“As a writer one of your jobs is to bring news of the world to the world.”
Grace Paley

author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

actually writing blog

a reading in replay. also a fictionette round-up
Tue 2022-03-29 12:37:06 (single post)
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Heh. "Tomorrow." But y'all know how that goes by now.

So the ephemera reading went really, really well! I was super nervous, of course, but that never changes. Still, I was grateful to be able to go first, so that I could give the other authors and artists the attention their lovely words deserved without being distracted by still being nervous.

How lovely was lovely? Very! Shimshon Obadia's poetry did that thing where every word they said caused me to reevaluate every previous they'd said, so that I was out of breath and mind blown by the time they were done. Stephen Granade's piece began in the wry, witty genre of list format fiction, completely failing to prepare me for that tiny snowball of understated emotion that brought an avalanche of "I'm not crying YOU'RE crying" down on everyone's head. And Ai Jiang's three flash pieces were masterfully haunting, turning simple images and innocent phrases ("Don't scratch, children") into gems of creepy loveliness, or lovely creepiness, that will stay with me for a long time.

(Above links go to @ephemeraseries's live-tweeting of each author/artist. Yes, there's a thread about my reading too. They said such nice things!)

Bonus: I got to treat everyone to BUNNY ZOOMBOMBING just before we went live. Holland saw me on the sofa and said "Oh, is it treat time?" and, well, yes. Because he asked so adorably, it was.

You can listen to the replay via ephemera's YouTube channel--click through to VIDEOS and it's Episode 28--or you can just click on this link here.

You'll next be able to hear me read live online during Story Hour on May 25. I don't yet know which author I'll be paired with, and I probably won't know which of us will go first until we're in the "green room" a few minutes before the show, but I can guarantee a good time for the whole hour long, because Story Hour is awesome like that.

So that's one bit of info I've been owing you. Here's another: the January Friday Fictionette Round-up. (I've also got the February round-up ready to go, but let's leave something for next blog post, right?)

Friday, January 7, 2022: "The Book People of Bloomsbury Falls" (ebook, audio) In which we find out who's best at identifying them, and what happens when we're right. Talking about them wasn't good for my temper.

Friday, January 14, 2022: "A Changed World" (ebook, audio) In which Sleeping Beauty wakes up and discovers who currently owns the world. "You know our law. Accept no gift without accepting the debt."

Friday, January 21, 2022: "One Last Spectacle" (ebook, audio) In which we know that whatever happens, however strange, must be the Magician's will. And we applaud. The automata were always unfailingly responsible and polite, which we all thought reflected well upon the Magician.

Friday, January 28, 2022: "Just Doing My Job" (ebook, audio) In which fairy dust is one hell of a drug. That's my job: to remind her that an ordinary life is worth living. One of my jobs, anyway.

Looks like I still haven't designated any of these the Fictionette Freebie for January. Let's make it "The Book People of Bloomsbury Falls." I'm particularly fond of it and would love to enable you to download it without worrying about a subscription.

In addition to the February round-up, I've also got more computer woes to gripe about. But I also have an impending poetry reprint to celebrate! And a bunch of hours in my week that are about to get freed up! So you can look forward to some of that news tomorrow.

Or, indeed, "tomorrow."

in which the author rails some more against the mean old voices in her head
Wed 2022-02-02 16:17:18 (single post)

I have some more leftover thoughts from last week. They regard an incident I've already regaled y'all with before, but that blog post was more than three years ago, and besides, it turned into such a tangent during the initial draft of last week's "here's my schedule" post that I can only conclude that it's important that I get it off my chest. Again.

If you followed that first link, the one to the post from November 2018, you probably see what I mean. If not, 's OK, you don't have to. I'm going to rehash it here.

