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!

That time of year again…

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Y’all know how I feel about autumn, heh.

The teens have returned to the neighborhood schools, which of course means twice a day, five days a week, for about fifteen to twenty minutes, twenty to thirty of them come into our store all at once and cause chaos. Some of them are just fine, some of them are troublesome, and many of them are blissfully unaware of their surroundings or how flipping loud they can get. I don’t mind them myself, but those two short stretches of time can suddenly make an otherwise calm day extremely stressful.

But I digress.

The weather here in San Francisco has definitely started its yearly changes. Our weather patterns are a bit weird compared to other places, even locations a short distance away in the East Bay. It might be humid and hot, or it might be chilly and dry, or it might be overcast, or it might be a rare moment of sunny warmth. Sometimes all of that within the span of twenty-four hours. We don’t get the glorious foliage that New England gets, but we do get the lovely colors of late-blooming flowers and the stunning oranges and reds of sunsets. [We do get the lovely blooming of cherry blossoms in the spring, so I’ll definitely take that as a plus.]

I think I’ve finally adjusted to this sort of thing, to be honest. I love a weekend walk through Golden Gate Park or Crissy Field, or even a trip down the other end of Clement Street to the local farmer’s market. And now that we have our garden plot, I even enjoy getting dirty with the weeding and deadheading and watering.

Autumn Sundays, as always, feel like the winding up of a relaxing weekend, and needing to prepare for the coming Monday. Even now, even when I have the occasional day off (like today), I spend Sundays prepping my blog posts and making vague plans for the week. What should I work on? When should I do the laundry? Do I need to do any local errands? It’s certainly not the frantic last-minute of doing homework I should have done Friday afternoon (I was notorious for that), but some days it comes close.

Still, it’s always been my favorite time of year, and I embrace it each and every time.

Going deep again…?

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Whenever I think about the Bridgetown Trilogy and the Mendaihu Universe, I almost always wonder if I’ll ever get around to writing something with that level of worldbuilding. Theadia certainly comes close, but that project’s a different beast altogether. While it certainly has an ensemble cast and multiple worlds, it doesn’t have its own conlang or its own highly detailed mythos. It’s a big story, but it’s not a part of a bigger universe like the MU is.

The MU is still alive and kicking somewhere in the back of my thoughts, and I still want to write more stories in that universe, but I’ve come to the realization that if I’m going to do it right, I’m going to have to go in deep once more. And I’m perfectly willing to do that once I allow myself to take that dive again. [And I will not complain one bit if that includes the music side of things, mixtapes and all. That was one of the best parts of the project!]

As you may remember, I deliberately chose to bounce away from that kind of thing because, up to 2015, that’s pretty much all I knew in terms of novel writing projects. Everything had to be a full-immersion, years-long intensity, and I needed not to do that for a while. I needed to know how to write something standalone and concise. Partly to prove to myself that I could do it, and partly because I knew that not all of my newer story ideas would translate well into that long of a format.

I knew I’d come back to the longer form sooner or later. I’ve often said it’s a format I truly enjoy writing. But in the several attempts in writing the temporarily-titled-MU4 novel, each time felt like I wasn’t doing it justice. The deep immersion wasn’t there, only a reflection of the past style. I wasn’t allowing myself that level of focus and, let’s face it, obsession. So it kept getting pushed to the back burner.

This will all eventually change, I hope. I’m not sure when, and I’m not sure how. Perhaps it’ll be a change in my writing schedule, better and more creative use of my break times at work, or perhaps it’ll be something else altogether. Who knows? I may even start a new extended universe instead…?

Not lazy, just languid

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I’ve gotten so used to my slightly unconventional two-days-on/one-day-off/three-days-on variations of my work schedule that working five days in a row at the Day Job over the last couple of weeks has thrown me for a loop a bit. [There’s also the fact that last Sunday we did some major gardening, after which I did three loads of laundry, which didn’t give me much of a day off.] I’m trying not to overdo it, so I’m allowing myself the occasional day where I do nothing much of importance.

It’s also that the weather’s been its usual weird westside SF self lately: overcast, foggy, extremely humid, and stuck somewhere in the mid-50s…plus it’s allergy season, occasionally leaving me sniffly and migrainey. On those days I’ve learned it’s best to just slow down a little bit and let nature take its course.

