#I might have to create a separate sheet to record it all in case I ever want to share it

[she-who-the-river-could-not-hold]

#100daysofwriting | day 016 (belated)

a daily writing challenge created by @the-wip-project // tagging my fellow writers in on the fun: @thelittlefanpire, @kinetic-elaboration, @hopskipaway, and @easilydistractedbyfanfic

A day off from writing accidentally turned into completely ignoring anything that had to do with writing so here's yesterday's prompt for now!

Do you have prophecies and superstitions as part of the worldbuilding in your WIP? Could you add some?

YES! In my dark/medieval fantasy AU, I've merged the concept of Wanheda with the Dungeons & Dragons Blood Hunter class created by Matt Mercer for Critical Role. So I’ve been working to create my own magic system and mythology to work with it, resulting in both a perceived destiny as well as superstitions and the feelings of people who don’t practice it. The destiny that Clarke is given feels like a prophecy at first, but as time goes on she’ll learn more about what she’s really meant to achieve.

In regard to superstitions, Clarke is warned of “stories of religious zealots of the west killing wanhedas for being heretics.” This stems from Cadogan and his cult in canon, but also the idea that since I imagine the world I’m creating having religious characters, I felt that they would find a wanheda’s ability to use blood to fuel their magic as sinful. Similar to how some faiths don’t support autopsies/organ donation/medical treatment/etc, I imagined that a more zealous religion in this world would be horrified by the concept. There’s also an archaicness to the blood magic practice, making even everyday people in the world wary of it. While it hasn’t happened yet, Clarke will eventually run into deeper animosity towards her once it’s revealed what her powers are. The superstitions about wanhedas (colloquially called “blood hunters” in the fic as a more derogatory way) are rooted in both assumptions, bad experiences decades ago that have been passed on in stories, and general fear.

I do think there are ways I can play all of this up though. This is the fic that I’m planning on converting into a D&D style experiment and my plan right now is to rework the current outline I have and find places where I have to roll for what’s going to happen. Each character is going to get a mini character sheet so that I can figure out their advantages + disadvantages. Then, while I have the core structure of things I need to happen, I want to have the dice dictate things in between. I’m probably making things harder on myself but I’m twice as excited to keep working on this WIP than I was before.

So back to the question: I think I’m going to have a roll set up where I see how well or poorly someone receives the information that Clarke is a wanheda. If it rolls high enough on the interaction, they either don’t know what that is, don’t care, or don’t have any superstitions. If it rolls too low, they’re extremely superstitious and on guard around her (if not outright hostile).

I often talk about dialogue being on my biggest hang ups so I think this would be a really cool way for me to have a more fun time figuring out how things will happen, as well as having the chance to dive deeper into the world.

link to my ao3 | masterlist of these posts

[godlytransurfer]

Personal Subliminal project update

If you guys have been following me for a minute you might know that I decided to create a more specific “master subliminal” for myself with tons of extremely specific things for my own self concept. I didn’t do this exactly out of absolute need, but because it brings me joy to hear it over and over again as it grabs onto my subconscious in a more permanent way.

I know sometimes we intend for something and command it and it still comes regardless we forgot about it for a while or not. But I happen to be trying to get rid of an old system that I created years ago that I drilled into my brain very persistently. Helped me already in many ways, but it needs an update I must say, and even though commanding works, I want my intentions to be as drilled there that it just becomes automatic default. (Yes I know my subconscious just blindly believes and it isn’t actually stubborn at all, but I want my conscious to not fight me I don’t wanna be an angry bitch lol.)

I don’t even know with how many things I came up with, but let’s say I ended up creating a computer voice audio of 17 minutes and downloaded it into my phone to hear it on a loop as desired or as I sleep. I don’t always hear tapes tho, I like to fall asleep in peace and sometimes it’s not really compatible for me if I’m trying to do the Lullaby, or go into the void.

I realized it did get me into a more consistent feeling state in the sense of seeing EVERYTHING I want put together and my own being in it. However the computer voice has me a bit... not totally unsatisfied but I would rather use my own voice. I initially wrote everything on my phone notes and took it to a site called readloud.net

However for my own voice recording I decided it would be good to pass them onto paper first. Repetition again, plus adding or changing something so that it’s at it’s best. Then I realized I had added some things I had suddenly remembered for extra perks, and there wasn’t really any order by category of subject. This is just me being a perfectionist, don’t mind me.

So up next, I decided to just go through all of it, plus more stuff that I wanted to add today. Next I’m gonna grab a binder and separate affirmations through categories: my own self concept, money, concept I have of this world and people and how things work, positivity, being grateful (not necessary, just really because it makes me feel good), getting rid of stupid guilts and logic illusions again, habits, bigger manifesting capabilities like stuff and people out of thin air more often, talents, love, whatever you can think of really.

I honestly don’t care that it is really long because I aimed at a 8h audio anyways. I didn’t initially think of separating audio files for each thing and different paper sections, but for some reason it seems right. Keeps everything in order.

More than anything because I like to keep track of what’s in the file since it is so much by now and also in case I want to add or change things later. Everything will be pointed out in it’s specific sheet.

I feel like I’m becoming my own universe file keeper or some shit at this point, given the fact that I’ve been keeping manifestation journals for a WHILE now. For some reason I never want to lose sight of them. Thought of putting everything into digital, maybe one day I will, but I don’t think it’s worth it, perhaps given the facts that:

1) For some reason I feel it way more real when I’m writing it onto the paper? Maybe it’s just another useless assumption because I feel it real too when I write online, but I’m guessing it’s a habit at this point.

2) Either ways, if I want to revise a ton of stuff all over again, why would I bother passing down paper files to digital... eh. Good thing all you need is in your mind and the feeling anyways!! (Jokingly thinks about all the “lost” ancient libraries, go figure.)

But nevertheless, these might end up as a library for my own amusement or until the whole system is fully 24/7 in my mind without me even needing to think twice. I know I’m already there. 

With the prior mental system, I used to feed myself daily conversations, music, art, inner monologues, and even the dreams unintentionally went accordingly. You don’t need any of these things to manifest, specially dreams, it’s true. But I know when my dreams are consistent, not necessarily in what happens but in the world and people I see, I’m on the right track. I had a big tendency and guilty pleasure for symbolism. I didn’t know about Law of assumption as law of assumption in the past, I thought it was an inevitable spiritual truth, so it felt natural to surround myself with all these things, and they would sometimes come to me and give me a real, consistent, insane ton of things and proof. It was a bit more law of attraction based and not necessarily so specific at everything sometimes, but still. Insanely close for many specific things and people, and I never necessarily need proof. So now I feel it’s time I give even my brain, although the logic is not needed, the permanent effects of the better system. Much has already improved, so nothing to wait much at all for. Just honoring my whole personal ritual, and enjoyment.

But back to the journals: these aren’t used daily, but I loved using them to revise and specially script or write affirmations over and over again. I actually started out writing everyday after I found out what I was doing was Law of Assumption. Then again, ABSOLUTELY NOT NECESSARY LOL I JUST ENJOYED WRITING AT THE BEGINNING AND I HAVE PERIODS OF INTENSE WRITING PERSONALLY. I just found that maintaining consistency in the focus of it all (it all aka the whole me, world, etc I want because I want an extreme thing) had really fast, consistent results for me. Like super glue on all the right dots of a pattern. Even though you don’t even need patterns or correlation necessarily. Your logical brain just likes patterns, and although I don’t like to negotiate with logic because it’s limiting, sometimes playing that bitch is funny.  And yeah, because by doing this I was thinking every second of the day from the whole thing being done.

Ofc I still do my best now, and i still don’t write everyday, but sometimes when you’re handling shit, you wanna keep focus without having to freak out about your 3D position. I just keep affirming it’s giving me everything I want. And the audios really help for me with that, I can’t fail.

[pl-panda]

The vines that bind us - Chapter 8

Chapter 1 || Previous || Next

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“I trust you to act responsibly. And as a Guardian, you probably should start learning magic anyway.”

“Let’s get started then. Please tell me I can curse Lie-la!”

“Mari!”

“Just kidding, alright?” She smiled innocently and Tikki shook her head. 

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Somewhere into the evening, Chloe called her to inform her that she was on her way back and she shouldn’t worry. When the blonde entered the room… it was a mess, using the word loosely. The walls were in all colors of the rainbow sans their original one. The room seemed to be double its size and Chloe was pretty sure her bed just got a fourth dimension added to it. There was also that the plants seemed to have taken over one corner and created their own kingdom. She could even see them raising a flag with Marigold Design and creations logo on it. 

“Figures! I leave you for one afternoon…!” Chloe said with disdain while trying to step over what looked almost like a black hole. 

“Chlo? Is that you?” Mari’s voice came from two and a half directions at the same time. The blonde had no idea how was it even possible.

“Isley! Get your pretty ass here so I can properly scold you!”  

“Um… Kinda tied at the moment,” came an answer.

“I don’t want to hear it. I had a long day of scheming and I need my beauty sleep.” Chloe complained. “Get me my bed fixed at least.”

“Oh fine! Tikki! Spots on!” There was a pink light from two separate directions and suddenly Ladybug jumped out of the small hole in the ground. “Miraculous Ladybug!” 

After the wave of shining bugs settled and the room was back to normal Mari detransformed and smiled apologetically at Chloe. “Sorry. Got carried away with the new book.”

“Picasso’s guide to architecture and interior design?” Chloe deadpanned. 

“Nope,” The bluenette smiled and pulled a rather hefty tome from her bed to show it to her friend. “Someone dropped it inside our room when we were out. Tikki deemed it safe and taught me the basics.” 

“I think you will need remedial lessons, given how our room looked. What exactly was the purpose of making my bed four-dimensional?”

“I might have tried to expand the room a bit, but I miscalculated a tiny bit. There is a surprising amount of math in magic.”

“Whatever. I would tell you how my date went, but I’m utterly exhausted now.” Chloe teased her friend. She expected the girl to beg her for the details. Instead, Mari pointed her arm at the bed.

“Pea and feather go along. Make this bed out of stone.” Her iridescent green and blue eyes flashed for a moment… and nothing happened. Chloe smiled triumphantly and tried to jump onto her bed, only to hit the cover hard. While on the outside, the bed looked like nothing changed, in reality, it was hard as the floor. Funnily enough, she could easily slip under the cover, but it still felt like lying on the floor with sheets of paper sewn together as a blanket. 

“You’re mean!” She cried. “I’m now commandeering your bed.” Before Mari even understood what Chloe meant, the girl jumped under her covers and snuggled on one side. There was still enough space for Mari to join if she was brave enough. 

“Ugh! That’s my bed!” 

“Exactly. You can take mine if you like it enough to modify it.”

“Tikki!” Mari cried, hoping that at least the Kwami would support her.

“Nope. You’re the one that made the bed so now you must sleep in it.”

“Um…” Mari tried to look in the book for a counterspell, but in the end, she just pointed her hand on the bed. “Princes found her prince at last. Take the curse and…” she tried to quickly find some rhyme. “break the glass? Ups…”

The window suddenly exploded, but the bed glowed, and after checking it was okay she picked Chloe to move her over. Except it totally didn’t work and the blonde instead pulled her into the comfortable bed. The tired Mari was too exhausted, both emotionally and physically, to care. She just cuddled closer to her adopted sister for some comfort. And heat since there was now a hole instead of the window and it was February.

----------------

The next morning Mari and Chloe woke up in a similar mess to the day before. And once again they were clothed.

“Ugh… I should probably calm down on magic.” Mari stretched herself a bit to get ready. She quickly changed into the fresh version of her yesterday’s outfit and helped Chloe gather herself a new ‘something’ for the day’s work. Apparently, for the next step of her scheme, she needed to look like a perfect Parisian princess. Something about Media attention. Mari was too busy with her tablet to care. 

She received a mail at 6 am that there was a slight change in the time of the press conference so she needed to forward it to the conference center before she even got to work. While eating breakfast she checked over the summary reaction about the public statement and emotions that accompanied the fallout. Predictably, the pictures served as a nice distraction, but also rallied the citizens behind the company. They treated it as someone making fun of the suffering company and flamed the Lila girl, even though the company said that she was also a victim. Well, there was a footnote about it. 

“You know you don’t need to put so much work into it?” Chloe asked while eating her croissant.

“I do. But if I can’t manage it now, how am I supposed to one day make MDC as big of a brand as Gabriel?”

“By not working yourself into a coffin?”

“Well… Wait a moment.” Mari was interrupted when her phone ringed. She quickly picked the call and her smile was replaced with a frown. “I understand. I will be there soon. Please keep an eye on him and tell the security not to let any more paparazzi.” she hanged up.

“Trouble?” Chloe asked with a grin.

“I’m afraid to ask…” 

“Damian is doing an errand for me. He is such a good sidekick.” The blonde smiled. Mari did not answer but urged her best friend to move on faster.

Since they stayed in their room for breakfast, neither girl wanting to deal with their moronic class longer than needed, they got down just in time… to see the bus leaving them in front of the hotel.

“Are you kidding me?” Chloe raised her hand. “We are in Gotham. Does that… that… Has she got any idea how dangerous is it?!”

“Said the girl that taunted the Riddler.” Mari deadpanned.

“He wouldn’t hurt me.” The blonde answered confidently.

“Anyway… we could call a taxi.” Chloe sneered at the idea, so Mari offered something else. “I could also test that portal spell…” 

“Taxi!” The girl shouted. Mari just shook her head and pulled the mobile phone. After less than five minutes Chas Chandler rolled next to them in his cab.

“I was in the neighborhood.” He smiled.

“Nice seeing you sir.” Mari greeted him before pushing Chloe in the back seat and joining her.

“To the Wayne tower, please. I would appreciate it if you could get us there fast. I need to get my boss to do his work.” She hoped they would arrive before the class to see their faces.

Sadly, the cab got stuck in the traffic and it took them over an hour to arrive. When Mari entered the lobby, she was angry enough to turn into a ‘stern assistant’ mode. Not a nice place to be if you are on her way. She stormed past the security while flashing her badge. They didn’t dare to try to stop her. 

“Get McKinsley to HR. And by the time I arrive I want Lila Rossi and Alya Cessaire to be sitting there!” The second one was directed to the receptionist, who nodded. So far everyone loved Mari, even in her bad mood. It didn’t stop them from being terrified. 

Both she and Chloe got into the elevator. When the doors closed, the blonde grinned. 

“I love it when you finally show your Gothamite side.” 

She got no response from the angry Mari, but through the ride, her smirk did not disappear through the ride. Once they separated, the bluenette continued alone. Angry did not give her emotions justice. She was furious.

Once she finally got on the floor, she stormed through the corridors right to the head of the department’s office. Luckily for everyone, Lila and Alya were already there.

“Who do you think…” Alya started only to be silenced by a death stare from Mari. For the first time in her life, she realized that the bluenette was someone not to be trifled with. 

“Apparently, since this morning I’m your superior.” Mari deadpanned. “Funny thing. I would probably only learn about this from your bragging later on if you didn’t decide, in all your stupidity, to write yourself reference in my name.” It was clear that she did not find it funny. 