So, last week, while delineating the Afternoon Shift part of my Monday through Thursday schedule, my first instinct was to describe those tasks as "real writing." You know, as opposed to the stuff I do during the Morning Shift that doesn't really count as writing and I only do it anyway because I'm a wannabe-writer loser who's constantly Wasting This Precious Gift of Time and playing around instead of working. Well, I corrected myself and said "career writing" instead. But even that phrase is a problem. It contains a tacit admission that what I do with my Morning Shift is orthogonal, irrelevant, to my writing career. As though the elements of my writing process that support and enable the creation of publishable works, but are not themselves directly involved with creating those publishable works, aren't part and parcel of my writing career.

This is not an original metaphor, but: As well tell a professional football player that nothing other than the actual game counts as part of their career. Not stretching before and after practice, not cross-training, not sports nutrition, nothing. As well tell a musician that scales and arpeggios and practicing specific techniques are wastes of time. Unless they are practicing the piece they are going to perform, or actually performing it, or maybe writing a piece they intend to perform or record, then they're not really making music.

I know this. I feel it. Yet every time I mention morning pages or my daily freewriting or even the Friday Fictionette project, I hear those condescending voices in my head saying, "But, Niki, after all that, what time is left for you to actually write?" And feel obliged to justify why morning pages, why freewriting, why this weekly self-publishing project that I'm constantly behind schedule on and stressing myself out over, when I could be taking all that time to write and sell more short stories and maybe finally a novel.

Why? Because those daily and weekly exercises are part of my creative process. They are part of my practice. They make the publishable works possible and they are non-negotiable. And I need to stop giving in to the guilt and shame I feel when I tell my co-writing colleagues that I'll be working on one of those things during our next sprint. I'm going to feel guilty and ashamed, sure, because brain's gonna brain and what can you do, but I don't need to act like it.

(I mean, yes, I'd like to begin getting up a little earlier so that I can do my morning pages before co-writing rather than during, but only because that would mean two sprints available for that day's Friday Fictionette efforts rather than just one.)

Hell with it. I'm going to Own My Damn Process and spend a few blog posts talking about why these exercises are valuable to me. And yes, I've blogged tiresomely on that precise subject before. But it's a new year, and I have new thoughts about them. Or new ways to word the old thoughts. Something like that. It's worth taking a look and seeing what's filed under those categories in my head right now.

On a maybe related note, I'm rethinking what days I can blog on. I got so very much stuff done yesterday, just this amazing amount of stuff, not a moment of time wasted whatsoever, and yet I didn't get to the "daily" blog post before it was time to get ready for roller derby. I guess that means there really is no room in a Tuesday for blogging. So maybe blogging happens on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays? Or maybe just Wednesdays and Saturdays because Friday is a day off? Except I'd really like to post more than twice a week? Which I haven't in a really long time?

Argh. Look, I'm gonna feel it out and see what works. Stay tuned.

the daily grind, dark roast, no cream or sugar
Wed 2022-01-26 10:57:04 (single post)

I thought I'd talk a little about my schedule today, because it seems like a January sort of thing to do--not quite a New Year's Resolution, just part of evaluating in concrete terms what works and what doesn't--and besides, all the big kids are doing it. So here's the Monday through Thursday routine I've sort-of kind-of settled into for 2022, which seems to work so far:

8:15 to 9:15 AM, ish - Get out of bed and do the morning chores. Give Holland (the bunny) his breakfast pellets, check his water and hay and daily treat box for if they want topping off. Water the plants if they need it. Take care of myself, too, which can be hard to remember, especially if I'm rolling out of bed closer to 9:15 than to 8:15.

I am the least useful hybrid of night owl and morning bird. I stay up until 1:00 AM, I have a very hard time getting out of bed at any time, but if I don't get to work in the morning, work won't happen. I re-learn this lesson every time I sleep in and then utterly fail my intention to write in the afternoon. Besides, there are afternoons that don't happen because reasons. So I've got to get up and bank some writing time before noon, just in case.

Looking at John Scalzi's blog post, I find it fascinating that he takes a little time before he starts writing to check email, blog comments, and other social media. I have a hard time tearing myself away from those sorts of things with any promptness. Hours will seep away without my noticing. So I don't touch them until my day requires it. I will, however, click around a little bit on whatever clicky games I'm currently unhealthily obsessed with (right now the big one is Harvest Land, and if you want, you can shoot me a friend request via code ffp4zphx. I'll accept pretty much any friend request so long as your avatar isn't awful and your name isn't obviously a way to get away with something toxic).

