Welcome to October

Happy October, everyone! Welcome to my favorite month. It has fall, leaves changing colors, Halloween, and a distinct smell to it between the crisp air, fireplace and pellet stove smoke, pumpkin spice, apple cider, and decay of vegetation going into hibernation for winter.

There are two other reasons why October is my favorite month. One of which is that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.

Image created for promotions on iHeartRadio Charleston & Y102.5

So, in honor of BCA, I'm changing all of my hyperlink colors from blue to pink for the posts I publish this month. If the shade of pink I choose ends up hard to read for you, please let me know in the comments below, and I'll try a different shade.

Also, please remember that, at least in the USA, breast cancer screenings are either free or very-low cost. They are uncomfortable, sure, but they aren't all that bad - I've had mammograms and ultrasounds myself - and the technology is there for nearly everyone to survive breast cancer if it's detected early enough. So please, go get yourself screened. Self-check at home. Remind any breasted persons you know that they should get checked. Also, remember that you don't have to have breasts to contract breast cancer, it can affect any soft chest tissue. Watch yourselves; check yourselves; be knowledgeable of your bodies and talk to a doctor if you notice anything new.

Long-time readers of this blog would know that my mom is a breast cancer survivor. My mother-in-law was one as well, as was one of my mother's aunts, one or two of my mother's cousins, and a few of my mom's friends. I've had a friend or two myself who have had breast cancer scares. Of all the cancers that infect this world, breast cancer specifically seems to hit the most of my friends, family, and neighbors. It is a cause near and dear to me, and I will fight the only ways I know how - and can financially manage - to make sure no one else has to die from this disease. So, please, use this month to remember to check yourselves, and remember to screen for other cancers throughout the rest of the year. Stay safe and healthy the best you can. Love you all!

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by Bitmoji

As for the last - and arguably, now the most important - reason October is my favorite month? Well...

I had known for some time now that I was going to be working this past Tuesday, and therefore couldn't work on my blog post in the morning, as I usually do. I even planned on spending Monday evening – while the football game was on – writing my post so it would be scheduled and ready to go for my normal noon update time. Clearly, that didn't happen. I didn't even open Blogger to start it.

Such a slacker.

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So, why was I working on a Tuesday anyway? Well, it's so I could have Wednesday off, of course. It was kind of an important day. The main reason why I love October so much, although, to be fair, my love for October to begin with was the main reason we picked it....

Hubby and I celebrated 8 awesome years on the 2nd!

Look how cute we were!

I grabbed a shot of Rogue and Gambit from a comic book cover
in order to cover up Hubby's face and mine.
I think it works awesome for me, but Hubby looks like he's
wearing a creepy plastic mask. XD
Sorry, Hubby. <3

We celebrated with quite the lazy day on Tuesday. Hubby has been hit with the plague for the past two weeks, plus his long work shifts have been giving him back problems, and so leaving the apartment to go and do anything would be tricky. Didn't really matter much to me. If I could spend all day snuggling him - after spraying him down with Lysol, of course - I would be a happy camper.

With that in mind, we started our anniversary off right by not turning the alarm on when we went to bed the night before, and then slept in until 10am.

Like the adults we are.

Yeah.

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Once we decided there should be more to our anniversary than snuggling in bed, we made a hearty brunch, and proceeded to finally plow through Good Omens.

Yeah, we caved, and grabbed that free month trial of Amazon Prime so we can get our Halloween costumes situated on time. Which also means we can FINALLY watch the Prime shows people have been gushing about. We already binged The Boys a few days ago, and now that we're done with Good Omens we have Carnival Row queued up. We'll see if we can manage to get through it before the trial ends, especially since we've also been playing catch-up on the YouTube series Oxventure.

Official Oxventure promotional artwork from 2017
by DustyLeaves (aka Bendix)

Yup, while seemingly the rest of the world is obsessing over the D&D campaign series Critical Role, Hubby and I have started up watching Oxventure instead. We've been following the channels OutsideXbox and Outside Xtra for some time now, but we usually stuck with their listicles, so we didn't really know what was up with their Oxventure segments.

What was up was that, in September of 2017, to celebrate hitting two-million subscribers on OutsideXbox, the OX crews – Andy, Jane, and Mike from OutsideXbox, and Luke and Ellen from Outside Xtra – decided to film their first ever attempt at playing D&D. It was fantastic, and became a fan-favorite. Since that premiere session, they've continued kind of sporadically posting campaign sessions. They are currently up to thirteen sessions and a leveling video – split into 28 videos – and roughly half of those gaming sessions were filmed live at conventions. As first-time players, they seem to be having great fun, and their kooky role-playing antics just feel so much like my own play group. Complete with the players dumbing down their characters - or the DM dumbing down an NPC - simply because it's more amusing that way. For instance, the bard Dob has become canonically horrendous with money. He tends to accept quests for no reward, overpays for everything - such as spending 50gold on a round of drinks for the 5-person party when a typical pint of ale is generally half-a-gold in most D&D campaigns - uses the party's loot as if it were common items - such as weighing down a makeshift diving bell with gold bars - and he also routinely tosses their loot overboard, assuming it will be "safer" at the bottom of a lake. While not a reference to Dob's financial ineptitude, the pirate and self-appointed party leader Corazon canonically sells tunics that say "Don't be a Dob" on the front of them.