“Puh-lease. You bullied Lila since she came. I thought that it was only fair that you’ve repaid her somehow.” Alya babbled, already forgetting her earlier fear.

“So you take full responsibility for forging both your resume?” Mari asked with a raised eyebrow, wanting to have it said out loud for the record. Especially since Madame McKinsley was standing in the entrance.

“Of course. It was totally unfair that such a bully got all the privileges while hard-working Lila had nothing.”

The Head of the Human Resources department sent Mari a tired look that seemed to mean ‘is she for real?’ She was a woman in her thirties with neatly cut black hair and skin in the color of dark chocolate by the name Mrs. Alicia Lynch

“Oh… In that case, you’re disciplinarily fired.”

“What?!” Alya screamed.

“And I will make sure this incident finds itself into your acts,” Alicia said with a frown. 

“You can’t…!” Alya was once more cut off, this time by madame McKinsley.

“They can. And you’re lucky that we are not pressing charges for attempted sabotage.” 

“The security will show you out. The teacher and your guardians will be informed. Since the hotel is paid by Wayne Enterprise for the members of the interns’ program, you will need to find alternative accommodations or simply return to Paris. I’ll leave this to the teacher and parents to resolve.”

“But… But…” Alya wanted to argue. All blood left her face and she seemed close to passing out. A man in a suit, carrying the security badge helped her out of the chair and led her outside.

“Now about you.” Mari turned her gaze toward Lila, who so far was busy checking on her nails.

“Oh! This is ridiculous! I had nothing to do with it. I’m a victim too!”

Marigold turned to McKinsley, who looked dejected.

“We can’t fire her. She was hired for the six months period.”

“Mutual agreement?” Mari asked. She’s been researching ways to dissolve her contract faster. Sadly, she already knew the answer.

“Two months waiting period. Standard to ensure she doesn’t use any of her knowledge against us.” For Mari, it was a year when she couldn’t work for any other company. Luckily, running her own business was still on the table, as long as she stuck to restrictions.

A different idea formed in Blunette’s head. She smirked slightly. “Well, Miss Rossi, looks like you’re in luck. Welcome to Wayne Enterprises. I hope you didn’t have any great ideas.”

Lila gulped. “Was that a threat?”

“No. If I threatened you, you would know. You and your little attack dog forgot that this is not Paris. This is Gotham. Here, we play by my rules.” With that she spun around and left, typing on her tablet. Just before the doors closed, she tossed another sentence that drove the nail deeper. “And this time, there is no minion to do it for you.”

----------------

Marigold didn’t calm down before reaching the top floor. Her emotions subsided a bit, but she was still on edge. 

“Ugh! How dare those stupid witches to try to use my name to sign their references! And that idiot who somehow believed them. He will definitely not get any bonus this month. Or next. At least they had enough common sense to call me. Except after the fact!” She was pacing in front of her desk. 

Tikki peaked from the inner pocket of her jacket. “At least you could do something about it!” She cheered.

“True. I got rid of one trouble. Without her, I will have a chance for some peace…” She barely finished the sentence when there was a crash in the room next door. Immediately, she rushed inside to check. Turns out her boss for some reason decided to move the desk. He ended up knocking the computer over. 

“Ehm.” She faux-coughed to get his attention.

“Oh! Um… I was just…” Tim tried to find some excuse.

“Trying to open the secret stash of coffee?”

“How do you…” he started to ask flabbergasted, but she interrupted him once more.

“I studied the schematics. And Sarah left me a note about it.” A smirk ghosted her stern face.

“Damn! Now I will need another hiding place.” Tim gathered himself from the ground. “Wait! You moved the desk by yourself?”

“Do I look that strong to you?” She asked, her face unmoving. Just because she came to hate liars didn’t mean she didn’t know how to bend the truth a little. And technically, she just avoided answering altogether.

“Whatever. You must’ve ordered the repair crew to move it then. I want my coffee.” He said pouting.

“Sir. I’m supposed to help you manage your time better. I am not simply your secretary.” Marigold informed him firmly. She checked with both Chloe and Nathalie what her responsibilities included.

“But you made that divine brew on Monday!”

“That was a gift for my first day of work.” Plus I had no idea what I was doing.

“But…”

“Enough buts for today. You have a meeting with Mr. Fox about the Friday presentation in half-an-hour. Did you familiarize yourself with the content of the email he sent you?”

“Ah! Of course, I did. I totally didn’t spend my night…”

“Then I would appreciate it if you spent the next half-an-hour on doing so.”

“B…” He didn’t even finish when her glare stopped him. She could pull Batstare better than the original.

“If you act like a proper CEO, I might think about making you some of my ‘divine brew’ as a reward.” She suggested and closed the door, leaving him to his own device. She had several calls to make and set other meetings

---------

It was two hours later when angry Caline Bustier demanded a meeting with her. Mari didn’t even think before redirecting her to HR. The teacher was supposed to be the chaperone of the group and look after them after work. She was also directly responsible for all of their actions. She was very displeased that now she had to take care of Alya for eight hours a day that used to be free time for her. So of course, she blamed everything on Marinette. This time, it backfired. She had to quickly give up any accusations before she ended up in an even worse situation. 

Luckily, after that little incident, the day passed without any more surprises. She had half-a-mind to search the town for her mother in the evening. Since she was hired, she was now technically independent of the class. Chloe had a slip from her father that allowed her to basically ignore the teacher. The blonde convinced Mari that mindless wandering the city would only get her robbed. Or at least involved in attempted robbery since she could easily kick ass if she only wanted. Instead, Mari spent the afternoon shopping for materials and working on a new outfit for uncle Jagged that he ordered for his visit to Gotham in a month or so.

She also made a quick call to Paris to discuss things with her hire. The girl informed her that she would happily run the store a little longer. Mari promised to even consider to hire her permanently if she did well. 

Chloe had another date scheming meeting with Damian Wayne. At this point, it was unclear what their relationship was. Good thing: neither did the tabloids. Mari promised to the blonde to hold back on the search for her mom until Friday afternoon. She also promised to take both Adrien and Chloe with her when she visited a contact in the local club. They would celebrate her getting a job and the first week over.

All would be great. If she didn’t spot a vigilante on the rooftop next to her (now fixed) window. Even then, it was Gotham. The bats were rather common at this point. It wasn’t like when she left and they were only starting. Batman was still mostly a myth back then, even after six years of work. Except this vigilante was clearly staking her room specifically. he even had binoculars that she was sure had night vision in them. 

She opened the window and picked a pencil. With deadly precision she tossed it. The wooden tool sailed through the air until it hit the binoculars and broke one side of them. She huffed and closed the window before pulling the curtains closed. How rude.

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NEXT

[akillysheel]

TENUOUS. ❜ ( 2 )

Summary:  Kuro asks the important questions before he and Cthugha decide on a starting point for their investigation. Warnings:  N/A. Notes:  N/A

    'I need to think about it.'

    Kuro slouched in his armchair, the events of the morning playing on loop in his head.  After Cthugha's untimely arrival, the Sheriff had taken it upon himself to take the rest of the afternoon off in an attempt to compartmentalise his thoughts.  He seldom ever took breaks, but when he'd emerged from his office as white as a sheet, his colleagues had ultimately pulled the plug on his hopes of remaining at work, advising insistently that he should go home.

    'Fine.  But you just remember, every minute you sit around ruminating about your stupid little life, that's another minute that this girl is missing, and that means it's another minute closer to doomsday too.'

    Could it be true?  Doomsday?  The end of the world?  It sounded to him like the paranoid ravings of a conspiracy nut...  yet he'd spoken with such calm authority, countered every one of the problems he'd had with a rebuttal of his own.  Every one of his questions had an answer;  everything he'd said about Raku  ( at least as far as his limited understanding of Gods was concerned ) was true.

    Mia Vanton's case sat on his lap.  It was a thin file, one that spared details for there hadn't been many to uncover, but in that moment it felt heavy.  Cumbersome.  As if he'd been shackled to the floorboards.

    This thing's been shut since 2001.

    One calloused thumb traced over its front, teasing the corner away from the papers inside.  He really didn't know whether he wanted to look at it or not.  It felt oddly like picking at a scab wound, baring himself to old pain that needn't be revisited.  Did he have it in him to feel as hopeless as he did twenty years ago?

    He grunted as a headache set in. It had steadily been growing for the past two hours, fostered in his brain like a bad habit.

    Is there any point in opening this up again?  Surely if she was to be found, she'd have been found by now.  This year marks the twentieth anniversary of her disappearance.  In two weeks, in fact.

    Was that relevant?  He couldn't help but consider it.  As much as he wanted to push Cthugha's prophecy aside as garbage, the fact was that he was impressed  -  and a little worried.  He knew things that nobody could have known, and deep down he knew that his colleagues wouldn't sell some random kid information.  Huron's task force was known for being small, humble and honest, and it's good service had been a near constant hallmark for the district's deep sense of peace.  There had never been a recorded incidence of internal corruption--  not even with other, less composed Sheriffs in the front seat.

    How else could he have known about Olivia?  About Raku, even.

    The Sheriff let out a deep sigh as he closed his eyes, knowing already what he had to do.

    “I’ve decided t’help y’.”

    “Thank.  God.”   The statement trembled with sarcastic frustration, Cthugha’s cobalt eyes all but grey on account of the storm that had entered them.  He sat in Kuro’s chair, his feet propped up on his desk.  The rubix cube--  the one that had previously been half-completed--  sat in his hands, its coloured faces now perfectly arranged.   “While you were busy jerking off to the end of all life in this realm, I was busy compiling resources that might help us stop it.”   He paused to reach inside of his jacket, retrieving a file of his own, before he dropped it unceremoniously on the desk.   “You’re welcome.”

    “Where were y’keepin’ that…?”

    “Just look at it.”

    Kuro hesitated briefly before dragging the file closer, opening it up to find himself staring at a myriad of newspaper clippings, interview transcripts and photographs.  It was makeshift work, by no means tidy, but the sheer wealth of information was staggering to him.  Even so, as he skimmed over them briefly, he realised that there was nothing there that he didn’t already know.

    Of course there isn’t.  Why would there be?

    I don’t know.  Maybe I assumed he was an agent of God or something.

    “Aside from all that,”   Cthugha started, rising from his commandeered seat.  In what felt like a flash, he’d moved from the desk to the far corner of the room, grabbing a hold of a whiteboard on wheels before reappearing where he had been.  Kuro blinked hard.   “We can rule out all the places you already searched in your previous hunt for her.”   Feverishly, the rifter began to fill the board with haphazard notes.   “That means you don’t have to trawl through Whit’s a second time, nor do you need to bother checking their home or questioning her papa.  He came up clean, remember?”

    “Yeah…  he was so dedicated t’findin’ his daughter that he all but singlehandedly led the search party campaign despite us tellin’ him that it was dangerous.  Had t’bust him outta a few compromisin’ positions fer his efforts...”

    “Exactly.  Also means that the tunnels are a bust too, so you don’t have to waste time trawling through the underground like a family of sewer rats.  Wherever she is, she’s somewhere ya didn’t think to comb through.”   He paused when he found his whiteboard pen beginning to run dry.   “Damn it--”   Much like before, he flickered away, a brief rummaging sound filling the quiet office before he reappeared before the board.   “Okay, so--  here’re all the places you don’t gotta worry about that I can think of off the top of my head.  There’s…  what?  Why’re ya staring at me like that?”

    “How’re y’doin’ that?”

    “You can write too, Kuro.”

    “I mean the…  disappearin’-’n’-reappearin’ thing.  Obviously.”

    “Oh, that.  Yeah, I guess that makes more sense…”   It was the closest to sheepish that he’d seen Cthugha thus far;  a break from his smug attitude was certainly refreshing.   “It’s just a teleportation shtick.  Think of it like…  instead of macro-leaps, I’m performing micro-hops in time.”

     "Huh,"   said Kuro, deciding not to question it.

     In truth, the more they talked about the Vanton case, the more he began to recall.  Kuro seldom ever forgot a victim - even though he'd been the Sheriff of Huron for over three centuries, and a police officer for even longer than that - but he wouldn't say that the details were as long-lasting.  There were simply too many nuances in too many cases--  too much information for him to store everything tightly away.  His brief read over the case file before he'd come back to the office that following morning hadn't helped much either, if only because there hadn't been much for him to garner in the first place.

    "I do have a question though,"   Kuro spoke up as he handed Cthugha a cup of coffee.  He wasn't sure whether he was trying to placate or subdue him.   "... or a couple."

    "Are they constructive?"

    "Maybe.  I mean--  y'mentioned parallel timelines 'n' shit.  Couldn't y'just…  hop into one where I found her 'n' tell me where she is?"

    "Parallel timelines are born out of choices, dummy.  Unless you're admitting that you purposefully didn't find her, that isn't gonna help at all."   A swig of his drink was taken, the rich flavour seeming to soothe his annoyance somewhat.   "Nah.  You're thinking of alternate timelines."

    "Then what about that?"

    "We're not really supposed to dip into those if we can help it.  Definitely a last resort sort of deal.  It creates the possibility for people to run into themselves;  fractures the separation between realities.  Doppelganger action is a one-way ticket to hell for the Universe.  Also the fact that, like parallel timelines, there are MULTITUDES of alternate timelines where everything's the same except one little thing, meaning it'd take a shit-ton of time to comb through 'em all--  most likely more time than we’ve got.  There're several versions of you out there, Kuro, but you're this one.  You should focus on that."

     "This's all real confusin’…"   the Sheriff mumbled, deflating a little.  He was so sure he'd had a good idea under his belt, but hell, what did he really know about the way that reality worked?

    "Mm.  Anything else?"   Cthugha asked tersely, eager to move on.

    "Just one more thing,"   Kuro affirmed, shifting in his place for a moment before deciding that brevity was more favourable than kindness.   "... how does this girl stayin' missin' end the world?  People go missin' all the time.  Some come home, some're found dead.  Some’re never found, yet the world keeps on spinnin’.  's just a cruel fact’a life."

    For the first time since their meeting, Cthugha fell silent.  A harrowing emptiness entered his eyes as he thought about the bleak future that awaited them if they did nothing.  A hazy field of fire, the once clean air ashen and thick.  The destruction spread like cancer, first exploding in Huron before it gradually spread outward.  What was perhaps even more frightening was that the one responsible for it seemed impervious to the herculean effort required to topple a district;  by the time he was done with Huron, he was already looking for a bigger, more developed fish to fry.

    It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the Universe in ruins by far, and he doubted it’d be the last.

    That didn’t mean he was accustomed to seeing it though.

    “Well,”   he said softly, whiteboard pen twirled absentmindedly in between his fingers.   “... let’s just say, grief does things to people.  Do you have any clue who Mia’s father is?”

    Slowly, Kuro squinted.    “Aside from knowin’ his name ‘n’ his daughter’s case?  No.  Should I?”

