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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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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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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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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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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Free Time Doesn’t Help

Hi friends! The small, mobile ones are back in school and have been for the last week. I’m getting so much done! She says sarcastically. (In case you’re wondering about the apron, I did eventually get it done, but I made it way too big somehow so it’s essentially useless. Sigh.) I was so looking forward to school starting. I was going to do so much! Write more, draw more, exercise more. Play video games. Watch TV shows! Have I done those things? Well, I have watched an entire season of Brooklyn 99. But mostly I’ve done…not really sure, to be honest. Some stuff around the house that needed doing. But otherwise… ??? (I would put the shrug emoji there but I don’t know how.) Isn’t it weird, how you look forward to free time? Like, I may not be getting as much done now as I want to, but it’s okay, because next week I’ll get lots done, or next month I’ll get lots done, or whenever, then I’ll be able to be productive. But then the free time comes and it’s so hard to actually focus on what you were planning to do. There’s probably some sort of professional psychology term for that. But I do know that they say that the more stuff you have to do, the more productive you are. That you fill the time you have with the things you have to do. Yet it’s so weird that you can have five hours to…

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