My Love/Hate Relationship with the Christmas Season

I love...

• Christmas trees.
• Festive outdoor lights.
• Festivity in general.
• Being generous to family and friends.
• Being generous to people I don't even know, through donations.
• Christmas music.
• Candy and baked goods.
• Classic Christmas TV specials.
• Saying "Happy Holidays!" to people because I want to wish them well but I don't know everyone's holiday affiliation and GUESS WHAT I'M AN ATHEIST so I'm practicing this whole "Joy to the World" thing in the secular mode, with an appreciation for the old pagan vibe of lighting things up in a dark time of year.

I hate...

• Obligatory gift-giving, especially in family cultures where this leads to passive-aggressive gift-giving (where it's easier to buy a present for someone you hate, due to family pressure, than to opt out, so you put a lot of thought into buying something acceptable that they won't like). I don't do this, but I find it upsetting that a lot of people get pressured to the point of doing it by toxic people who have emotional power over them.
• The horrifying bullshit of luxury jewelry ads that tell you that your love for someone can and should be measured by the amount you're willing to spend on a shiny adornment for them to wear around so that other people will know they've been showered with riches.
• Excessive consumerism in general. Do we need so much stuff? A constant churning of stuff in, stuff out, stuffing ourselves? Nope.

So I can get into this holiday, and enjoy it very much at times, but I always have ambivalent feelings about it because things get twisted and unpleasant when there's greed involved. I guess I'm going to lose all of my obscenely wealthy conspicuous consumer friends now... Oh, wait, I don't have any. :)

Speaking of Reading, as Surely We Always Are...

...I might as well post a list of books I particularly enjoyed reading this year, regardless of whether or not they were published this year. BECAUSE DECEMBER IS FOR LISTS, and you might find something here that you'd like to read or give as a gift. These are books to which I was moved to give five-star ratings (out of five, just so we're clear). According to my way of rating things, that means I would gladly read them again and I imagine I'll get even more out of them upon doing so.

None of these links have anything to do with me and I will not profit even a tiny bit if you click on them, unless there's some karmic system that operates on a different level from financial gain, in which case I'm pretty sure there's no law against it. ENJOY.

Non-fiction

• Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, by Robert Keith Sawyer - "A science-backed method to maximize creative potential in any sphere of life." 
• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert - "Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the 'strange jewels' that are hidden within each of us."
• The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms, by Danielle LaPorte - "We have ambition backwards. Getting clear on how you want to feel in your life + work is more important than setting goals. It's the most potent form of clarity that you can have, and it's what leads to true fulfillment."

Fiction

• Medusa's Web, by Tim Powers - "...a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family."
• City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett (my second reading of this one) - Divine Cities #1. "Years ago, the city of Bulikov wielded the powers of the Gods to conquer the world. But after its divine protectors were mysteriously killed, the conqueror has become the conquered; the city's proud history has been erased and censored, progress has left it behind, and it is just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power. Into this musty, backward city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the quiet woman is just another lowly diplomat sent by Bulikov's oppressors. Unofficially, Shara is one of her country's most accomplished spymasters — dispatched to investigate the brutal murder of a seemingly harmless historian. As Shara pursues the mystery through the ever-shifting physical and political geography of the city, she begins to suspect that the beings who once protected Bulikov may not be as dead as they seem — and that her own abilities might be touched by the divine as well."
• City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett - Divine Cities #2. Just as outstanding as the first! I'm looking forward to #3 in 2017.
• The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins - The description of this book is too long to quote, and it also doesn't even begin to explain how freaking weird, dark, awesome, and amazing this book is. Probably because that would be impossible to explain. JUST READ IT.
• The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison (my second reading) - "A vividly imagined fantasy of court intrigue and dark magics in a steampunk-inflected world, by a brilliant young talent. The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir."
• Uprooted, by Naomi Novik - "Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood."
• The Severed Streets, by Paul Cornell - "Summer in London: a city in turmoil. The vicious murder of a well-known MP is like a match to tinder but Detective Inspector James Quill and his team know that it's not a run-of-the-mill homicide. Still coming to terms with their new-found second sight, they soon discover that what is invisible to others - the killer - is visible to them. Even if they have no idea who it is."
• The Necromancer's House, by Christopher Buehlman - "Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago. Andrew has long known that magic was a brutal game requiring blood sacrifice and a willingness to confront death, but his many years of peace and comfort have left him soft, more concerned with maintaining false youth than with seeing to his own defense. Now a monster straight from the pages of Russian folklore is coming for him, and frost and death are coming with her."