    “No.  That’s exactly why ya should be worried:  he’s got nothing left to lose.  Do you think he’s going to care about hurting anyone when he’s hurting this much himself?  He’s got no children to provide for;  no public image to protect.  When he loses his mind, he does it for real, and damned’re the consequences, get it?”

    “Got it…”   Kuro muttered.  He knew all too well about people like Mr.Vanton.  While an anonymous existence was ultimately a peaceful one, when crime was brought into the mix, it became a dangerous shield.  Who suspected the nobody?  Nobody, that’s who.   “Then we gotta get movin’.”

    “I have to ask,”   Cthugha started as he stepped towards the chair he’d been sprawled in, reaching for his jacket and shrugging it on.  Now that he had a little time to look over him properly, Kuro noted its strange cyan decals and the symbol that he’d never seen before adorning the right side;  two parallel lines with a small triangle beneath the centre point of the bottom one.  It looked vaguely like a seesaw with two slats on top instead of one.  "What made you change your mind?"

    “Well, I guess I never got over the fact that I couldn’t solve it.  D’y’have any idea how hard it is t’look a parent in the eye ‘n’ tell ‘em that the search fer their child is over?  There was nothin’ else I could do, but I still felt guilty.  I figure, even if yer full’a shit ‘n’ this really is some heartless stunt all fer yer own amusement, I can at least make sure that there really was nothin’ else I could’a done fer the Vantons.”

    The rifter hummed softly as he adjusted his tie.   “Heh.  Ya really are a good person.”

    “Y’had doubt?”

    “Who doesn’t?  Much easier to expose a bad person who’s pretending to be good than to find an actual good person these days.  I guess it’s just an unfortunate byproduct of evolution.”

    “Yer wrong,”   Kuro said firmly, pulling his black coat closed.  The gun at his hip was touched briefly before he pocketed his hand, satisfied that he had everything he needed.   “There’re a lot more good people in the world than bad.  ’s just that the bad leave behind their messes t’clean up.”

    “Well, whatever the truth is, it’s clear we’re dealing with a bad person here, huh?  So, got any bright ideas?”

    Already were the gears in his head turning.  With the compiled notes to aid him, he knew of the place that he wanted to start with.  It may have been a dead end--  wishful thinking more than anything--  but he wouldn’t be able to progress until he knew he’d upturned every stone on this property.   “We should head t’the Valerie Vineyard first.”

[literaticat]

Hi! For IP book deals, when it's a six figure deal, how much of that is for the author? Is it a fixed fee? And are book packing companies like Alloy considered as part of creating IP or is that separate?

(I'd like to just say for the record - there are a LOT more IP deals than you even know about and "six-figure IP deals" are pretty freakin rare, so uh -- I REALLY would not count on that unless you are literally famous? But Anyway.)

Just so we are all on the same page - a couple of definitions:

"IP" = Intellectual Property - Whoever has the rights to the characters/world/project, is the IP holder. So a book that you came up with all on your own? That's YOUR IP. A book where DC Comics owns the characters, that they hire you to write, is their IP.

So yes, this CAN be shorthand for big existing franchises like Marvel or Disney characters - but it also can refer to literally ANY Intellectual property. AND it can be shorthand for "the type of project where an author is hired to create a book for the IP holder" (as is the case in this question).

"WFH" = Work-For-Hire - WFH can be what you might think of as "IP deals" like the above -- but also, WFH can be, like, phonics books, those 8x8 cartoony books that are on a rack in the grocery store, textbooks - like, any book where you are just getting paid a fee to write the book, but you don't own the copyright.

People often use "IP project" and "WFH" essentially interchangeably - and they kinda are. An author of an IP project IS doing work-for-hire. But "IP project" sounds a bit grander, so is usually used when it is a book where the author is meant to use their own name to promote or it is Fancy in some way - whereas "WFH" sort of implies that the author is an anonymous cog in the machine and will not be credited, or barely credited.

There are different kinds of IP deals, and they might be structured in any number of ways. A few of them:

Franchise Properties: We're talkin characters you KNOW. Disney, Marvel, whatever. The current fashion is to hire relatively well-known authors from the world of say, YA or Kids Books, to write original novels based on popular characters and world. So like, Jason Reynolds writing Miles Morales/Spidey. Probably these authors will be paid a good amount, because well - their names and experience are the reason they got hired for this project. The publisher will DEFINITELY want to brag that they got stars to write their books! And the star author will promote them. The hope is here that it will draw in fans of both The Character and The Writer. THAT BEING SAID: what a "good amount" entails might vary a lot, depending on the popularity of the character and the author and the amount of work involved. And the author probably will only get a small royalty compared to an original deal, and they will not own the copyright.

Publisher-Generated IP: This is where the publisher creates a storyline/characters and hires authors to write the book, basically. You'd probably get a fee based on the amount of work, and whether or not you are experienced at doing this kind of work, and if you are bringing any kind of "fame" to the equation. You might get a small royalty, or a tiny share of subsidiary rights - or nothing. You won't own the copyright. If it is a bigger project, like a novel -- you'd probably use your name, and promote it just as if it was a "regular" book that you invented. There are MG and YA novels and GN and all kinds of books that you have definitely seen and heard of, that are Publisher Generated IP.

Book Packager projects: Book packagers are companies, like Alloy or Paper Lantern, for example, that create book projects complete with intense outline, character beat sheets, extremely detailed - then work with an author to create a whole "package" with an extremely detailed outline and sample, possibly even with artwork involved and just... it's a whole THING, that they then sell to publishers as, essentially, what will be a polished book. How those deals are structured may vary, but probably the author will be paid a small "token" amount for helping create the sample pitch material, and then if the project actually gets bought by the publisher, they will be paid a determined fee or percentage of whatever the packager receives to write the actual book, and possibly get a share of subsidiary rights. However - the packager will own the copyright, and they are getting the lions share of the profits in this scenario.

Uh I don't know if I answered your question, kinda got lost in the sauce there. It depends, I guess is the answer? lol.

[skyflicker]

sea glass (amasai week day one)

written for @amasaiweek2020, hosted by @storyflight and @toxicisnotapineapple! i know it’s not Monday over there in America or wherever you are unless you live in Asia like me, but it is very early morning over here so y’all get early content...? the prompt is shy/confession and i chose the latter but it might as well have been tears because, as you can see, i literally used it 510983794789278974983 times. i’m sorry-

this is the first official danganronpa fanfiction i’ve completed besides one i only sent to my friends for mid-autumn festival, so please go easy on the newbie of the day :3 i hope y’all enjoy this! (and if you do enjoy it, do drop over to my ao3 @silveryyy, where this is also posted, and leave a kudos ;) (it’s okay if you don’t tho-)

-

Shuichi remembers the day as clearly as if it were just yesterday.

Three long, blurry years could not make a single dent in his memory, in his pain. Three years, and he still flinches at any sound of crashing, still hears the roaring sound of silence rolling in his ears afterwards, still sees the image of the smile he loved so much through the tears blurring his sight into a swirling mess of colours.

Time heals, they’d told him. It’ll numb soon. But Shuichi had never, not once in the half decade he’d spent locked in his room, felt the pain, the grief, the guilt recede- instead, he felt the dread twist deeper into his stomach every day, his lungs squeezed so hard he could hardly breathe with the streams he let pouring down, his gut stabbed, ever so brutally, by a thousand snow-rimmed spears, the deadly cold metal stinging his wounds, and then he’d look down and see nothing at all. The pain, though, still remains, and his heart drops and falls and smashes to the floor into a million tiny fragments that are painstakingly put back together just to be destroyed again the next day. Rivers of guilt and pain flooded his mind day by day, flowing between him and that person he loved so dearly, separating them cruelly on two opposite riverbanks, so so far away from each other.

The mornings are always the worst. He remembers the day after the accident, remembers his eyes opening to sunshine flowing in from the window as always, the fully clear glass fracturing the light ever so slightly to create the most gorgeous rainbows dancing playfully across the walls, casting a golden sheen across the room; the skies such a lovely vibrant shade of azure, smooth as a painter’s steady hand brushing across the ever-expanding canvas. The sky was so clear, without a cloud in sight, like it had not a single care in the world. For a moment, Shuichi had forgotten the day before, forgotten the endless tears shed, the screams that echoed the air, and actually felt his spirits life and soar as high as a joyful bird dashing up into the world. It’d only made him hurt more when the imaginary world breaks into pieces and bits and pieces of memories, ironically just like sunlight, streams into him through the faux happiness, like how the sun always finds a way to break out of the dark sheets of tar-like clouds.

Three painful years, with no one there for him, no one to ease his mind, no one to comfort him.

To be completely fair, his friends did try to help. Kaede still lets herself in every other day, after her day job at the local coffee shop, to shake Shuichi awake, make him a small dinner and prepare simple meals for him when she wasn't there, maybe try to coax him out of the house. She never gave up on him, never gave up on trying desperately to cheer him up, to have him pick up the life he once had. Maki comes over as much as she can- she's busy, being a kindergarten teacher, sits with Shuichi and talks about her day, talks about Kaito, and sometimes they just mourn, together, and he ends up crying and Maki just silently comforts him. Unlike Kaede (not to say she isn’t of any help, Kaede’s great and helps him take his mind off the incident), Maki more than understands- she shares in the pain of having lost a loved one- when Kaito'd died of cancer four years ago, Shuichi'd been completely devastated at the loss of his best friend and brother, but Maki definitely bore the brunt of the impact. At least he'd had Rantaro to help him then. Now- 

It's too painful to think about. But even if his friends tried their best to help him- his other friends/old classmates drop in from time to time as well- they're just… not the people he wants to see or talk to. Despite their attempts to have him move on, he just can't, the last argument he had with… him still deeply etched into his brain, every single moment he'd spent with his ex-boyfriend imprinted onto his eyelids. None of his friends, none of them except maybe Maki, truly understand, truly get why he's chosen to stay here mourning the loss of his lifeline. 

He feels guilty whenever they try to usher him out, though. He remembers the first time Kaede tried to persuade him to go out, his outburst at his foster sister, and she looked more scared than he'd ever seen her. That expression'd been enough for his anger to fade away into the dark wisps of shadows that now permanently reside in the corners of his eyes, always waiting to strike.

He remembers being so shocked and horrified at himself that the glass mug slipped from his hand, the crystal-like cup shattering into tiny sharp fragments, and they'd both flinched at the high-pitched crash, Shuichi's heart falling with it. He’d looked at Kaede, and opened his mouth to apologize at the sight of her large, sweet plum coloured eyes filled with guilt and tears, but she’d quietly beat him to it and slipped out of the doors, leaving Shuichi alone, alone with the click of the doors, and his own screaming, and the sound of the glass shattering on the floor echoing over and over again.

For three years, he hid away in his apartment. For three years, he’d been mourning alone, shut in his room, buried under the numerous blankets he kept in his closet.

But today, he decides, he’s going to break that record. For the first time since his best friend’s death, he’s going to go outside.

For the first time in ages, he actually wants to go out.

The last time he’d gone out was the day his best friend left him, left him alone in this cold and unforgiving world. He remembers coming home to his phone buzzing from a text, from Rantaro, the first time they’d talked since the large, intense argument they’d had two whole weeks prior. Rantaro’d been in Europe since that argument, with the only sister- Rina, a sweet girl five years younger than both Rantaro and Shuichi- he’d found over the countless years of searching- now the sole heiress of the Amami fortune- looking for his other siblings.

“I’m sorry.”

It was so sudden that Shuichi hadn’t known how to respond at all. He’d stared at the text, at the two words glowing on his screen, trying to figure out what to say. He wasn’t mad at Rantaro, not at all, (now he thinks that it was so stupid of him to argue, if he hadn’t he’d have been with Rantaro and Rina in Europe, he might have been able to save a life and saved so many hearts-) but, what if, what if he’d suddenly said something wrong? What if he destroys their friendship once and for all?

He didn't get to be anxious over it for long, though. Barely five minutes later, he’d gotten a phone call from Rina, a call that completely turned his life upside down.

Rina’s completely broken voice, shaking as tears surely were flooding down her cheeks, rough and raw from screaming, still haunts him. He still hears her sobs as she’d delivered the news at night, while sinking in the giant cushion of cruel dreams and misleading unconsciousness.

He couldn’t even bear to leave the house for the funeral. Somehow, the idea of seeing Rantaro’s broken body, bruised and pale and so void of any life at all, was so scary, and frightening. It’d felt so surreal, like he was dreaming and couldn’t wake up at all….

In his memory, Rantaro is smiling. Happy. Alive. His eyes are so full of life, full of care and kindness.

He brushes off a tear, and with shaking hands, tentatively opens the door.

Maki’s waiting downstairs for him, having promised to drive him. She smiles at Shuichi when he appears at the top of the staircase, but it doesn’t reach her eyes- they’re dull and full of sadness, and probably reflect Shuichi’s own. Sometimes Shuichi forgets that Maki was close with Rantaro too, but the pain in her eyes says it for her today all too clearly. Shuichi returns the greeting with a slight inclination of his head, not daring to say anything in case his voice breaks, and his walls fall.

She doesn’t say anything either, just wordlessly gestures for him to get on, her gaze bitter. Her car is a gorgeous shade of glossy sapphire and it shimmers in the morning sunlight, projecting a soft warm silk-like sheen of light that almost seems to coat the vehicle, and Shuichi is reminded of the ocean- gently rocking the boat like a baby’s cradle and its waves softly caressing the vessel sometimes but roughly pushing it from side to side and violently crashing over one’s head in others- as he looks at the colour, and he feels as if he’s drowning in the wild raging waters of heartbreak.

It’s also vaguely similar to the deep navy blue that forms the base of the galaxy, the shade that swirls to form so many beautiful and yet unpredictable patterns upon the dark spans of canvas at night. He wonders briefly if Maki picked this colour in memory of Kaito, of the love of her life she lost to dreadful lung cancer, of the space he used to love and fantasise about so much. 

In so many ways, Maki is much stronger than he, Shuichi, is. Even after the death of her boyfriend, she’s still able to pick herself back up, able to actually get back on her feet and continue living on with Kaito’s stars shining a pathway in her eyes, guiding her hands and mind, and his memory in her heart that she carries with her everywhere. She lives on and her world keeps spinning where Shuichi’s stopped, lives with a smile that Kaito instilled in her, remembers the good memories and is able to move on, truly once and for all, carrying the fond memories she smiles upon without a single trace of bitterness with her. 

Shuichi envies her, envies that she has the courage to stand up and brush the pain off her as if it were just simply dust and ashes, when he’s falling into an endless spiral of despair with no way out.

It’s too upsetting, though, he decides, to think about it now. He squeezes his eyes shut and pulls the door open, hands fumbling to pull himself into the chamber.

It takes them a whole hour to get to their destination, complete with a quick stop to the nearest boutique. Shuichi clutches the flowers he picked out tightly, restlessly fiddling with some of them, absentmindedly weaving a few roses into a small flower wreath. Maki’s mostly silent as she drives along the deserted roads of the countryside, and Shuichi stares outside the glass panes, at the miles and miles of rolling emerald fields, the sun shining upon it relentlessly. He can’t help but think how Rantaro would’ve tried to break the silence, giving him that beautiful smile and initiating a conversation that would bloom to become lively and animated, and end with all of them smiling or laughing. Rantaro was perceptive like that, knowing when people needed support and being able to cheer them up in the best ways possible.

