#but this was not something I wanted to see in a monthly newsletter from my brain injury association

[ultrainfinitepit]

When you first started making pins, how did you advertise them? And vs now? I really want to get into making some of my own :]

That's a great question! There's lots of ways to advertise and I'll share what worked for me. But your mileage may vary or you might find ways that work better for you than they did for me.

Here are my first angel pins, by the way, it's been four years since I first started if you can believe it.

Here's what I did at the beginning that I still do now:

Build your following on social media and post about your pins. This is probably the most important thing to do, but also the hardest. Focus on a small number of social media profiles that you can manage comfortably, don't stretch yourself too thin as it is important to engage with your audience to build it. Each site has their own quirks as well. I can go into detail on my favorites and what I've observed for each if anyone is curious, just send a follow-up ask.

Run crowdfunding campaigns to fund your pins and then advertise to backers. Specifically start on Kickstarter if you are a beginner. While I am loving Backerkit it is a lesser-known site and it's harder to get discovered on it. I have gotten comments from artists who worry that they need to be popular before doing crowdfunding. However in my case it was my first campaign that built my audience the most. And in my opinion, it is never a waste of time to try out a campaign. If it fails you still have the artwork ready, you can gauge interest and see which designs are popular, and you will have a starter pool of people interested in your art that you can build off of.

Create a merch newsletter and share monthly updates. Since it is independent of social media it is a lower barrier to entry for customers interested in your art; and doesn't require them to check social media and happen to catch your posts. It takes some time to build a list but you can be assured everyone who signs up is invested in your merch.

There's quite a few things I did at the beginning to get started pin making and then advertise, that I don't do now. Mainly it is an issue of time. I used to spend hours and hours running around on all these sites, as well as reading over posts for research. Nowadays, social media and shop following are enough for me. But I would recommend the following for anyone looking to start out in pin making.

Things I used to do that I would recommend, but don't do much of now:

Join PMR on Facebook and post in their weekly share thread. "Pin Maker Resource" is the best place for beginner pin makers. It is a huge group of dedicated pin makers, all eager to answer questions and provide valuable insights into pin making. Most of all, it has those manufacturer reviews and names that everyone is always asking for! I have personally posted many reviews to this group. It is open for applications once a month. You have to apply because they specifically prohibit pin manufacturers from joining so people can post their reviews freely.

Post in Facebook groups. These communities can be large so your post may get lost in the crowd, but it will be seen by people specifically looking for pins. I like "Pin & Art Collector Marketplace" and "Pin Nation." "Enamel Pin Collectors, Artists, Trades and Kickstarters!" is decent but smaller.

Join a pin Discord server and share your designs in promotion channels. Many pin collectors such as myself join these servers to look for pins to buy. We are also in multiple servers and will crosspost if we like something. I have found these servers mainly by joining pin creators' Patreon clubs.

Post on Reddit. The communities are small but a guaranteed place to find people interested in pins. I like r/EnamelPins and r/pinprojects. If your pins are for a specific audience, you can post to relevant subreddits. For example, I have shared my work on angel art subreddits.

That's just about everything I can recall. I hope this is helpful, good luck on your pin journey!

#ask #pin making

[christiansorrell]

THE 2023 MEATIES: Indie TTRPG Awards

For a while, I’ve been joking about doing my own Official and Exclusive TTRPG Awards, and this is exactly what that is!

It's available now on Itch as a pay-what-you-want title (which, of course, includes FREE)!

Inside, you���ll see exactly why I chose to have the awards take on this easily home-printable fanzine form and what games I selected from the last year (or so) as my stand out favorites from indie and hobbyist creators.

The winners will be getting (if they are up for giving me their mailing addresses) a special color print variant of the zine, limited to 7 or so copies, as well as some MCGW/Meaties stickers. Anyone paying for their copy of the zine over on Itch will help offset that cost (but I'll do it no matter what, even if everyone picks up the zine for free). Otherwise, this zine won't be hitting print in any official capacity. Print it off at home! Give it to your friends!

This was a really fun project to put together over the last few days, and I hope you enjoy reading it. It’s definitely something a bit less formal and more personal than a lot of my other work.

The zine originally appeared on my monthly newsletter, Missives from the MeatCastle. If you'd like to get stuff like this (including TTRPG supplements each and every month) straight to your inbox, you can subscribe HERE.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #ttrpgs #rpg #fantasy #science fiction #liminal spaces #osr #pbta

[spnfanficpond]

Weekly Pond Newsletter

If April showers bring May flowers, then please send me more allergy meds because I'm gonna die of a runny nose next month!

Old Business:

The Monthly Prompt(s) - Admin Marie was channeling her inner Trickster and posted this for the prompt on the first day of the month:

(I was kinda digging it but she insisted it was a joke! 🤣)

In all seriousness, though, here's the link to the actual prompt for April. Flowers!!

The Angel Fish Awards - The post for March went up, and this month we had a crack fic get TWO nominations!! Definitely click here to see the list and check it out!

Fishing For Treasures - This weekend is Omegaverse weekend over at the @fanficocean! Head over there for some non-SPN fic recs!

Last week's #TweetFicTues prompts were:

New Business:

Manta Rays in the Discord server - It's going to be a busy week in the Discord server this week! Later today, Manta Ray Arthur will be there, and then Admin Marie will be there on Friday!

SPN Rewatch: Fanfic Edition - Next weekend, we will be discussing episodes 2.03 Bloodlust and 2.04 Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. If you want to see the kinds of things we've been discussing in our rewatch chats so far, check out The Archive!

Competitive Writing Sprints - Next weekend, Admin Michelle will be hosting some competitive writing sprints! Add words to your WIP and win fabulous prizes! Note: Admin Michelle would be open to making this a special session of sprints by making this a follow-up to the rewatch chat and having everyone write something based on the discussions from Saturday. If so, she would also offer prizes for more than just word count. What do you think?

(Divider by @glygriffe!)

That's all for this week! To see all Pond events, and also other SPN-related things like conventions and online concerts, check out our Google calendar! Click here for a static view in Eastern US/Canada time (desktop only, no mobile app access, sadly), and click here to add our calendar to your own Google calendar! We try to keep it as up-to-date as possible. If there's something you want to see on the calendar that's not there (maybe a convention we missed, cast birthdays, or something similar), send us an ASK and let us know!

Hope you have a great week! - From your Admins and Manta Rays, @manawhaat, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @mariekoukie6661, @thoughtslikeaminefield, and @heavenssexiestangel!

#weekly events post #michelle answers #pond admin #long post #spn fan fiction #spn fanfiction #spn fan fic #spn fanfic #supernatural fan fiction #supernatural fan fic #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #the winchesters #spnwin #spn prequel #john winchester #mary winchester #carlos cervantes #latika desai

[sashimiyas]

A Bitter Blend

Summary: you’re a barista and Kishibe is your regular though he’s far from it

Word count: 2k

Genre: angst but like soft angst? idk, if you’ve read any of my works you can recognize it’s not explicitly angsty, more bittersweet i guess; coffeeshop au; implied age gap

Warnings: mentions of blood; description of an attack; mentions of alcohol, food, and obviously coffee

A/n: missing my coffee shop job it seems; fun fact, i would write the monthly newsletter for my coffee shop to promote community and it was chock full of stupid coffee puns. my favorite month was febrewary

It starts with doing your job. You greet at every ding of the door, him no different.

“Good morning,” you chirp effortlessly. The words are meaningless along your tongue, palaver in the form of customer service. “Thank you for choosing our store. What can I get started for you?”

Regardless of your height, he peers down at you from a place above. A diminutive feeling that makes it hard to keep your cheery composure. It might be a trick of the light, but you swear you watch his tongue run down the inside of his cheek, tracing the inner of his scar. What story is associated with an injury like that? You wonder, but force your gaze back to his eyes, doing your best not to be impolite.

You’re caught, you realize, when he smirks at you. A small tilt on the scarred side of his lips, he runs a weathered hand, deep wrinkles indenting his knuckles, across his jaw. You hear the minute schwick as he scratches at the prickles of facial hair there.

