Et tu, Muse?

Hello friends. Have you ever gotten near to the end of a project, and all of a sudden every other project is super interesting? Or, in the case of my current brain, all of a sudden, there are new ideas everywhere. I’ve written more new things into my idea file in the last week than probably the last six months combined. Why do we do this? (Or maybe it’s just me?) While I’m close to the end of my revision (we’re firmly in Act 3 now) I still probably have at least a month more, maybe two. And that’s only going to get longer if I get distracted by every shiny thing my brain finds for me. And, holy cow, my brain is actively searching for shiny things. They’re everywhere. And you know that if I gave in and actually switched to one of these new projects, my brain would also give up on that one, or try to redirect me to something else, or decide now is an excellent time for a fanfiction hyperfixation. (oh no, I’m giving myself ideas.) Is this normal? I know other writing friends have this happen, but arguably no writer is normal, so this is a terrible litmus. If you too get distracted in the home stretch or find that you’re actively sabotaging yourself, what do you do to counteract it? My current technique is to tell myself that as soon as I finish my revision I’ll dedicate a month to chaos, where we…

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Not So SAD

It’s March, friends! Not only that, the first Tuesday of the month (my blogging day) went sailing by when I wasn’t looking…whoops. Somehow, somewhen, we’re already into the third month of the year and almost up to the time change (except for those lucky folks who live in places like Arizona…ahem). I’m generally surprised by how fast Time is going these days. It doesn’t help that Toronto has been experiencing our warmest winter on record, which also bodes poorly for the planet. But…I kind of hate our “normal” winters, all grey and slush and cutting, damp winds. Without those last two, the grey is much easier to bear. I tend to struggle with SAD at this time of year, between January and March. This year…I’ve been waiting for it, and for the most part, it just hasn’t turned up. Why? Well, the weather could be a major contributing factor, of course. Or the Vitamin D that I’ve been mostly remembering to take for a change. It could be the ongoing culinary experiments — I’ve been making a point of trying new recipes and ingredients. Most recently, I’ve done ratatouille, stir-fry with broccolini, butternut squash & white bean chili, and tonight, Spanish lima bean stew (I’m on a bean kick). It could even be the (shhh) writing — I spent February doing writing prompts, a few hundred words a day, and rereading one of my favourite writing craft books, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. (Bird by Bird by Anne…

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A Day Late and…You Know

It is 8:30 p.m. and I am already posting a day late. I don’t know what to tell you–sometimes the brain it just won’t work. Last week I enjoyed a glorious five days in a row off work. One of the things I did was to take off to Sedona. I love Sedona. So much. Oh, hey! you’re probably thinking. Is this going to be another blog post full of rambling and pretty pictures? Yup. Though probably not a lot of rambling, as it’s already 9:45. What can I say? The brain. It don’t work. Here’s the cabin we called home for the weekend. It’s one room with a full bed and a pair of bunk beds, but also the very important heater as it got down to freezing both nights. No, seriously. I don’t plan to talk much at all. Check this out. My child told me I caught a UFO! I told them that must be lens flare somehow–it wasn’t there when I took the picture. They told me then it’s an orb (think ghost.) It’s just a tree, but I like it. It’s a gnarly tree! All of these were taken on my phone, by the way. It’s a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and I love the camera so much I put up with the dang huge phone in my tiny hands. Full moon! I was trying for a nice edgy shot with the branches against the moon. Works a lot better without the branches. GEEZ I…

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Email Inbox Woes

So, why is this post being written at 2:15am on Wednesday instead of on Tuesday like it’s supposed to be? Well, I could tell you about a few things: a work emergency, a dental emergency that’s caused me to have an even more erratic sleep schedule for the past few days, but…actually, I just spent the past hour going through my email inbox. Trying to get things cleared out and ready for my night. Because anxiety. Because it’s the first (or second) thing I do. Because I have toooooo many things coming through, and it’s just getting out of hand. A Facebook post in a group I’m in actually inspired this post. People were comparing notes on how many unread emails were in their email inboxes and giving and receiving advice on how to clear them out…if at all. I saw some pretty huge numbers there, which honestly gave me heart palpitations, so I felt just a tiny bit better. But only a bit. See, I just went through a massive unsubscribe purge recently, which helped the situation a lot. But…there’s still a lot of business emails, and emails coming from people that I follow and want to read, but when these emails pour in, I just want to hide. Seriously. An hour a day, folks. I’ve joked that I need an assistant just to manage my email. I also routinely get those all-important business emails in spam despite whitelisting numerous times, so there’s always a spam email sweep added…

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Building in Procrastination

Heya, friends! I hope everyone enjoyed Across Worlds with You! (And if you missed it, all nine parts are now available in the freebies section!) Here we are, mid-February, about a month and a half into the year (which is a little crazy if you think about it). Last month I talked about why I thought everyone tends to be so productive at the beginning of January as well as my goals for the year, which including adding in side goals in reading, art, and video games and whether or not I thought that was going to be a bad idea. And now that we’re six weeks in, I’m going to say–I think they were a good idea. I can’t always concentrate on my big project. I’m not sure anyone is actually capable of 100% focus on their main project at all times. I’m tired from work, or I only have ten minutes before I need to go do something, or my brain is just fried in general. What I found last year was that when I hit these times I tended toward binging YouTube or playing hours of Minesweeper or something along those lines, which was frustrating because I was not doing what I wanted to be doing and also wasn’t enjoying my time doing whatever it was I was doing instead. So what I’ve found with the addition of the side goals is that instead of defaulting to the dumbest thing possible when I can’t work up motivation,…

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Black Histories and Afrofuturisms