Shuichi wonders what Rantaro thinks of him now, if he were watching Shuichi in his afterlife. Would he be disgusted, disappointed with how Shuichi is wasting away his life? Supportive and encouraging, understanding that Shuichi can’t move on? Hoping that he’ll see sense soon?

“You’re nervous,” Maki breaks the silence around them, her eyes not leaving the road for a single second, but Shuichi knows she’s directing her statement towards him. 

Shuichi lets out a breath, “who wouldn’t be?” He can feel his stomach turning over and over, and the horizon seems so blurred, the shades of blue and green swirling together into a mess of emotions as the tears swim in his eyes. He can feel his throat tightening, and the dread settle in his gut, sinking slowly but surely, like heavy grey stones. 

Maki laughs bitterly. “Yea, true.” Shuichi doesn’t look at her, is scared to look at her in fear he’ll break down and they’d have no choice but to turn back again, but he’s certain Maki’s hands are shaking terribly as her slender fingers tap on the wheel. “You don’t have to be, though. Rantaro would understand why you’ve put this off for so long. It’s not easy.”

She doesn’t continue, but Shuichi knows what she doesn’t say. It was especially hard on you.

“Would he, though?” Shuichi remembers clearly, the last thing he ever said to Rantaro, harsh words he regretted for years in a harsh fight. Rantaro’s eyes, pleading, the lemongrass colour Shuichi adored so much infused with tears, Shuichi telling him to leave him alone, stop bothering him. He’s regretted the words the moment they left his mouth, but by then Rantaro was already gone, with nothing but the tear stains left all over the ground by both of them, left behind. Shuichi didn’t have enough courage to take the initiative, to face his best friend after that, but never in his wildest dreams would he have had ever imagined that he wouldn’t ever get a chance to apologize and make amends. He knew very well that Rantaro had done nothing wrong at all, that it was him, him and his issues and bad mood, and Rantaro had simply walked in at the wrong time when Shuichi was weak and vulnerable and just upset. Still, he’d pushed Rantaro away, hurt both of them at the same time, unknowingly the last time they’d see each other.

Rantaro had died thinking that Shuichi hated him, that Shuichi didn’t want him around, that Shuichi didn’t trust Rantaro enough.

All of which were false, and Shuichi, to this day, can barely live with that fact.

Rina had told him that the crash hadn’t instantly killed her brother. According to the younger girl, the bus had gone completely out of control in the middle of the countryside, veering completely off the road, crashing into a tree and flipping back onto the road, this time upside down. It’d killed most of the other passengers on impact, knocked a few others unconscious, but Rantaro had grabbed his sister the moment things had started to go wrong, keeping Rina safe and one of the only survivors of the crash. Rina’d described to him in tears when she visited him how Rantaro had reached for his phone desperately despite being severely injured, stabbed all over by the shattered windows, just to try calling Shuichi (who was unfortunately in the elevator),and when there’d been no response, he’d painstakingly typed out his final words to Shuichi, wincing in unbearable pain with every moment. “He refused to stop no matter how much i begged him,” Rina had said, her face stained with numerous tear tracks that were being constantly renewed. “He really did love you a lot.”

That night, and countless nights after that, he dreamt of Rantaro’s last moments, exactly how Rina had described it to him. It played, and replayed, and replayed in his mind, constantly torturing him with the knowledge that his best friend, his crush, the one person he loved beyond everything else, went through such pain just to reach him, and died not knowing that Shuichi wasn’t mad and loved him with all his heart.

Shuichi knows, deep down, that he doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t deserve that love that Rantaro had endlessly and unconditionally shown and devoted to him.

Countless memories flash before his eyes, and Rantaro laughs and smiles in them, his eyes so bright and full of life and happiness, taken away from him too soon. He always had a way of comforting people, and it was so hard to not smile in his presence… ever so easygoing and kind, ever so calm and collected. It drew so many people to him, most of all Shuichi. He remembers how Rantaro’s eyes lit up in excitement and anticipation when they’d travelled to anywhere he hadn’t been; the concern so blatant on his face whenever Shuichi got himself injured or neglected his meals; the concentration he held in his eyes when he’d walked in on Rantaro sketching, his colour pencils scratching the parchment lightly, Rantaro’s chuckle as he tore the drawing off the sketchbook and pressed it into Shuichi’s hand....

“You’re too harsh on yourself,” Maki says, and takes one hand off the wheel, placing it over Shuichi’s trembling pair, as the car slides into the empty carpark. “Rantaro isn’t the type of person to be angry at you for something like this, and you know it.”

He can’t say a thing, not without letting the urging stream currently held back by a weak imaginary dam rush out and drip down his cheeks. He slips out of the car once it comes to a stop, and Maki comes to his side after locking the doors. She looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t, and instead wordlessly walks away towards the onyx iron gates glittering in the sun. 

She looks back at him as she approaches the gates, and Shuichi follows her steps as Maki pushes them open slowly. 

Beyond the gates is a path sheltered by tall oaks and towering willows on both sides, leading to an open field framed with trees, holding rows upon rows of uniformly arranged warm grey stones, an endless meadow of rest for the deceased. Maki heads straight for them, maneuvering around the graves easily with complete certainty, like she had the route memorized and printed clearly into her mind, and her feet would find the correct path without error even if she wasn’t looking. She must’ve walked this same path a thousand times.

Shuichi follows her after a slight moment of hesitation. Maki stands at the side of one of the rows in the middle, and as he approaches her, she walks to the seventh slot, and kneels before it. She drops her own bouquet of blossoms, takes the wreath of roses from his hand lightly, and places it on top of the gravestone for him, and with a shock, Shuichi realizes that Maki is crying. 

Her silent tears make their way down her face and fall onto the cushion of soft grass beneath her knees. They remain in the quiet for a while, with no sound except for the rush of the wind and the soft chirping of the birds in the distance. 

He can’t even recall the last time he’s seen Maki cry at all, at least not since Kaito’s funeral (which was natural, considering they were completely and utterly in love). Seeing her expressing her emotions, letting the droplets run freely across her cheeks and glisten in the sunlight, is so utterly devastating and somehow relieving (as opposed to how reserved she was when he’d met her and Kaito in primary school) at the same time. Maki used to spend so much time with Kaito, it’s so easy to forget she and Rantaro were childhood friends, but in times like this it’s clear that they were at least close. The scene pushes at his own tear ducts, and he holds back his sobs, in fear he might distress Maki even more.

Eventually, she raises her hand to swipe off the tears, and stands. “I’ll give you a little bit of privacy,” her voice is soft and trembling and so fragile, completely opposite to her normal tone. “I’ll be over at Kaito’s, you remember where that is?”

Shuichi nods, and Maki picks up her flowers and walks away.

He takes Maki’s previous position, kneeling before the gravestone, and finally lets out the sobs he’s kept. Finally, he lets the regret, the guilt, the grief, the pain all out at once, letting it stream down and away from him.

“You finally came,” A familiar voice says, and Shuichi looks up to see the image of a teenage boy sitting on the edge of the stone. “I was wondering when I’d finally get to see you.”

He looks exactly the same as when Shuichi last saw him, down to the very last detail- his tousled green hair, the soft aegean-and-white striped sweater he loved so much, the same charcoal coloured jeans, the warmth he held in those pretty lemongrass eyes. He was sixteen when he left, and he looks like he hasn't aged at all- which, admittedly, he probably hasn't. Do people age in heaven? Is there even a heaven?

Well… if there is one, Rantaro would definitely be there.

“Rantaro,” Shuichi chokes out. "I-" 

The person in question shushes him, a faint smile remaining on his lips. "It's okay, Shuichi. Don't apologize."

Shuichi brushes away his tears, "How could I not?" His voice wavers and shakes as he speaks. "I- I yelled at you for nothing- you-"

"Shu, it's okay," the smile doesn't leave Rantaro's face. Why isn't he angry? Why isn't he- "It's okay to just be feeling upset. It's okay to take your time to process something that impacted you as much as my death did." 

And there it was- the ease with which he addressed his own death, like it was something out of his control. Like Shuichi couldn’t have saved Rantaro in another world or another timeline. “But I- I could have saved you, I could have saved all this pain-”

“Shu... “ Rantaro shakes his head. “It’s already been done. It’s fine, it’s completely fine… I’m proud of you, already, for coming here today to see me. You’ve been so brave.”

His hands seem to instinctively reach to touch Shuichi’s head, but Rantaro quickly retracts it before it touches the other man. Shuichi, however, stands and hugs his friend, not caring about the freezing coldness spreading across his body, burying his face into Rantaro’s shoulder as he sobs into him. In life, his friend was always so warm, in contrast to Shuichi’s constant coldness, but now he’s deadly cold, but Shuichi doesn’t mind.

Rantaro hugs him back, and for a moment Shuichi feels like they were back in the past, three years ago, when Rantaro was always with him. “I love you,” he blurts, “I never really got to tell you that, even if I did crush on you for ages,” he laughs bitterly at all the years he spent pining for his best friend, “ and you were gone so quickly- so soon, when I thought we’d have more time, and the argument, and all, I’m so sorry…”

“I love you too,” Rantaro replies simply, and Shuichi’s heart soars, “that was quite sudden, though,” he adds, “very unconventional. I like it,” he chuckles. “ why wouldn’t I like you back? For someone who’s so smart and quick normally, you can be dense when it comes to your feelings and feelings others have for you… Akamatsu-san crushed on you for years, and as did I, and you had no idea.”

Shuichi laughs through his tears, “So I’ve been told,” he says, “I should’ve told you earlier, maybe we’d be able to avoid all this.”

Rantaro smiles, shaking his head again. “What’s done is done, Shuichi, there’s nothing we can do to turn back time. Besides, I don’t blame you for being upset about being bullied for something as personal as sexual orientation, let alone being taunted for crushing over me.”

The other man goes quiet, “you knew?”

The smile Rantaro gives Shuichi is a sad one, “Kokichi told me after I left you alone. I’m sorry for triggering you that day, I shouldn’t have-”

“Don’t say that,” Shuichi cuts him off, “please, Rantaro, it was my fault for yelling at you.” He doesn’t say that his mistake haunts him for days, for months, for years, that he still dreams of it and wakes up screaming in the mornings. It’s his fault, after all, and he deserves the punishment.

“How was it your fault?” Rantaro’s voice is soft. “Listen, Shu, there’s no going back now. We had so many chances, but all those are over now and I don’t regret ever loving you, I don’t regret a single second of the time we spent together. Our chapter of your story, the final chapter of mine, it’s over, Shuichi. It’s time for you to move on now, to turn over the page and find your happiness again.” He pulls away, ushering Shuichi to sit down on the grass. “There’s nothing I want more than to see you truly happy again.”

“But- but,” Shuichi starts, “how do I go on without you? How do I move on-” his voice breaks and he whispers, “how do I move on without you with me? Without you guiding me?” 

Rantaro smiles lightly, “I’ll always be there for you, with you. My memory’s always in your heart, isn’t it?” He reaches up and unclasps the necklace around his neck, the one piece of jewelry Shuichi had never seen his best friend without, and he grabs Shuichi’s hand gently, shoving the necklace in it. “Part of me is always with you.”

Shuichi stares at the priceless treasure he holds in his hand, the blues and greens in the sea glass swirling into a gorgeous whirlpool, and he’s reminded of the gentle waves lapping at Rantaro’s boat, that one time they sailed to find Rantaro’s sister. It reminds him abruptly of the one night of his life he’ll always remember, one beautiful night when Rantaro got himself drunk and accidentally kissed Shuichi. Rantaro’d forgotten the incident the next morning, and Shuichi had been too embarrassed and nervous to tell him what had happened, but he remembered the feeling of the lips of his first love pressed against his own, and the feeling that everything was right in the world when the green-haired boy had taken his first kiss. He smiles sadly at the necklace, knowing things like that would never happen again.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t do it just once again. He pulls Rantaro down from where the other was perched on the gravestone, and ignoring the feeling of ice that spreads across his body, he kisses the man he loves so much. Rantaro seems alarmed and surprised at first, but he complies and kisses him back, and Shuichi can’t control his crying as he melts into the person he fell in love with so long ago. 

Eventually, Shuichi pulls away, and hugs Rantaro instead, wrapping his arms around the other and clutching on as tight as possible. It feels so bittersweet, and Shuichi knows this is the last time he’ll see Rantaro, at least until he dies himself, but somehow, he’s alright with that, at least more than he was before he came to see Rantaro. At least, now, he has closure, and something to look forward to. At least now, he knows that he isn’t alone. He’s had a chance to say goodbye, a chance to write the final sentences of the last chapter, a chance to reconcile with what he thought was long gone.

Only one question remains, that Shuichi needs to ask Rantaro.

The man in question only smiles at Shuichi as the latter asks, “is this real, and are you really here? Or am I dreaming and all this is only my imagination?”

Rantaro holds Shuichi’s hands as the latter sits up, having pulled back from the hug, and lets lemongrass meet the green grey that is Shuichi's eyes. “Of course it’s a dream, an act of imagination, but why should that mean it isn’t real?”

Shuichi lets out a laugh, “thank you. I love you, Rantaro Amami,” he takes a deep breath, pushing away further tears. “Thank you for all you’ve given me.”

Rantaro smiles, “I love you too, Shuichi Saihara,” he lets go of Shuichi’s hands. “Thank you, for being the most amazing friend and crush I could ever have asked for, thank you for the happiness you gave me, thank you for everything.” 

And Shuichi cannot help but brush away a tear as the image of his best friend fades away and is carried off by the gentle spring breeze, and picks up the bouquet of forget-me-nots lying on the ground. He places it right in front of Rantaro’s gravestone, and his mind is full of images of the drawing Rantaro had gifted him years ago that is still placed on his desk, the vibrant azure of forget-me-nots captured eternally in colour pencil.

He stands, and the light of the late morning sun shines over him as he looks over the graveyard, his gaze sweeping over the endless rows of stones, and landing back on Rantaro’s. He looks down, and with a start, realizes that a certain sea glass necklace is still in his hand.

He holds it with both hands, caressing it softly with his thumb, his fingers moving across the glossy, reflective surface of the gem as droplets land on the sea glass and allows light to pass through, fracturing the sunlight into countless tiny rainbows shining on the surface of the sea glass. 

With a small laugh, he clasps it around his neck, tucking it behind his black T shirt, and feels the cool gem drop onto his skin. He lets his gaze move to a farther spot, where Maki is kneeling before Kaito’s grave, and starts to make his way over, but not without looking back at Rantaro’s grave, and whispering “thank you”.

And for the first time in three years, Shuichi smiles, genuinely.