I am working on Theadia, just not on a daily basis and not at intense levels, so at least that’s still moving forward!

Hopefully things will be a bit less languid in the coming days….thanks for your patience!

Thank you!!!

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I’ll be honest, I spent the entirety of July thinking that no one had downloaded any of my books during the Smashwords/Draft2Digital summer sale, and now I realize that it was because I’d been expecting a notification with every download, something I’d had set up at Smashwords.

SO! Imagine my surprise and my joy when I receive my D2D sales report on the afternoon of this past Monday, and find that I’d actually gotten sixty-two downloads!! Wow! A huge thank you to everyone who downloaded the books, and I hope you enjoy them!

So yeah, now that I know that I’m not getting all those notifications, I’ll be sure to check out the sales reports more often, heh.

Walking

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I’m doing a little bit better with the walking to and from work instead of taking the car, but I could probably stand to be less lazy about it. There are days where I’ll take the bus in (after all, my commute might be only eight blocks but it’s literally all uphill) and walk back, even when I’ve had a ridiculously busy day at work, and I think I need to do that more.

It’s not as if my Day Job is sedentary…I can do up to four or five miles a shift with all the walking and moving around I do within the span of eight hours. Perhaps that’s partly why I don’t always have the moments to step aside and write out story ideas or work through something. It really depends on the day.

Still, I’m glad that I’m moving around a lot more than I was during the Previous Day Job, which had me sitting on my behind and snacking more often than I really should. All this moving around keeps me healthy and my blood pressure at normal levels. And when I’m walking home after a shift, it’s a stretch of time where I don’t have to think about anything else. I don’t use earbuds, so I only listen to the world around me. Some of those walks have been spent thinking about what needs to be done with my WIP, or working out how I want a certain scene to go. And most importantly, I get to unwind for a little bit before I start the writing work again!

fly-by: brb, going to enjoy the weekend

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Hey there! It’s been a sort of busy week at the Day Job and next week’s schedule is going to be pretty much the same, so I’m going to enjoy the two days off I have coming to me by doing some stuff outside. Take care of our plot at the community garden, go for a walk, catch up on errands, things like that.

Hope you have a nice weekend! See ya on Monday!

A creativity rethink

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No, I don’t plan on giving up this writing gig anytime soon. I’m seven books in, one I’m currently working on and a few future ideas on the back burner, and I have no plans on letting them fall by the wayside.

I’ve been thinking — again — about other creative outlets lately. More to the point, how I haven’t allowed myself to give them any proper focus and practice to be anything other than passing hobbies. I’ve often said my other two creative outlets would be art and music, but I’ve spent so long working on writing novels that I rarely ever have time for either of them.

Why is that? Well, part of it has been just not allowing myself the time. Balancing the novel writing and the Day Job (and spending some time IRL with A.) often leaves me with very little time to do anything else. I still have a habit of carrying a notebook with me at all times so I could easily spend a few moments doodling. I have enough time outside of the Day Job that I can pick up my guitar and noodle for a bit. And I’m better at both than I used to be just ten years ago.

What’s stopping me? I think it’s that my creative brain gets stuck on the ‘well, you’re not bad, but there’s at least 9,000 more hours of practice and experience before you’ll be good‘ and I put it aside for a later time. And that later time keeps getting pushed further into the future.

I think I’m perhaps also a little daunted by seeing so many musicians and artists relying on computer software nowadays, and simply I don’t have the money to spend or the PC memory to eat up (or the desk space, for that matter) for it right now. And then I start thinking that maybe my art and music should remain a hobby.

But if I’m going to take either of them more seriously, I realize what I should do is take the same route I did with my writing: Do It Yourself.

I mean, my inspiration for having a DIY writing career is based on music, so I’ve got the knowledge to go that route anytime I want, right? Why should I worry about trying to learn the technology when I have the Beatle-based inspiration of pushing a button, saying ‘oh hey this sounds neat’ and running with it? I’m not a synthpop based performer that needs all the doowackies; Drunken Owl is more something you’d hear on Slumberland Records than a hipster indie label, and would be right at home on Bandcamp.

As for art? Who knows what would come of that. A webcomic? Storyboarding? Something else? And as for photography, I really just need to give myself the time to properly edit the pictures and make them saleable on stock footage sites like Shutterstock.

The net is vast and infinite, as Major Kusanagi says. I just have to make the time to explore it.