Likewise, as I mentioned, my play group also does stupid "our character should know better" moves for the overall entertainment value it brings to the story. Heck, in the latest session Hubby and I participated in, our characters - WHO SHOULD HAVE DEFINITELY KNOWN BETTER - requested probably the dumbest reward for clearing out a goblin den. We were going to be staying in the town for a few days, so my character asked for "free room and board" for the length of time that we would be there. However, Hubby's character misheard, and asked for "room and A board." So now the party has two free rooms - one for the men; one for the women, even though we never split the party that way - in the local inn for as long as we're in town... and a plank of wood that my character - who is a cat-person - uses as a stress-relieving scratching post. Along with the free room and "a board," Hubby's character - who really shouldn't have been the one to hand our reward request to the town mayor - requested just ONE SOLITARY MEAL voucher for us all to share for that night's dinner. We also received a large boat-shaped cookie for each of us when our original request for a fleet of "baby boats" - rowboats - was denied. We're good at this "receiving a reward" thing.

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So, when I hear the Oxventure Guild characters doing The Stupid, such as the dragonborn paladin propelling himself over a wall by standing on his shield and exploding a bomb beneath it, I just... I feel at home?

Hubby and I will have to get to Critical Role eventually, but each of those videos are roughly three hours long, and the first campaign alone is 121 videos! That's a little over 15 straight days! It will take us over 4 months to finish just the first campaign if we watch only ONE session each night; nevermind catching up on the second campaign. That 4-months schedule also takes for granted that we wouldn't be watching anything else - such as anime with Omnibladestrike on Saturdays; football Mondays, Thursdays, and Sundays; or The Masked Singer on Wednesdays - otherwise it will take even LONGER to catch up with the series. We'd also have to ignore all of the extra content on that channel! Meanwhile, each Oxventure video is between 40 and 70 minutes long... a touch easier to get through. Especially when it looks like the last one was posted in August, so it's not like we have to catch up on a new one weekly. Although, it should be noted that they're doing another live session at EGX in London the weekend of October 18th, so the campaign seems to still be going strong.

Anyway, if you want a goofy, light-hearted, quick-to-watch D&D campaign series, I do suggest Oxventure. And if you're still not convinced, I'd like to add that Merilwen's cat form is friggen adorable.

Luke as Half-Orc bard Dob, and Ellen as Wood Elf druid Merilwen.
Stuffed kitty as Merilwen's Cat Wild-form.
Screen shot from "Bad Chair Day"

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Soooo, yeah.

Hubby and I have been taking in the stories of the Oxventures Guild, The Boys, and Good Omens. I've also tried to go through a few more prompt ideas, still struggling with Ronoxym's now much-belated birthday gift. At least my struggles have helped ChibiSunnie come up with a new story idea. She was trying to help me brainstorm for Ron's gift, and in doing so I somehow got onto the topic of the show Altered Carbon on Netflix. The basic concept of the series ended up sparking an idea for Chibi, and she kind of ran with it. Her teacher and classmates are super excited with the solarpunk alien-world story she's developing, and I also can't wait to see what she came up with. Sooooo... there's always that. Happy to help.


I was still struggling though, and while talking to Wolfhearted about my Ronoxym dilemma, he told me that Ron's favorite character of all time just might be Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. I looked the series up and.... it's up to fifteen novels! Just reading ONE novel quickly enough to write a Dresden fanfic before the end of the month would be challenging, but to read FIFTEEN so that I could fully know the lore, and Harry's character development, and yada-yada? Nope. No way I'd be able to do that. Especially with the shows I still want to watch this month - I didn't even mention above that I also want to watch the Dark Crystal series on Netflix - and finishing pre-NaNoWriMo prep.

Feeling defeated yet again, I noticed that Butcher has a sort of prequel short story as well as a vignette posted on his website. I read both to get the basic feel for the series and the character of Harry Dresden. In doing so, I had a bit of a light bulb moment.

The concept of The Dresden Files is that Harry is a modern Chicago P.I. who happens to also be a wizard, and therefore also works to help magical creatures in need of a P.I. He also uses his magic to protect normal humans from the magical world they didn't know surrounded them.

Now, Ronoxym also likes the works of Rick Riordan, in which ancient Greek/Roman, Egyptian, and Norse gods/mythology are real and still around in the modern world. The teenage main characters must keep the mythological world hidden from regular mortals. Also, the protags all have special abilities of some form thanks to being mages or demigods or – in the case of The Trials of Apollo – a god-turned-mortal.

On top of that, while it is on my always-expanding “to read” list, I have yet to get to the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. However, it was Ron who had suggested it to me, and Ron who is cautiously excited about the Disney adaptation of the first book coming out early 2020. The concept of that series? A modern-day, teenage, criminal mastermind, and his interactions with Fairies. Although he starts off as an anti-hero – holding a Fairy hostage in the first book – he evolves to become a sort of reluctant ally of the Fae throughout the series.