More Is Not Always Better, Unless You're Talking about Kittens

(My new kitten, Annabelle)

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Today's photo has nothing to do with today's topic. BUT LOOK AT THIS SWEET LITTLE FACE.

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I'm really here about the reading challenge I signed up for this year on Goodreads.com. I was possibly a little too ambitious. See, for my 2015 challenge, I said I would read 50 books in 2015 and I did. Just barely. 

Then I thought I should really PUSH MYSELF for 2016, so I signed myself up to read 60 books this year. As of today, December 7th, I'm at 52, and almost done with two more books, but even after those two are done I'll need to finish reading six books by the end of December 31st if I'm going to finish the challenge. I might do it. I might take a couple/few days to just read, and choose some short books so that I can finish them. I've already read more books than I did last year. However, I'm starting to feel that this challenge thing is not helping me, for the following reasons:

• I sometimes avoid choosing longer books, just to get done faster.
• I rush through reading books, just to get done faster.
• I force myself to finish books I don't really like, just to avoid losing the sunk cost of the time I've put into starting to read them.

...and for what? To say I've technically read a large-ish number of books, when I didn't get much out of them due to the rushing though? That's just dumb. The main benefit I get out of the reading challenge is that I end up with a convenient list of what I've read in a given year, in order. To get that benefit, I could sign up for a much smaller challenge--say, 12 books in a year, because I'd have to spend most of the year in a coma to avoid reading that many. So that's what I'm going to do. I'll probably end up reading more, but it will be at the pace I want, because I feel like it. 

Mixing Up the Spice of the Variety in the Planet-Sized Blender of Life

I'm here to say that there's room for everyone. In matters of opinion, my opinion doesn't negate yours (facts are quite different from opinions, for the record, but we can get into that another time). My way of life can't blot out your way of life. THINKING ABOUT different ways of life can't even make you change yours unless you want it to. Variety within a society is not a threat; it's a sign of freedom: the freedom to make a choice, try it out, think about the results, and then have the option to choose again.

People who don't look like you on the outside are remarkably similar to you on the inside.

Being comfortable with and interested in a diverse array of humans is something to be proud of.

I See You, Baby

Like this image? I made it! There's more where this came from on my Instagram.

Hey, guess what? I'm a Super-Recognizer. THAT'S RIGHT I HAVE A SUPERPOWER. Or that's what I'm going with, anyway...

Here's what happened. Last week I saw a link from Scientific American in my Twitter feed, to this not-really-flattering post: "Super-Recognizers Lurk Among Us: Some people are so good at recognizing faces that it's downright creepy". Naturally, I needed to go and discover any more clues I might find to help me calculate my potential "downright creepy factor," which is IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

I learned that "In 2009, psychological scientist Richard Russell and his colleagues first used the term super-recognizer to describe four participants in a study they conducted. According to the conclusions of the study, 'our findings demonstrate the existence of people with exceptionally good face recognition ability and show that the range of face recognition and face perception ability is wider than has been previously acknowledged.'"

The post linked to some online tests posted by researchers, and I took the "short teaser test" linked on that page. I did pretty well, but was a bit disappointed to get only 10 out of 14 on it. Then there was a request at the end to leave contact information, if I was interested in participating in more online research, but it said that they might take a while to contact me. So I left my email address, thinking I might hear from them someday. I had an email from them in my inbox the next morning, inviting me to take a series of their other tests. I went and took the heck out of those tests. After I was done, an hour later, I got some information about how I did. 

First, it said that "the 14-trial 'fun" test is not diagnostic of true face recognition ability- we have found that a few super-recognisers (as measured by follow up tests) score as low as 10 out of 14".

