Home Articles posted by Kit Campbell (Page 6)

Freaky Fast February

Is it just me or is the shortest month of the year feeling REALLY short this year? That’s my excuse for posting today instead of Tuesday. Yes. But also, what, Monday is halfway through the month? What have I accomplished? Where has the time gone? (I am, at least, on top of Valentine’s Day. I pre-ordered heart-shaped pizza for my family.) (I can’t eat pizza unless I want to regret my life, so I pre-ordered something else for myself.) (Don’t tell my family, it’s a surprise.) Seriously, though, I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing all month. Mostly I’ve been focused on what I hope is the final revision of the first book of a high fantasy trilogy I’ve been working on for literally forever, but it’s not really getting anywhere. Which is quite frustrating, because I have the time and energy necessary, but am lacking direction. So maybe that’s why the month feels like it’s getting away from me. Lack of accomplishment. Or maybe it’s just going by really fast. Time is weird, especially lately, amirite? What do you think, friends? How’s time flowing for you this month?

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Oof, I Say

Last week, Siri expressed her hope that 2021 would be better than 2020. And then the next day happened, so that hope’s already been shattered. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m really not. I recently went back and looked at my posts from late 2019/early 2020. I was so optimistic, so ready. I had so many plans and was looking forward to getting them done. And then 2020 happened. I’ve wanted to be excited about it being a new year, but I haven’t been able to get up the energy to. I did eventually come up with goals for the month and year (like, late on the first), but I haven’t really acted on them. (Part of that has been because I have a client edit that’s taking up most of my time. Part of that is that I’ve got an Among Us tournament that starts tomorrow, so I’ve been practicing that so I don’t embarrass myself. I mean, I probably will anyway, but here’s hoping.) Do you feel that? Just…vaguely apathetic? I want to be doing things. I have lots of things I want to get done. But actually doing them…it feels like too much, sometimes. I’m hoping I’ll feel more into things once some of my current commitments finish up. Or maybe the world will get its act together. Anyway, how are you? Any tips?

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Tis the Season for Procrastination

Hi, friends! Can you believe it’s almost 2021? I can’t! This year has both been extremely long (things that happened in February feel like ten years ago) and too short (ah! It’s the end of the year already?). The holidays have snuck up on me. I’d like to pretend that’s caused by 2020, but, to be fair, they do every year. For some reason I can’t seem to ever do any Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. My brain can’t process it or something. But then what happens is that I only have a few weeks to do everything, and I get overwhelmed and shut down, which makes it harder to get everything done, repeat ad naseum. This is why I can never carry my Nanowrimo momentum through December. Very frustrating. A side effect of being overwhelmed is that I am an expert procrastinator. December is perhaps the worst month for it, too, because I’ll tell myself things like “It’s the holidays, you should make sure you’re enjoying them” and then spend two hours on YouTube. (In case you’re curious, I am almost completely done with my shopping now. I have to do my brother and his new wife–I’m thinking gift certificate somewhere–and some little things for stockings. Also my husband has informed me that he’s gotten me four presents and expects an equal amount of things to open. I got him one expensive present, so I may go buy some Reese’s Cups and wrap them or something.) (I am only about…

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What a Year This Week Has Been

As evidenced by the fact that it’s Thursday and I was supposed to post this on Tuesday. It’s been a week, hasn’t it? There was the never-ending U.S. presidential election that ended, but also kind of didn’t because certain people are being sore losers. At this point I’m so tired of the whole thing that I can’t even be bothered to be frustrated. There was the vaccine news that seemingly went nowhere. There were bizarre rumors about Putin resigning and Tumblr got taken over by Destiel going canon. And COVID-19 cases are reaching their highest levels and the schools are shutting back down, thus depriving me of the little free time I’d managed to scrounge up over the last month. (I already miss it.) God, I’m so tired. In March, when everything shut down, did any of us think we’d still be here now? I mean, logically, I think we knew, but emotionally, no. Are we ever going to get to see our extended families again? Our friends? Go to new places and try new things? It’s almost worst now. Back in March and April, when we were all home, we adapted. I had virtual coffee dates with friends and we did a virtual Easter lunch with our family. But now, it’s like people are trying to squeeze out what normalcy they can, and we’ve mostly gotten the responsibilities back instead of the good times. Man. I am depressing myself. This year has been so weird. Things that happened in…

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Halloween in COVID Times

Hi, friends! It’s October, best month of the year! The weather’s finally cooling off, the leaves are turning (and hopefully will get all the way done before a snowstorm kills them all), I can wear boots without looking like a crazy person, etc. And normally there’s Halloween! I mean, there’s still Halloween. But this year it’s a bit anxiety-inducing, isn’t it? What’s safe? What isn’t? How do I still make it fun for the small, mobile ones? They’ve recommended against trick-or-treating, and it feels like the trunk-or-treats have the same issues (which, I’m assuming, are “lots of people touching the same things” and also “the potential for someone COVID-positive to spread a lot of germs and make it near impossible to contact trace”). Next Door has announced their Halloween map for the year. Normally you can mark that you’re giving out goodies and any specifics (for example, I normally take part in the Teal Pumpkin movement, where having a teal pumpkin set out indicates you have alternatives for kids who can’t eat candy due to allergies), but this year your options are for having decorated, doing a costume wave parade (where, I’m assuming again, you stand outside and wave at the kids and admire their costumes?), or having put out pumpkins. Sad times. I know people who are still planning on handing out candy to trick or treaters (bad idea, but I’m not surprised), or doing an alternative like setting individually wrapped candy out on a table (if you think…