Now hold up, because we're not quite done yet. The last I checked, Ron's favorite TV series is Supernatural. For those who don't know, that series follows the Winchester brothers Sam and Dean as they fight the – surprise, surprise – supernatural forces in the modern world. Usually it's demons and generic monsters, sometimes it's angels, who aren't nearly as kind and loving as the Bible would imply. The long-and-short is that it is yet again a modern, urban fantasy in which supernatural / paranormal / mythological beings are being hidden from mortal common knowledge.

Then you have the LARPs Ron plays via the White Wolf World of Darkness campaigns in which vampires, werewolves, mages, changelings, and even mummies roam the world; hidden from public knowledge.

Sensing the same theme I did?

Urban fantasy in which magical creatures are part of the day-to-day, but are somehow hidden from public knowledge, and the main character is the bridge between the two worlds? I could do that. It wouldn't be a Hunger-Games-like dystopia, nor would it be about Harry Dresden or any other fandoms Ron is in. However, if I do it correctly, perhaps a completely original work can still be entertaining enough that Ron will enjoy it.

So back to searching for more writing prompts. I actually collected quite a few that I enjoyed, even though most of them wouldn't really work with the urban fantasy feel I was now going for.

• The king has passed away without naming a proper heir to the throne. However, none of the six siblings are interested in inheriting the crown. The struggle to push the crown to someone else begins now.
• You are the king. After your daughter was kidnapped by a dragon, you offered the standard reward of her hand in marriage to whomever rescued her. You weren't expecting her to be rescued by a different dragon.
• With hair as black as ebony, lips red as blood, and skin as white as snow, you are a truly terrifying vampire. The people still tell of you to this day, even though you haven't publicly paraded as a vampire for centuries. The only problem? Some idiot screwed up, and now people tell the story of “Snow White” the Disney princess, rather than “Snow White” the deathly feared vampire.
• First appearing as a discoloration on your shoulders, now the scaling has spread across your chest and arms. You are changing, and you're not sure how much longer you can keep it a secret from the ones that you love.
• Three ancient dragons have existed for thousands of years. They hold the key to the kingdom's power source while protecting it from outside threats. When two of the dragons are killed mysteriously, a ragtag group of Orcs must find a way to the third before it's too late.
• Tinnitus is actually the result of pissed-off pixies, who haven't been properly fed in a couple of centuries (hint: it involves sugar and rum).
• You've been raised all your life to fulfill a prophecy, only for the seer to realize they were mistaken – you have no great destiny after all. What do you do now?

I could go on, but this is getting a bit excessive already. Just know that I now have a file of prompt ideas for my next writer's block moment. Before I move on, though, there are still a few others I wanted to make sure I shared. First, there were some that made me think of Taurus Pixie's story Immortal Bond, or Ali Luke's Lycopolis universe.

• Due to certain circumstances that are best left untold, you are now fused with a demon. What this means, however, is unknown.
• You're possessed by a demon. You quickly realize he's never done this before.
• The demon stands amid your destroyed kitchen screaming. “How? How were you able to summon me!?”
  You're standing in the corner frantically flipping through your grandma's cookbook, screaming back, “I don't know!! You were supposed to be chicken soup!”

That last one makes me chuckle whenever I re-read it.

And then there was one which made me think of the Legend of Zelda character Navi: bane of just about every player who played “Ocarina of Time.”

The tiniest fairy settled on your shoulder. She was cute at first, but several months later, you are desperate to get rid of her.

The main one I wanted to share though, was the final prompt I read to Hubby.

You finally build enough courage to talk to that cute someone you see every day on the bus. Their face turns dark as they respond, “You shouldn't be able to see me.”

This one proved to be the winner. Upon hearing it, Hubby actually thought of a slightly different prompt for me. He quickly jotted it down, and when I read his idea I fell in love. I could work with this prompt. In fact, while at work on Tuesday, I did some research and worked on my world-build. I don't know if I'll be able to get the story done before this upcoming Tuesday, but I'm aiming for the 18th at the latest, that way it's within the first month of Ronoxym being 30. Still counts, right?

Speaking of writing prompts and self-appointed deadlines. The Fruits Basket fan-event “Kyoru Week” begins on Sunday. One week of daily prompts – already released so people can get a jump start on their stories/artwork – dedicated to the Fruits Basket ship of Kyo Sohma and Tohru Honda. As Chibi pointed out, I've already written two Kyoru stories, unprompted, over the past few months. If I tag-team thinking of those seven prompts and figuring out my story for Ron, might I be able to conquer both???

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For those who want to join in with Kyoru Week over on Tumblr, the link is here, and for those who don't want to go to Tumblr, here is the list of prompts.

I will either be in a writing frenzy the next couple of weeks, or I won't get anything accomplished. I guess we'll have to see which way I go. I'm personally pulling for the “writing frenzy” option, but considering how late this blog post is I don't have terribly too high hopes....