Then it showed the results of the four other tests. Three of those tested facial recognition, and one was about recognizing images of guitars. I did the worst on guitars, ending up below the top 50% of people tested, but I did the best on the Cambridge Face Memory Test, a long one where I scored 96% correct, putting me in the top 5% of those tested. 

This will have practically no impact on my life going forward, other than confirming that once I meet someone, I remember their face and where I met them. I already knew that. Combined with making a point of remembering names, I am slightly impressive at parties sometimes. I thought you might like to know. ;)

Why am I even writing this down? Well, I watched an interview of Seth Godin recently, and he made a convincing case for blogging every day. Between that and ideas I've gotten about communicating more, from Austin Kleon, this blog is about to get much more random. I'm going to SHARE MY THOUGHTS, y'all. 

Don't Call it a Crisis

Hey, I'm in the middle-aged years of my life.

And this summer I've been doing a thing.

One might examine the characteristics of this thing I've been doing, and consider the implications of my age being 44, and think this thing might plausibly be called a "midlife crisis." But I don't think that's a very kind or fair label to apply to the thing, so I'm going to call it my Midlife Thing.

It's happening because of good reasons. I've survived to the age of 44 and a half! I've achieved many of the standard life goals for which one can find readily-available advice, such as having the relationships and children that I've wanted, and a series of houses. I've taken some trips that are widely considered to be desirable, to Italy and England. I've learned decent chunks of a couple of different languages. I've even done some things that are a bit less usual, like selling my original paintings at art shows, and publishing some of my short stories and the two original anthologies that I've edited.

My Midlife Thing is not coming from dissatisfaction. It's coming from the feeling that I've crossed off many goals from my original list, and I'm looking at the goals that remain on the list to see if they're still goals that I want to do. And I have this other blank sheet here, and a pen, waiting for me to fill it in with my next set of goals, preferably next-level challenging ones that will feel invigorating.

The way I noticed the beginning of my Midlife Thing - which probably started brewing quite a while before I noticed it - is that I suddenly had this SUPER INTENSE NEED to decorate my bedroom IMMEDIATELY. Summer is a hard time for me to write, because of loud boy-children living life echoingly no farther away than the room adjacent to the room I am in at any given time, so I tend to do more artsy, projecty stuff in the summer. But this need to decorate basically pounced on me, dug in its teeth, and consumed my entire personality for a few weeks there. The photo above is one I took when it was not even as decorated as it is now. YEAH. I've got this "if a goth discovered boho" vibe going on in the room. And I love it.

I love it! But after I did that, I wondered why exactly I needed to do that decorating, that hard, that minute. My conclusion is that I was subconsciously trying to invite in some more creativity so that I could do something bigger than what I had been doing. I was bored and I didn't have any big goals to attack, so I needed to create the kind of bedroom a creative, big-goal-attacking person would have. I just don't usually have to launch my own subconscious at myself in order to figure out things like that.

Once I got my motivations sorted out, I started to spend a lot of time in my magnificent pageant of a bedroom, reading books that seemed relevant and writing many questions and answers. I also started to watch YouTube videos made by some inspiring individuals. I don't even know how I found Marie Forleo's channel, but I watched a lot of her videos, especially her interviews with other people who had written interesting books. I recommend this course of action, because she's interviewed some fascinating people. The first book I read as a direct result of watching her interviews was Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I had picked up and put back down in bookstores I don't know how many times before that. It took seeing Gilbert being delightful in an interview to get me to read it, but at that point I was definitely in the right state of mind to read it. Apparently, despite not being particularly woo-woo oriented, I am in a state of willingness to try out acting as if some woo-woo thinking might work for me even if I don't thoroughly believe in it. Just putting on some woo-woo shoes to walk around in for a while and see if they take me somewhere good.

Which means I also found it useful to read The Fire Starter Sessions, by Danielle LaPorte. It's not ENTIRELY woo-woo, but it's, you know. Pretty spiritual, philosophically. At the same time, it's loaded with personality and good ways to figure oneself out in many areas of life, not just the spiritual side of it.