“Coffee,” you suck your teeth between your lips at the answer, take one extra long blink with it to restrain yourself, because obviously he wants a coffee if he’s in a coffee shop.

“Large,” he finishes and tosses down an exceptionally grand bill, “black.”

Then he walks away. A small brisk in his step, he places his hands in his pockets, and stands near the exit. He watches you from where he is. Not a single word is spoken and he leaves without one glance back.

You don’t see him until months later. He’s forgettable until he isn’t. The same low cost, back alley haircut, same stitched scar that makes something constrict in your chest, but his movement falters. His overcoat whips against his thigh as he limps his way to you. You glare down at the uneven tempo of his dress shoes, a rich suede splattered with something even darker.

He looks at you, waits for you to say something outside of your regular greeting.

“Coffee,” he finally states when you don’t, “large. Black.”

You already know from just the uniform he wears, the scars and hollow look in his eye, that this is something he is accustomed to, something that you’ll never understand. When your greatest horrors are cleaning the bathroom of a lactose intolerant customer who’d basically just consumed a very dairy beverage, his must be actual torment. He must be plagued by devils and not only of the ones of his own creation.

“You look like you need a little more than that,” you point at his injured leg with your sharpie.

He doesn’t laugh, but he does smile. The distorted kind that makes you feel bitter and sweet and angry and forgiving, “you’ve got rum?”

“No.”

“Then that’s all I need.”

He ruffles through his overcoat pockets. The sleeve of his button down peaks out and you witness faded blots of iron, as if they’ve been scrubbed to remove saturation but not stain, taint white.

“You need a doctor.”

“Alcohol’s my medicine.” He drops the same denomination from last. The man makes a move to walk away again, but stops at the sight of your expression. You’re intently glaring at him, unexceptionally pleased with the interaction. It doesn’t matter who he is or what he does, he’s still only human.

“Don’t make such a pretty face like that,” a hand covers his mouth, traces the line of scruff along his jaw, and when he removes it, you swear you see an edge of amusement. “The ones that get mad at me are the ones I like best.”

You make it a point not to think of him, not to look up at every jingle of the door, not to frequently check the cambro if you need to brew more. He’s despicable, purposely enigmatic just for the opportunity to be annoying.

But it’s been months again and as you wipe the crumbs off a table with an overused sanitizing cloth, your thoughts go in a direction you’d rather avoid.

What if he’s dead?

Checking the news hadn’t been a habit before but curiosity does often get the best of you. You don’t even know his name, but occasionally on your break, you’ll watch anyways. Hopefully the next time you see him, it won’t be on a screen.

The sword devil is apparently running rampant in the streets of Japan. You listen to the crisp vowels of the reporter, spoken straight from the diaphragm as you bask in the peace your coffeeshop porch has to offer.

The bumble of the morning is drowned by the sound coming from your earbuds. There’s no reason for you to look up, but you know the heat of that stare anywhere.

“You,” the man says with one foot in the door and out the other.

Your index finger traces the edge of your ear, removing one of the devices. It prompts the newscast to pause, “you.”

He raises a brow, “that’s not very welcoming.”

You pinch your lips, doing your best not to look irritated at him with the memory of his last words replaying in your mind.

It’s like him to say something stupid.

You glance down at your imaginary watch, “I’m not on the clock.”

He nods and there’s this strained silence as he obstructs the entryway to your shop. He opens the door wider, presses his frame against it so people can move in and out but it still makes for awkward movement.

There’s something about him that upsets you, the distance that he keeps. Interacting with customers is seamless and people for the most part are easy to read. You have the same exact conversations with regulars over and over again.

(How are you? Oh, you know. Yeah, I know. On your way to work? As always. Have a good day at work. You too. See you tomorrow! See you tomorrow.)

Even the ones who aren’t even looking for a conversation, the ones strictly there for caffeine, you speak to in familiar head nods.

But this guy? It feels like he’s always one step away from disappearing. At least the Pollock painting has been wiped free from the suede of his shoes.

“You’re back.”

I’d been thinking of you. You would normally tell a regular customer. He’s beyond regular so you leave it at that.

He nods. A set of teenagers pass him onto the street and you debate putting your ear bud in. There’s little time left of your break and spending it with this alcoholic of an old man is one of the least appealing ways to end it.

“You’re still here.”

The surprise in his tone makes you respond quickly, “of course I am.”

He starts to shake his head, as if to deny the fact before his very eyes, but he stops himself, tucking his chin in for one single and sharp nod.

“Why do you–”

“Sometimes people aren’t meant to stay. Keep that in mind.”

You want to say something but his overcoat whips back. And he enters your coffeeshop, one foot in. The second foot comes after.

He comes and he goes. Waits for his door near the door. Years go by and you continue making coffee with the news playing in the background.

It’s been a while since you’ve had a proper breath and your vision goes dotted. The world is blurry and unfocused and maybe you’d been too harsh on him.

For a man to experience this, to seek devil and death so outrightly, you should have known he’d always been in a plane out of your reach. How could your experiences compare to his? When all your worries are selfish, meager things, like your apartment being too cold or the price of daikon going up?

Is this what he goes through every day? You look at the grotesque form of a human and sword, grappled by neck with dangling legs. Is this what he sees? Is this where he goes when he’s not ordering the plainest request in your coffee shop?

Your grip on the sword devil’s wrist goes limp as you resign to your fate. Closing your eyes, you don’t realize what’s going on.

In an instant, you’re falling, breathless now in flight. You land in someone’s arms and start hacking into their knee. They rub your back and from the precipices of your vision is a showdown of sword and knife. Steel, blood, metal, it is all overwhelming and it takes minutes for you to regain clarity again.

When you look up, the remains of the sword devil is splayed across the streets of Japan rampant no more and above it is him. He lingers on the sidelines while the medics check your injuries and when they look away, you rush from the scene.

“What are you doing here?” The man is quick to notice your absence.

Maybe this isn’t the right way to cope but you want to run away. You want normal. You want the smell of roasted beans and toasted pastry.

“You weren’t at work.”

Look at him, still saying the most stupid of things. “Obviously. I was busy getting close to murdered. What are you doing here?”

“My job,” but the answer is uncertain and maybe just the slightest bit scared. You turn to face him one more time. He’s close, closer than he’s ever been and without the brew of coffee, you can smell the rum that’s permanently stained on his lips.

“And I’m going to mine.”

“You need a doctor,” he’s firm with this. The muscles in his jaw dance along his papery skin, dried by so many years around the sun. Without the register separating you two, you can see the peaks, ridges, and valleys along his face, the vestiges of a handsome man. Age had done a number on him but maybe the culprit is trauma or stress.

“And why would I need that, Kishibe? When coffee is my medicine?”

He ignores your pointed statement. “How do you know my name?”

“I heard one of your coworkers say it.” If there’s one thing you want to retain from this incident, it’s that. At least now you know what to look for in the obits. “Now quit following me. I can go to work by myself.”

“I’m getting a coffee. You happen to be going in the same direction so why don’t you let me walk you?”

“So you can walk back out again?” You’re done with this elusive game he’s been forcing you to play. He only answers with silence and a defensive glare.

But you’ve spent years serving him coffee, picking up all the crumbs he likes to leave behind. There’s no way your heart can take this anymore, this vague relationship he’s begun and maybe it’s all on your end, self imposed by a sincere worry for his well-being, but then why? Why does he always come back?

“Make a deal with me.”

Kishibe ruminates, “like a contract?”

“Sure.”

“What is it?” he runs his hand along his jaw. You’ve noticed it’s a nervous tick. His fingers like to find the grooves of his scar and you think it’s because it reminds him that he’s still alive.

“I’ll stay. I’ll be there to brew your coffee. Large and black,” you point at him, “but you have to come back. You have to make sure you come back.”

“Is that it?”

“And maybe you stay.” You grow quiet at the suggestion. He gives you an amused huff when you look at him. A smile that encourages you on, “Stay and have a cup with me.”