9:30 to 11:30 AM or so - The Morning Shift. I've sung the praises of Cat Rambo's community co-writing sessions before, and I probably will many times again before I'm through. The morning co-writing session starts at 9:30 my time, so I log on to Zoom and get to work with everyone else. The structure is three 30-minute work sprints on mute bracketed by brief check-ins: sharing with each other how the last sprint went and what we plan to do during the next one. Generally, I'll use the morning sprints for my "dailies and weeklies," like this:

  1. Morning Pages,
  2. Idea generation (freewriting to a prompt), and
  3. Work on the current Friday Fictionette.

But sometimes I'll put those off until the afternoon because I'm playing catch-up with some tasks I wasn't able to get to the day before. Like today! I really meant to write this blog post yesterday, but what with yesterday being a catch-up day too, I didn't. So I'm working on it now.

Noonish to 2:45 PM - Lunch break? Yeah. Get a bit of something to eat. I am very bad about breakfast, so by now I'm probably HONGRY. I'll also have some non-writing work waiting for me, like my physical therapy homework--I have a much better record of getting that done if I do it during my lunch break. Wednesdays I've got a show to record for AINC (the Employment Opportunity News: job ads from all over Colorado). And if it's January (hey, look! It is!) I'm probably participating in the annual Weekend Warrior contest on Codex, so now's a good time to read, score, and comment on a few more of this week's entries.

Now's also when I finally get to my email. And also play a little more on the clicky-games, because it's lunch break, right?

3:00 to 5:00 PM or so - The Afternoon Shift. There's an afternoon co-writing session at 3:00 PM my time, so if I can, which is not always the case, I log in and join the crew. For these three sprints, generally I'll try to work on what I think of as "career writing"--writing and revising stories and poems for commercial publication. Also submitting same, and tracking the results of said submissions. I'll also try to get a blog post in, like this one, but that is proving tricky to fit into the afternoon shift along with the rest. As you can no doubt see by the extreme occasionalness of this blog. It's a work in progress.

After 5:00: I Have A Life. I'm trying very hard to say that, at this point, the work day is over. And some days, it really has to be. Like on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I have roller derby practice (and yes, we are back to that after the aforementioned saga), I have to make time to get ready to go to practice (pack up my gear! change my wheels? have some dinner, dang it!), and I have to accept that no work is happening after practice.

In reality, on days that don't end in derby, I feel like I have to pull a third shift, an Overtime Shift as it were, to finish up whatever didn't fit into the first two. Or get to whatever chores I didn't manage over lunch. Or, or, or...

Here's the thing: there's always more stuff I want to do than there are hours in the day to do them in. I am instinctively uneasy with free time. So I'm trying to practice saying, "Today's work day is over. You have put in your hours. Now you have left the office. Rest, play, and do whatever it is tomorrow."

That, too, is a work in progress.

have a friday fictionette round-up and also a recipe that i failed to follow
Wed 2022-01-19 22:17:00 (single post)
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Today's special: The December 2021 Friday Fictionette Round-up (meant to have it up last week, but, y'know, see below) and some ill-advised cookery! But first: the state of Chez LeBoeuf-Little.

I posted the full saga to my Patreon, in the free-for-everyone Monday Muse posts that serve as a sort of extra blogging vehicle, but here's the tl;dr gist: I got well and truly exposed to COVID. For reals, yo. The closest people in the chain of contagion to me were all responsible, careful people, but the world is full of people who are irresponsible and careless and also environments where one has no individual control over who breathes breaths with you. Also the world is full of bad luck and shitty circumstances that affect the careful and the careless alike. So I am passing no negative judgment whatsoever upon anyone involved when I say that, for certain, I was in close contact with someone who tested positive shortly thereafter.