I CAN ALWAYS TAKE OFF THE WOO-WOO SHOES LATER.

I'm going to end this series of links with one to my new favorite human discovery, Brendon Burchard. He has a long playlist of short videos I've been tearing through. This guy has so much sparkle, it's like watching sentient glitter confetti tell you how to get your shit together. That's the kind of person I want to learn from!

I also have a huge new section of my list of things to read, and I suspect I'll tell you all about that as time goes by, but I've clarified my ambitions a lot already.

What I'm saying is that I've never written an entire novel before, and I still very much want to, and it's time. I don't know what other goals will go on the new list, but this goal is now written at the top. I even know generally which novel I want to start writing (some assembly will be required on the details). So that's my next-level big goal that I'll be working on when the kids are back in school.

The Friday Report for February 12, 2016

One of my images for this week...

You can see more on my Instagram page.

I'm going to have to make this week's report a quick jog through the highlights, because I'm starving AND I have to go drop off books at the library. So here we go!

My projects:

Writing: Last week, I decided that I wanted to have my current story pretty much finished by today--everything but the final polishing edit done. I did not reach that goal. I don't feel too bad about it because I'm about halfway there. I've worked on it every day this week, but it's a weird story and I keep getting new ideas for what to do with it, so that's a bad news/good news scenario.

I did find a couple of anthologies I want to write my next stories for, though. They're both due on May 1st: Ghosts on Drugs, and Survivor. 

Reading: Still the same books as last week, but I've also added two.

• Year's Best Fiction Volume Two, edited by Kathe Koja and Michael Kelly
• Fire Up Your Writing Brain, by Susan Reynolds

February's Other Project: I nailed the back onto my new desk. Next up: assembling and installing the drawers and keyboard tray. DESKS ARE COMPLICATED.

The Friday Report for February 5, 2016

One of my Instagram images for the week!

(I surrender to my need to make more than one per week.)

Hello! This Friday Report is here despite the fact that I had sick kids at home for three out of my five work days, including today. Nothing too serious, just some coughing. It's February. This is what happens in February.

I've even written a decent amount of fiction! I finished a very rough draft of my new story yesterday, at five thousand words. It's a good thing that I went back and checked the guidelines, because I had been thinking it could be six thousand words long, but it could not. Five thousand was, and is, the limit. Does this mean the story is done? Not even close, because when I say "very rough draft," I mean "nobody sees this version but me." But after today's work of starting to convert "rough" to "readable," I feel good about the first thousand words of the story, and I just have the remaining four thousand to turn into prose that I would want to submit.

I feel like it's time to start thinking about what kind of a story I'll write after this one, so that I'll have a project to work on after I finish this draft, while I'm waiting to do the final version. I like to do three drafts: 1) very rough; 2) pretty much finished; and 3) thoroughly polished. After a story is pretty much finished, I like to leave it alone for maybe a week so that I get some distance, and then I print it in a different font from what I used when I wrote it, and I read it out loud while walking around the house. That gives me a few different ways to notice things like repeated words, typos, and most importantly, the way the sentences sound. I mark the printout with any changes I want to make and then incorporate them, and make sure the final file is in Standard Manuscript Format, and then I send the story to its destination. 

So now I must figure out what to write next. I'm currently most interested in writing The Weird as a subgenre of speculative fiction, but that could include all sorts of things. I'm also going to look for themed anthology calls that will involve actual money being paid for stories, because that's been my route to publication every single time, so far.

My Projects:

Writing: I have two weeks to get this Weird West story to the thoroughly polished stage--because that's what I promised my writing buddy--so I'd like to have it pretty much finished by next Friday. And I want to have a new story idea forming by then, too.

Reading: 

• City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett. I'm re-reading this because I want to refresh my memory before I read his new book, City of Blades. I STRONGLY SUGGEST THAT YOU BUY AND READ BOTH.
• Undeniable, by Bill Nye

February's Other Project: Still my new office! This is taking a while! But I have the desk halfway assembled, which is more than I could say last week.

The Double Friday Report for Januarys 29th and 22nd, 2016, Because I Missed Last Week

Double the Instagrams, double the fun!