After a moment, his overcoat ruffles as he shrugs, “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I can get out of you, isn’t it?” It’s not exactly what you want, but as you’ve always known, the man in front of you is far from regular.

“Some people aren’t meant to stay, but I’m still here so might as well give it a try.”

#reina.writescsm #csm x reader #kishibe x reader #chainsaw man angst #don’t know how to tag in this fandom

[thesensteawitch]

Urgent Message From The Universe🌻🧹👂

Pick A Pile Reading

Breathe...and Choose!🌻

(Left to Right--- 1,2,3)

Hey, Senstea Souls! This is a general reading. Take what resonates and leave what doesn't.

Pile 1

Tarot Cards- 7 of Cups, Justice, The Emperor

Hey, pile 1. I see that you wish for so many things. You daydream a lot. At times you ask for things or make up certain scenarios that in real life you wouldn't want to happen. The message is simple yet urgent. Something you've been wishing for is going to come true. And you will be given options. Your job is to be cautious while you make a wish and don't let your emotions rule your decisions. There's a surprise that is going to make you flabbergasted. You are going to love it. But it's still cooking. So you may make a wish but think twice before doing so. Something hides behind the curtain of justice. Please appeal for the thing you deserve. Things may not look like as they are. A scary crow may look like an angel and an angel may look like a devil. Please do not judge a book by its cover. The universe is trying to reward you for your karma but there are energies around you that wouldn't like you to receive this gift. Think straight, and follow your intuition. Control your mind and rest will be taken care of.

Pile 2

Tarot Cards- Knight of Wands, 3 of Wands, Wheel Of Fortune

Hello, my dear pile 2. I see a new opportunity coming your way that may want to redirect you. You'll be learning a lot if you change your decision. There is a vision and then there's a strong desire that you can't shake. You're cautious but still moving in the opposite direction of your calling. The decision is in your hand. The wheel is waiting to be rolled as soon as you decide to choose a path. Now the turning of the wheel is in your favour or not depends on what decision you take. On one road you would be asked to take the leap of faith and be ready to learn and on the other road, you'll be going to and fro from assessing the risk of one situation to another. You've almost mastered something on one hand and on the other, you are a beginner who has a long way to go. There's a one-time risk on one hand and then there's a lifetime of risk on the other. Make a choice. My advice is that there's no harm in learning new things. It's your destiny calling you. It may look a bit risky but eventually, the choice is yours. You can come back to what you were doing before but once you miss this opportunity who knows when is it going to come back again?

Pile 3

Tarot Cards- 7 of Wands, 4 of Swords, Page of Swords

Ah! My dear pile 3. You are going through a battle. The world seems against you. Mentally and physically you seem exhausted. It's high time that you take a step back. No need to prove yourself to others. If they think you're not good enough laugh at their naivety and walk away. Because you know you are. You wouldn't cry if someone said that your blue hair doesn't suit you while your hair is not even colored. You have great wars to win why are you wasting your time on such petty battles? You deserve to be fighting somewhere else, showing your light somewhere else. You can't make those believe in the sun who sleep when the sun rises. They don't know that the moon gets its light from the sun and you making this point would not change their belief. Hold onto what you know. Forgive those who don't know any better. It's better your surrender to the divine. You need rest. Eat, sleep, and exercise. That's all. Stay at home if you want to but make sure you do not deprive yourself of fresh air and the natural beauty of the world around you.

Thank you for reading! I hope you found this reading helpful.🌹

Tip me jar.

Subscribe to my newsletter for monthly healing tips and exciting offers.

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#tarot readings #urgent #message from the universe #message from spirit #message for the collective #divine messages #divine protection #psychic #tarot reader #tarot cards #free tarot reading #free tarot #tarot community

[dooksofearl]

SQUEAK SPEAK

Monthly newsletter for Dooks of Earl Ferret Sanctuary Inc

Happy April and Greetings to Everyone!

Much excitement at our little rescue this month and I can't wait to tell you.

Thanks to my income tax check coming in our fundraising goal for between now and May 1st is only $768.00

That will cover

The rescues regular bills like; utilities ($280 on average since our HVAC is still out, but we are hoping someone is coming to fix it soon), and pet foods ($488). I have managed to raise enough to cover the other bills and supplies from my income tax check. And of course, none of this is for me personally nor do I get paid for the work I do. It's not about me, it's about these animals and making their lives amazing for however long they have left.

Other needs that the rescue has not included in this list are:

As always, Pine pellets from Tractor Supply Company, we go through about 30 bags a month.

The blue dishes we got last time will be added back to our list because they are working so well for our sweet seniors and tiny ferrets in helping them eat in a more natural position.

We still have a short wishlist with links to these items on Amazon. The pine pellets I just listed tractor supply gift cards because they don't sell the pellets through Amazon for delivery.

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/dl/invite/63ZMinE?ref_=wl_share

I also want to remind everyone that you can pick us as your Walmart.com round up charity and that you can send gifts from our Walmart registry and Chewy Registry if you'd like.

https://www.walmart.com/nonprofits/7a69297c-7cb2-4cb9-a70f-3eaedd738ef4/profile

https://www.chewy.com/g/dooks-of-earl-ferret-sanctuary-inc_b103217538

We still need fence panels for an outdoor dog kennel yard if anyone has any locally they'd like to drop off. And if you are throwing out any 13 gallon kitchen trash cans or plastic bins of any size we would be thrilled to have them.

We currently have 11 ferrets in amazing foster homes so our population here is becoming very manageable for me AND we have 4 new volunteers!!!!! We are so happy to welcome Michael, his wife, and his mom to our team. They will be coming soon to help me get things back to tip top shape and I greatly appreciate it.

And an amazing girl named Michal who came yesterday and spent the day helping me. The ferrets were crazy about her and you know Keiko was too. The bunnies warmed right up to her but they are very friendly girls. Mr Maru gave her the tour till his house was finished then he had to go see what I had done and grab snacks. Cal the sugar glider, slept through it all. But what delighted me most was Mr. Spooky. Our shy, bite first ask questions later guy, went right to her and cuddled her. WOW He is still having a hard time with Justin not being here. Ferrets grieve just like us and he was really close to his dad the Ferret King. He gave me kisses and now this. It makes me so excited and emotional for him.

There was a minor set back for me medically as I have a new allergy, possibly to Stevia. Of course I try to do something good for my health and now I look like I have rolled in bees. If you don't know, this is not a surprise. Lol But I got some medicine for the hives and hopefully will be feeling much better very soon. Until then if you see me dancing against the doorway like a bear, just walk away. 😂

I'm through infusion 3 of 8. YAY! And I have a surgery consultation coming up finally so I am hopeful that it goes well and we can get a date for surgery. 🤞

I have a potential part time job as a virtual assistant and I am truly excited about that. And we are looking at setting up the trailer for a rental so that I can generate a little income and start paying off old debt and getting back on my feet again.

The three month anniversary of losing Justin was really hard on me but I want to thank everyone for their abounding kindness and support. Some days you and these rescue babies are all that gets me through to the next day. I am so grateful to have you in my life.

I also want to mention if you don't get a thank you note and receipt for your donation or some sort of confirmation, please check with me to make sure we received it. I always send a thank you note if it lets me and if you use cashapp I send a heart.

You are awesome and amazing and greatly appreciated. I could not do what I do if you weren't here supporting us and cheering me on. I hope the blessing that you are comes back to you ten fold. Have an amazing month!

Shelly Breeden-Conner

Executive director

Dooks of Earl Ferret Sanctuary Inc

731-326-0690

Tax ID 88-0945277

Donations can be made in app at:

https://www.jotform.com/app/213234930973154

Zelle and PayPal

[email protected]

Venmo @DooksofEarl

Cashapp $dooksofearl

Checks or money orders can be mailed to:

Dooks of Earl Ferret Sanctuary Inc

4826 US HIGHWAY 70 E

BROWNSVILLE, TN 38012-8412

#animal rescue #cute animals #animals #ferrets #cats #bunnies #kittens #funfundraiser

[netherworldpost]

A general shop idea I'm happy if you institute as well

One of the things I have been tinkering with, and I'm finally settling on, is a monthly zine that pulls the essays and comics and photos etc. I take in a month.

