Home Articles posted by Kit Campbell (Page 4)

Any Procrastination in a Storm

Good afternoon, friends. It has come to my attention that I am bad at priorization. I say that because I’ve been working on my book description for Hallowed Hill for like a month now and have yet to finalize it. But neither have I finished anything else useful in that time frame. You see, my brain seems to work like this: Have important project that needs to be done Panic because important project is IMPORTANT and must be done right Decide to work on other, less important projects because Important Project is overwhelming, and then at least things get done Cannot focus on other projects because Important Project is outstanding Fall apart Play Solitaire I’m really good at Solitaire. Earlier in the week I made a list of everything that needs to get done in the hopes that I could then make some headway because it was all written down, but instead I’ve only done one thing and have been existing in a vague form of panic. I’m getting real sick of my executive dysfunction here. I have Things To Do. And I swear I used to be way better at this. Like, I would sit down and get things done. And I could work on multiple things and make progress on all of them. Is this leftover COVID trauma? Is my brain going as I get older? Well, it will all get done eventually. Maybe if I sic my children on me. Like, tell them I need to be…

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Like Riding a Bike?

Hey, guys, how’s it going? I’m going to have a book coming out in October through Turtleduck Press! But it’s been a long time (since City of Hope and Ruin in 2016) and I’ve realized I’ve got to relearn all the marketing stuff that I haven’t touched in a while. (I did put out two short story collections, containing stories I wrote for TDP plus a few new ones in there–The Short of It (2017) and Half-Formed Places (2021)–but those are different beasts entirely.) Between life and the pandemic and everything, I had a hard time keeping on top of what I was supposed to be doing, let alone extra things like keeping up with marketing trends and new methods, but the day has come to jump back in. I actually went to a webinar this morning! And I’ve promptly forgotten most of it, though my understanding is that they will send the video out so I can watch it again. The biggest thing I remember is that she recommended getting a launch/marketing specific calendar and putting everything on there, so it’s all in one place and you’re keeping track of it. Sounds good to me! Maybe it will come back to me, like riding a bike, but I’m skeptical. Bike riding is always the same, and marketing techniques are always changing. But I am excited to have the book coming out! It feels good to have something done after all this time, and especially after the last couple of…

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Unexpected Lack of Inspiration

Hi friends! We just returned from two weeks in Scotland, which was a lovely trip. We had great weather, the scenery was fantastic, and there were plenty of ruined (and not) castles to traipse around in. But I did find myself disappointed on one front–inspiration. I thought for sure I would find story inspiration all over the place. I love traveling, and I especially love the way different places’ legends and mythology are tied into their history. And Scotland seemed like inspiration central–the romanticized Highlands, the empty moors, mists and fae. The aforementioned castles. Loch Ness. But I didn’t find it. Maybe–maybe a lot of it–is that Scotland’s history is kind of the general European-centric medieval time period that a lot of fantasy typically espouses. It’s great learning about how castles functioned and who did what, and how, but it also kind of felt like that was stuff I already knew, you know? Part of it may be that this is a major part of my ethnic background, so I was already familiar with the history of the country, so while I was seeing places I’d only read about, I wasn’t necessarily learning anything new. Part of it may be that the Scots don’t seem to embrace the faerie aspects of Celtic mythology as much as, say, Ireland does. While there were places labeled Fairy Glens or Fairy Pools, it was clear that there was no actual mythology linked into those places. Only one castle tour even mentioned ghosts. Don’t…

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Oh, May, the Busiest Month of the Year

Hi, friends! It’s May. Every year May sneaks up on me. No matter how stressful the last May was, I always forget before May rolls around again, and then I am surprised by the amount of stuff that I suddenly need to do. I should put a reminder in my calendar. “BEWARE MAY” or something like that, that pops up around April 25th or so. May is the last month of school for the small, mobile ones. Which means there’s stuff like teacher gifts and a memory book for each child, plus one of their teachers is retiring, so there’s parties and gifts for that, and I’ve got to track down contact info for friends for playdates, and all that jazz. So much jazz. And then there’s a birthday to be done too, which I am never on top of because of other things and the fact that it’s right after school gets out, and there is so much work that needs to be done for a child’s birthday, not the least of which is the contact info issue mentioned above, and I have definitely lost the phone number said child brought home to me that I needed. There’s volunteer commitments, most of which circulate around said small, mobile ones, and so need to be done by the end of the school year as well. I am working on passing some of those off onto other parents, though, so hopefully that will be better in the future. There’s summer plans…

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Almost Normal

I hate to say it, friends, but the past few weeks have felt almost…normal. Like, pre-pandemic normal. Of course, things will never be the same again. 6 million people have died worldwide, the economy’s a wreck, and we all got into weird habits when we were stuck at home that may or may not stick with us over time. But, that being said… This past weekend we had a Scottish festival. The first one in the state since 2019. It was smaller than normal, and there were some people wearing face masks, but it felt…good. Normal. Like we’d turned some corner that we could do this again. And it was so good to see acquaintances and friends, even though some people were lost over the past few years. And last night, I went to a concert. An indoor concert. A nearly full concert, where we all sang along. I know some of you are cringing, so I will say I am triple vaxed and our COVID levels in the state are the lowest they’ve ever been, since we started tracking. Is it still a risk? Of course. But I do think it’s also a balancing act, between letting your fear rule your life and being safe. And I think, at least for me, it’s good to revel while you can. It’s only been two months since Omicron was everywhere, and we were all hunkered back down in our homes, and I’m sure that won’t be the last spike. And it’s…