(Click the link to see so many more, you will be BOGGLED)

Good day to you! Last Friday my eldest son gave a presentation at school, so I went to that instead of blogging. I thought I'd just blog on Monday. GUESS HOW THAT WORKED OUT.

Last week, I did some good work on the story I'm writing. I had the realization that, for once, I had started it at a point too far into the story, and it could use a new beginning that would show the inciting incident. Usually it's far too easy to start a story too early in the character's timeline, which can slow down the pace by including unnecessary information. I felt good about figuring that out, but I still didn't know the ending.

I'm about to do something that's a bit uncomfortable for me, but I've been inspired by Austin Kleon's awesome book, Show Your Work!, so this is his fault. I decided to figure out the ending of my story by writing a sonnet, because I love writing them--they're like making up your own puzzle and solving it as you go along--and I thought it would trick my subconscious mind into revealing a solution for me, which it did. The uncomfortable part is that I don't tend to post this sort of stuff, because it's not finished, it's more like poetic notes, but I'm going to take Kleon's advice and post that sonnet. 

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A young child weeping helpless on the ground,

And half-hid under bushes, turned away,

Reveals a secret, once she has been found,

Her eyes a mix of power and decay.

A kindness met with slash of sudden claw--

A fever builds, unconsciousness, abyss--

Awake anew and see with horrid awe

The world beneath the surface is amiss.

So enter, now, the traveling milieu

Where poison--posed as healing--fakers give,

Then thread the maze, a pathway shown to few,

And heal the sickness, only then to live.

The wound received has turned into a gift,

The wicked ones returned back through the rift.

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This is not a sonnet that tells a story clearly by itself, but it's like a message from my subconscious mind to me. A few of the lines came out as complete surprises that showed me exactly what to do in the story, and now I know my ending. I still have to write it all out, but I do much better with that part once I have an outline, no matter what form the outline takes.

My projects:

Writing: I've written over 3,000 words on the story, and I would like to finish a rough draft of about 6,000 words total by the end of next week. 

Reading: 

• Ruby and the Stone Age Diet, by Martin Millar
• Craft, Inc., by Meg Mateo Ilasco
• Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, by Bill Nye

January's Other Project: My new office. I've moved furniture around and hung an organizer thingy on the wall--it's a chalkboard on one half, and has wire mesh to clip things on with mini clothespins on the other half. I have yet to assemble my new desk, office chair, and small set of shelves, but there's not much procrastination between me and those tasks!

The Friday Report for January 15, 2016

This is one of the two images I posted on my Instagram page this week. 

(I know I SAID I'd only do one per week, but sometimes I need to make more art!)

This week I had a lot of Life Business to attend to. I AM NOT A FAN OF LIFE BUSINESS. But it has to be done. There's a great big oak tree in front of my house, looming over my roof, which is missing a large patch of the outer bark that's supposed to be on the trunk, and it has dead branches and a tendency to drop chunks of dead branch even when there's hardly any wind blowing. I live in the Midwest. We are kind of KNOWN for wind, and I've been nervous about that tree for several months now, without being able to do anything about it. The rule about oak trees, around here, is that they are not to be trimmed or cut down in the warmer times when the healthy oak trees might catch their diseases. We had pretty warm weather (for Wisconsin) into December, but now that it's well and truly cold I can get the tree, and its buddies that need trimming way back, dealt with. 

Between meeting with the tree guy and dealing with a long list of additional Life Business Items, including car issues, the week has been one of those blink-and-it's-gone weeks. I wrote a little bit and expanded the outline of my new story a little bit, but I'll need to do a lot more of both next week if I'm to reach the goal I set up with my writing buddy: 3,000 words, otherwise known as half of the rough draft of this story.

My projects for the week:

Writing: I'm up to a little over 200 words on the Weird West story, so I will have to basically lock myself in all next week and work on that at my highest intensity setting.