It will essentially be a monthly compilation of the original content I make for social media.

Zines will go out the first week of the month, capturing all the stuff from the previous month, so there isn't a pressure to make stuff specifically for this zine.

"Why not create new stuff?"

Because resources (time/energy/etc.) will be to create new stuff at large -- products, comics, etc.

This is specifically designed to repurpose existing stuff.

The specific point is to connect without adding more work that would derail the creation of stuff.

It's a catch-up. An archive.

An "I get too many emails, not enough physical mail, I want weird ghost mail"

"...so... why would I subscribe to this..."

I, myself, regularly say "Hey I like this comic or thing. Here is a few coins."

It's a take on the $1-3 tip jars, pledges, patreon levels, etc. that are extremely popular to offer, and extremely popular to support.

It's there if you wish to support the content.

It's also there as a way to bypass the multitude of social media platform decays, frustrations, lockouts, etc.

As a person who Makes Things Online and has for 20+ years, I am extremely worried about what the space will look like going forward in the next 20+ years.

Hence! This!!

Hey remember when RSS was far more accessible? Those were fun times.

Hey remember when Reddit wasn't on the verge of...

Hey remember when Twitter wasn't...

(sotto voce) Do you see where I'm going with this?

"How much is it going to cost?"

About 125% the cost of production, so probably $2-3/month. This is not a profit-making vehicle, the extra grease on the wheel is to cover production issues, lost in the mail, etc.

When I have a sale or launching a new thing, a note will be included. "Hey! For the coming month, use code XYZ! We're launching New Thing on This Date too!"

"Couldn't I just follow you on social media and/or subscribe to email and see it for free?"

Yes.

I'm not trying to shift your behavior from one to another.

I want to create a thing should you say "I like you but I'm tired of XYZ social network and/or I get too many emails."

I want to create a thing should you say "I'd rather read about calling myself an Addams cousin while drinking coffee in the park."

This is not anti-social media.

This is not "people are on their phones too much."

This is not anti- anything, really.

I want to create something should you say "I want more mail. I want more physical mail and I want it to come in a bright envelope decorated weirdly."

It is my professional estimation that online communities are going to continue to fracture. The following is my personal rambling opinion:

It is going to get harder, and harder, and harder, as a person, to keep track of the artists and makers that you are interested in.

It's going to get even harder, and harder, and harder, as a maker, to connect to people who are interested in the stuff you make.

Before social media, you had "marketing," and for awhile, we've had "social media marketing," which is similar but about 100,000 times cheaper.

We are rapidly reaching a point where the majority, possibly the vast majority, of content you see on socials fall into one of two categories:

Created by a large business

Created by a large business but funneled through a special division they created specifically to quietly hide the scale of their operation

This happens right now more often than is comfortable!

And I think it's going to continue to shift that way!

"I'm on board, where do I sign up?"

Until the shop launches, I'm sending out a monthly newsletter. Signup is at netherworldpost.com. This will be among the first projects I launch.

Once said shop launches, I'll continue with the online newsletter, but this will also be available.

I will have an open, public, forever free, never paywalled guide on "This is how I run this with the tiny print shop we built. Here are some ideas if you do not have a tiny print shop."

Thanks!

And feel free to take this idea and make it your own for your whatever sized shop on whatever platform you make things on now and/or the future!

#small business

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

Writing Newsletter #1: March 2024

So! Lil author's note to explain this. I decided to start up a newsletter, monthly, but until I get around to figuring out website hosting &c., to post on here instead of emails. Once I get that sorted, I'll switch this to email, and there'll be a newsletter signup gift of two stories - Ever Changing, Ever Near (hosted on my website until recently) and A Fragile Solace. Together, in unedited form, they're around 3k. They're Inklings stories, both of which were highly commended in the separate competitions I wrote them for. Anyway, if you want to be on the taglist for this monthly newsletter, say the word and I'll add you.

Writing update

Lately, my main project has been Patience, Changing. It’s a story about autism, changes in routine and loving despite the inconvenience. There’s also a spice of mental health in there, because I’m me and that’s what I do. Also my protagonists are eleven and twelve years old. Very fun. Rhona is incredibly over-dramatic and while in some ways she’s justified, in other ways she’s just not—I’ve written a couple of scenes from her perspective that I intend to cut, just because I love her so much. (It’s meant to be all from Patience’s POV.) An interesting thing that I’ve noted in the last few days is the inclusion of a character I’d intended to be already gone before the story began, but on a whim I decided to change the timeline. If you’ve read The Patience of Hope, the character I’m referring to is Hannah—Patience’s aunt, who dies of anorexia complications long before. However, I’ve chosen to include her in Patience, Changing because as someone who suffers from anorexia myself, I felt it was important to include the possible outcomes. I’m not entirely sure what her role in this story is, but I’m discovering that she is very important to Patience, so we’ll see when she dies. I’ll have to edit The Patience of Hope to change that detail, but that’s okay.

This is the second time I’ve made myself cry over a character I originally wrote as dead before I wrote them before they died, but anyway.

In terms of word count, I’ve written 80k of assorted Patience content since I started writing the novella in mid-December, so I’m pretty happy with that.

Reading update

At the moment I’m reading Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle for Lent (well—Lent-ish), as well as Cry of the Raven by Morgan L. Busse. This is my first time reading both, and I’m tremendously excited to finish them both. The first Ravenwood book was one of my favourites for a long time and I only recently read Flight of the Raven for the first time. It lived up to my expectations.

I’ll have more to put in this section next newsletter when there’s been a definable sense of time since the last one, so. Yeah.

Ramble

Hi. This is just an area where I can ramble about whatever. Since I’m new to this whole newsletter thing, this one is pretty empty. I’m considering how I want to do this thing—considering whether I add in a Goals section or not, or whether I try and get back to posting on my blog, but anyway. Hopefully here on out will become more polished, or something. This was a pretty last-minute idea—I’ve been kicking around the idea of creating a writing newsletter for a While, but until now didn’t actually get round to it.

Anyway, please contact me and let me know what works best or what you’d most like to see! I need the advice.

Drabble

Under Pressure

“Patience!” he called.

She turned to him with relief, pressing her hands to her face in distress. “Oh, Nathan!” she said, leaning a little towards him. “Why can’t I just—be normal?”

“You’re normal—for you,” he said gently. “The public perception of ‘normal’ is so weirdly skewed it’s crazy. Don’t think any less of yourself just because you can’t handle that.” He gestured to the party they had both left behind. “You’re fine, Patience.”

“I’m autistic,” she said bitterly. “I’ll never cope with the world.”

“That’s not your fault.” He didn’t touch her, only smiled, and she was comforted.

Photo

#newsletter #author newsletter #indie newsletter #indie author

[laufire]

After some deliberation, given the issues we've been seeing with substack, I decided to make a patreon page. Everything I plan to post there now and in the near future will be available for free. Ignore the subscription (patreon doesn't let you put it as anything less than one dollar). I just want a page where I can indulge in this stuff in a different way, hoping to get something out of it that I'm not getting in my other sites.