I lucked out--all my subsequent tests came up negative. I'm willing to draw the cautious conclusions from this that 1. masks help a lot (I was masked and so were they), and 2. so do vaccines ("Vaccination does significantly reduce transmission from vaccinated breakthrough cases but does not completely eliminate it." -Tara C. Smith, Kent State University epidemiologist) So mask yo'self and get jabbed, why don't you?!

Also: Appropriate COVID testing gives the info needed to make informed choices! I am even more pissed at someone who wasn't involved, that being the person who used to be in one of my social circles, who flounced out of said circle, declaring that she would never get vaccinated, never wear a mask, and never let anyone "stick a swab up [her] nose" (!!!) so it follows that if she'd been the one who came to our gathering infected, none of the rest of us would have known in anywhere near as timely a manner because of her virulent (indeed) anti-testing stance. Anti-TESTING! I just can't even. (She's a parent! Presumably she's had her kids tested for strep throat once or twice! That too involves sticking swabs in orifices! And the swab goes farther down your throat for strep, gag hack arrgh, than it goes up your nostrils for COVID tests! We are past the era of swabbing the frontal lobe via the nostril! I've been tested four times now, and they barely ever reached the bridge of my nose!) But, y'know, that selfish jerk self-selected out of that social circle, so she wasn't there to infect us and obstruct our attempts at contact tracing. So I guess I gotta be grateful to her for being forthright and honest about her anti-social views.

And because the person who came down with symptoms was not a selfish jerk with anti-social views, they 1. got tested and 2. let the rest of us know. (And 3. they had been vaxxed to the max, which--see above--probably helped prevent their passing it along, and certainly helped keep them home and out of the hospital. And they tell me they're recovering well.) John and I got the alert and made the choice to quasi-isolate until PCR tests 5 days after exposure came back negative. So I am grateful for caring, responsible friends, for free-and-easy drive-up PCR testing, that both John and I work from home, and that the various people I had to inform on a last-minute basis that "I can't come in and do the thing, I've been exposed to COVID" were extremely understanding.

Honestly, that it took this long for me to get a confirmed exposure is a glaring neon sign that I'm 1. lucky as hell, and 2. privileged like woah. I am surrounded by responsible people, I can work from home, I do have access to good, free testing and good, affordable masks (McGuckin, y'all - just picked up a couple N95s. Size small). I'm grateful, and I realize things could have gone very, very differently, especially if any of the above weren't true.

Nevertheless, good fortune notwithstanding, there was some aggravation and emotional toll which delayed a few things on the writing front. But yes, at this time, I have released all of the December 2021 Friday Fictionettes. They are as follows:

December 3: "Burning Bright" (ebook, audio) In which supernatural security methods find their failure state, but also get debugged. There are borders for a reason.

December 10: "Symbiosis" (ebook, audio) In which we need each other, though we may not know it. The Field of Gears was off-limits, especially to a sickly half-grown like Laurel.

December 17: "Incognito" (ebook, audio) In which some play-testing happens. "It is said that the Goddess of Mercy walks among us in humble guise, the better to judge the hearts of Her people. Beware, lest She judge you harshly."

December 24: "Across Great Distances" (ebook, audio) In which a secret is betrayed and another is vouchsafed. Mehtai shouldn't have answered. She knew it even then.

The Fictionette Freebie for December 2021 is "Across Great Distances." You can download it if you so choose without any need to part with fiat currency. But if you like it well enough that you'd like to read or listen to something of its general length and weirdness, and by me, every week, and the existing freebie archives going back to August 2015 just aren't enough for you, or maybe you just wanna be one of the cool kids who gets to read/listen the very moment a new fictionette drops--which is darn well gonna be every first-through-fourth Friday from now on, just like it says on the tin, because I'm about to get ALL CAUGHT UP this week--the how-to-do-that info awaits you over here.

