Category: RANDOM

I had made plans, dammit

AM Devine

I had made a great plan for myself and then life promptly kicked me in the ass.

Needless to say, those plans had a bit of a wrench thrown in them by my slowly adapting to the new meds I’m on for my various issues. The ADHD meds have given me enough blocks that I am having trouble writing again, and of course it happened right as I was planning to put nose to the grindstone and bust out three novellas in 9 months. As of right now, They’re being pushed back with the release of the omnibus being aimed for halloween of next year. On the original plan, the omnibus was meant to be released in July of next year – but I’m less than 10 days from the first planned release date and I’m nowhere near ready with the first story’s complete second draft. At this point in time, I should be formatting and getting the cover finalized, and I’m absolutely not ready to even say it’s a solid draft, much less a complete one.

I’m worried that my writing creativity has mostly dried up with the adhd meds, whereas my artsy creativity seems to have fully reappeared. As such, I have actually started poking around in photoshop again and I will be thoroughly honest, I’d forgotten exactly how much I love to do that sort of thing.

As such, I have started a redbubble shop, and I can be found at https://www.redbubble.com/people/amdevine – I make a lot of moons, and text based things, though I am about to start getting into geometric patterns. I am looking into a zazzle shop as well, though Zazzle’s uploading system is a piece of shit, and it’s really hard to tell what the hell the products are while you’re trying to set them up for sale.

Happy 2017

AM Devine

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Obviously, I fell off the freaking posting schedule again. But, this time I’ve got something somewhat better going on in life and I feel like I’m finding my groove now.

It’s January 2nd 2017. Welcome to 2017, after such a horrible block of time for the fandom communities in 2016 – we can only hope that 2017 will treat us much better.

In that sense, I’ve got a few things that I am working on – and with any luck, I’ll work out a schedule for working on it all and will be able to start producing more than the occasional blog post.

Well,

AM Devine

It looks like I didn’t break it, so the blog is wholly back online! YAY!

This post definitely doesn’t fit the Technical Tuesday thing properly, but I’m going to send it live on a Tuesday anyway. Updates ahoy!

With any luck, I’ll get back on schedule with the Muse Monday, Technical Tuesdays, Whimsy Wednesdays, Truthful Thursdays, Fandom Fridays, and Caturdays.

As it’s been mentioned in the past: Muses, Technical things and Truthful things are all blog exclusive (though they may have bits and pieces show up on Twitter and/or Instagram as well). Fandom Fridays will probably be on Twitter, as will Caturdays (though Caturday can also appear on Instagram), and Whimsy will be wherever I choose to put it.

Now, If you’ve been here before, you’ve already noticed the first of a few major differences. The theme is a new one, and I actually really really like it. Eventually it’ll have a slide show on it making it a little less text, but that looks like it might be at least a year or so out.

Right now, I’m heading up NaNoWriMo 2016 in Memphis, with a Co-ML. We’re hoping to make this the best year yet, and have a lot of enjoyment of the season. Stay tuned for the NANO2016 updates. This year, the NaNoWriMo theme is SPACE, and let me tell you, I am way excited. In case you have not been here long, or don’t actually know who I am in the real world, SPACE is probably my favorite thing ever. (It shares the favorite things box with Coffee, Coca-Cola and winter.)

I’m also attempting to write a novella for Tor-dot-com Publishing. They’re opening up for unsolicited submissions for three months starting on October 12th and I have an idea that;s actually workable. My word count goal for it is something like 25,000 words. I’m allowed to have up to 40,000 words, but I know myself well – I’m going to overshoot. I’m also allowing for editing, and the notion that I may need to seriously rewrite bits and pieces. I’m going for romantic fantasy, with magic and rice and kimonos, and a driving need for revenge that someone has been working on for 20 years. I’m only half way hoping now, to get it into Tor. On one hand, that would be fantastic. On the other, I could turn it into it’s own world and make more stories out of this world. Tor wants stand-alone stories, and while at this time this is, I wouldn’t mind being able to expand it.

A side effect of the Tor project, as it’s currently called (I haven’t come up with even a working title for it yet, yikes), is that I’m doing a lot of research into Asian cultures. This is helping the Revanta project something fantastic as one of the major cultures in the Revanta Universe has always been more Asian than anything else. I use Asian here in the sense that this particular culture has Samurai like warriors as major players, as well as the more structured courts with royal concubines that are seen elsewhere. I’ve always wanted to get deeper and deeper into this court, but seeing as most of the work I needed to do was for elsewhere, since the story only really spends maybe 12 to 16 hours in the edge of that court – I didn’t really get to. Now I can, and it’s giving me a lot of creative go power for doing work on almost all of my various works in progress.

Before I make this monster post any longer, I’m going to sign off. With some luck, I’ll be back to posting at least once a week, but until then, enjoy October!

Help out the Author!

AM Devine

So, I want to do something interesting here. What kind of interesting things should I do? I want to post fun things as well as more serious things, and I’m trying to decide what nifty things I can do with ease.

I’m thinking something like, FanFriday, obviously Caturday (since I do have cats), maybe Muse Mondays, and Whimsy Wednesdays? And possibly Technical Tuesdays and Truthful Thursdays? A rotating schedule of these things, so I’m not writing 3 to 5 blog posts a week, because I know myself, and I am a procrastinator/slacker (also anxiety and some form of ADHD, so yeah…).

So, Muse Mondays would probably include writing prompts, cool pictures, or links to really nifty things.

Technical Tuesdays would likely contain grammar tips, plot tips, world building, research tips, character creation, etc. All kinds of things to do with actual writing.

Whimsy Wednesdays would likely feature more on twitter and Instagram than here on the blog, as it would likely more often than not simply be me acting silly or being excited about my hair. (if you don’t know about the hair, go look me up, @huskersgirllaura)

Truthful Thursdays would be the days where I speak absolutely truthfully on some subject. Be it #breakthestigma, or just a question I’ve been asked, I’ll try to answer it as clearly and concisely as I can.

FanFridays would be the day where I promote something I’m a fan of. Or where I just fangirl in general. I do that. I do that well.

And then Caturday. I’m not going to explain caturday. You’re on the internet. You’ve more than likely heard of it by now. This will definitely be cross posted from Instagram and twitter and depending on what I want to say, even here on the blog.

I’m trying to become more active, and more engaging. I’ll get there. Also, all of these things would likely cross over onto facebook too, just so you’re in the know.