Although, to be fair, I HAVE been working on it daily since Tuesday, but time restrictions prevented me from working on it for more than a few paragraphs at a time....

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

OH! I almost forgot! I can officially retire my netbook now!

I've been complaining for quite a bit lately about how slow the poor thing has been running, and how it's gotten to the point where it won't even charge properly anymore. It is roughly a decade old, to be fair. Also, the keyboards is... shall we say... worn?

My glorious 10" HP Mini

Can you guess what keys, what part of the space
bar, and what portion of the touch-pad
I use the most?

The poor thing truly is in such bad shape. Most of the keyboard writing is missing from it! Also, do you see the claw marks my habitually long nails left behind after so many years? Poor keyboard!

I'm not actually getting rid of the netbook. That way I have it and the cables as emergency back-up should my laptop, my new netbook, and Hubby's laptop all fail me. It's an unlikely event, and I probably shouldn't "hoard" in an already overly cluttered home, but still....

To replace my old HP Mini, I now have an HP Stream, which is supposedly the replacement model after HP discontinued the Mini.

I've been using the Stream for about a week, as of this writing.
So there's quite a few finger/hand prints on the ribbed cover already.

It's not as pretty as that awesome vibrant red Mini cover, but it's still sleek, and it's suuuuper light. I think I've read BOOKS that are heavier than this thing! But it doesn't feel flimsy either. It should be able to last me for a little while.

Look at this happy new 11.5" netbook

Oh, hey! All of the letters are still on the keys!

I'm excited with this purchase, and the Stream is FAST too. Not much space on it, but once you clean up some of the surplus programs that come standard with HP Windows 10 - such as Xbox live stream, a couple of game demos, and Skype, which I rarely ever use - you have a comfortable amount of memory available to save a couple of small things. I also almost exclusively work on my netbook with my external plugged in, so everything is saved to and taken off of that. More than enough for what I use the computer for. I can actually use the internet with ease as well. That was always the big irony of my Mini. It was a Netbook, but even when it was new it was fairly slow while on the internet. That's not a problem for me anymore.

Now to find my Muse again, and some downtime at work, and I'm in business again. Yay!

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

Off Week; Send Help

This has been an off week. Every spare minute outside of work was either occupied, or I was too burnt out to really think creatively. At my job, I was either hopping with actual work, or I again felt burnt out so I instead focused on my various mobile games or Duolingo practices.

To give you a feel for my week, we'll start with the fact that I wrote last week's blog post Monday evening so I could sleep in and spend all of Tuesday morning with Hubby for our anniversary. The problem with that plan, however, was that I completely forgot to go back online and promote my blog! Whoops! So... uh, thank you to the 11 people who still checked in on it and read last week's post.

Another quick reminder that I have links to the right for an RSS feed - if anyone uses that anymore - as well as email alerts for when a new post is up. They're great resources for situations like last week because a robot automatically sends out the alerts once the latest post is live. You don't have to suffer to my human error.

Anyway, my point is Hubby and my anniversary was the start of a long week of minimum online presence. This lead me to almost exclusively play Social Media Catch-up whenever I had a few spare moments to hop online. I ended up completely missing the release party Celeste Straub threw on Facebook for her debut novel “Leather and Lies.” What's worse is that she kept the party going until 9pm Sunday night so people like me could still hop on, read the author take-overs, and participate in the other prize draws. And yet I STILL didn't find time to participate. Whoops again.

As I stated, Tuesday was all about Hubby, and our anniversary. Wednesday was the start of a long work week for me, followed by Zumba. After I was done with Zumba I showered and then rushed back out the door to do laundry before the laundromat closed. I actually double-teamed laundry and zipping over to the grocery store while the clothes were in the drier. It was a long and tiring day.

Earlier in the week, Shadow had messaged me to see if he could “commission” me to help him with a D&D campaign and world build he had in his head for years now. I agreed to meet up with him on Thursday, completely forgetting that we would be hitting up Quarthix and Panda's for football. Hubby had to work late Thursday, so we ended up just watching football in the background of our own home so Shadow could still swing by.

Well, turns out Shadow wasn't joking at all! He tossed me $20 for sitting with him for a few hours Thursday night and try to organize his excited ramblings of his world. It... was a task... because by the time I wrote up what he said five minutes ago he was already onto the next topic. We were kind of jumping all over the place, but it was fun to listen to him go on and on. I'm amazed by people who world build so easily.

“But he had years for it to stew” I hear you say... yeah.... I've also had years allowing Gyateara and the world of Glitches to stew... still... I'm so lost!

Anyway, Shadow ended up heading home around 11:30 Thursday evening, so that was a long – but fun – night of helping someone else with their creative. Not much of my own worked on though.

Friday I had every intention to work on my own creative. Or I was going to clean. Or I was FINALLY going to read. Instead, I was so burnt out I just curled up in bed with my laptop and played catch-up with Facebook, Tumblr, and some recently updated fanfics. So.... I did get some reading in, just not what I intended.

Anyway, one of the fanfics I read was a cute one-shot by Jowy's Pixie.