Now, at the top of this post I promised you some ill-advised cookery action, and ill-advised cookery action you are gonna get. Because as soon as I got that last negative test result back, I went the hell to McGuckin and I bought a whole bunch of bits and bobs that various home fix-it projects were waiting on. A new multicooker was not on my shopping list, but I've been needing a new multicooker for a while, so when I saw the 8-quart Instant Pot Duo on the end-cap on my way from, oh, split rings and snap hooks, I think it was, to where they keep the acetone... well, reader, I bought it.

And I had this recipe for Dal Makhani waiting for me patiently in a saved browser session, and I hadn't made myself dal of any stripe since the Fagor LUX Multicooker stopped working, so I was super hype for dal. Only I didn't have any whole black gram in the house. All I had was red lentils. So I swapped in red lentils. And, reader, that was a mistake, because black gram takes more time to cook than red lentils do, as I should have figured from seeing it thrown into the same pressure cooker session with red kidney beans. By the time my red beans were soft enough, my lentils were beyond mushy. They had become the broth.

Which, as it turns out, was perfectly tasty and I would do it again. (Although probably not it exactly. Probably I'd let the kidney beans pressure-cook alone for half an hour, then add the red lentils for an additional pressure-cook session.) But before I did it again, I'd try laying in the actual ingredients as called for in the recipe, and actually following the recipe as written. It's not like I can't get all the right ingredients. It's not like India's Grocery isn't right there. I might be heading there this very Friday, actually, because at some point I acquired a packet of frozen shaved beef (thanks, Wild Pastures!) and I know exactly what to do with it.

Friday Fictionette Round-up: November 2021
Wed 2022-01-05 23:28:49 (single post)
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I should probably do the November 2021 Friday Fictionette Round-up, because next week I'll be doing the one for December. YES! I will be all caught up next week! Only about a month later than I originally planned, but hey.

November 5: "On Lightning Plain" (ebook, audio) In which we defy the gods. "Ah, go easy. New in these parts. No clue about the weather hereabouts."

November 12: "An Emerging Talent" (ebook, audio) In which a late-blooming sorcerer finds her magic at last and makes an enemy for life. "But if I show that I have sorcery of my own, doesn't that change things?"

November 19: "The Cursed Mascot" (ebook, audio) In which we scale up. Lost every game since you bought the ugly thing? Maybe you should review your training curriculum.

November 26: "In Memoriam" (ebook, audio) In which we make everyone perfectly safe. But her husband didn't want to hear about it. One didn't talk about magic in polite company.

The Fictionette Freebie for November 2021 is "The Cursed Mascot," which is preachy as hell but I don't care, it was a lot of fun to write. Go ahead and download that sucker if you wanna; it is now an unlocked post, so you don't need to subscribe at any tier to access it.

think - write - stop thinking - write some more
Wed 2021-12-15 22:30:12 (single post)

Hell yeah! "More tomorrow" actually happened! It probably wouldn't have happened if a friends date hadn't fallen through, leaving me at loose ends for the evening, but the evening I can't make lemonade out of those lemons is the evening when THE LEMONS WERE A LIE anyway.

(When and why did we decide "lemon" was slang for "a bad deal"? Lemons are tasty! They smell nice too! A bit of lemon juice in my water bottle before roller derby practice and my hydration improves significantly!)

So, briefly, to report on the Recalibrated Catch-Up Project: I'm still on track. For the November 19 release, Step 2 ("the real draft") was not finished on Day 2, but I did finish it up on Day 3. It's getting uploaded tonight or at the very latest tomorrow morning, and then it goes live on Friday.

Sometimes a story doesn't come together easily at all. Doesn't matter how long or short the story; anything from flash to 6K has the potential to be either a breeze or an ordeal. The November 19 Friday Fictionette was an ordeal, though not as "ordeally" as November 12 was. (No surprises there. November 12 was a novel-length idea I was trying to compress down to flash. Which: No.) And the difference between an ordeal and a breeze is in the answer to the question "Can I write a full draft in a single setting?" Or, for longer stories, "Can I go the entire session without hitting the 'I don't know what to write next' wall?"

I have a Process. It goes like this:

  1. Think about the story.
  2. Write the story.
  3. Stop thinking about the story.
  4. Write more of the story.
  5. Return to Step 1.