I already published there the short story/teaser for "Underground Elysium", and plan to post there (& crosspost in my other socials) things on the same venue as in my newsletter: monthly samples of my original writing in the form of short stories, flash fiction, or excerpts; and recommendations and in-depth analysis of other people's writing.

and as this will also serve as my pinned post here:

about me | icon/header/sidebar | edits | fics | stacked100 | reading meme | writing woes | original writing

#intro post #talking to the void #me me me #id in alt text #captioned #tumblr nonsense #lau's patreon

[queenslayerbee]

for a while now, I've been thinking of making a (bi?)monthly substack newsletter, like I've seen other writeblrs do. it's different in my fandom blog, but I've been more detached from the writeblr side of things in tumblr and other platforms and I want to see if diving into something more involved will lead to more focus on my original writing, and to more enthusiasm when it comes to share it.

lately I've been writing a few short stories, because due to some RL complications and other commitments I find the idea of tackling bigger projects too taxing (all the short stories are technically part of a longer project -the redstart's ledger, the wicked witches of trickstown, and the travels of soyolmaa, respectively-, but they're very focused, with a smaller scop, and thus manageable for me at the moment).

my intention would be to post the first one of those short stories (one about captain latoya before she was captain latoya) by the end of october/beginning of november, although I plan to write a more introductory first newsletter to get things going.

other than original writing itself, the idea is to offer writing updates (and maybe some personal updates if I feel like it lol), thoughts on writing in general, and more than likely, recommendations (or teardowns!) of art I've found inspiring, one way or another.

let me know if you're interested, and if we're mutuals, feel free to send me a link to your own newsletter to check it out ^-^

#writeblr #writeblr community #writers on tumblr #writing woes #original post #susurros

[adornesibley]

NAME GOES HERE: a Newsletter

Reading: Old Gods of Appalachia TTRPG by Monte Cook Games, Starter Villain by John Scalzi, The Secrets We Keep by Shirley Patton

Finished Reading: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Future by Naomi Alderman

Podcast: Unwell

Playing: God Hand (PS2(on PS3(Thank God Hand for PS2 Classics)))

Making: Zines and Doom Levels

Writing: Project E

Word Count: 168317

TLDR: EfanGamez needs food help badly! CHEAP TTRPG BUNDLE! Working on working titles. The, frankly, crowded writing scene and AI intruders. ADHD and unfinished proj… Wingspan is so cute and so fun~ We’re Here because We’re Here because… Mekborg and Steel Psalm want YOU!

An indie TTRPG designer needs help badly! EfanGamez has put all of their paid TTRPGs and supplements together into a tidy little bundle and is currently offering it for $25USD on their itch.io page! This sale is on for another 19 days as of the posting of this newsletter and I HIGHLY encourage anyone interested in trying out TTRPGs that are out of the norm to take advantage of this deal. Grim and Mourn are two first-person-shooter-inspired TTRPGs that I can recommend in particular.

I have been working on Project E, the working title, of which she’s had many. Just recently, I decided it was necessary to completely rewrite every bit of dialogue for the main villain, allowing him a more gradual, consistent descent into madness. It’s going well, and progress is happening. I want to touch on something in the first sentence of this paragraph. It’s FASCINATING to me how some stories get their names with minimal teeth-pulling. Hell, I’ve had stories who received their names BEFORE I wrote a word of them. But Project E has gone through so many iterations of names that I’ve sort of decided to keep this working title until I’m done and maybe even after Beta Readers have had their turn. I know the name will come when it’s meant to. Part of my problem is the book is about a very specific theme, its plot has some consistent elements, and its setting is vivid… but to wrap up enough of these separate elements together in a title is proving… troublesome.

Trying to get your work out into the world as an author (in ways where people will actually see it that is) is SO freakin difficult. The market is saturated now more than ever. We, as writers, not only have to “contend” with our fellow writers but now with AI as there is an influx of AI-generated content being submitted to journals and magazines around the world. I am glad I am not in the publishing industry right now. But, nevertheless, I have submitted to two anthologies this past month. One bigger name bi-monthly and one niche market which was INSANELY fun to write. Hopefully, something will come of them. But if not, what do you do? We, as writers, continue on. We heed the call in our hearts and minds, we sling that ink and continue forward, one lie at a time.

Speaking of which, I have so many unfinished works XD I tend to post about something I’m working on then distraction occurs and all of a sudden it has been a month and I have totally forgotten about the project I had been working on. I have no doubt picked up something new or something old and once-forgotten. ADHD brains often feel like a quagmire, hard to pull thoughts through, sometimes you lose them altogether to the deep dark, sometimes they resurface, grimy and forgotten… what was I talking about again?

Last month, my little TTRPG group didn’t meet as several folks were unavailable… so instead we got the remaining few of us together and I got to play Wingspan for the first time! What a blast~ It was certainly complicated starting off but the rules become pretty easy to grasp after about two rounds of play. After that, when you’re about one round from the end is when it becomes clear how you’re supposed to plan for the ending if you’re intent on winning. Or of course, you could just enjoy all the beautiful birds, the weird facts, and the wonderful time shared with your friends.

I am a long-term Nerdfighter. 2012 era. If you are unsure of what this means, I’ll briefly explain. John and Hank Green are two authors/ YouTubers /philanthropists/ podcasters/ educators/ nerds/ TBFighters (I could go on… these guys are PROLIFIC) and they have been vlogging since 2007 and around that vlog (originally meant to bring them closer as brothers which I think is/was/whatever a resounding success) has grown a community called Nerdfighteria, among many other things. They have recently started a “good news” newsletter called We’re Here. “A nice little email for people from Earth.” I highly recommend signing up. These humans have continued to make the world less sucky by their presence and their actions. It’s beautiful how these massively powerful, famous, and influential creators are using their network to support folks in their extended community and using their community and influence to make so much good change in the world. Please go check out We’re Here and Vlogbrothers.

Speaking of community and supporting one another, DMDave is starting a Kickstarter for two books! Mekborg, which seems to be Warhammer 40k grimdark meets Battletech, is/was/whatever designed by John K Webb who has a LOT of design credits for the magazines Broadsword and Sidequest. As well, there’s Steel Psalm, designed by Dave himself, which from the name I’d presume is the same setting, but using wargaming rules similar to Forbidden Psalm (Also big recommendation). The Kickstarter is launching April 16th and the best part? When it’s done, the digital copies will go out immediately and by June or July the books will be shipped out (depending on how long printing takes) as the books are already finished! I’ll fully admit DMDave probably doesn’t “need” help to get the project funded, but the more support there is, the more likely projects like this will be created in the future!

Support weird. Support indie.

#indie ttrpg #writblr #ttrpg community #wargaming #battletech #mörk borg #writers on tumblr #Mek Borg #Steel Psalm #Forbidden Psalm #DMDave #efangamez #John Green #Hank Green #We're Here #am writing #support indie creators #Wingspan #ADHD brain

[l-e-morgan-author]

Writing Newsletter #2: April 2024

Still not figured out website hosting, so this is still on here. I also haven't edited the two stories I plan to provide as a signup gift, so that's not ready yet. Anyway, if you want to be on the taglist for this monthly newsletter, say the word and I'll add you.

Writing update

My main project is still Patience, Changing. The mental health aspect to it has been more pronounced in the last few weeks, although my writing has been variably swift. I’ve enjoyed getting to know my characters, and am eager to work on more that fleshes them out after I’ve finished with this; I’ll probably write a novella about both Connie and Hannah at some point. Novellas are an incredibly freeing medium: they can be filled with Plot, or they can just be a whole lot of vibes packed together. They won’t be the Best Novella Ever, of course, but it does give a chance to explore vibes without necessarily having a significant amount of plot going on.

I’m getting closer and closer to Hannah’s death. I know I’m going to have to go back and write her properly into the story, since she barely occurs and her death is going to have a significant effect on Patience. I’m not looking forward to writing it, but anyway. It has to be.

As far as word count goes, I’m up to 115k total, being around 35k written since last month. Most of that is on the novel, with some drabble work (some of them shared and some put in the novel so effectively serving double duty) and a couple of specific scenes from different planned novellas (like the one I wrote for the Furious Fiction that didn’t get anywhere but I’m pretty happy with—that’s 500 words or fewer). My momentum is not as strongly forward carrying as it was, but I think that’s just something that varies anyway. I’ll be glad when I finish this novel; I hope to finish writing it this month and then do further work on novellas while I let it rest, or perhaps back to the Inklings story I am tentatively titling Metamorphosis of a Girl, Hadassah’s story. I could go back to Hands Made for Gentleness, but that may be darker than I should be looking at at present. I’m not entirely sure what this month will bring, hence.