Secret Shipper

Marinette finds herself drawn into the terrifying shipping world of LadyNoir when she stumbles across a particular type of fictional story she really wasn't supposed to, written by none other than her best friend Alya Césaire.

Another was the first chapter of a fanfic one of the women I follow on Tumblr wrote. This is the first time Buggachat is attempting to write a multi-chaptered story, and I know the bittersweet pain of taking such a task on, so please give her some love.

Curiosity Wrote a Comic

Marinette is entrusted with the opportunity to beta read Marc and Nathaniel's Ladybug comics, and she couldn't be happier. What's more fun than consuming content inspired by you?

That is, until the comics take a turn she had never expected. Now she finds herself faced with truths and possibilities she had never considered before, and it may just take a certain blond-haired boy or two to calm her fears.

...

Basically, Marinette reads some angsty fanfiction about herself and doesn't handle it too well.

Lastly, there was a bitterly painful but still wonderfully beautiful one-shot by Megatraven. It's super short at just over 300 words. It's also a bit unique because it's inspired by a tumblr ask as a writing prompt.

A Little Longer

“I can still hear the screams… they’re so loud.”
- requested by my-name-is-tom-dupain on tumblr

It's a Post-Defeating Hawk Moth story that hits right in the heart. I'm still amazed how people can relay over so much emotion and such a complete story in less than 500 words. Then again, Meg has 89 friggen stories written for Miraculous Ladybug alone, so clearly they have a gift for writing short stories, and with a quick turn-out no less. In other words, they have had the time and practice to perfect this craft. I still have no clue how they do it though and will always be in awe.

Anyway, I should have spent the time writing, but I just needed a recharge night on Friday, so reading fanfics it was.

SATURDAY! Saturday could be my “be productive” day! Hubby was going to be out all day again while having a game day with friends. I was going to have a “day off” the next day. It would be a great way to end my exhausting work week.

Yeah... no... Saturday I was in a bad spot. I was so burnt out with everything else that I was teetering on “I'm going to start balling and I don't know why” pretty much all day. My left eye twitch was back. I needed a second recoup day. So I gave myself a spa treatment. Long shower. Lather up with lotion. Do my nails. Soak my feet. Try to find things like “A Little Longer” to read to try to push me over the edge, and when that didn't work, I tried watching humorous videos on YouTube to try to pull me back the other way. Still quite melancholy and again snuggled in my bed when Hubby got home, I gave up on trying to be productive.

Sunday Hubby's one friend was getting married. So the morning was filled with the two of us tag-teaming the bathroom in an attempt to get ready, and then I ironed while Hubby made us brunch. We got a bit lost trying to find the place, but managed to get there with about 15min to spare. We then walked an awkward tightrope for the next few hours. Hubby works with the groom and has had game nights with him. During said game nights, we've met the bride, but we weren't exactly “friends” with her. We didn't know her enough. Same with the groom's friends we were at a table with. We've hung out once or twice with them during the bigger, more involved game nights – such as on the groom's birthday – and we like them well enough to have a fun evening. At the same time though, we were clearly outsiders... so.... it was an interesting day. We got home just in time for the evening football game, but we both wanted to veg, so I snuggled my husband, watched football, and ignored the fact that I didn't write all week.

Yesterday was my last hope. Two weeks ago at writing group the few members there requested I bring in something where Adrien is Chat Noir so they can see the personality shift. Sadly, he's uncharacteristically Emo in "Peeping Tomcat” due to him being ashamed with his spying. I could read off Mimicker's attack since that's closest to the dynamic they have in the show, but Ladybug isn't in the right light due to her frustration with Chloe. Plus, it's an 11-pg chapter. I've tried reading it aloud, and it takes me about 20min. Maybe read just certain parts?

Alternatively, I thought of writing the opening to “One and the Same” finally. Ladybug is her normal self, and Adrien is in a good place, so he'd be the closest to canonical Chat Noir. I just haven't been inspired though. I do also have the introduction to my MariChat relationship in OatS, but that's another one that isn't QUITE right with how Chat Noir acts. I've also played with a scene introducing my headcanon origins for The Bracelet so Adrien knows how important the charm bracelet was to Marinette, and therefore shows how much she cares about him. I just can't figure out how to organically bring up The Bracelet in front of Chat Noir though.

In the end, I ended up playing more catch-up; mostly reading tumblr exclusive fanfics or longer writing advice posts. We got TWO new Miraculous episodes on Saturday, so the fandom is super active right now, and it takes me hours to catch up. I really need to take a step back from Tumblr so I can find time again to WRITE. I just blank whenever I open a notebook or a word doc.

On the flipside though, I DID write a small blip of a scene with Hubby this week. He's trying to restart the X-Future game, and in the meantime of waiting for everyone to be ready to play again he and I are playing as his one NPC and Trish. Poor Lia hasn't been played since 2016! OVER TWO YEARS, and Willow hasn't been played for at least a year, but Trish I've still been quite active with.

I think I should be worried about that.