That's kind of glib and not precisely accurate. It's more like, I have two active modes, which are "thinking about the story" and "writing the story," and I switch between the two when I get to the end of the progress I can make via the one I'm on.

Frustratingly, through, sometimes I can't make progress in either mode. That's when the passive mode, Step 3 above, comes into play. Go do something else. Think about something else. Better yet, go to sleep. Stop thinking about the story and let the story think about itself for a while.

This is what makes a compressed schedule for Friday Fictionettes such a challenge. If I'm trying to get one finished in three days or less, well, there's only two sleeps it can benefit from.

I tried to account for that these past few days by scheduling myself two specific sessions per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon or evening. (Monday and today, it worked well. Yesterday was trickier because I had roller derby practice, but I was able to turn the 20-minute drive into an active "thinking about the story" session, which got me a plan for this morning's "writing the story" session.) And today I got the last bit untangled during a sort of mix of thinking and not thinking--I mean, I planned to go for a walk and actively think about the story, but mostly I just thought about the crows and the hawk that I saw.

tl;dr - If I've only got three days to work on a story, my best bet is to turn each day into two or three mini-days. It worked this time, anyway.

Speaking of derby, I have derby news! We are hosting a public bout on January 8. You can find all the details on Facebook: Preps vs. Goths! January 8! Doors at 5 PM, First Whistle at 6!. "Preps vs. Goths" is the theme for the adult bout, but there will also be a JUNIORS bout (theme: Freaks vs. Geeks) and we couldn't be more proud!

Here is the online ticket sales page. Extra special hint from me to you: Using the discount code "Fleur" (as in, the short form of my derby name) to get $2 off the price of your ticket! (Discount code is caps-sensitive. Upper-case "F", lower-case "leur".)

(Do go read the FB event page; you don't have to have a Facebook log-in to read it, and that's where the most up-to-date COVID protocols for the event can be found. Those details will most likely be evolving between now and bout day, so keep an eye on it.)

recalibrations; also the Friday Fictionette Round-up for October 2021
Tue 2021-12-14 14:45:09 (single post)
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It's already midway through December and I owe y'all a Friday Fictionette round-up post. But first, a report on the Great Big Catch-up Project.

There was slippage. There was significant slippage. There was sufficient slippage that I had to recalculate my schedule and my expectations. At this point, returning to my three-day/step process (1. babble draft, 2. real draft, 3. compile/produce/upload), I will be All Caught Up by the end of the month. Which is to say, by the end of the year. Which still gets 2022 started off right, but does mean a couple more weeks of this accelerated pace and prioritizing the Friday Fictionette project over all else.

Nevertheless, I did manage to submit two poems at the end of last month, log their rejections yesterday, and submit a story today. And also make this post! (Finally.) So my writing life isn't being entirely monopolized by the catch-up initiative. Only maybe like 98%.

So here's the Friday Fictionette Round-up for October 2021!

October 1: "Transplant" (ebook, audio) In which we flourish and thrive. She'd stopped being able to move her right arm at all a couple days ago.

October 8: "One Oracle, Two Swords, and a Thief" (ebook, audio) In which we're only following orders. He wondered whose death the Hex Queen had bound to such a banal purpose.

October 15: "The Old Weaver Retires" (ebook, audio) In which someone other than the usual suspects sets off on an adventure. She'd never enjoyed weaving. It was why she'd run away to the Palace in the first place.

October 22: "Revisions" (ebook, audio) In which time travelers micromanage your life. At times you grow tired of your advisers from the future.

The Fictionette Freebie for October 2021 is "The Old Weaver Retires". You can follow the links above to read it in the ebook format of your choice (available in epub, mobi, and pdf) and/or download the audio version (narrated by the author) regardless of your subscription status/pledge tier or lack thereof.

All for now. Probably more tomorrow. Until then!

how is november going? well, it went
Tue 2021-11-30 19:33:23 (single post)

Oh hey how is it the 30th already? Welp.