Reading update

Since last month, I’ve read a bit more of Walking on Water and Cry of the Raven. I’m loving both of them. I’ve also completed Wintergirls (a reread—an excellent though disturbing book), Billabong Adventurers (reread—one of my favourite books), Billabong’s Daughter (reread—also one of my favourites), The Sound of Music (another reread—and one I absolutely loved, more than I expected) and Captain Jim (another reread—the Billabong books again).

So all of the books I’ve read recently have been rereads, but I’m really enjoying them. I’m currently reading From Billabong to London, Cry of the Raven, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and Walking on Water.

Ramble

Oh hello, it’s the ramble section again. My mental health has been comparatively amazing lately, which helps with some things but means that I’m not doing as much “aaaaa I’m feeling So Bad let me Write The Pain Away”, which is… both good and bad. It’ll take a bit to adjust to feeling Like This (positively), and I’m still struggling with motivation and all that (in part because, interestingly enough, a lot of my motivation in the past has been stress-related, and now that I’m not as stressed (either that or Too Stressed) I’m not sure how to motivate myself).

I’m sure I’ll figure something out here presently. Anyway, please contact me and let me know what works best or what you’d most like to see! I need the advice.

Drabble

I Will Be With You

I need someone to guide me, Connie wrote in her diary. I need someone who I can believe to tell me that it’s okay to care about myself. I know all the stuff the psych says about being worthy of attention and love but I don’t believe it. I need someone to believe in me, I think. But I don’t know how to find someone who’ll do that in a way I won’t just discard what they say like I do so many people. I need someone who’ll be there. But then again—they say the sun rises every day.

No photo of Ransom this time, sorry!

[amadeusgame]

Amadeus Devlog 1: from Concepts/Ideas Into An Actual Demo

Well, as of this past Saturday, the demo for Amadeus is live. I hope it's a good introduction to the world, story, titular character, and general atmosphere/ambience of the game.

Over the next year, I'm going to be shifting my sights toward getting the full release of Episode 1 ready by next summer. I'm planning to post at least monthly long-form development updates, both here as well as devlogs on the itch.io project. I'm considering a newsletter, but that hasn't happened yet - in the event it does, I've created a Linktree to track all of the resources relevant to the ongoing development of Amadeus. Give this a bookmark and check back: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame

Without further ado.... the first update about the ongoing making of Amadeus! Or, in this case, a retrospective on making the demo. If you're curious about how this project started, and how various inspirations and circumstances helped me see it through to a released demo, give it a read! It's a bit long, so if you'd rather skip it, you're not missing anything but context on what's already done. Future devlogs will be shorter and have more news looking forward.

Amadeus the character has existed in my brain for several years, now. Solea - who is mentioned in the demo, but has not yet made an appearance - was conceptualized at the same time, but she was originally named Solaris. I changed her name because it felt strange to have both main characters' names end with the same sound. Now that it's changed, I think Solea fits her better.

Below are the first sketches I made of these characters. It's interesting how little Amadeus changed, but Solea on the other hand is almost unrecognizable. Her characterization changed so much that I felt she needed a new design to accompany it. As for what that design is... that's something to be revealed later! I think she's an incredibly compelling character, and I can't wait for everyone to meet her.

What motivated me to turn these characters into protagonists of an actual, real video game, was a series of concurrent Things during my second year as a grad student studying music composition, last year. At the time, I was:

Taking an elective course on C#/Unity, and learning how to Actually Make A Game

Writing a music piece for solo marimba and electronics (for a different course), and using Professor Layton music as inspiration

Thinking about a particular scene I had just come up with involving Amadeus

#2 is extremely relevant here. There was one evening when I was listening to a WIP of the marimba composition I wrote, and realized it evoked the exact kind of melancholy that might fit my story - so, as a form of fun procrastination, I played the track back on loop and sketched out a title screen for Amadeus's story in a small notebook.

Yep... the very first thing I made for this game was a title screen. Not exactly the conventional way to do things. (That marimba piece eventually turned into "Spellbound Mischief," the BGM track during the largest interactive/investigation scene in the demo. It was greatly inspired by the "Kodh" BGM in Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, and "Bewitching Puzzles" from Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney.)

Meanwhile, in the Unity class, I had just learned how to make a very basic title screen with a button to proceed to the game on it. So I opened a new instance of Unity, imported a phone camera picture of the drawing I did as a title screen asset, and made a "proceed to game" button that deactivated the title screen. I went ahead and put the in-progress version of the marimba piece as background music while I was at it.

And so the development of Amadeus began.

The very first build was made in one weekend, after I had finished my actual Unity/C# homework for the week, and wanted to apply what I had learned to building a game. Unfortunately, a game needs art assets. I found that it was incredibly difficult to motivate myself to work with pure greybox assets, so I sketched up very placeholder-y assets (a background, a walk cycle) and played around with them. As a visual artist, I find it easier to work in pencil and paper than digitally, so I sketched the assets in the same notebook as before.

Behold the glory of Prototype Amadeus:

I ended up building out a very rough skeleton version of the first scene in the demo, almost exclusively using Unity buttons as functionality, because that was what I understood best at the time. The portraits for Amadeus and the Witch are used in the final game, as well as the hand sprite and the door scene (all of which I put considerably  more effort into than the placeholder walk cycle and manor, seen above.)

...In fact, if you're REALLY bored, the prototype still exists here on itch.io: https://arcanaxix.itch.io/amadeus-prologue-demo (password is "werewolfdepressionsim").

If you're not that bored, you can hopefully still appreciate how much better the released demo version of the text UI looks, compared to this:

At this point, the professor of my Unity course introduced us to our final project: we were to create a Game Design Document for a game, a timeline with finishing major benchmarks to complete the game as proposed by the day our final project was due, and then have a fun party where we would all play each others' games. The game didn't have to be anything very involved at all (it was music school, expectations were not very high), but I was getting excited about actually making a game with MY CHARACTERS, and I wanted to use this assignment to build a playable point-and-click chapter.

I also wanted to learn how to try and code a drag-and-drop puzzle mechanic, not just for this game, but also to try and help with the ongoing development of another exciting project I am part of (Project DuskPuppy). At any rate, I used the final project of this class to build a very janky "chapter" of Amadeus.

I learned so much working on that, and at the end of it, I had something that was Technically Playable, an absolute nightmare in terms of user experience, and in which half of the assets were scribbles. But I shared it with friends, and one of them gave me the following feedback, which (thanks ZeroJanitor) basically directed my continued development of the demo:

"i love the whole tone of this game, the paper cutout sprites and somber music set a really cool tone, which compliment the character dialogue and theming really well! also it functions from start to finish which is always nice"

I'm including this because I think it's important for people to know just how much their comments can influence and motivate creators. Hearing just one person say that the paper sketch visuals - which I was using originally NOT out of any aesthetic direction, but literally just because I personally find it easier to draw assets on pencil and paper, and needed assets to implement - set an interesting and unique tone? Well, that settled it! I decided to double down on the pencil sketches from then on, and have used the same notebook that I sketched the original title screen in to draw every single art asset in the game.

This has come with its share of difficulties - a couple of the sprites I needed to entirely re-draw, because they were drawn at a different scale in my notebook, so the line thicknesses didn't match up with the other sprites. This would have been much easier to tweak digitally, but for pencil-on-paper, I had to just start over.

The second version is an improvement anyway; but I ended up using the "rough" version as an in-between frame in an animation, and by sheer luck, it happens to flow pretty well. So the original still made it in after all!

Anyway, that all came later -- at the end of 2022 I simply had a technically playable version of the game that was extremely rough and was mostly held together with Unity buttons deactivating and activating things, but it was Enough of an accomplishment that I started to feel like I could see this through into a real release.