Anyway, nearly two years ago Hubby started up a scene with Trish where one of his NPCs - currently only known to Trish as The Stranger because they haven't introduced themselves yet - saves her from a Purifier attack. It was a painfully slow play through the scene where we'd go months before updating, and we finally finished it this past spring or so. Well, Hubby asked if we wanted to continue while waiting for the restart to happen, and I'm game.

Now we have Day Two of Trish and The Stranger working together to wipe out The Purifiers. And, yes, they STILL haven't introduced themselves so Hubby's character is STILL just The Stranger to Trish. We started up this new scene about a week or so ago, and we're going through it a bit faster this time. So.... that's where my creative bits went this week, I guess....

It did re-inspire me - along with long letters back and forth between me and Pixie - to go back through and re-read my write-up of my Glitches world build thus far. Tweak a few things. Maybe add others. It's not much, but it's something....

I better get past this writers block before November starts! Next week should be more-or-less back to normal when it comes to my work schedule, so I'm hoping that will help reset me.

In the meantime, maybe I should focus on reading.

Coincidentally, Celeste told me the random scene I opened to for this
picture is her favorite one in the whole novel, so... neat.

That's right, kiddies! “Leather and Lies” is officially out now, and on Saturday I got my beautiful paperback copy! So I'm excited about finally breaking this bad boy open. Apparently, she got her first review just TWO DAYS after the book released. And it was a five-star over on iTunes.

Nail-biting, suspenseful, and full of lust
I stayed up all night reading to get some resolution. The book is full of great twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat. I'm desperately trying to decide what the Skye/Wes couple name should be. Skyley? Fingers crossed for a sequel – you've got the perfect setup for a series!

So super congrats to Celeste for that rave review! I'll be sure to share my thoughts here and on Amazon once I'm done with my read through.

Need one more reminder on how to get your own copy of “Leather and Lies”?

You can buy the ebook and/or paperback on Amazon or on Barnes & Noble.
As for other places to find the ebook? You can find them on Kobo, iTunes, GooglePlay, and Smashwords.

Did you also get “Leather & Lies” on pre-order and have blown through it already? Let me know in the comments what you thought of it, and don't forget to leave Celeste a review. It really is the lifeblood of authors.

Now to figure out what to read at Group tonight... Could I manage to write something today before 6? I'll keep you posted. Catch you all next week.

Happy Anniversary! and "Leather & Lies" Release

This is going to be a short post this week, because today is my seven year anniversary with my best friend and love of my life.

I haven't really done much reading or writing wise this week anyway. I've been a bit burnt out, so I focused on other things. Mostly, I'm focusing on learning Japanese. So I downloaded the app Duolingo, and I've been a bit obsessed with this app ever since.

As of last night...

I've been averaging about 250XP per day.
My daily goal is 30XP.

I still have quite a ways to go. I'm probably the equivalent of a pre-schooler at best. Still, I'm loving this app and I just may learn a second language yet! I may even add in Spanish to shake off the rust on that and MAYBE become fluent in it finally, instead of only remembering enough for exams and then apparently instantly forgetting everything.


I've also let a couple of other scenes for "One and the Same" stew a bit in my head. I really should start writing them down though. At least to get a rough rough draft figured out.

Well, since I've slacked with writing this week, I guess I should at least use this blog to help promote someone who HAS written.

Namely, Celeste Straub. Her debut novel "Leather and Lies" is available TOMORROW!!!! Kind of a nice birthday gift, since her b'day was yesterday.

Have you pre-ordered your copy of "Leather and Lies" yet? You still have time!

You can snag your paperback pre-order on Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

If you prefer the ebook version, the above links work for that as well. You can also pre-order the e-book version on Smashwords, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play.

I can't wait until I get the email on Wednesday to tell me my paperback copy is shipping. One last "Way to go!" to Celeste Straub.

And while I'm still waiting for an update of when "Not So Imaginary" officially publishes, I do have another update on Ali Luke. After a bit of a hiatus, Ali has unveiled her updated look to her writing advice blog Aliventures. The place is so streamlined and shiny! She did a great job with the rework of the blog. Another cool thing? She decided to rework the prices on her products as well. So, most of her items have dropped three or four dollars in order to make the prices a bit more universal and easy to add the 35% discount for anyone who subscribed to her.

So go check out her new look, and see if there's any writing help you'd love to pick up with the new prices.

Alright, as pathetically small as this blog is this week, I'd rather be cuddling my Hubby right now. Sorry, folks.


Until next week!

So In Love With Two (and, of course, Hubby)

From now until the fullness of time,
where we will meet, remember, and love again.

First and foremost, a happy belated anniversary to my amazing husband. We had a super chill day of just snuggling on the couch watching movies and playing board games and the like. It's great that we just need to be next to each other all day to celebrate our anniversary.

Love you always, Hubby!

The man is amazing, and he has been my number one sounding board pretty much since we met. And yet, even he can't help me out with the dilemma I found myself in this week.

Last Tuesday I commented on how I had a week to rush through as much of my Peeping Tomcat fanfic as I could before the end of the month. That was because after September ended I was going to shelf the project for a few months. That way I could work on NaNo prep as well as try to FINALLY finish my "Hey, Arnold!" fan-script before the official The Jungle Movie airs on Nickelodeon in November. I was then going to work on my Varekai fan-novelization during NaNo itself. Spend December fixing the fight scene for the Devon/Trish story, as well as GIVE IT A FLIPPIN' TITLE, and then back to Peeping Tomcat.