No regrets, though. The month has gone more or less to plan. Well, other than my weekends having a tendency to disappear in a puff of roller derby. In my defense, it wasn't just regular practice but also holiday parties and trail skating and all the activities associated with moving into our new practice facility. This past week, we put down the Sport Court and then we taped a track outline and then we were all like, "Well, we know we said no practice Tuesday night because of Thanksgiving but hey, let's skate Tuesday night anyway because NEW FLOOR WHO DIS?" And yes, Tuesday is not a weekend day. What's your point?

Anyways, some writing time was lost here and there, and I am slightly behind on my big ambitious Friday Fictionette Catch-up Project upload schedule. But only a little! There is one, count it, (1) short-short story-like object that should have gone out by now that has not. That is an entirely surmountable bit of slippage. I can soak that. It'll go up and be released this Friday along with the other two that ought to be, and everything will be back on track for a December 17 ALL CAUGHT UP celebration. (A private celebration. That takes place in my head.) And there should be an October 2021 Friday Fictionette Round-up post next week. JUST YOU WAIT.

What else? Well, tonight I am in Steamboat Springs, doing about the same thing I do with all my days except less roller derby, more writing, and a different subset of the Rocky Mountains out my window. To be entirely specific, I am currently sitting at a table in WildPlum Grocer (and coffee shop, and bar, and liquor store) enjoying the writing-at-a-cafe sensation I have so rarely experienced since March of last year. It's also nice to get out of the hotel room. It's mostly comfy and has a nice view, but my poor feet got sick of dangling. The only table or desk set-up in that place is sort of bar-stool, and I am a short person who can't even reach those tall chairs' support bars. And I needed a slight change of scenery from my change of scenery, I guess.

("What are you going to do in Steamboat?" we get asked. "Enjoying the opening week of skiing?" No, we don't ski. "Then... um... what exactly are you doing?" BEING HERE. Shut up.)

More news of note: Before we left Boulder for this little vacation-like activity, I bought a whole bunch of dried fruit and nuts. FRUITCAKE WILL HAPPEN THIS YEAR. And now you know.

the smooth continuation of things and also the august fictionette round-up
Thu 2021-11-11 23:27:27 (single post)
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So what with the Friday Fictionette Catch-up Project going so well, I guess I can post the Fictionette Round-Up for August 2021. Actually, I could have posted it... *checks notes* ...any old time in November, since the August 27 release went up on Nov 1. Welp, here they are now: links to, and teaser text from, the short story-like objects originally scheduled for the first four (and only four) Fridays in August:

Friday, August 6, 2021: "The New Undertaker" (ebook, audio) In which we have a changing of the guard, about which the old guard is ill-informed. This wasn't an apprentice. This was a usurper.

Friday, August 13, 2021: "When It Calls, You Have to Go" (ebook, audio) In which some parties withstand unearthly temptation, and others enthusiastically give in. Tom still hadn't come home.

Friday, August 20, 2021: "Who's Afraid of the Dark?" (ebook, audio) In which we visit lodgings with a most unusual innkeeper. Of course, you, dear reader, are too sophisticated to believe in vampires.

Friday, August 27, 2021: "King of All He Surveyed" (ebook, audio) In which revisit a beloved bedtime story. I'll tell it to you exactly the way I remember my mother telling it to me.

"Who's Afraid of the Dark?" is the Fictionette Freebie for the month. That's the one you can read and/or listen to without having to be a Patron at any tier. Check it out! I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope you do too.

So you remember how I described the three-day process for producing overdue fictionettes in a hurry? I said Day 1 was for the babble-draft, Day 2 was for the final draft, and Day 3 was for production? Yes, well, about that: it turns out the final draft stage is not the work of a single day. Typically it's been more like "extra practice drafts and eventually a final draft" and it's been creeping into Day 3. This has not, fortunately, thrown any wrenches in my schedule. Turns out since the production stage only takes about an hour and a half or so, I can fit some last minute drafting and polishing on Day 3. Heck, the one time I didn't finish production until the morning of the next fictionette's Day 1, there was still plenty of time left in the day for the scheduled babble-draft session.