Reading: 

• The New Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

January's Other Project: Setting up my new office. This week I pulled off some of the painter's tape around the newly-painted walls, which is the kind of annoying little job I could avoid forever, because my messy painting makes the tape hard to remove. I am a tidier painter when I don't use the tape! But this time I was nervous about the prospect of intense deep ocean blue paint getting all over the place, so I bowed to my fears and taped around the edges. I'm sure there's a lesson in there. I also assembled a small storage cabinet. There's still a lot left to do.

The Friday Report for January 8, 2016

My latest photo edit for Instagram!

I happen to think it's pretty awesome to have a lot of interests and do a lot of different things. Which I do. Copiously and with thoroughness. But while I get a lot of satisfaction out of that, there's a trade-off that comes with it: very little linear progress in any one area. Because of that, I end up sometimes feeling like I'm getting nowhere, even after I've made bunches of things. 

And I have goals. I do. NO, I DO. I've just been doing my own little butterfly-flight-style interpretive dance method of getting to them. I've decided, though, that this year I want to work on a more linear, forward-going approach, with more emphasis on writing. Instead of making an image for Instagram EVERY DAY, as I was doing for a long stretch of last year, I'm going to make one each week, and apply the 30-to-60 minutes each one usually takes toward story development and writing down words. That way I still get to enjoy that activity, but clear more time for the story-writing.

Here's what I've been working on this week:

Writing: My current story is my first attempt at the Weird West genre. I like the way it's going, but I haven't figured out the ending yet. I'm looking forward to finding out what happens! And I want to finish it by the end of this month.

Reading: I'm in the middle of reading three books:

• The Best American Essays 2014, edited by John Jeremiah Sullivan
• The New Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
• Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, by Keith Sawyer

January's Other Project: My new office. My office has been in a room next to the kitchen, where I can't completely close off the noise of the household because there's a pass-through window to the kitchen. You would think this would be the dining room, but my house is odd and it is not. Anyway, when I moved in here I set up my art things in another room, and then promptly started to do more digital art than painting, so now I'm giving myself an hour a day to transform that into a combined art-and-office room, with the hope of being able to get more writing done in the evenings, with the door closed. 

2015: I Had a Super-Eclectic Year

I recently read a post by Amanda Palmer, in which she mentioned Henry Rollins. I don't even know if this is true, but what she said is that Henry Rollins is in the habit of taking an Inhale Year, followed by an Exhale Year, meaning that when he inhales for a year he is reading, absorbing, thinking, relaxing, and getting his mental state ready for a year of exhaling bunches of cool artistic output in whatever form it may take for him. I hope that's a fact, but I don't care if it is or not because it is a damn good idea either way. I want to try that system, but maybe on a shorter-cycle plan, like monthly. That's because, in looking back at 2015, I feel like I've been subconsciously trying to make that happen for a long time, but fighting it because I felt guilty about not producing enough. I'm starting to feel that I would produce more if I fought that less. If I planned to mentally respirate in a sensible manner and stopped feeling so stressed about it.

So! What did I actually do in 2015? Here you go:

• Got a pretty decent grasp of how to speak basic Swedish by studying it for a few minutes a day with the FREE, and AWESOME, Duolingo app, which offers bunches of languages you can learn in a very useful, fun format. If you are interested in learning a new language, you should absolutely try this. Jag tycker om Svenska!
• Started the writing of two different novels, and did not finish either (yet). 
• Wrote one story for an anthology after being invited to submit one, and it was published: "Tipping Point," in Ghost in the Cogs, which contains steampunk ghost stories. My story got a nice mention in this very positive review of the whole book!
• Made over 200 digital abstract images that I posted on my Instagram account.
• Put many of those images into my DeviantArt print store, where they're available to buy in a variety of formats. I used my discount to get a framed canvas print of one of them, to check out the quality, and it is BEAUTIFUL. It's printed with acrylic paint and it looks like a very smoothly-rendered painting, and the frame looks good, too. So if you're looking for abstract art, please check it out because your purchase will help me make more stuff to put out there, both for sale and for free.
• I read 50 books for my 2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge! And here is my Goodreads Author Page, where you can friend me and follow along as I attempt to read 60 books in 2016.
• Posted a bunch of tweets on Twitter, even though I took a big break from that in the summer.
• Posted different items of interest on my Facebook page. My policy on social media is to diversify my posts so that it's worthwhile for people to join forces with me in more than one place. 
• I blurbed a book for the first time, too! A comment of mine can be found on the cover of Indelible Ink, by Matt Betts.
• Worked at an EXCELLENT and very scary haunted house called The Insanitorium, in New Glarus, WI, for all of the weekends of October.
• That's on top of, you know, getting my kids fed and to school on time day after day and having them at home for most of the time in the summer and taking them to see their grandparents and all the life maintenance stuff that goes on, and whatnot, so I am feeling pretty good about my 2015!