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A Plethora of Star Trek

Hi, friends! When we went into lockdown, I thought I’d be watching more TV and movies. But I didn’t. In fact, I still have a movie out from the library that I got in mid-March right before they shut down. (They’re…probably going to want that back.) When I have watched TV, though, it has been almost exclusively Star Trek. We have a plethora of new Trek right now! It’s great! (Until you get into comments on YouTube or Facebook and find they’re all full of whining about how things aren’t Trek enough, or how they’ve gone all SJW–like they ever weren’t–or how it’s just scifi and not Trek and the heck is wrong with these people? They’re stuck in a nostalgia that never really existed, I think. Also, why do people complain when they get more of their favorites? The lesson here is don’t read the comments on anything.) First we finished the second season of Discovery, which was really good! And I love all the characters so much, which is really the point, you know? No one sat through the early seasons of Next Generation because it was a good TV show, if you know what I mean. (If not, the first two seasons of Next Gen are…bad. There, I said it.) They sat through it because they liked Data or Geordi or Deanna or whoever was their character of choice and they liked to watch them have space adventures. (Though “adventures” in conjunction with Next Gen isn’t always…

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Taming the Beast, by Kit Campbell

Taming the BeastKit Campbell Mortimer the Magnificent leaned forward, his focus completely on the task in front of him. He almost had it…just a few more inches… There was a knock on his door, startling him. The replica of Gildrun’s sword, tiny and perfect, fell from his fingers, clanging onto the table in front of his model of the great hero’s historic defense of Longswallow. Mortimer sighed; it never failed. The knocking continued. Mortimer frowned at his model, but there was no use going back to it, not with that ruckus. He pushed to his feet, crossed the room, and pulled the door open just as the man on the other side of it started to knock yet again. Mortimer calmly dodged the man’s fist. “Can I help you?” “Oh, ah, yes.” The man took off his hat, holding it with both hands. “I’m looking for Mortimer the Magnificent.” Oh, no, not this again. “You’ve found him.” “I have?” The man tried to discreetly examine Mortimer and failed miserably. “You’re Mortimer?” Mortimer was never quite sure what they were expecting to see. A slight man in glasses and a worn cardigan never seemed to be it. The man scuttled back, starting to bow but then apparently deciding otherwise halfway through the motion. He fidgeted with the hat in his hands. “Hector says you got rid of his dragon problem.” Mortimer had no idea who Hector was, but suspected he knew where this was going. “Yes…?” The man fidgeted more. Mortimer…

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Not Going to Talk About the Pandemic, I Swear

We’ll see how far I get. I mean, I’m still scatter brained as all get out, but I feel like I’m slowly starting to adjust and make progress on things. WE’LL SEE. I mean, I forgot to put red peppers on the grocery list, and it’s possible just a few minutes ago I called my husband to ask where he’d hidden the red peppers that I need to make dinner. And it’s also possible that he had no idea what I was talking about. It’s also possible that I spent an hour and a half this afternoon playing phone games instead of editing a certain short story I owe people or, you know, remembering it was my turn to blog. I blame the non-existent red peppers. That I still need for dinner. Siri always talks about her vegetable garden, which always makes me a bit jealous. You see, I also have a vegetable garden, but invariably something goes wrong and I don’t get much out of it. This year we made it larger and built a fence (the dog keeps eating the irrigation) and deployed Tertill, a weeding robot made by the same company that invented the Roomba. (We kickstarted Tertill a few years ago, but didn’t get to use it last year because we didn’t do a garden. Here’s an intro video for it.) The plan was to plant corn, chamomile, cantaloupe, carrots, broccoli, onions, cucumbers and sugar peas. We planted everything except the chamomile over a few weeks,…

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Still Here

Did any of us think we’d be here four months in? Our local renfaire just cancelled their season. Normally it runs early June through the first weekend of August. They’d decided to delay and open mid-August, but with no improvements (and the trend going the wrong way) they finally pulled the plug. Yesterday the school district sent out an email stating they were moving the start of school back two weeks. There’s no end in sight. Oy vey. And then there’s everything else going on. It’s exhausting. I am exhausted. I am also not getting nearly as much done as I’d like to–and normally would–be doing. Logically, I understand this is Okay. I have seen the articles about how trauma works, and how this is traumatic and it is perfectly reasonable to be having a rough go of it. But good Lord. I did some research this morning about the Spanish Flu. You can’t escape the comparisons, and of course the Internet had a field day about having a pandemic 100 years after the last one (though the height of the Spanish Flu was 1918-1919, so it’s actually more than 100 years). (I actually, back in March or April–I can’t remember since that was a million years ago–I read a novel that took place during the Spanish Flu. I think they only closed the schools in the book for, like, two months or something, though.) It took over a year for everything to settle down from that, and even then,…

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Cover Reveal: The Best of Turtleduck Press, Vol. 2

Hey-ho, everyone! In celebration of our tenth anniversary here at TDP, we’re releasing the second volume in our Best of Turtleduck Press anthology series. Siri introduced you to the anthology last week, so I’m here today to reveal our cover. It’s been great fun to go back through our old stories and pick out our favorites. More information soon!

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