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Years in the Making

Howdy, friends! I just returned from a trip. A trip I was supposed to take in 2020. In March of 2020. March 15, 2020. You can guess how that went. The trip in question was a Western Caribbean cruise out of New Orleans, making two stops in Mexico, one in Belize, and one in Honduras. Back in 2020, we’d been watching the situation closely. If you recall (and I know you do, though you may not remember when this happened because time has been weird since the pandemic started), in Feb 2020, the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship, had a major COVID-19 outbreak, which culminated in something like 700 people getting sick and the whole lot being stuck off the coast of Japan for weeks. And there was another Princess ship around then that had a COVID issue–the Grand Princess, which hung out off the coast of California forever. (We didn’t go on Princess, I just remember these situations in particular because they were awful.) In the end, we decided we wouldn’t go, because cruise ships were obviously death traps, and cancelled. And then they cancelled the cruise anyway. So we rebooked the trip for March 14, 2021. Surely we wouldn’t still be in lockdown and everything a year out. Ha. Haha. Anyway, when the 2021 cruise was cancelled, we again, dutifully, rebooked for 2022. Each time we rebooked we got a slightly bigger, nicer room due to incentives because the cruise lines were really hurting. With the Omicron wave…

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I Can Procrastinate Forever

Howdy, friends. (How goes the Encanto thing, you might ask. Well, we watched it again tonight, so, uh, good?) Last fall, frustrated with how my year was going and how I was not getting anything I’d planned done, I sat down to look at my writing goals and do some soul searching. And I came to the realization that everything I’d been doing–for years–was avoiding my main goal, which is to see a high fantasy trilogy I’ve been working on for over half my life in print. It was awful. I felt like I’d been wasting my life. And I understand why. I’ve put so much time into this one story, over so many years, that the idea of it being rejected, or not doing well, is almost paralyzing. But, anyway, long story short, I came to this realization and so set a goal for this year of seeing the first book revised so help me God. But. There’s always a but. At the time I came to the realization, I was in the middle of another draft. So, of course, it made sense to finish that first. Then I needed a novella to submit here, so that had to be done, and now there’s an anthology that needs working on, and you know, deadlines and so forth… It is a problem. But at least I can see that now, and understand my own motivations even if they are stupid. I’m telling you this, friends, so you can keep me…

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Help, It’s Got Me

Man, what a year thus far, amirite? I’m actually doing pretty well so far. Hopefully that will last, though I did lose two hours this morning to the soundtrack from Encanto. Not on purpose. There’s a song called We Don’t Talk About Bruno in the movie, and it’s been stuck in my head for about a week now. So, yesterday, I tried to knock it out by playing the song over and over and over and over, which is normally how I deal with this sort of problem. And it kind of worked! But then the small, mobile ones got it stuck in their heads, and they are perfectly happy to sing the same thing over 20 million times, so now it’s back. Yay. I even found a 1-hour loop of the best part of the song, but I think that might only be aggravating the problem. Anyway, very distracting. Send help. Or listen to the song and join the madness with me. This week has actually been pretty weird. I’m waiting on the results of a COVID test I did Monday morning, which means my whole week is in limbo. I can’t go back to work until I get the results, and I can’t plan anything til I get the results, and I also can’t, you know, hang out at coffee shops or run errands til I get the results. This is the first test I’ve had to take. I’ve been lucky thus far, so I haven’t had to…

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2021, A Liminal Year

Hello again, friends. Did you miss me? I at least know what day it is this month. Small steps. It’s December, in itself a liminal month, where the old year is essentially over but the new year hasn’t yet started. So it’s almost the time of year when one starts to think ahead to the one coming up. 2022. Can you believe it? We’re firmly into science fiction time periods now. But hasn’t 2021 just felt like a weird extension of 2020? Like, I can’t easily differentiate what happened when. A lot of that is the pandemic, but things I’m remembering happening last year are really from, like, February of this year. And who knows what happened last year. I don’t. But I also don’t feel like I can be optimistic about a new year. I’d like to think that I’ll get on top of everything again. I’d like to feel like a new year brings new opportunities. But I don’t. I’m just tired, and it feels like the world is falling apart around me. Anyway. Enough of that. Yeesh. My point is that 2021 doesn’t really seem to have happened. Or exist. It’s just 2020 part 2. So here’s hoping that 2022 feels like it’s own year, amirite? Anyway, I won’t see you guys again til the new year, so here’s hoping you wrap up everything you want to and make happy plans come 2022. Best of luck, take care of yourselves, and remember that the holidays are about…

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November Has Fried My Brain

What day is it? Where am I? Who are you? Oh, friends, what is happening? Don’t ask me, I don’t know. Like KD, I’m also doing Nano this year. But is it going well? It is not. And, I mean, the story itself is going fine! It’s fun to write, and the writing is flowing reasonably well. But everything else is kind of melting around it. Seriously. Problems are cropping up left and right, deadlines have come out of the woodwork, people I’ve been trying to get a hold of for months are finally calling me back, and there’s work happening that I scheduled months ago. I haven’t been this busy in a long time. They say that having more on your plate helps you get more done, but at some point you also start to lose track of what’s happening around you. Or things get forgotten about because you’ve got twenty things you’re trying to keep track of. Or your to-do list gets so long it’s overwhelming to even look at it. I want to say that it’s going to get better soon. But I also know that it isn’t. Even if I manage to get on top of everything that’s going on right now, there’s fifteen other things that I’m ignoring for my own sanity that will, eventually, need to be dealt with. Plus the holidays are coming up ridiculously fast and all the grandparents want ideas, and they are very impatient about waiting for answers. Is there…

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