Serial Stories: A Confession.

 Dear Reader,

I have a confession to make. I'm stuck. I am completely blocked on how to move forward any of my serial stories on here. I just stare at the page and go 'wut r werds?' until it's so painful I have to go do something else. I'm trying to get unstuck but it's not working so great.  Give me a few weeks and hopefully, I'll claw my way out of this. While I could joke that I'm giving up serial stories for Lent, I'm not Catholic so I can't make that joke.

I apologize and ask your patience. 

Craft of Writing: What to do with old works?

 Dear Reader,

As a creative person, you're bound to have a pile of old work laying about somewhere. It may be a stack of notebooks tottering precariously on the end of a table. It might be a sketchbook shoved deep into a drawer, the images never to see the light of day again. It may be a file that you occasionally add to but usually just leave languishing on the desktop of your computer. Either way, there's going to be old work somewhere around that may be haunting you. The question that comes up is what can you do with it?

Sure, you can ignore it. That pile of notebooks makes a very good counter weight for the to-be-read pile at the other end of the shelf. The sketchbook doesn't take up that much space in the drawer and makes a nice buffer to keep pens from falling completely into the abyss. And you can hide that file with a click, right? Denial doesn't change the fact that this record of your past is lurking near by.

Some people box it all up and put a note on it "Open postmortem." Others just cast it away. But, what if you opened up that old work and looked at it with fresh eyes. There's a chance that you might find a few gems among the dross that you can polish up. You can get a chuckle/cringe out of your past work and appreciate how far you have grown from when you created it. If, upon consideration, you decide that it is time for the past work to go, you can release it with a sense of completion. Your work is waiting patiently for someone to look on it and appreciate it. That someone doesn't have to be another artist, a publishing house, or your pet cat. It can be you and you can appreciate how far you've come from where you were when you made that little time capsule known as your work.

Is it Monday yet?

 Dear Reader,

In case it isn't obvious, my week has been complete tumult and posting here has been difficult. Aside from the challenges of having the kids home from school on winter break (which I completely forgot about), I am waiting to hear back from the eye doctor just what exactly is wrong with my eyes and how much of a risk do I have for glaucoma? Tomorrow, I get to go to the blood draw station in the next town over to get my A1C tested in preparation for my diabetes follow up (maintenance?) visit with my family doctor. I've been playing phone tag with the care coordinator for my family doctor's office to get some questions about diabetes answered. The end result of getting ahold of her was more questions than answers and the distinct feeling that there is a massive communication gap between the two of us. It makes me think I should get a referral to a nutritionist, if my health insurance will even cover that.

I have been struggling to keep up with my daily writing that I do aside from blogging. My therapy journal is a mess. My daily journal is a mess. And we won't even talk about the state of my daily planner/household notebook. I am frustrated because all my effort just leads to me spinning my wheels right now. Heck, I haven't had time to do any reading really. I've got Gabino Inglesias's Zero Saints on my Kindle to read and I haven't gotten past the opening scene. (It was an awesome scene by the way.) 

I got my non-fiction project done. I had everything all set up to publish through Lulu.com when it became apparent that Lulu.com is back up to their shenanigans. The front end of the site is real pretty. But it's not going well on the back end. They're messing with people's work and screwing up orders. So, now I'm working on trying to find another site I can publish through aside from KDP. I'm hoping to figure out something that is more flexible in format than KDP because I have other works that really would be better with a different binding than the glued soft cover that they offer. I was working with Lulu.com because they offered that wider range of binding formats and it's mildly vexing that they're falling back into bad habits that makes their business model not very user friendly (or consumer friendly).

Serial Stories: update

 Dear Reader,

I found my notebook! It was filled with illegible marginalia and large pictures of robots. The kids had decided they were going to help me be creative. I am attempting to decipher my notes beneath these things. It's a bit busy over here and I've got a child working on catching up on some missed work from the last few units in social studies. I may not be getting the updates for the Iron Lily or Dacia's War to you this week. 

In other news, I found my old notes from the beginnings of that science fiction series that I've been doing in bits and pieces here. I am going to clean them up and try to move that side project along too. I'm almost done editing my side project. I expect that I will be caught up on that in the near future. Thursday there will be no post because that day is going to be utter chaos. But, hopefully next week will be more 'normal'.

Flora & Fauna: Rose berry.

 

Dear Reader,

Roses are one of my favorite flowers. I had to incorporate them somehow into the series. The rose berry bush looks like a regular rose bush except it is a little different.

Once pollenated, the rose berry bush doesn't lose its petals when it forms its berry. The berry is a sweet-tart flavor (like real rosehips) and is safe to eat. If you eat too many, it causes mild digestive issues (just like real rosehips).  Rose berry can be used medicinally.

The petals can be infused into alcohol to make a mild aphrodisiac. The leaves can be used in tea to ease menstrual cramps. The berries can be used to ease menstrual cramps or induce labor, which gives this plant it's alternate name 'Birthwort'.

Oh gods, help me!

 Dear Reader,

I forgot that the kids had their winter break this week. I'll try really hard to get a post up but goodness knows if I'll be able to accomplish that. Wish me luck.

Locales: Coming Soon.

 Dear Reader,

I may suck at drawing maps, but I will be making a master list of locations described thus far. Also, I will be adding new locations that could be a good D&D setting for a dungeon crawl or other sort of campaign. I am going to attempt to draw up something vaguely map related for the settings that I am sharing with you to use in your tabletop games but I have to warn you it is going to be blocky and badly drawn. (I have graph paper to work with and I'll be color coding levels.) I have a love for tabletop gaming and for similar 'old school' role play games. The idea that one of my settings may be used by someone for a game is one that makes me really happy.

I will be posting the 'maps' (if you can call them that) as images and I will also try to figure out how to make a .pdf of the map with a full description of the setting. For example, if your players want to meet the wise dragon Gerða and be gifted with a magical weapon from her treasures, I will be drawing up a map of her warrens (known as Gerða's Hall). In with the .pdf of the map will be a description of the sort of things that one may find in Gerða's Hall, the persons one may encounter, and of Gerða herself in both her forms. If your players want to go on a campaign that takes them into Dacia and lets them battle the enemies of the Empire, I will be providing a description of a few battles with maps marking enemy locations and the terrain.

If you're a cartographer of sorts and interested in working with me on this project, that would be awesome. This is currently a labor of love and there isn't really any funding behind it. However, when the project is complete and all the documents are complied into one e-book, I will split the proceeds with you. Contact me and we can discuss the details, if you're interested. I know that artists and creative souls die from working for exposure. This is why I am giving my solemn word that I will work with you to figure out a fair business arrangement between us before all the eyes of the internet. Such an oath is serious business according to my faith. I can also help you get into contact with persons who are designing role play games that you might want to work with.