It’s Black History Month in Canada and the US, friends. I would encourage you to listen to and amplify Black voices this month (and every month). Here are some I’ve been listening to and reading, and some I’m looking forward to… Listening Reading Kai Ashante Wilson, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. This fantasy novella is a bloody sword-and-sorcery adventure elevated by the way the author plays with language. The main character, Demane, code-switches between Black American slang and other dialects when he’s speaking, while the narration is more poetic and literary. It’s set in a secondary world based on Africa – and I do mean Africa as a whole, because there’s a lot of travelling and we get a sense of places beyond the edges of the story, too. And the characters are all beautifully drawn, from Demane’s queer love interest (no HEA, though) to the caravan security grunts they’re travelling with. One of the best books I read last year. Tochi Onyebuchi, Riot Baby. A near-future novella full of violence, suffering, and anger about what it can look like to be Black in America, and yet it’s also about love, protection, and hope. It’s fierce in so many senses of the word. Nalo Hopkinson, Sister Mine. This is a wild contemporary-fantasy ride through complex family relationships, demigods, Toronto, hoodoo, lake monsters, cats, music, kudzu, and more…as you can tell by the wonderful cover. Brown Girl in the Ring has many of the same elements and is equally cool. N.K.…

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Standing Up for Myself

Apparently, scientists are finding that too much sitting is as bad for you as smoking. That’s pretty scary! Especially considering I spend much of my work day on the computer, then come home and spend a lot of my evening trying to write books (or on the computer avoiding writing books. Don’t judge.) I’ve been watching the studies, and if anything they’ve become more convinced of this. And, oddly enough, I do like to stand up to type–it’s unexpected, but I do it sometimes, because i just don’t want to sit anymore, or I want to dance, or whatever. I do it. Until my back hurts from bending over the desk, anyway, and then I sit down, because what choice do I have? Well, now I have a choice. After literal years of watching the price for an adjustable desk go from $500 to $350 to $275–I found a highly-rated one on great sale for about $150. And I pounced. Unfortunately, I don’t have room for two desks. So. Pour one out for my old friend. I’ve written a couple books at this desk, and edited more. But. I want to stand up sometimes. It’ll be good for me, and also fun, since I have a balance board. I even caught a good simultaneous sale on an under-the-desk treadmill! So. Time for some furniture assembly. As I told my family (with a lot of swear words) –if you have a choice, never try to put something together with the garbage…

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Journaling for Self-Love

So, one of my goals for 2024 was to cultivate more self-love/self-care for myself. And I had a brilliant idea one day in the shower (as one does). I decided to pull a Tarot card each day and think about what good quality I had that matched it — and journal a bit about it. For example, if I got The Chariot…the Chariot is about victory, attaining your goals, taking steps to move forward…I’d write about how I’m driven to succeed, I’m a go-getter, and how I’ve accomplished many of my goals because of this. And so on. And then I thought, hey, it’d be cool to decorate this journal a bit, kinda like a scrapbook, make it kinda fun and pretty. I’m not the best scrapbooker, to be honest. I used to scrap back in the day, with my sister and a mutual friend (we even did those 12-hour events which were a blast) and I did okay, but my pages were never gorgeous. But they were decent. My sister brought me supplies in boxes for this project and one of them was mine. I saw some of my old stuff, and I was a bit taken aback because…wow…twenty-some-odd years ago…I didn’t even remember creating those pages…and they were of things I’d done with my ex-husband…but they weren’t bad. Not at all. The journal is for me only, so I am not about making it perfect. Just fun and pretty. I want to add pictures and poetry and collage-type…

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Chaos and Snow

Good morning, friends. Look at me, posting when I am supposed to and early in the day (pay no attention to the fact that this month’s installment of Across Worlds with You was a week late, and purely because I spaced it completely, not because it wasn’t ready). Despite time being arbitrary and all that jazz we talked about last month, there is something a bit magical about January, isn’t there? A feeling of potential, that there’s so much that could be done this year. I think it lulls you into a false sense of security. Sure, you can get a ton done in January! You have plenty of free time! The holidays are behind you (though not completely behind me, as the Christmas tree still needs to be moved to the basement), there’s potentially a bunch of days off of work for less prep-intensive holidays, sometimes it’s below zero for days on end and the whole state gives up, things like that. Add in the general feeling from the cultural zeitgeist that you can do anything because it’s a new year, and it’s really no wonder that everyone crashes in February. That being said, I am having a great January. This, too, is a false sense of security. Because I can already see what I’ve done. Traditionally I set a bunch of goals–writing goals, reading goals, art goals, video game goals, health goals, etc. Last year I cut them all out except for a single writing goal (finish a…

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2023 at Turtleduck Press

You may have noticed that things have been a little quieter around here this past year. Your intrepid authors have been dealing with home repair crises (if anyone breathes the word “plumbing” in KD’s vicinity, she’ll send the piranhas after you). Also, family crises, health crises, the occasional good thing that doesn’t involve our computer keyboards, and… *gestures wildly* you know, all that distracting stuff that keeps happening in the rest of the world. The more Life happens outside our heads, the harder it is to get into our heads and make the stories happen. So it’s a wonder that we’re all still here and cracking jokes, but we are. And occasionally we’re even writing stuff! In 2023, we released one long(er) work of fiction for sale as an ebook, my own Voice of the Sea, featuring a post-fossil-fuel world, clashing worldviews, and a certain undersea fairy tale. Oh, and lots of ocean descriptions, just because I can. (Any guesses as to which ocean?) Kit kept the lights on at TDP the rest of the year by releasing a fantasy serial, Across Worlds with You. Look for the latest installment, number 8, next week! Erin has been writing (and publishing!) poetry elsewhere, and KD did NaNoWriMo for the first time in…a while…so creative things are happening — just not always things that are measurable in TDP publications. Thanks for hanging in there with the four of us. We’ll be here, plugging away, one page at a time. After all, that’s…

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