That was the plan. I even updated my FanFiction profile page for the first time in like five years in order to reflect my writing schedule.

Then I saw this in my email:

Commit to your superheroic creativity

Friggen NaNoWriMo is superhero themed this year! I missed the first year they used this theme, so I'm super excited about it. However, now I'm super torn! How great would it be to write my "Miraculous Ladybug" fanfiction - ya know, a story about TWO SUPERHEROES - during a NaNo dedicated to superheroing? It would certainly be easy to remember the theme for the NaNo I wrote it. I mean, it's only a year out and I already don't 100% remember the theme from last year's NaNo. Shooting for the stars, or something like that? There was a rocket and a flag on the moon. Space themed?

The temptation to work on a story that fits the NaNo theme is so great! It's to the point where I feel like this might be kismet. Forget Varekai. Ride the momentum of this fanfic that started off simply as a random writing practice whose sole purpose was to add words to a total count. This story has obviously gripped me.

Also, there's another drive for me to want to stick with PT. Namely, I'm writing for an ACTIVE fandom for once. I'm writing for a series that hasn't been concluded yet. There are still so many questions that people want answered, and fanfiction is a great way to fill that void until the canonical answers are given.

Which is why, for the first time, I have a moderately popular story. I mean, it's VASTLY popular for me, but for the grand scheme of things, it's only so-so. Still. Check this out!

Ignore the bottom one. It's just me getting the email announcement that my story went live.

This is from last Tuesday! The first story follow was only 34minutes after I published the story on Fanfiction.net!

A little over 12hrs after the teaser went live I received 287 views, 8 faves, and 3 reviews. I ended the first 24hrs of publication with 360 views and 9 faves on top of those 3 reviews. A week later, and I'm now up to 525 views, and 13 faves!

To put this into perspective, out of my 18 stories published on Fanfiction.net, only six other stories had 13 or more faves, and they were all in the HA! fandom. One of those six other stories STILL hasn't hit even 400 views even though it was posted in 2012. All of the other stories I have with more views, more faves, and/or more reviews are all from around 2012 when I updated a lot more frequently, and the story has more than one chapter. I couldn't tell you anymore how quickly my work was found, read, reviewed, and/or faved, but I'm fairly positive it wasn't comparable to the numbers I saw with the Miraculous Ladybug story numbers.

On top of all of that, the reviews for Peeping Tomcat are asking for more, so yay! Maybe I shouldn't make them wait until next year like I originally planned? Maybe go for it and write the story in November after taking this month to write up an actual outline so I'm ready to go? Then the first month or two of 2018 can be used for editing. That way these readers can get the full story a couple months sooner than anticipated?

On the flipside, I have been wanting to do the Varekai story for a couple months now. The only thing stopping me from working on it more was that I wanted to use it for NaNo, and so I was trying not to have too much written before the start of the challenge. I did start working on world building, as it were, to try to explain the dynamic between the different "races" presented via the costumes in the show, as well as trying to explain why The Betrothed has her transformation. I've dug deep to write this story. I WILL write this story. The question now though is, do I still do it in November?

I have tickets to watch the show in November. I am beyond hyped to go see it with my one friend. It's supposed to be my driving push to keep going for the last week or so of the challenge. I KNOW that while driving home from the show my friend and I will talk about the performance, and inspiration will strike, and I will want to write for this story. I don't want to derail myself from the ML story once I get that jolt from FINALLY getting to watch Varekai in person.

True, especially compared to my ML teaser, the teaser I posted for my Varekai story back in August hasn't really gotten much love. It's only been seen 21 times, and it has no faves. It does have one review though, and that review is also asking for more.

It's a much smaller fandom. Who thinks to WRITE a fanfiction based on a circus act? Let alone who thinks to look for them to read? On Fanfiction.net, mine is but one of EIGHTY-EIGHT stories written for Cirque du Soleil. Out of the 78 stories written in English, mine is one of 64 that has been reviewed. The fandom of Cirque du Soleil is also predominately written by 7 authors, making up 62 of the English-written 78 stories! One person wrote 18 and another wrote 14 stories. That is a lot of love from so few writers! Also, my numbers may be off, but just based on the summaries coupled with the stories, almost half of the Cirque du Soleil stories are written about the 2007 show Kooza: forty stories, and possibly more! Meanwhile, I seem to be the only English-written story about Varekai.

So, yeah, a lot less love, but also, who is reading this story? Some might take this as me stating that I should shy away and go back to the popular ML story. However, I think of it more of "those who DO want a story about these shows has virtually nothing to read. I could fix that!" Plus, considering how small the fandom is, the fact that there is nothing else written for Varekai, and the fact that I'm an "outside writer" for a fandom that seems to be mostly written by the same seven people, the fact that I had 21 views and one review at all is kind of amazing to me! Plus, now I REALLY feel obligated to post my story for the reviewer looking for more because they don't seem to have any other options on FF.net.