I had learned:

The basics of how C#/Monobehaviors work, and enough of an understanding to be able to look up answers and resources for further learning

How to make a game design document and break a HUGE task like "make a game" down into every single small task within it, and prioritize/schedule those to get something made

That no matter what you will never actually finish everything on time, and to make peace with that

(Regarding Point 3: my original script for the movement could not handle the upper limit of movement on a screen being anything except a horizontal line, so for the scene with the grave on a hill, I just.... rotated the camera and Amadeus' sprite. I figured out a more elegant solution later, but sometimes, deadlines mean you have to slap on a band-aid that sort of works!)

And, crucially, I had the OK from my professor to continue asking him code and Unity questions after the course was finished, with the caveat that he would respond when he had the time. This is probably the only reason I actually finished the Amadeus demo. Being able to ask for help when you need it is invaluable.

The next important thing that happened was over winter break I spent 2 weeks obsessively binge-reading the visual novel Umineko When They Cry. This was, I cannot emphasize enough, THE most motivating thing I could have possibly done. I was struck by several things: the insanely catchy soundtrack, the fascinating abstract sound design choices, and the CHARM of the MS-paint graphics. I had been surrounded by an obsession with big budget games at school and the idea that music that's too melodic or looping distracts from the game, but here was an example of a soundtrack with some of the catchiest tunes I've ever heard that hit incredibly hard during key narrative moments.

(The development of Amadeus had to take a brief pause while I painted the Golden Witch Beatrice on my laptop. But this means that the majority of serious development for Amadeus happened on a laptop with the Golden Witch Beatrice on it:)

Playing Umineko was exactly what I needed to completely throw the "soundtracks should support the game but not draw attention to themselves" value out the window. I had just played a masterpiece of a game in which the soundtrack hit you over the head with itself and it ruled so indescribably hard. Moreover, I had just played a masterpiece of a game in which almost all of the art assets were clearly drawn by one person doing their best, and it ruled so indescribably hard. So I doubled down on my values: I was going to create a game, with my own hand-drawn assets, and my own music, and it was going to be chock full of certified bangers if it was the last thing I did.

(May as well plug the soundtrack again while I'm on the topic: https://arcanaxix.bandcamp.com/album/amadeus-demo-original-soundtrack - I was studying music at music school during the majority of this game's development, so unsurprisingly, the music and sound are by far the most polished part of the whole affair.)

On the subject of music-! My last semester at school I didn't have a C# course giving me deadlines to work on the game, so I had to learn how to make my own deadlines. I drafted a calendar that originally scheduled the release of the demo for the end of May, 2023. I broke down the remaining tasks for a "complete" demo and scheduled them across the remaining months.

I did not follow this calendar at all. What I did do, was learn more about myself, and how to motivate myself. As you can see, the demo got released - so that means I managed to find a way to keep myself on track! And that was to take advantage of the fact that I was in music school, making music.

The whole project was started because of a piece of music I was writing. So it made sense to me to channel that, and to use my remaining time at school to create the perfect soundtrack, and to draw inspiration for the game itself from the music I was writing. Sometimes the game inspired my music, and sometimes it was the other way around! The point being: I still had deadlines, but they were music deadlines now, so I used that to motivate my development of the game.

A few examples:

Spellbound Mischief: I worked alongside percussionist Jay Lee on this composition, and engineered the recording session. Because of that, I had the backing track and the marimba recording split into two different audio stems. This gave me an idea: what if I had the marimba stem fade in and out? The actual nature of the dynamic soundtrack in the scene changed a lot over development, but it was inspired by the fact that I had multiple audio stems to work with in the first place.

Fugue ~ Interlude: The underlying composition of this piece is just what it says - a fugue. My final project in my counterpoint course was to write a fugue. The nice thing about fugues is that, once you understand the process, fugues more or less write themselves; this was written entirely divorced from Amadeus. So I wrote this fugue, and a different friend (thanks monstrman) gave me the feedback that it sounded like a Final Fantasy villain theme. I started thinking about it and I realized it had a ton of potential as a theme in my game... and much later, when I created the "Amadeus opens the notebook and thinks to himself" scene (added after playtester feedback that the narrative flow was hard to follow), I realized that I could use it there.

Deal With a Witch: I knew I needed a witchy theme. I didn't have one. So when I got assigned to write a contrapuntal ABA form piece, I wrote one in minor on the harpsichord, and it felt suitably witchy. The clarinet was added after, and I don't even remember why I added it other than that I know someone who plays a mean clarinet. It was definitely the right call.

A Riddle for Thee (Demo Version): I'm being a bit rude by including this one... this piece was written as a final project, a "Theme and Variations" for a course on 20th century harmony. However... this piece is going to manifest very, very differently in the complete game. I won't tell you what that is, but I will say this much, and hint at it very heavily: I hadn't quite figured out how to structure the complete narrative of Amadeus, other than that it would be in episodes; but writing this piece finally gave me a very compelling idea.

So I continued to work on the audio assets while I was in school, and resolved to have a mastered version of every track before I left campus for the last time. Once I graduated, I took the "end of May" deadline very seriously and focused on knocking out all of the remaining tasks to get the demo ready for private playtesters. Privately, I extended the actual demo release to the end of July, to give myself some time.

And here is where I have learned the most about keeping myself on track, as an individual with ADHD, no formal deadlines, and a lot of passion for this project:

Make your own deadlines, and make them ones with accountability.

I didn't follow my calendar because there was no accountability. What I DID do was finish a private-ready demo by end of May, because I had announced that it would be ready by end of May, and had a handful of people ready and excited to playtest it. And I finished the public version by end of July, because I had announced that it would be ready by the end of July.

You may be suspecting something... that's exactly what these monthly devlogs are going to be! I have a private calendar with benchmarks to meet in order to ship the finished Episode 1 of Amadeus by next summer, but the best way to be sure I meet those benchmarks is to write about them each month. This also helps keep you all informed too, and hopefully, excited about the project.

I know this has been a long write-up, but hopefully you gained some insight into how this project started, and how I as a musician-slash-multimedia-artist with one semester of C# under their belt managed to cobble together a game demo. And I hope you're as excited as I am about the complete game. I can't wait to make it so you can all experience it!

#Amadeus Game #Devlog #indie game dev #indie game #indie dev

[maverick-werewolf]

AUGUST - A look ahead + some general updates

Hi, all! Just keeping everyone posted on what I've been up to and what's coming up in the future. Here are some things you can expect to see in the month of August, both publicly and exclusive to the Patreon...

Public posts:

New Werewolf Fact - That's right; it'll be a werewolf fact again this month! What will it be about? Well, that's up to my patrons. They have several choices this time. Whatever they pick, I'm going to refocus on werewolf facts again for a little while, especially to prepare for the promotion of my upcoming book Knightfall - and possibly even for the announcement of another nonfiction werewolf folklore book from me.

Preview for an upcoming short story - Depending on how efficiently I get these two new short stories written, I would love to post a public preview for one this month!

Website updates - I'm going to be doing some website updates this August, including some updates to the character pages on my website and possibly more (I would love to improve the look/feel of several pages, but I'm not sure I have time to get to that this month). If you haven't seen my website redesign, by the way, don't forget to check that out! It has lots of useful pages now, including character pages and reading order guides to my fiction, as well as previews of all my books and links to purchase them online from Amazon (they are also available online at most book retailers). I am especially fond of the Characters section, myself.

Patron-only posts:

Poll on next Werewolf Fact - Patrons will get to decide what August's werewolf fact will be! The poll will go up around the start of the month, and it'll run for a while before I take in the final results and start working on the fact itself.

Monthly Preview, Chapter 8 of Knightfall revision (near-final draft) - Already loaded up and ready to be posted soon, the monthly preview for August will be chapter 8 of my Knightfall revision in its near-final form (not final yet, though)! This chapter introduces a brand new plot twist, and we're fast approaching the point where I will no longer post chapter previews of this revision, as things are really heating up. I'm very excited to hear what readers think of this preview!

Previews for 1 or 2 new short stories - I'm not sure how much writing I'll get around to in terms of these short stories, but I know what I want to do with both now, so I'm really hoping to post a preview at least for patrons this month of one, if not both, upcoming short stories! If you missed the writing journal on those, check that out here.

