Month: September 2024

It’s Inktober time!

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It’s been a few years since I’ve actively joined in the fun with this! I’ve got the time, my plate is relatively well organized (if not always clear), and I’m not in the middle of some sort of major project or personal crisis or whatever has kept me from it in the past.

That’s how I’m going to focus on it this year: have fun with it! I’m not out to prove anything, I really shouldn’t try to aim for perfection with every single prompt. Just draw whatever comes to mind. It could be the first image that pops up in my brain, or it could be a ridiculous pun or a music reference (I mean, #16 just begs to be full of flannel shirts). Don’t think to hard, just have fun.

And that’s something I need to remind myself of more often!

Passing the time

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So, how is my little experiment with passing the time at work going?

Well, it could be going better to be honest. I’m still finding too many excuses (and they are excuses) not to pull out my phone and screw around on Threads for the short amount of time I have for breaks. I mean, fine, it’s downtime and there’s nothing inherently wrong with using said time to mindlessly scroll social media…but like I said, I don’t want to do it anymore, and I’m trying my damnedest to get OUT of that habit.

I’m just not trying hard enough, really.

On the plus side, though…I have been doing a damn fine job of maintaining a level of Zen while at work. For a little while there I was letting myself get too frustrated and/or distracted and reactive to situations, just like I would do in the past, but that doesn’t happen nearly as much these days. Sure, I’ll get a bit snippy or grumble to myself in certain situations, but I’ll let it go very soon after and not continue to dwell on it.

And creativity-wise? I’ve scaled back the prep work, so to speak. For a while there I was carrying a small but bulky notebook in my jacket pocket, which did get its use, but I’m back to the old-school ways again, using my trusty back-pocket pad. Why? Because it provides lower expectations. I’m not writing anything big there, but I am starting to write down more lines of lyrics/poetry and the occasional WIP note. And that’s all I really need right now.

Walk in Silence: resurrecting the book again?

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Okay, so this long-simmering, often-backburnered project surfaced completely by chance and maybe because I was, er, cheating on my daily 750 Words.

A few days ago I found I’d run out of time to get my daily words done so as a fix and not miss a day, I figured a quick and easy cheat would be to copy and paste some older blog posts and add some commentary at the end of it. Cue the 2016 entries from my music blog as yet another attempt at a music-themed memoir.

I really liked this version, as I wasn’t really trying to prove anything with it. I wasn’t trying to shoehorn music history into it this time out, because this story was about me and not the college rock scene of the time. It was about my reaction to it, as well as what led up to it. And now that I’m reading it again for the first time many years later, I realize that perhaps this version has a lot more merit than the previous versions…?

The only reason I hadn’t focused on it then was because I was doing some heavy revision in preparation for the Bridgetown Trilogy. I knew that I’d get back to it eventually…I just didn’t expect eight years and several new novels to pass in the interim!

So. Do I pick this one up and run with it? Well, I’ll have to see how much work it actually needs. If it only needs expansion and minor revision, then I’m sure I could see it as a release for 2025. I can’t say for sure, because, well, Best Laid Plans and all that…but you never know.

Bringing a bag…?

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I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing my satchel to work. Right now the only thing I usually bring is my coffee thermos and my lunch bag, but I’ve been thinking lately about bringing just a few things more.

The main reason, to be honest, is to change some habits.

I’m really getting sick of spending my entire breaks staring at my phone and reading social media. I mean, there’s no real harm in it as I curate my feeds pretty thoroughly these days, but I’m kind of getting bored by it, to be honest. Not the feeds themselves, mind you. Just the habit of doing it every single flipping moment that I have a break. I don’t really enjoy it anymore, to be honest. I’ll check my emails or any texts I get from A, but not much else.

I’ve been thinking about it: bring in a few things I will definitely interact with: my moleskine personal journal, a word search magazine, that sort of thing. Preferably something not electric if I can get away with it. Perhaps bring in one of my empty spiral-bound notebooks for some longhand work.

And yes, that’s another reason: getting out of the habit of passive scrolling and into the habit of fun creativity at work. I’m not aiming to write a novel here (not just yet, anyway), but I think I would benefit from using downtime for things I enjoy. The tricky part here is that our break room is tiny, so I’d either need to find a spot outside (in the car if I’m driving, for instance) or on the roof. But I’ll figure that out when it comes to it.

Either way, I’m up for a change. I’m due for a change, at any rate.

Paying It Forward — Thanks to Holly Lisle

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Sad to hear about the passing of author Holly Lisle the other day. She was one of my first inspirations and influences within the SFF genre, having read The Secret Texts trilogy in the late 90s, right about the same time that I was writing and revising The Phoenix Effect, which of course morphed into the Bridgetown Trilogy.

I remember seeing something in the acknowledgement pages of those books that intrigued me: she’d created what was essentially a BBS forum called Forward Motion, a smallish but very active online writing community. They — including Holly — were extremely welcoming, and being a member helped me figure out what I was trying to do with the Mendaihu Universe. I even had a few people beta read some of it at the time. I spent a lot of time at the Forward Motion site during the Belfry years, especially on the days we had ‘word wars’ — we’d all say, okay, let’s see how many words we can hit starting NOW! as a way to get ourselves geared up and excited about the projects we were working on. I’d pop into chat rooms just to see who was around…and often there would be someone asking a question or needing help, and we’d all chip in and offer advice. I got some great advice on my trilogy; one in particular that I remember is that I’d been stuck on a name for a certain character, and a few people suggested his name sound sibilant and harsh to fit his personality. Together we came up with a rather interesting name, and some years later during revision, it was shortened to Saisshalé.

I’d moved away from the FM site when I moved out to San Francisco, though to this day I still talk with a few people I met there. We still talk online and I’ve even met a few in person!

Holly stepped away from FM sometime in the early 00s if I’m not mistaken to focus on writing and teaching, but I never forgot how much that community helped me. It wasn’t just about the help, though — one of Holly’s mottos was ‘paying it forward’ and I certainly did that over the years, offering to beta read for others, and later on giving what information and suggestions I could about self-publishing during local conventions. I never forgot that either.

Thank you, Holly. Your influence as a writer may not have fully been through your writing, but your sense of community certainly stayed with me all these years.

Coming 3 Sep 2025

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A special tenth anniversary edition of A Division of Souls, the first book in the Bridgetown Trilogy within the Mendaihu Universe will drop this time next year!

All three novels will be rereleased in ebook format via Draft2Digital and Smashwords, and will include updated covers, revision and formatting, and perhaps a few extras as well! Stay tuned for more info!