So now I'm thinking about the things I want to do in 2016 (hint: one of them is posting in this here blog on at least a weekly basis), but I think this post is long enough for now! Happy New Year! 

A New Steampunk Story from Me, WITH GHOSTS

My next short story publication will be "Tipping Point," in a new anthology from Broken Eye Books called Ghost in the Cogs. Coming soon! Here's a description of the book, from their website:

Ghosts. Gaslight. Gears.

In the wondrous age of steam, pirates, rust, and syphilis aren’t all you need to worry about. Ghosts abound!

In this hissing and clanking steampunk world, there are moments that science just can’t explain. All the mechanical geniuses scratch their heads and whisper words of ghosts and powers, of spirits and demons. Possessed automatons take on lives of their own. Superstitious pilots take all necessary precautions. Avant-garde machinists harness the spirits to power their creations. Revenge-minded ghosts stalk haunted gasworks. This is a mechanized playground for the souls of the dead.

I'm really excited about this anthology! Want to know who else has stories in it? Click here for the official announcement! 

Getting My Voice Back with NaNoWriMo

This year has been very stressful and strange for me. I'm separated and living in my own place now, but getting here involved a lot of work, tension, and pain, and I just could not write fiction for most of the year.

My NaNoWriMo novel cover.

CC image by J.K. Nilssen, with title added (no other modifications).

I had a few promising fiction ideas, but nearly every time I thought about writing, an awful feeling of emptiness would stop me from doing it. Then I saw friends of mine excitedly getting ready for NaNoWriMo, and I thought that maybe the speed of writing required, and the friendly competition, could get me to set aside my perfectionism and self-editing and really allow myself to write a ROUGH draft, an approximation of the story. Anything that I could work with later, because writing something is much better than writing nothing. So I'm doing it! I started late, on the third day of the month, and I'm up to 6,300 words so far. That's short of the target for today, but not by much, and I still have time for at least a couple more writing sprints today. I'm rewarding myself with bragging and chocolate every time I finish a sprint!

In the meantime, the Kickstarter for my next anthology is almost at its end, but not fully funded yet, so if you'd like to be a helper, please check it out and tell your friends about it! Not Our Kind: Tales of (Not) Belonging. 

My New Anthology: the Kickstarter!

THIS IS HAPPENING:

Oh, didn't I mention? I have a new book in progress. NOT OUR KIND: Tales of (Not) Belonging. "A genre-defying diverse collection of fantasy and sci-fi stories of cultures, their problems, and seeing life from a new point of view."

"Edited by Nayad Monroe - who also edited What Fates Impose - these nineteen stories bring us tales of being the other, of belonging, and not belonging. Our contributors have won a wide range of awards for their previous work, and include: Wes Alexander, Alex Bledsoe, Maurice Broaddus, Jennifer Brozek, Amanda C. Davis, Sarah Hans, Janet Harriett, Tyler Hayes, Michael Haynes, Erika Holt, Gary Kloster, Marissa Lingen, Remy Nakamura, Andrew Romine, Ekaterina Sedia, Lucy A. Snyder, Reinhardt Suarez, Juliette Wade, Tim Waggoner, Damien Angelica Walters ...and perhaps YOU." (We're hoping to reach the goal of an open submission call to add more stories!)

In order to pay the authors a professional rate, we have this fundraising campaign going. The book is currently 59% funded, with six more days to get to 100%. If you'd like to help get this book made, please head over to the Kickstarter page, and/or tell all of your friends about it! Because there's some great new fiction and rewards to get out of this!