[throwinggrapesoffthebalcony]

preface to LAVENDER SOAP

You can feel apocalyptic in a number of ways, even while living in peaceful times. But what many times looks like peace, isn’t. And so a piece may arise during our own suppressed apocalypse. That was the case with Lavender Soap and my life in 1996. Very few places have had the energy to influence me as a writer, to feed into my tendencies, and even fewer places that could provide a sense of peace, that I was only ever able find in the water; buoyant saline, under the warmth of the ray’s of the sun. Even in storm, or the dead of winter, it was a tranquility, a sanctuary, that I could never find on land. Depending on your life, it’s a beautiful separation.

The epoch and the hotel was very different then, it was at peace tucked into the trees. It wasn’t decimated  by this new cheap world yet. The perfect air was still influxed with the smell of foliage and perfume and of old materials, plaster ruined and repaired a thousand times, regrouted with the tiles left intact, the aging glue of wallpaper is sweet. Decor should be timeless during our lives. Life is so short after all. It was a hotel imbued with and not completely claimed by the past yet, with the past, absorbed into the walls and woodwork and tapestries. The faint voices, rapes, murders, sufferings, and suicides of a more glamorous past, saved like metal oxide on tape in the walls; played when the atmosphere is right. The first element that effects me are women I’ve been involved with sexually and their particular fashion and our conversations, the other is the inspiration of architecture; this necessity to remove and protect ourselves from the elements of nature. And the third being that wild energy of nature itself, weather, thermal dynamics, etc. I’ll save the commentary about the energy arising from the earth and surroundings for the preface for SSHS, which was more influenced by the raw energy of a geographic location and life’s tragedies than it was about architecture. And writing that piece was never about silence for me, while Lavender Soap was born, not in the clash of an apocalyptic scene, but in the very opposite, in the midst of the most pleasurable quiet, not an absolute silence, but a perfect quiet. The sound of air moving through trees, the sound of a rotary telephone ringing, faint voices speaking somewhere, the existence of humanness, not intruding on your life, when it doesn’t need to. That was a time when I think everyone had their own scenario, there were bounds, and knew that your scenario wasn’t their scenario; which is called sanity. Perfect separation of lives, we were humans not insects. And because of this, meeting someone was always much more interesting than now. Lavender Soap is, besides being a psychological piece delving into my experiences at the Chateau, it’s also to a great extent a retrospect, and a regression to my childhood. It was in a childhood bedroom that I perfected disassociation, disconnection, and detachment in, out of necessity, for survival. A house of continual violence, week after week, year after year, leaves you with nowhere to go but down. Fantasy and pictures, allowed me to drift off. A calendar out of date, a hopeful month of lavender fields is where all of my loves stood. They never take you up. Sleeping with my weapon of choice, a tapered necked ball peen hammer. And with the faint smell of WD40 and rust the angels never come to save you from the screaming. A movie about war, that’s pretty in a way, is the only way I can remember that film.

In 1996, experience wasn’t found on a cell phone. I was young and if you wanted to feel something or experience something, you had to shower, dress and traverse whatever plane you were on. And from one location to another, so much could happen, and in-between there was discovery, moments. Forget the set pieces, that’s not what this life is made of. This life is made of moments. In my opinion, that curiosity is what the young are absolutely lacking in today’s world, that and not feeling like individuals. There was a conversation that I read, I think around that same time, where a film editor, I think Murch, if not, one of the other prominent film editors, was talking about editing on a Moviola. And because of the linear nature of working with whole strips of 35mm film, he would have to pass through a lot of footage that he hadn’t previously considered, and that he would have, if working in a non-linear manner have never encountered. And there, he would find moments that worked more profoundly than what he was intending to use. And I think that lack of an analog approach in living, has people missing the more profound encounters, the accidental encounters, encounters more enlightening than what they might experience with a premeditated itinerary. But wait, they had an exchange on tender; what a fucking joke. I feel sorry for them. I’ve never fallen in love with this new digital era, a work of spite and bitterness, a reaction to a world that didn’t feel inclusive enough, so it’s become a strategy of slash and burn. And how do you tell someone to fuck off so they truly listen in today’s era? Must it be an apocalypse for the stalkers. Are people always drawn into that state of darkness. And it’s so easy to lose sight of the jungle you’re in, when the modern world disguises the archetypes so well. The weeks become months and the months become years and years become a decade, while I was creating the philosophies of a man facing death, even while undeservedly healthy, and unfairly able to fuck.

Arriving at the hotel in 96’ was serendipitous, or fateful, whether you want to believe that life is steadfast or whimsical. It felt whimsical when I met a couple of cute girls named Hanni and Sunny at Beverly Connection one evening; one lovable, the other the type to want to watch, then try to explain what each of the other really wanted. I jotted down a few impressions I had of them at the time. They told me that they had this special place they wanted to show me. I thought they were full of shit. But one evening they picked me up and took me to the Chateau Marmont. The weather was terrible that night. I was dressed for the woods. It was a quiet place, empty, with an entrance of willow branches hanging dank over the drive. We sat in the living room and even while I tried to concentrate on the conversations we were having, I was only half there, while the other part of me had already wandered off into the hotel, amongst the spirits and whispering lips. Sunny called, with the concern of the other on mind. It was against her religion to have sex before marriage, and she was confused as to whether oral copulation was sex. I gave the wrong and less comforting answer. Of course it is. People go stagnant just as places do. I went looking for Hanni where she worked at Milk and Honey as a hostess. I saw her through the windows, but the place was busy and I didn’t want to get her into any trouble, so I continued on my walk. I didn’t see them much anymore, but I kept going back to the Chateau. It was just as quaint during the afternoon as it was at night. On most nights, it was desolate, like a huge spaceship had hovered over and removed every last trace of guests. This was before they began to monetize the mythos of the place, and run it like a circus. The hallowed courtyard had eyes in 1996, and then in 2006 it had the eyes of a cheap set looking for anything edible. Drug dealers intwined with movie moguls and music producers. When first arriving there, there was peace, and I would explore the floors unimpeded. I felt strangely allowed. One afternoon that week after the two girls had shown me the place, I went and stood on the landing on the shady side of the hotel. I could have stood there for centuries. I thought about a life with her, while still in love with what I couldn’t have. I wasn’t apart from those feelings yet. They choked me up, but I would never cry. I probably set the record for being on the verge of tears, while they dried. The people were more reclusive and weird then. With so many people in those rooms, so few went about. They come out for air. They ask each other, never asking you. Even while asking me, would be the quickest way to find something out. Strange quirks with some of these who reside here. Notes I wouldn’t even have to look back upon to remember. I didn’t know about the inner workings of Hollywood yet, even while I was already pitching ideas, but wrote literature and not scripts. I didn’t know there were those perpetually green-lit, only needing content, and those perpetually in the red light. But on the surface, everything was crystal clear, with my young primo lenses at the time, seeing even the minute texture in anything like glitter in the dust. I suppose speculation has always been a turn on. But the place was an immediate enchantment, and people were actors, so forgiven, and no idiosyncrasies of the fauna would keep me from going back. I loved the place. It gave me a chance to linger in that aesthetic. There were occasions when I’d stay in the living room until dawn, undisturbed, when I could have stayed and ordered breakfast if I’d wanted to. Hollywood and this hotel had already had a long history before I arrived. The materials, the curtains and rugs and upholstery was already soaked to the bone, damp with the secretions of the body, the blood, the saliva and vaginal fluids of the past. In the present, you can smell the distinction of a vagina from a mouth perfectly. But through time, it becomes this amalgamated scent, so fine and subtle that it could be bottled as perfume; an aphrodisiac for the intellect. I want to stay and live here, but it costs a fortune. Check out time is like another death, the woman who spreads the sheets might be the perfect fuck. Dreaming in a bed that saw the golden age. The ghosts of a thousand whores arise. But that was the wet part of the dream. They all say the same thing, they all dance the same way. They all want to stay in this world. This, while everyone claims to live in a higher plane. They want freedom without the label being emblazoned upon them. Today’s perfect. That’s just a desirable label and we all have desires. You wish you could turn them all into someone someone would have loved. On the landing on the shady side of the hotel, the rush of thoughts has me without sight, the sun penetrating my eyes. I wouldn’t even know what a strange thought was then, always in the wine. I went into the shadows falling over me. The strange trees don’t know my past, but it seems that they love me. She was cold, goosebumps on the skin, she never warms. She’s not of this world. But this place is like heaven’s turnkey, and here I can dream, that I’m living a spectacular life. My every thought here like a disco in the dark light. It’s coming up river with the blackness gleaming to take my life. In the past one only had to return to civilization. Now, there is no civilization to return to. Modern society is like a plague that has no brains. That dies out, not by heat or cold or is prevented by the razor wire of another man’s desires for peace of mind. Death is the only peace. Just as I was told of my literary pursuits, that all the hours were wasted, and to think about the fact, that all those I admired in that craft, are all dead, and so was the craft. I was sitting at a drive-in theatre. Hail memory. Prefaces are life, when a form of death has already occurred.

On the subject of soap balls, they were always perplexing. My grandmother, a strange woman, born in New Braunfels, Tx, who never opened her presents, wouldn’t let me wash my hands with them. They were decorations, to be dusted and sniffed for their essence. One lathered by mistake and placed back into the bunch looked funny, and you wondered if she’d notice. They looked like dull gum-balls in a decorative bowl, and I’d acquired a taste for soap, or at least I wasn’t as disgusted as they’d wanted me to be. You can frustrate the hell out of a nun that way, by loving it, and asking her for more. But I was curious as to whether they were different flavors. I couldn’t tell; perhaps because sometimes smell and taste are inseparable. Perhaps their mystery lays in their not being of a practical shape, and round always tends to represent the erotic, like ovaries, representing the female anatomy. But there’s also a aspect in the work that I didn’t consciously think about until after writing the piece. And that was that in the victorian era, in the psychological journals, they often considered masturbation an attempt at suicide, or a suppressed death wish. And even while much of what they believed in then is laughable, maybe the act of masturbating with lavender soap was my fragrant wish to kill myself. I don’t know if I’m trying to cum or kill myself in the present either. My theory is that it keeps me from being desperate and at the mercy of women, when they aren’t readily available to me.

Dark blue was a piece I was more in love with writing, a story about a woman who’d committed a sin, that caused me to become an exile to femininity. When you can no longer trust women, there’s no longer a church to visit, there’s no safe place to hide. Dark Blue wasn’t as spontaneous as Lavender Soap, it was more evolved, I wanted to think carefully about it, I wanted some past world to be impressed. I wanted to stay immersed in a calm exile. Those who could even judge literature, now were few and far between. And because Dark Blue was also set at the Chateau, it was slowly being devoured by this more delirious work. It was like one stage of my life devouring another. And I wasn’t even in that careful mood to make a copy of it before I began cutting it up, and making fodder of it for a pop piece. I’ll probably extract Dark Blue from Lavender Soup and make it the subtle, psychological piece I’d wanted it to be; another conversation piece, the finite texture of dark blue polyester, a comfortable face and beautiful thighs, and a line, ‘I can’t believe you’d ever do this to me.’ You never expect a woman to be a criminal. It’s subtly frightening. You take the time to stare more deeply into the mystery of a pair of eyes. And when you can no longer believe in the feminine, when that door too, says deception, when it says enter at your own risk, it leaves you with no sanctuary at all in this world.

Lavender Soap was a chance to dwell on audiophilia and woodworking, even though much of the elaborations ended up on the cutting room floor, when it began to feel like This Old House. I think in every field, there’s an equilibrium with our humanness. And I think that wood and glass and analog technology was something that we can never rise above. There was no dissonance between it and the human body. We evolve technology, but the whole while we’re devolving. Like an individual, as a society, we cannot admit to wandering onto the wrong path, out onto a branch that leads to our demise, and while looking back at our past selves in arrogance, at our own expense. They’re already like zombies, and I think 5G will finish them off. Lithium, lithium, lithium. War, an OLED screen, and a sickening.

There was that first period of time exploring the Chateau when LA was magical, then I moved to D.C. and New York for a number of years. And as I did, many of the stories I’d started in my notebooks about or taking place in that setting were put on the back burner, while I was experiencing more of the in between and writing what I considered more significant novels. I’d visit Los Angeles on occasion, and the first place I’d want to get to was Venice, then after that, the Chateau Marmont. There were no marriage vows on the east coast, so I moved back to Los Angeles around 2006. I’d seen the Chateau become a less mysterious and more clamorous place during my visits but that was confirmed when I started going there frequently again. The magic was gone, for sure. And that magic was peace and quiet. Literature was becoming a dead beast, that had no place in this frivolous nature. I myself was disenchanted. I met a girl named Emma while I was living up Larrabee. I thought, maybe. And for the record, it was unfair to her that I quickly had such high expectations. I wanted a family. She said I was too smart for my own good and proceeded to eat my heart out. But I admit, I had her on the most perfect day of her life. No one will remember her so fondly. And so, at this breaking point of my life, I’d gone to a bicycle shop down Robertson and bought a chrome Bianchi Pista, trying to remain relevant and alive. I belonged in nature with a risk to life and limb; this was a crazy city now, homogenized, ceaseless, hungry. It was a point in my life when I had to seriously contemplate a return, a return home, or to academics, even while I despised its limitations, and had already fallen in love with studying outside of those restraints. I needed to give hard thought to returning to create some stability for myself, a life of normalcy, even if in some nowhere place. I already knew I’d been on a blacklist for some time by then, and well aware of the futility of trying to make it, while there are those determined to keep you down. But I kept writing, even without those motivations. And so I was riding around with that last chance to return on my mind, like always being conscious of death. The new technology had everyone riddled with something more invasive than neutrinos that just pass through everything. I was trying to shake off the stogy thoughts of literature and avoid the lack of patience that had infected everyone. And disappointment only aggravates your pride. You want to prove something, so you slip even in the bright sunlight, further into the heart of darkness. I’d try to ride through it, and write through it; the dystopian nightmare that everyone had feared would come, if they had their way, and they had their way. Without an exit strategy, the delusional self-induced Berkeley type archetypal bitch, had a plan. The illusion of an alternate world onto the real world. It had me dreaming of a landslide or a flood or a ball of fire heading right for us more than ever at the time. The freeze of disappointment settles on the brain. The billiard balls cease to scatter with infinite possibilities. You have to begin to look for your moments, then get the hell out before they burn down around you. But I would ride and when moving at the right speed, I could still say, that it was the place I first fell in love with. I played dead riding with no hands. I brought my old notepads out and began burning into Lavender Soap on a silver airbook. And again I’ll save this subject matter of writing tools and how they effect the process, for SSHS; the pen as opposed to a laptop, as opposed to a typewriter, etc. etc.

