or wherever, and no one was available to play anymore. No one wanted to play anymore. We’d burned out. My server stayed together–we still hang out and chat–but we didn’t really play AU anymore, aside from every now and again, or the odd round of Vent Tag. Now, about a month ago, two of the mods on said server started organizing AU games again. Regularly. Turns out they’d accidentally found another server where people WERE still playing on a regular basis (and weren’t jerks–I had to leave one AU server because of that). Those of us that were interested got invited over, and now I’m playing AU again, on a regular-ish basis, eighteen months after I more or less stopped. It’s not the same game. Oh no. The bigger lobbies actually make lying way easier, because there’s…

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Introducing Hallowed Hill: Cover Reveal and Excerpt

Hallowed Hill, a YA gothic horror, is currently available for pre-order and will be released on Oct 1. Martie’s class was near the end of the row, with a spongy blue floor and a mirror across the entire front of the room. Eight other students were there, only one of whom she recognized from her own grade. And, of course, that one person was Sinclair. Martie took a deep breath. Sure, she’d gotten off on the wrong foot with Sinclair, but aggravating her was only going to make things harder. And things were already hard enough. If she wanted to survive where apparently others had failed—and she should really follow up on that—she needed allies, not enemies. “Hey,” she said, walking up to where Sinclair was stretching her arms over her head. “I wanted to apologize for the gas station thing earlier.” Sinclair was wearing a gi. It was black and had no ornamentation. Without replying to Martie, she bent over and touched the floor behind her feet. Oh well. Baby steps, she guessed. The instructor stood near the front of the room, watching everyone stretch. She was a small Asian woman, wearing the same gi as everyone else. She stared at Martie as she approached, then, without a word, beckoned for Martie to follow her to a closet off on the side of the room. She selected a uniform from several unlabeled piles and handed it to Martie, then indicated the locker room across the way. Okay. Maybe talking…

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Hallowed Hill

Maybe you should look a gift horse in the mouth. After the sudden loss of her parents, 16-year-old Martie Torsney receives a surprise scholarship from a prestigious boarding school. This is the opportunity she needs to leave the heartbreak and echoes of her parents behind. Greyson Academy sits deep in the forests of Vermont, high on a hill overlooking the trees. The school has a long history of helping its students succeed in life. If Martie excels here, she’ll be set. But all is not well at Greyson. Scholarship students are very rare, and none has ever completed their time at Greyson. And, now, someone wants Martie gone too. Her things are moved, cryptic messages are left, and the school is vandalized in her name. But is it the living trying to scare her away–or the dead? Martie is determined to stay, for herself and for her parents’ memory. But staying may cost her more than she ever imagined. If you love ghost stories and mysteries, check out Hallowed Hill now! Buy the ebook here: ( Kindle | Smashwords | Kobo | Barnes&Noble | Apple )Buy the paperback here: ( Amazon )

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