Writing Journal on short stories - You can expect new writing journal(s) about one or both upcoming newsletter short stories.

Writing Journal on newsletter - You can also expect a writing journal about my newsletter itself, what I hope to achieve with it, what to expect from it, and more.

Possibly other journal(s) - Who knows what I might write a journal about? I like to do journals at random sometimes. I actually have had something in the works for a while that's totally unexpected... we'll see if I get that posted this month or if it continues to lurk in the drafts for a later date.

Will I finish at least one short story to the point of posting a public preview in August? I can't say yet! We'll see how it goes. I am going to run them by my patrons first; I do know that. So if you're a patron, definitely expect at least a preview of one or both new short stories this month.

Patrons are going to be my test audience for these short stories, so patrons will receive these short stories in their entirety before they are available publicly through my newsletter!

Also, as a more general update, I have removed the Character Questions reward from my Patreon for the time being in order to make space to experiment with other potential rewards in the future.

If there's anything anyone would be excited to see from my Patreon rewards, be it related to my folklore work or my fiction or whatever else, I'd love to hear from you!

There's a lot in store, and I can't wait to share it all. I'm really hoping to make 2024 a big year for me and my work, so I'm doing a lot of preparation in the remainder of this year to work toward that.

Until next time!

#updates #looking ahead #upcoming folklore facts

[tryslora]

Social Media platform usage, etc…

I’ve spent a bit of time thinking through how I use different social media platforms, especially as a creator. I’m trying to better grow my presence as a writer, and do more to put myself out there. It’s… overwhelming. I can recognize that and I can own that I haven’t done much.

To that end, I’ve made some decisions about how I’ll be using my different social media platforms, and what’s available where.

Information on supporting me, as well as blogs, newsletters, and Mastodon and Twitter behind the read more!

Paid Content

I am set up on Patreon for monthly support, and Ko-Fi for both monthly support and random one-time donations. Monthly supporters on both platforms will get unscheduled posts of snippets, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks as well as thoughts as I develop projects. This’ll be across all my original work, including the PHU ’verse, the new Seven Lakes ’verse, and short stories in development for tradpub, self-pub, or small press.

Monthly supporters on Patreon will also get previews of new chapters when Welcome to PHU starts posting again. Those previews are usually posted one posting cycle ahead of the chapter going live on Tumblr and Pillowfort.

Tumblr, Pillowfort, and Dreamwidth

The Welcome to PHU serial is currently available on both Pillowfort and Tumblr; I do not have plans to mirror it on Dreamwidth as well. There are seven full novels serialized, and 20ish stories. I do plan on continuing to post to those blogs; Nate, Dax, and Cass need to get moving on their roadtrip (PHU book #8: Run Together).

On my personal blogs on Tumblr, Pillowfort, and Dreamwidth, I will post random rambling blog posts on anything from how writing relates to knitting, trope inspections, my thoughts on craft (which are not lessons, just me deconstructing my own thoughts), to fandom flailing. I’ll mirror these posts on my professional site at TrisLawrence.com too, because at the heart of it, I’m a fan as well as a writer as well as someone who loves to knit, or listen to music, or… whatever. These posts are all free, and just for fun. Maybe instructional, if I’m lucky.

Mostly they are fun and no stress for me. I hope.

Newsletters

I’ve been doing a monthly newsletter on Patreon for subscribers. That will be mirrored on Ko-Fi, and on both sites it will be subscriber-only at first, then go public after a few days. I also plan on setting up a mailing list and mirroring on my professional site after the posts have been made public. So subscribing/following on any of those platforms should let you see that information.

Newsletters are a roundup of what I’ve been up to for the month, in terms of personal life, publishing life, writing life. What’s coming out, what’s been sold, where can you find my words… and if I’m not writing, why. You might even get cat pictures.

Mastodon and Twitter

I’m on Mastodon more than Twitter these days; it’s a lot lower stress for me. And those are just microbursts about writing, fandom, anime, knitting, whatever happens to percolate up in my mind. I’m interactive and chatty. I’m just me. Please, feel free to connect up. I’ll try to remember to announce blog and newsletter posts there as well.

Discord

Yes, I’ve created a Tris/PHU Discord as a thing that can be linked to Patreon/Ko-Fi and as something that folks can join without being patrons. Mostly just as a chatter space, and a way to flail about writing. Or sprint with me, if you want to. Because I focus well while sprinting. It will eventually get launched, and I will announce it then.

I think that covers everything. WOW social media is so spread out these days. If there’s a platform I haven’t mentioned, please feel free to ask about it. If you have questions, give a yell. I’m happy to try to answer.

#tris talks #administrivia #tris lawrence

[on-poetry]

On Sound in Poetry

I’ve been writing monthly newsletters for poetry and fiction writers at Writers.com, and wanted to share the below from December’s newsletter with y’all ❤️

Poetry Recommendation: "The Sciences Sing a Lullaby" by Albert Goldbarth

Retrieved from Poets.org.

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you're tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

This delightful, imaginative poem has so much happening at both the language and structural levels. At the language level, the poem sings like a lullaby, reconfiguring the natural world as metaphors for wakefulness. Don't you just love the phrase "dancing the shimmy in silver shoes"? I can even see my genes tap dancing their way into new cells as they split down the center. And those final two lines, their cadence and rhyme, tuck me so quietly into bed, I'm about to fall asleep writing this sentence.

At the structural level, the play with the sciences both scaffolds the poem and helps connect the universal to the particular. If the poem didn't have the "[science] says" anaphora at play, the poem could still function beautifully on its own. But the poem here is making science intimate. It's saying: even something as private as falling asleep echoes throughout the sciences. It is no different than the shifting of tectonic plates, the motion of the Earth, or the circadian rhythms of fish, gazelle, and atoms inside your cells. There's something comforting about how this poem connects our lonely lives to the world around us, so much so that science, clinical and impersonal as it seems, agrees.

(Also, it's no mistake that the final "science" is actually a field in the humanities. What do you think the speaker means by equating history with science?)

Many great poems connect the personal to the universal in both linguistic and structural ways. How can you play with structure in your own poetry to achieve this? This month, try writing a poem about something outside of yourself—the sciences, the arts, smells, colors, the oceans, the gridded streets of Savannah, GA, the Fibonacci sequence, etc. Help us understand one another through something outside of, but not disconnected from, ourselves.

Notes from "Sound Clusters" by Gregory Orr

Poetry is a sonic art. We cannot expect to move or delight the reader—or ourselves!—if we aren't carefully attuned to the possibilities of sound in language. Many of the best poets use sound to replicate the topics and emotions of their poetry, and no study of verse is complete without understanding tools like consonance & assonance, euphony & cacophony, percussive consonants, sibilance, meter, rhyme, and even the effects of long versus short vowels.

Take, for example, Albert Goldbarth's poem above. The poem uses sound like a lullaby does, with sounds that shush, soothe, slow, lilt, and murmur. Few words, if any, in the poem are loud and percussive. There's no cracking, no explosive plosive, no whips or pows or words that strike the reader.

Conversely, take this excerpt from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, agape they heard me call.

This is an example of cacophony—notice all the hard k and g sounds jostling against one another. The effect is language that's deliberately loud and in your face. Lyrical, certainly, though not altogether pleasant.

Attunement to language's sounds and possibilities is a lifelong study for any poet. A great place to start is to read poetry aloud. Words spoken only in our heads lack dimension: they have no shape, no space, no material reality. When we speak a poem, we slow ourselves down, allowing language to occupy our bodies, to be felt where we need to feel it.

Here's Gregory Orr's essay, which includes a craft exercise for all poets: https://www.pw.org/content/sound_clusters

And, here are some resources on using sound in poetry:

https://writers.com/literary-devices-in-poetry

https://writers.com/what-is-form-in-poetry

https://writers.com/onomatopoeia-definition-and-examples

#writing tips #writing ref #on writing #on poetry #creative writing