Why my father or anyone else for that matter was so miserable is about a past we cannot know. My father lived a life before I was ever born, I can’t judge him. It’s just the sight of an underwater knife and old scuba gear; everyone dives and that’s their life and no one else’s. And despite the terror in the household, he made an effort to educate me. He was a musician, so I was dragged around to Jazz festivals, which I always found fascinating, even while never being my favorite genre of music. More importantly, he loved film, and would take me to see first rate films while I was still at an impressionable age. It was Texas at a very different time. I don’t think he would in today’s world ever be able to sneak me, as a child into movies like The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, or Apocalypse Now. At least without being escorted by the police past the ‘no such thing as gender’ restroom doors, which the icon of the beast and word androgyny. Apocalypse Now is still my desert island movie, it was like candy to a child’s mind. I leave it in the DVD player for months at a time playing on a loop. It’s a movie I never tire of watching. I love when someone hates what I love, so maybe it’s a way to turn the stalkers off. Let them dwell in what will break them. It’s based on a book called Heart of Darkness, which is also one of my favorite works. It’s about the primordial model that we can’t get away from. We can build empires, then die over the wrong look. And when you’re a child, you see everything so differently, your eyes move to different parts of the screen, you take a different path through the film. You may not understand the poetry yet, or the subtext, or every word uttered, but you see another layer of beauty, that an adult might miss. And so your memory of certain elements are vivid. What’s written on a helicopter as it lands, ‘death from above’, and lavender smoke in the air making the ravages of life so pretty; like makeup on the whorish face of humankind. Then all the years have gone and it becomes like a masterpiece of background noise to a life in the continued, but post modernistic bloodbath of tribal animosities and nepotistic tendencies. The Heart of Darkness was a perfect model, because it’s the only model that makes any sense. We will die of a spear in the modern world. That dark model dwells in the modern city, and she’ll fuck us when she wants to. The end is always a bright pink clit coming down with bitterness and animosity. I can’t wait. 

When I first arrived in Los Angeles, we were consumed by the talk of lenses and cinema and the craft of filmmaking, when the craft was religion, and not political correctness. We knew our lenses. How’s political correctness done as an industry?, you may ask. Fairly well it seems. The advertisers don’t give a fuck what they’re selling or what Greco Roman history they’re destroying. They’re mercenaries. They’ve not replaced civilization with anything that will last. But now, nothing’s supposed to; not even history. Once again we can’t escape the analog nature of ourselves and how other methods aren’t as conducive for the flesh or for externalizing our fascinations for the world to see. Our inability to get away from that period will see us shrinking as human beings. We won’t be strong enough to fight off the virus. Analog is more evolved than digital, and I call this the ‘prism effect’; if you’ve ever seen a prism penetrated by sunlight, and how it separates white light into a spectrum of colors, it’s a beautiful sight. Now imagine the energy it takes and the technology to do what the prism does so simply, and without the need for batteries. We’re trying to digitize and synthesize nature until it resembles nature again, or sounds analog again, or feels like flesh again. Why? So someone can shut it off when they’ve lost control. The digital age has allowed a bunch of really strange and ‘awkweird’ people to rule over earth; and as it’s turned out they’re not immune to the thirst for war and destruction or terror. They just like to fuck things up from a distance, and don’t believe in repercussion. But someone at a pseudo think tank can cost so much life then walk to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee. We’re all vulnerable to nature. 

We can try to escape to places like Topanga or Malibu, but they want to stay connected. They don’t want the natural world to take place, even with all the natural beauty that still exists. Off the grid, makes them nervous, they’re so used to spying on everyone’s every move. It’s become their addiction, their lithium. I’m not your lithium. And it was during a time I was trying to escape, living out old Topanga road that something that might be considered trivial happened, but that in my mind was like some completion to an era of my life, like some forgiveness to put that part of my existence to rest. It was an afternoon that my girlfriend at the time and I made a stop at PC Greens along the Pacific Coast Highway, headed for a beach higher up. She waited for me while I ran in to buy a few things. And there, roaming around the store, was Martin Sheen. An old man now, but with the same face and voice. I looked into eyes I felt I knew well. I’m never one to bother actors, I know they fight for their private lives as well. But when heading for the checkout he came towards me like an old friend, and he was in a sense. And like perfection, what was playing and what was he singing to me? ‘The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.’ And he sang it as if disappointed, but as if there were time. We can’t know each other’s lives, but it was a beautiful sentiment. I went back out into the sun, elated, as if spared. Interesting. The wind took us up. We could have dissolved at that point with the waves breaking over us. Never complete, never finished.

And now, on another now. I leave the menu screen on flickering for hours, with the droning sound of the helicopter over fiery palms sweeping across my life, before I can bring myself to hit ‘play film’ again. 

-Alan Augustine

Los Angeles, 2020

[fromeggtodragon]

How to survive your first year in med school / in university studying medicine

                     Or, at least, how I did and how you can as well

                 * Not a native English speaker but still doing my best *

Step 1 : use a different study method for each subject – July 12th

          When I was in highschool, I already had two study methods : one for sciences (biology, chemistry, chemistry, physics) and a different one for humanities, litterature and languages.

           Coming into university to study medicine, one of my first mistakes was wanting to memorise everything (*absolutely everything*) by heart, no matter what the subject was. However, although many subjects do require this type of technique (histology, embryology, cellular biology, reproductive biology, biochemistry), that is NOT the case for all of them.

Anatomy 

           Anatomy is a tough subject because of the amount of material you’re expected to memorize in a short period of time. Although a substantial part of anatomy can be learnt by heart, here are a few specific points you can learn differently :

Functional anatomy

What it consists in : learning how differents muscles, for instance, work together in order to create a movement.

 How to learn it : the thing is, once you know where a muscle is, you can deduce what it does by imagining the muscle getting smaller (contracting) and vice versa.

For instance, the quadriceps is on the upper part of your thigh and linked to your patella ; therefore, when it contracts, your patella (which is linked to your tibia as well) comes closer to your stomach, and extends your leg. On the contrary, because your leg (as in your knee) is extended, your thigh (as in your hip) is flexed.

This method is very convenient because you can learn only half of the information and still know the other half. However, you can’t really use it to learn very descriptive anatomy …

Neuroanatomy

Same as functional anatomy : you need to understand the whole picture about how a message is conveyed in order to remember the small details of each anatomical part.

Pharmacology

What it consists in : studying a drug’s action on the body and how it is then eliminated by the body

How to learn it

The concepts : in pharmacology, you will come across many concepts that you will need to UNDERSTAND first (e.g. iatrogeny, pharmacokinetics, molecular pharmacology). By understanding it and processing it in a logical way, you will learn plenty of information and the basis of how things work.

The mecanisms : mindmaps come in quite handy if you’re a visual learner but you can also record your profesor (if they’re okay with it) explaining the whole mecanism and listening to it often.

The name of the drugs and very specific details : I had a whole separate document where I wrote everything drug-related in order to find the information much faster and to remember it differently. If you have the time, flashcards and/or Quizlet would probably be great !

Physics

What it consists in : this one is a bit different. First, I don’t know if it’s the case for every country but, where I live, we still have plenty of physics during first year. It’s pretty much the harder version of high-school physics for us as well as new topics.

How to learn it

Don’t waste too much time on learning the lesson : make a summary sheet for each chapter of the formulas and ways to solve exercises as well as important comments made by your professors. Learn it as well as you can with the method that suits you.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Use past papers and make them once, twice, as many times as you need to no longer make mistakes. Do every set problems. They are a great break when you’re sick and tired of learning things by heart in the afternoon !

Humanities

That might not be common to all unis but I had three humanities in first year : history and psychology (1), medical law (2) as well as epidemiology (3), although the latter isn’t really part of humanities …

History and psychology : make summary sheets for each lesson ; although i twill take time, it’s great in the long run when revision time will come around.

Law : UNDERSTAND IT ! It’s better knowing what the law states on a certain topic rather than knowing the name of the law article but not being able to know what it states !

Epidemiology and biostatistics : make summary sheets for each lesson and practice with past papers for examples.

Organic chemistry

That was one the hardest classes for me when it came to figuring out how to learn the content.

What it consists in : learning an incredible number of reactions of chemical components (e.g. what happens when you put an alcohol and a ketone together ?).

How to learn it

Make summary sheets ! It personally made mind maps where the main chemical component was in the center and where I drew with arrows the outcome of each reaction by alphabetical order (tell me if you want an example in order to understand it). Learn them well but don’t spend too much time learning everything.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. I finally understood how organic chemistry worked when I did practice problems from past papers as well as exercises provided by our professors during tutorials. This has two main benefits.

 (1) It allows you to study in an active and different way.

(2) Professors usually set the same type of problems every year but they only change the name of the molecule. By understanding both your summary sheets and these exercises, you’ll be able to tackle most (if not all) of the exam.

I hope this was useful ! Feel free to leave other tips if you have some to share and ask any questions if you think about other subjects !

[linechinese]

6 tips on learning Chinese

I contemplated Mandarin Chinese 15 years back. It took me nine months to arrive at a level where I could decipher paper publications from English to Chinese and from Chinese to English, read books and decipher for individuals, I did this in the age of the open-reel recording the device, sometime before the age of the Internet, online word references, language learning applications, MP3 documents, YouTube and cchatty Chinese learning center.

On the off chance that I think about what I did, I find that there were six things that helped me learn quicker than different understudies who were concentrating with me. Underneath I list every one of these tips on the most proficient method to learn Chinese, which you might need to apply to your investigations.

1, Tune in to Mandarin as Often as could be expected under the circumstances

The first month or possibly two, simply center around tuning in.

Begin by concentrating on tuning in. Simply become acclimated to the sounds. You should peruse whatever you are tuning in to, yet do so utilizing the phonetic composing framework, for example, Pinyin, to show signs of improvement feeling of what you are hearing. You should get familiar with the characters in the long run, yet you can forget about the characters from the outset, and rather, attempt to get a little force in the language.

It's too hard even to consider starting learning characters when you don't have any feeling of the words, what they sound like, or how they cooperate. Another dialect can seem like an undifferentiated commotion toward the start. The initial step is to get acclimated with the individual hints of the language, to figure out how to separate words from one another, and even to have a couple of words and expressions resounding in your mind.

My first prologue to Mandarin was tuning in to Chinese Dialogs, middle of the road content without any characters, only romanization, right now Yale form of romanization. Today Pinyin, created in China, has become the standard type of romanization for Mandarin. In Chinese Dialogs, the storyteller talked so quickly I thought he was tormenting us. In any case, it worked. Following a month or so, I was utilized to the speed and had a feeling of the language.

As an aside, I think it is a smart thought to start learning a language with the middle of the road level messages that incorporate a ton of redundancy of jargon, instead of excessively straightforward tenderfoot writings. Digital recordings and book recordings are extraordinary for this. The Mandarin Chinese small scale stories at LingQ are a case of the sort of perspective stories, with a lot of reiteration of high recurrence action words that are accessible today. These were not accessible to me 15 years back.

With a feeling of this energizing new dialect and some aural cognizance, my inspiration to become familiar with the characters developed. I needed to know the characters for the words that I had been tuning in to and becoming acclimated to.

So that is tip number one, to concentrate on tuning in and Pinyin for the principal month or two.

2, Commit Time to Memorizing Characters 

The investigation of Chinese, Mandarin Chinese is a long haul venture. It will acquire your contact with the language and the way of life of well over 20% of humankind and a significant effect on world history. Hence, I generally suggest learning Chinese characters in the event that you will gain proficiency in the language.

When you choose to consider Chinese characters, work at them consistently. Commit thirty minutes to an hour daily just on learning characters. Utilize whatever the technique you need, however, put aside devoted character learning time each day. Why consistently? Since you will overlook the characters nearly as fast as you learn them, and in this manner need to relearn them over and over.

You might need to utilize Anki or some other current PC based learning framework. I built up my own dispersed reiteration framework. I had a lot of 1,000 little cardboard cheat sheets with the most successive 1000 characters. I had sheets of squared paper to work on composing these characters. I would get one card, and record the character multiple times one segment on the squared paper and afterward compose the significance or elocution a couple of sections over. At that point, I would get another cheat sheet and do likewise. Before long I ran into the importance or sound of the last character that I had composed there. I at that point worked that character out again a couple of times, ideally before I had totally overlooked it. I did this for the initial 1000 characters. After that I had the option to learn them by perusing, finding new characters, and haphazardly keeping in touch with them out by hand a couple of times.

As we progress, learning new characters becomes simpler in light of the fact that such a significant number of components rehash in the characters. The characters all have "radicals", segments that give a trace of the importance of a character. There are likewise segments of the characters which propose the sound. These radicals are useful in securing the characters, despite the fact that not from the outset. As with such a great amount in language learning, an excess of clarification forthright is an interruption to procuring the language. I found that the endeavors of educators to clarify these radicals and different parts at the beginning periods of my learning were not to incredible profit. I didn't get them. Simply after enough presentation did I begin to see the segments and that accelerated my learning of the characters.

Tip number two is to truly invest consistently and committed energy into learning characters.

3, Perceive Patterns Rather than Rules Concentrate on designs. Try not to become involved with convoluted syntax clarifications, simply center around designs. At the point when I was contemplating we had a superb book by Harriet Mills and P.S. Ni. It was called Intermediate Reader in Modern Chinese. In each and every exercise they acquainted examples and with me, that is the manner by which I kind of got a feeling of how the language functioned. The examples were the edges around which I could manufacture anything I desired to state.

I have positively no feeling of Chinese language structure or punctuation terms, yet I am very familiar. I have seen books that present uncommon sentence structure terms for Chinese. I don't think they are important. It is smarter to become acclimated to the examples that Chinese uses to communicate things that we express in English utilizing English examples. Chinese has a somewhat uncomplicated language structure, one of the joys of learning Chinese. There are no declensions, conjugations, sexes, action word viewpoints, confounded tenses or different wellsprings of disarray that are found in numerous European dialects.

Tip number three is to concentrate on designs, work them out, say them to yourself, use them when talking or composing, and watch for them when you tune in and read.

On the off chance that you might want a free sentence structure asset to help supplement your learning, at that point I prescribe Chinese syntax assets.

4, Peruse More than You Can Handle Peruse a great deal. 

On the off chance that I learned quicker than my kindred understudies 50 years prior, it is on the grounds that I read all that I could get my hands on. I read considerably more than different understudies. I am discussing unique writings for students, but instead a wide scope of material on subjects important to me. I was helped by the way that the Yale-in-China had an incredible arrangement of perusers with glossaries for every section. We began with student material utilizing something many refer to as Chinese Dialogs, at that point graduated to a reviewed history content called 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture.

20 Lectures were an intriguing open door for me to find out about Chinese history and culture while learning the language. The book comprised uniquely of writings and a glossary, no entangled clarifications, no tests. At the point when I take a gander at a portion of the course readings accessible today focused on transitional and even propelled students, they are brimming with drilling content about anecdotal individuals in China, someone at college who met his companion or went to the stylist or went skating, trailed by clarifications and drills. Not a smart thought except if you are keen regarding these matters.

I moved on from 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture to Intermediate Reader in Modern Chinese out of Cornell University. This was a peruser with valid writings from present-day Chinese legislative issues and history. Every exercise presented designs and downplayed drills and clarifications. Or on the other hand, possibly I simply disregarded them.

Yale had a wide assortment of perusers on legislative issues, history, and writing, all with word records for every section. This was my learning material. The accessibility of word list per part implied that I didn't need to counsel a Chinese lexicon. Before the coming of Alec Tronic or online lexicons, it was very tedious and agonizing to counsel a Chinese word reference. Since we overlook the majority of the things we turn upward in the lexicon, this was a gigantic exercise in futility.