(Besides, late uploads would be pretty much invisible from where y'all are standing, what with them not going live until the following Friday morning.)

What I've learned is, not only is this 3-day schedule working, but it's got some room for flex in it. So that's good. Especially since the one for September 24 is giving me trouble. So, you know how the Friday Fictionette for any given week is based on a freewriting session from the corresponding week in the previous month? (If not, now you do.) Well, sometimes I choose a freewriting session not because it would positively make a good fictionette, but because it is the least bad of my options from a week of slim pickings. "Future me is going to hate me for this," I'll mutter to myself as I copy it over.

GUESS WHAT. Past me was a jerk.

It's OK. After today's session of babbling on the page about it, I feel kinda almost secure about maybe attempting a real practice draft that might magically transform itself into a final draft beneath my very fingers. Maybe. I hope.

On a Friday.

Um. Well, there should be time in Saturday for whatever doesn't get done tomorrow. Theoretically.

whatever happened to Friday Fictionette Roundups (July 2021)
Tue 2021-09-28 15:56:55 (single post)
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Hey, you know what I haven't done in a while? ("Upload a blog post?") Quiet, you. I mean, a really long while. ("Um...") A Friday Fictionette Roundup, that's what!

Quick obligatory recap, given how long it's been: The Friday Fictionette Project is where I turn some of my daily freewriting into semi-presentable short-story-like objects four times monthly for your amusement, confusement, and (hopefully) delight. The ebook version of each is available to Patrons at the $1/month pledge tier, and those pledging $3/month additionally get the audiobook version, which I narrate. One out of four fictionettes I'll designate the Fictionette Freebie for that month and unlock its posts for public consumption.

As with everything in my life, I am behind schedule, but for the most part I have been uploading something every first through fourth Friday. (I don't know what happened last week, but I hope to make up for it with two uploads on Oct 1. They'll be the fictionettes originally scheduled for August 13 and 20. You see the problem.)

Having recently finished all four releases originally scheduled for July 2021, I shall round them up here for your convenience.

Friday, July 2, 2021: "Leveling Up" (ebook, audio) In which a hero receives his just reward. Or is that come-uppance? The traditional reward was half the kingdom and a royal heir's hand in marriage--but maybe that was thinking too small...

Friday, July 9, 2021: "Bride of the River" (ebook, audio) In which our protagonist was right all along about their creepy classmate's creepy family. Sort of. "Fine. But if they wind up slaughtering me for Sunday dinner, don't say I didn't warn you."

Friday, July 16, 2021: "Pilgrim's Voyage" (ebook, audio) Being a sort of New Passenger Orientation for a somewhat perilous journey (and its rather more perilous destination). Does something to you, coming under the Goddess's eye. Makes words seem a little, I dunno, noisy.

Friday, July 23, 2021: "Where the Streetlights Never Come On" (ebook, audio) In which we go for a Saturday morning drive that lasts all day and maybe forever. Uncle Garrick never took Harold's friends with them on their adventures. He only ever took Harold.

"Where the Streetlights Never Come On" is the Fictionette Freebie for July 2021, so feel free to click the links and go check it out regardless of whether you're a paying Patron.

("Hey, but what about the ones for May and June? The last round-up post you did was for the March fictionettes.") I said quiet, you.

And that's what I've got for you today. Dare I promise anything for tomorrow? I have to admit, my daily writing routine has been kind of crap lately. I mean, when it works out, when I stick to it, it's awesome. But I've been kind of crap about sticking to it. Weirdly, I tend to be best at Tuesdays and Thursdays, in spite of those being my roller derby practice days. More like "because of." Knowing that after 6:15 I will be good for nothing but skating and then maybe a beer brings that necessary urgency to my scheduling. If I want to get everything done, I have to stick to certain timelines. I stuck to them today, gosh darn it! Like GLUE!

Tomorrow? Eeesh. Not gonna think about tomorrow just yet.

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