So..... WHICH DO I WRITE!?

While going through an old playlist of mine, I came across the song "So In Love With Two" by Mikaila. I am still planning on using it as a chapter for What Is Truly Meant To Be, once I EVENTUALLY return to it....

In the meantime, though, I think it would be a very amusing AMV for Miraculous Ladybug. Poor Marinette is torn because she can't decide between her love for Adrien and her crush on Chat Noir, completely unaware that she's actually just crushing on the same guy. There is in fact at least one AMV of this song using the show, but it's Marinette trying to choose between Adrien/Chat Noir and Nathanael/Evillustrator. A fun dynamic, for sure, but not the same.

Anyway, going back to the song itself. Coincidentally, with this pull between Varekai and ML, the song works really well for me! I am torn between two that I seem to love equally.

I tried to "listen to my heart" to see which story pulls me more, but one doesn't seem to need to be written more than the other. I tried to "trick" myself into making a decision by deciding "OK. I'm just going to go with the Varekai story since that's what I decided on months ago" to see if I felt a pang of sadness for not writing the ML story more. I did, so I happily went "OK. Peeping Tomcat it is!" only to get the same pang of sadness that I wasn't working on the Varekai fan-novelization. NOT. HELPFUL.

Since I couldn't make the decision myself, I decided to go to Facebook for some help. I commented about my dilemma on my personal page, as well as on a fanfiction group I recently joined. I asked for people to vote on what they thought I should write.

I even shared the links to the two "teaser" stories to see which people preferred reading and would want more of first. In case you want to weigh in, here they are again:

"Icarus' Descent"

On DeviantArt            On FanFiction

"Peeping Tomcat - Teaser"

On DeviantArt            On FanFiction

I have one vote for ML. I have one vote for Varekai. I have two votes to do both. I have one vote to "do what works for you." I have one vote for "Start with one story, but use the second one as a back-up for when you need a break and switch gears to recharge."

Not helpful, guys! *chuckle*

So, I'm still in limbo. Meanwhile, NaNoWriMo is asking me if I want to promote my novel for next month. Problem is, I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT TO PUT IN FOR MY NOVEL! Oh, the melodramatic pressure!

In the meantime, I guess I just start building more information for each story so that I'm prepped for NaNo regardless which one I decide on. Or... in case I go with the majority vote and try tackling both at the same time.

I even started up already. I have a notebook for each fandom.

The red one is for my Miraculous Ladybug notes.
The orange one is for Varekai.

I must admit that I actually didn't continue with any narrative writing this week even though it was, supposedly, my last chance to advance PT for a few months. Instead, I started making notes on what I needed to fix in the story to better get it to work. The reason I stopped when I did was because I wasn't much of a fan of Chat Noir's confession speech. I honestly don't know if I want him to confess the way he did and when he did. I think I need to save that for the "All is lost" moment of the story. I needed to figure out what was next though, after Adrien figured out who Marinette was.

My on-going notes for the Peeping Tomcat
story.

So, I wrote down things I needed to fix. I wrote down things I wanted to make sure I included. I wrote down things I wanted to avoid. I even started coming up with my own Akumatized Villains for the duo to go up against. Because, frankly, just a story of those two sorting out their teenage confusion is nice and all, but it also is too focused on that fluffy angsty stuff. There needs to be more to build up the story. There has to be a plot beyond Adrien and Marinette finally coming together after a LOT of confusion. There needs to be exterior conflict.

I'm terrible at costume design, but I did make up visuals for two villains thus far:

 The first one is the main reporter on the show Nadja Chamack akumatized into the villain Headline. She was supposed to be part Wonder-Woman-Homage with part 1920s reporter with the trench coat and a small off-center "press fedora." But, with the limited selection available in the doll maker I used, she looks like a female Gambit. Whoops.

The other Akuma victim I came up with is Vocalizer. She's an original character named Annette Moreau. I literally just started throwing things together to make up a costume I liked, and then colored it blue and purple because those colors haven't really been used in the show yet.

I need at least one more to start the story off with I think. Beyond that, I think I still want to come up with one or two more Akumas, but we'll see how many the outline needs me to have.

If that's not enough - which it may or may not seem like a lot, depending on your perspective - I also started up a bunch of notes containing my own observations and fan-theories on elements of the show. I then made even MORE notes of my fan-theories based on other fan-theories and confirmed information via the Miraculous Wiki.

I wrote on the back cover and the blank page between the
cover and the last notebook page. So. Many. Notes!

Yeah. This is where the majority of my week went. These fan-theory notes. I wanted to make sure I really got the feel of the world and the rules that control it so that I don't break any of them when I write my story. This is the first fanfiction where I had to worry about stuff like that. It's a LOT to take on, but I hope I do it justice.

Maybe waiting until next year for more PT is a good idea so I have more time for these builds. Then again, I'm kind of doing the same thing with Varekai! Gaaah!

I have to figure this out. Any advice or requests you'd like to throw at me, feel free to do so in the comments section.