I developed my jargon utilizing these perusers with word records lastly had the option to peruse a book without jargon records, simply disregarding the characters and words that I didn't have the foggiest idea. Following seven or eight months I read my first novel, Rickshaw Boy or 骆驼祥子, which is a well-known novel of life right now during the fierce first 50% of the twentieth century, composed by Lao She.

Tip number four is to peruse as much as you can. This is a lot simpler to do today. You can discover material on the Internet, utilize online word references and applications.

5, Get the Rhythm of the Language to Master the Tones

Concentrate on tuning in. I attempted to tune in to whatever content I was perusing. Perusing encourages you to learn the jargon, yet listening causes you to associate with the language and get readied to talk. Listening cognizance is the center's expertise important so as to participate in discussions with individuals.

One of the difficulties of Mandarin is the tones. We gain proficiency with the tone of each character as we get jargon, however, it is hard to recall these when talking. It is critical to disguise the tones as a major aspect of expressions. Listening encourages you to do this. The pitch and cadence of Mandarin, or some other language, can just originate from tuning in to the local speaker. You can't learn it hypothetically.

Specifically, I discovered tuning in to customary Chinese comic discoursed, Xiang Sheng, 相声, an extraordinary method to get the beat of the language and of the tones since these entertainers overstate the pitch. These days you can locate these web-based, including the transcripts and even import them into a framework like cchatty. This was not accessible to me 50 years prior.

Actually, there is an enormous exhibit of listening material accessible for download on every single imaginable subject or you can purchase CDs on the off chance that you are in China. In our cutting edge world, all the material you find on the Internet, or material you may discover in CDs, can be changed over into downloadable sound records which you can have with you any place you go on an MP3 player or an advanced cell. Steady tuning in, in any event, for brief times of five or 10 minutes while you're standing by someplace, can significantly build the time accessible for learning any language, including Mandarin Chinese.

This was not accessible to me 50 years back. I truly needed to sit before my open reel recording device with my headphones on. The circumstance has changed significantly. I needed to scan book shops for a sound substance to tune in to on my recording device. Today there is no restriction on the material you can discover, and there is no restriction to where and when you can tune in.

Exploit and listen at whatever point you can. That is tip number 5.

6, Talk a great deal with a teacher in cchatty

The individual hints of Mandarin are not hard for an English speaker to make. The tones are an alternate story. You should rehearse a great deal with a guider, you can practice with a Chinese teacher in cchatty, both addressing yourself and addressing others. Work on emulating what you are tuning in to. Discover writings for which you have the sound. Tune in to an expression or sentence, at that point attempt to mimic the pitch, without stressing a lot over individual sounds. You may even need to record yourself to look at. On the off chance that you can get "contaminated" with the mood of the language, not exclusively will your control of tones improve, yet your selection of words will likewise turn out to be increasingly local like. At the point when you talk, don't re-think yourself on tones, or some other part of the language. Simply let the words and expressions you have heard and rehearsed stream out, missteps whatnot. Each time you utilize the language you are rehearsing and becoming acclimated to it. In the event that you appreciate communicating in Chinese, on the off chance that you appreciate getting in the stream, singing to the musicality, at that point your Mandarin will keep on improving. Try not to stress over acing elocution toward the start. We can't articulate what we don't hear, nor mirror sounds and pitch that don't impact us. So as to develop the capacity to hear the language and to feel the music of the language, we basically need to tune in to hundreds or even a large number of hours and permit the mind to become accustomed to the new dialect. You can't surge this procedure. Rather you should confide in the way that you will steadily and normally show signs of improvement. Accordingly whatever organize you are at in Mandarin, simply talk without dread and trust your impulses. In the event that you proceed with your perusing and listening exercises, and on the off chance that you keep talking, your talking abilities will normally improve. Here you can find out about: The most ideal approach to become familiar with a language.

So my 6th and last tip are simply put it all on the line and you'll get the cadence. Good karma!

[awfully-sadistic]

The Hellowoon Diaries ft. Armand || #5

Oct. 28th 11:25AM

D.A.D.,

Something very weird has been happening.

When I wrote last time, it was Friday evening and everybody had plans to watch movies in Dot’s home and we’d be spending the weekend with her. A sleepover, I believed they called it. That night went well; I experienced a lot of things, namely popcorn, and I fell asleep during the last movie we would have been watching but other than that, nothing seemed out of place.

I woke up on Saturday, very early in the morning, that it wasn’t even daybreak yet. Unconsciously, I had retreated back into my bound item because I had to stick my head out of the clock as soon as I was aware of where I was. It was very dark out, still, and everything was quiet. I noticed only one thing that was off.

Dodger was already up and had been sitting very still that I thought he had fallen asleep sitting up. But I could see his eyes in the hazy dark as he had turned to face me. Dot was a heavy sleeper, she did not feel any disturbance despite what we were feeling that caused us to awaken.

It is unusual to explain the sensation. It felt like dread. Worry. Anxiety. An impending sense of doom. I will not lie, I was a little frightened. The feeling was not overwhelming and it is hard to explain why it was so uncomfortable. It was not like a nagging feeling in the back of your mind. It sat like an unwelcomed guest in your home after you had committed the mistake of letting it in. I think letting it in was waking up and realizing it was there; it happened so fast and it was so intruding, you had no choice but to let it in as soon as you opened your eyes. It seems a little unfair, doesn’t it?

Now you are left with a feeling you did not know how to deal with and had no way of getting rid of it.

Then, the feeling was gone. But not with a snap of the fingers. If I had to contribute it to a feeling, I suppose it felt like a sheet being pulled away from your body, slowly, starting from the feet and being pulled off your head then lower and lower until finally, it was gone.

Even as a ghost, I felt the sensation as if I were a real person. I have no previous experience to compare it to, but that felt the most natural thing to say.

I found it so odd that a sensation or feeling was so strong that Dot did not wake from her slumber and experience it with me and Dodger. But I am also very happy that she did not, it wasn’t reassuring and I would never want her to feel uncomfortable. We can only give her our accounts and she has to experience it second-hand but I would had rather give her that than let her experience the real thing.

We could not go back to sleep after that. Dodger and I remained awake, quiet at first, but then we had to start talking about what we had experienced. It seemed only natural to do. What was it? Why did we feel it? Did Dot experience the same thing in her sleep? She was an empath, so she must have, right? We had many questions and we talked quietly, Dot not being stirred by our curiosities nor worries and the both of us glad about it. I would have felt awful if we awoke her to something like this.

We eventually told her around breakfast time, when Dodger woke Dot up after what seemed like a feast he created. I think he was trying to distract himself and needed something to do with his hands. He made pancakes, waffles, sausages, eggs, bacon, toast, and hash browns. We do not eat that much and Dot had told him the same as soon as she saw it.

Dodger just gave her a smile but he didn’t divulge just yet. I think he was giving Dot some time to wake up and be comfortable. That was nice of him. But then again, he treats Dot better than anyone else I know.

After her coffee, it did not take long for Dot to understand that something had been wrong or, off. We weren’t trying to act weird but she is a lot more observing than people know. She says she attributes it to “knowing her babies” and we are her babies. I think it’s silly she calls me a baby, I am so much bigger than a baby. But it makes me feel warm and I never correct her. But if anyone should be a baby, it should surely be Dot—she is smaller than me.

I could see that Dodger had a debate whether to admit to Dot that something strange had happened this morning. The both of us could tell that something had shifted but we were unsure what that might have been. We had no proof but Dot did not need convincing. She could see it on our faces, in our attitudes. In Dodger’s restlessness. She had said I was quieter than usual.

Then, we told her.

We spoke about the sensation of waking up to dread. We told her that we felt a certainty of doom even in our separate experiences. Then, how it lingered like an unwelcome house guest. Dodger had tried to explain that he could not logically or rationally come up with a reason to dismiss it, that it wasn’t something that wanted to be dismissed. Then he said how it made him feel like it could have been a warning. Or a threat. It was puzzling that the both of us could experience the same type of feeling at the same time yet Dot could be left sleeping like the dead.

She seemed a little bothered she slept through it and told Dodger to wake her next time but Dodger declined, feeling as much as I had that it was a good thing she slept through it.

“Why would I put you through that?” he had asked her. I could see that Dot wanted to argue, to give Dodger a reason, but maybe she was touched that he wanted to protect her from it.

Dodger told her it wasn’t long, anyway. He finished with how it left us behind and placed an awareness of a shift in its wake. It seemed longer being told out but the whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than three minutes.

Dot said she didn’t feel anything in her sleep and she didn’t have any particularly weird dreams that could have contributed to the feeling. She wasn’t aware of a shift except in our attitudes and it had worried her. But she also didn’t dismiss it; if we felt it, she had said, then something must have happened and she believed us. We seemed serious if not a little grave this morning.

Dot had the bright idea of phoning in the strange phenomena and that was when we noticed that it might have had an effect on our world, bigger than we could have ever thought.

Our Saturday was spent at the Sanctum, trying to get into touch with Nick Fury or anyone else from Earth-616.

It was like they never existed.

The portal that Doctor Strange had made in the Occult Room was just a closet yet both of our Cursed items he had sealed were still sitting on our shelves. We know we didn’t imagine the entirety of his existence along with Earth-616.

We spent the rest of the day, intermittently calling the number Mr. Fury left us. It was hard to concentrate on anything else but Dot had insisted that we take breaks. She was worried about us and didn’t want us to overtax ourselves with worry. I felt that was a good idea because there was nothing we could do, otherwise.

It was then decided that we’d be staying at the Sanctum until we were able to get into touch just in case anyone needed us, from both worlds.

We ran errands to grab some extra food, drink, and stocked up on goods that made it look like we were preparing for the end of the world. That was what Dot said, at least. Dodger said it was good to be prepared but Dot said it made us look pretty crazy.

“We won’t be crazy when it turns out that something is happening.”

We still didn’t have a name for this, we just kept calling it the “something” yet we knew what it meant.

We also went home to pick up my clock and extra bedding. With the many rooms we have, it was easy to remake one into a living quarter with chairs, books, a television, and someplace Dot and Dodger could rest their heads if they got too tired.

Dodger tried calling Evi but she never picked up. That was to be expected though as it was our day off. However, Dot and Dodger thought it was strange. It was explained to me that Evi had said she’d be reachable at any time, regardless of days off. Dot said that was a red flag, and I think that means something troubling. I hope nothing bad had happened to her.

I don’t know how we managed to sleep that night with that strangeness looming over our heads but we did.

On Sunday, Dot and Dodger called a couple of their contacts at The Agency to confirm that something had… shifted. It was also able to confirm that whatever had happened seemed to throw the entire world into chaos. Things such as Supernaturals and Cursed Items that have been hidden have suddenly been unearthed. Trading in the waters have been halted as the sea was too tumultuous to endure travel. The Agency was much more willing to admit the existence of Cursed Items, now, but with no way of knowing how to handle them, left them untouched. This left a lot of areas where Cursed Items resided in turmoil, almost like a lawless land, Dot had said.

When all was said and done, Dot had explained that The Agency had their hands full and that it was a good thing they broke away from The Agency before “shit hit the fan” otherwise “we’d be caught up in that chaos, too, and I don’t think I could handle that.” Since our business isn’t as big, she said we have the freedom to get to the bottom of what may be going on. I hope she’s right.

When Dodger asked where they could even start, Dot… did not have a clue. That was fair. We didn’t either.

It is now Monday as I tell you this. Dodger said it was a good idea to keep a record of what’s going on so we can recall events. I volunteered by stating I’d be relaying the sequence of events in my diary. I’m glad it’s a good idea because otherwise I feel useless. I don’t have the knowledge that Dodger does about the world or the resources Dot does that she can get information from friends or co-workers. I feel like they do everything and I end up being a third wheel. I’m grateful to be here and I love being with them, but I want to feel useful sometimes, too.

I hope this helps.

I’m stating that Evi did not show up for work and we still have not heard from Mr. Fury or Doctor Strange. The portal is still gone and we have been hearing reports from Dot’s contacts at The Agency that say all around the world hasn’t been left untouched by whatever happened. It’s on a global scale and The Agency has been using up its manpower to try to settle their cases.

We have been staying in the Sanctum rather than our homes because it feels easier to be here.

Somehow, safer.

I am glad that I have Dot and Dodger by my side. I have no idea how I would have been handling this on my own.

12:15PM

Still no sign of Evi. We’ve tried calling her home phone and cell to try to get into touch but her phones do not connect.

1:15PM

We’re having lunch now. Dodger made us warm things; a savory tomato soup and some grilled cheese sandwiches. It seems he had made more than we can eat again.

Dot and Dodger are restless. I want to try to get them to relax but I do not know how. Perhaps we could watch a movie, something funny and light. To forget momentarily that strange things are happening all around the world.

4:25PM

At this point, we’ve given up trying to get in touch with Evi. Dot says she hopes she’s okay. Dodger remained quiet this entire time. I wonder if he feels bad about Evi. But it looks like he’s more contemplative than remorseful. I wonder what he’s thinking about and why he doesn’t share his thoughts more often.

Now that we’ve acknowledged that something strange has been going on or whatever had happened had made the Supernatural aspects of things stronger, I’ve noticed a lot more… activity in the Sanctum. I do not think Dot was too far off in suspecting things, either.

She has said so many times before that she doesn’t think we’re fully alone in the Sanctum. But it wasn’t like the Poltergeist we had dealt with when Dot and Dodger first took over the office building.

She thinks we may have a friend who is too shy to make an appearance.

Like me, I had thought.

6:00PM

We’ve just watched a news report. Dot had said this was very important because the government was now going to address what was going on. Apparently, the president has made a speech and everything.

At the end of it, we were disappointed because it was things we already knew…

Dot and Dodger were saying that they were keeping information from the people, perhaps not trying to throw everyone into mass hysteria. But it might have been too late for that.

However, the thing we were surprised about was not the news.

Our… friend had finally made an appearance that scared the “bejesus out of” Dot. Dodger looked a little surprised, too. He had no inkling that something had been with us.

At the end of the news report, we were talking about how we hadn’t learned anything new other than the world seemed like it was going to end. That Dodger might have been right going “bunker” on us—Dot explained that is something crazy folks do when they think the world is going to come crashing on our heads. They stock up lots of supplies to last for years and years, to survive.

I was in the middle of saying I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this when I was interrupted.

A new voice joined in saying, “I should have been cremated.”

Our new friend was just as see-through as I am when I’m not in my corporeal state. He says his name is Ryton Thorne. I was a little awed by him; unlike me, he seems to remember who he is…

7:00PM

We spent the hour learning about our new friend; where he came from, how he died, and why he was haunting the office.

Mr. Ryton Thorne was a thirty-three-year-old Estate Agent. In his ghost (or corporeal form), he has short brown hair that was cut quite neatly, brown eyes that almost look reddish, and a nice smile. He seems relatively harmless, pretty normal. He’s also taller than me and Dodger, I suppose that’s the only thing unusual about him.

I didn’t know what a real estate agent was but he explained he had sold houses and property. He doesn’t quite remember how he died but he believed he was murdered. Dodger stated that ghosts who were murdered often don’t remember how they died. It takes something triggering to bring back that horrific event.

He didn’t seem to be too bothered by it. In fact, he said he believed that was the best thing that has happened to him. I couldn’t see how being murdered was good… but he seems uplifting about a lot of things. He said he didn’t need to work himself to death anymore since he was already dead and it was better having all this free time instead of committing himself to a job that didn’t appreciate him. He earned a couple of chuckles out of Dot. I wonder if I didn’t understand the joke, hmmm…

He doesn’t know why he’s bound to the office but he thinks his bound item is a stapler on one of the desks. He laughs about it saying that it was better than his briefcase, that was the last thing he wanted to be bound to. I suppose that is also better than a huge grandfather clock; it would be easier if I were bound to something smaller that Dot could keep in her pocket.

8:30PM

Not much of a change this evening. We hear a lot more racket outside nowadays but Dot said it’s just other people, “losing their damn minds” about things. We hear windows being smashed and car alarms. Dodger thinks humans are rioting. Supernatural beings are perhaps being targeted now more than ever.

It truly is the end times, isn’t it?

10:00PM

I think we’re afraid to get some sleep. The rioting... if that was what it was… had died down and everything is quiet. We’ve been watching some movies and binging funny television shows to help calm ourselves.

Ryton absolutely loves the one with the crazy boss and they work in the paper business. I think it’s pretty neat we have a new friend. He’s been really nice to all of us and seems like he’s just glad to be heard, finally.

It turns out that he wasn’t shy. He just didn’t have the energy to manifest. When the something that happened, happened, it allowed him to appear. Having Ryton around has allowed us to forget that there’s something strange going on, that things around the world has just taken a dive for the worst. He has lots of funny stories from his time alive to tell us and asks us questions about how the world has changed. I think everyone has been grateful for the distraction.

So, we have been spending a lot of time just talking about ourselves; Dot was content to share what happened with the Agency so Ryton could understand what we were and what we do and Dodger was content to listen and let Dot lead.

Ryton surprised us by saying that he wants to join our team if things get back to normal.

It was weird that he said that. For some reason, and I think the others would agree with me, I was feeling like nothing would get back to normal. Things were going to be dangerous and strange and that was when I realized that feeling of dread had never left me at all. It had just disguised itself, hidden itself, so it wouldn’t be recognized.

I’m glad Ryton is here.

I think the others are, too.

11:59 PM

We just got a signal.

It seems Nick Fury, Doctor Strange, and Earth-616 has returned.

[foreveralwaysanauthor]

oooh I’d definitely like to see mick and xander for the character sheet thing!

Alright! I’ll do Mick on this one and a separate one for Xander.

Dotted orange text is category

Numbered bold text is subcategory (ie. favorite food and favorite color under Favorites)

—————

Name: Makana Kaya Birch

From: Broken Record and Creating a Rift (my Teen Beach Movie fanfictions)

Age: 16 (Broken Record) and 18-19 (Creating a Rift

Appearance: Brown hair, just past shoulder blades. Brown eyes with a green ring. Wears mostly shorts and t-shirts in her world, but wears more dresses and play suits in Wet Side Story.

Preferences:

Sexuality: Straight

Favorites:

Food: Tacos

Color: Red

Animal: Octopus

Weather: Snowing. She visited New Hampshire with her parents for Christmas one year and fell in love with snow.

Season: Summer

Time of day: Afternoon/Evening

Music: Beach Boys

Foods they will/will not eat.

Will: Pretty much anything.

Won’t: Chili and yogurt. (Frozen yogurt is fine, just not regular yogurt)

Religion: The attend church, never said which. It’s up to the reader.

Political Beliefs: Independent. (She chooses whoever seems best, not by their status as either a Democrat or a Republican)

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw

Personality: Empathic. Laid back to an extent, but mature enough to know when to be serious. She has a good head on her shoulders and has high hopes for attending a college in Florida, the other side of the country.

Family:

Parents: McKenzie Phoebe Birch, née Ellis, and Brady Aaron Birch

Any siblings? No.

Family life:

What was it like growing up? Pretty nice. Mack was the more serious one and Brady was the more laid back one. They evened each other out enough for Mick to have a simple, yet loving childhood.

Anything from childhood that affects them in their present state? Being taught to surf at only 3. Her great-grandfather (Mack’s grandfather) teaching her that communication is important in relationships. Her parents making her watch Wet Sode Story all the time and listen to their stories about being there.

Discipline as a child? If she got in trouble at school/at home she was kept from surfing, dancing and listening to music. If she got grounded for any reason, she was kept between home and school along with the aforementioned discipline. Getting low grades was never something Mick worried about, but her parents knew that if she got a grade lower than a C, she would get a tutor, but that was all.

Rich, poor or in between? In between. They weren’t rich rich, but they had enough to not worry about money much. Due to Mack being a professor and Brady creating new technology along with taking over the surf shop, they were well off.

Cultural history:

Any affects? Not really. She is French, Italian and a touch Scottish. Mack and Brady taught her that she was no different from anyone else and that skin color/cultures don’t mean you can treat/be treated by others differently.

Traditions? Visiting her Mom’s family back in New Hampshire every other Thanksgiving. They visit Australia to surf every year. Brady’s family will take the family for a vacation every once in a while.

Flaws

Overthinker. Mick takes things apart bit by bit until she’s come to her own conclusion, whether it be right or wrong.

Too straight forward. She has no filter to keep things from going directly from her mind to her mouth. Sometimes, she’ll catch herself, but other times, what she’s thinking will make it’s way out.

Over emotional. I think we’ve all seen her overreact to things like the whole journal thing and the idea that Butchy might drop her for someone better.

Wants

Attend a college.

Get married, maybe get a dog.

Visit England and maybe Japan.

Help her dad make new kinds of surfboards.

Needs

Family time.

Medication (EpiPen and inhaler).

Love, both familial and otherwise.

Pictures of cute animals.

Fears

Heights.

Alzheimer’s/Dimentia.

Losing the ability to surf.

Being strangled/attacked.

Losing her best friends/family/husband.

How do they handle:

Disappointment: If directed toward herself, she clams up and holds it against herself for a while. If directed towards others, she will make sure to say she’s disappointed, yet not make it a big deal after maybe a day or so.

Anger: Depending on the range, she can go from rolling her eyes and scoffing to full on assault mode where she can (and will) harm the person *cough* Xander *cough*

Embarrassment: Try to fight it and pretend her face isn’t a cherry look alike.

Betrayal: From a friend, probably alienate herself from them slowly until there isn’t any more contact between them. From others, most likely just say “why?” and try to move on.

Fight or flight: Depends, once again. In an attack, fight. In a situation she really doesn’t wanna be a part of, fly like a bird.

Money: Mick hates to spend money on herself. She likes to save her money and use it when necessary if it’s on herself. She’s all for spending on her friends, though, as long as it’s in reason.

Lack of sleep: Insert Red Bull and energy pills.

Alcohol: Hahahahaha! Fucking drunk off her ass. I could see her going through this, stage by stage, within maybe an hour of drinking:

Injustice: Try to find a way to make things right again. “There will always be a solution as long as we try hard enough.” -Mick from a future chapter...

Mental illness: She gets so frustrated about it, lemme tell you. When she got her memory back, a seed of fear planted itself in her that she may lose her mind someday. She’s not from the perfect world Butchy’s from, she’s scared of forgetting everything again.

Grief: Closing herself off so nobody can see her crying or worrying over existential fears.

Exercise: Other than dancing, surfing, and maybe riding her bicycle, she despises exercising. Her gym teacher in elementary school made them run laps on the track around the football field almost every class, so she developed a hatred of exercise. (My school had a mile long track around the field that our teacher forced us to do. Use that as a guide for how far the teacher made these 5-9 year old kids run)

Defining moment: You’ll see it soon, let’s just leave it at that.

How do they feel about:

Glitter: Every Halloween, Mick will run to the costume supply shop and stock up on all of the glitter they possess. Pressed glitter, yup. Little bottles that you’re supposed to put on as necklaces, you betcha! Glitter eyeliner, ooooh yeah! Glitter witch hats and sparkly crowns, she owns three of them already!

Ferris Wheels: HECK NO.

Camping: In a camper, yes. On the ground, no. Not with all the mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies lurking about. In other words, Mick is our average Glamper.

Coffee: Brown water with ground up beans? Yeah, no, she’ll pass.

Crispy or floppy bacon: Any bacon is good bacon. She likes it in the middle, but anyway is good, really.

Mushrooms: Allergic.

Twilight Saga: Sparkly boys and werewolves and a fucking creepy cgi baby and-, hold up, is that Jay? Like, Mal and Malina’s friend? Wtf??? 🤨🤨

Guns: Owns a mini gun for protection and shares custody of a shotgun with Butchy. Butchy taught her how to use them both properly in case of an emergency or if someone were to break in. She is a licensed owner and never has had to use them before. She believes that guns don’t kill people, the people holding them do.

Extras

Do they have a signature smile? Not really.

Do they have a tell when they lie? Fidgeting with fingernails or scratching her head.

Do they have any nervous ticks? Her fingers shake, she bites her lips/cheeks, and her legs bounce if she’s sitting at a table or something.

Do they speak loudly, softly, or average? Average, leaning more toward loud.

Quality of voice. Smooth, like a lake on a windless day. Her voice rises more toward the middle of her sentences, but can also fall into a deeper tone if she’s not really concentrating on her inflection. It’s almost like watching a pinball rise and fall throughout a game, never sure where it’ll go.

Do they gesture when talking? She’s French. Of course she talks with her hands. Perhaps she should take up sign language, that might help her to stop gesturing so loudly 😆

Do they understand personal space? Yes, very much so. She enjoys her personal space and grants that to other as well out of habit.

How do they greet others? Usually “Hey” “Hi” or “What’s up?”

How do they say goodbye? “See you later/around!”

Something they always have with/on them. The bracelet with Butchy’s initial that matches the one he has with her initial. Her engagement ring. The flower ring. Her lucky shell necklace with a heart bead dangling from the center.

Do they recognize people better by their face or their name? She’s terrible with both, to be honest. She knows the names of people, but can never decide if it’s them or not by looking at them.Reversely, if she were to recognize someone as familiar, she wouldn’t be able to place a name with them until they said who they were.

What do they admire most in others? Honesty. Fairness. Compassion. Love of animals. Love in general. Intellect.

Pet peeves. Silverware grinding on ceramic plates/bowls. Questionably sticky floors. Loud people when there’s no reason to be loud.

What grosses them out? The smell of sliced cheese with nothing else on/with it, the smell of peroxide/rubbing alcohol, moist objects, the smell of diesel radiating off of a truck.

[stevensavage]

Steve's Marketing Advice June 2019

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve's Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

It’s the latest update of my Marketing Tips!  As always, I keep updating these every few months.

The Core Principle: The Web Of Connections

To promote yourself your various activities, giveaways, social media, and so on need to connect and reinforce each other.  If a new book comes out, promote it on your website and give away a few copies in your newsletter.  If you’re speaking on art, give out bookmarks with links to your website.  Everything ties together.

This does make finding what works a bit challenging, so I take these steps:

Do what is easy, like cross-posting sales and stuff among my social media.  Hey, it’s easy.  Then I monitor what seems to work.

Do what seems rational and looks like it’ll pay off.  Don’t try everything, try what will probably work.

Do what seems fun.  Why not enjoy this?

Advance marketing with incremental steps.  Usually that takes a month or two to show, so I tend to do my experiments every month or every other month.

Record what I find from above.  What do you think this post is?

Over time you’ll find what works for you, what doesn’t, and how elements interact.  It might help to keep a list like this!

Have A Website

Have a website, period. A website is a place you can send people to that acts as a "hub" for your marketing efforts. It doesn't have to be complex (I've got some tips below), it has to be a place that acts as a hub for finding out more about you. The goal of a website is to have a one-stop-show for people to come to for information, and leave from to go to your various portfolios, books, social media, etc.

Follow these steps:

Get a domain name (networksolutions.com, tierra.net are recommended). Make sure the name is unique, fits you, and can be re-purposed if your plans change (FrankDoesArt.com is a bit specific, but FrankGetsCreative.com is more general).

Set up a website. Most people I know use www.dreamhost.com or www.wix.com. Just start with one page to make it easy - I've seen successful authors whose page is a blurb and a list of books.

A fast way to do it is buy a domain and redirect it to one of your social media accounts or a portfolio setup (like Twitter or LinkedIn).  You can build the site later.

Link to all your books, art, portfolio, and social media from here.

This website should be mentioned in your books, social media, etc. so people get prompted to visit.

Link to all your social media from the website – LinkedIn, Goodreads, whatever.  Well, whatever is appropriate, like maybe no one wants your photo collection of antique pots on that photo sharing site.

Other things to add:

A schedule of speaking engagement.

Reviews of your books.

Testimonials.

Helpful downloads - like character sheets, guides, etc.

Fun things not necessarily related to your writing like a cookbook or a link to pet pictures.

Have Appropriate Social Media

Social media is a troublesome subject. Yes, it can let you market - or be annoying. Yes it can let you meet people - or it can waste time.  It also changes in value over time.  However, done right it's a great way to connect with people.

Your social media should always link back to your website and in many cases, your other social media. This helps create a "web" of connections, so people are able to go to one social media source, find your others, and of course buy your stuff.

My takes on social media in rough order are:

Twitter: Twitter, for it's many flaws, has a lot of use, its simple, and with lists and filtering (and learning when to ignore it) you can meet authors, promote yourself, and be found. I'd determine what approach you want to use (from marketing to just goofing off) and do it.

LinkedIn: You should have a LinkedIn profile anyway, but how much of your "creative" life you want to share or link to depends on your goals and personal image.  If you do list your creative works, don’t forget the options like “publications.”  Also remember there are communities there you can join.

Instagram and other photo-sharing sites: Some people use this to promote their work, others use it as a sort of photoblog. I'm mixed on it myself.

Facebook: Facebook keeps having issues, but it helps to have a presence. I'd keep an author page on it at the very least and see how you engage.

Amazon Author Site: Set up your Amazon Author Site at Author Central.  This also can be a place to point your web domain.

Books2Read Author Site: I learned about this as Draft2Digital.com sets you up there if you use them.  Not sure it’s useful as I’ve just set one up, but its pretty nice.

By the way, a good way to manage social media in one go is www.Hootsuite.com.

Have A Newsletter

A newsletter is the way to engage with readers and keep people informed, as well as give them cool reviews, interesting updates, and more. In some ways it's like a mailed blog, but I separate them as a newsletter is more focused and like an update, whereas blogs can be more freeform. If you don't do a blog, do a newsletter, and if you only have time for one do the newsletter.

The ruler of newsletters is www.mailchimp.com, which has an amazing free service and reasonable paid services.

Make sure that your newsletter subscription form(s) are linked to from as much social media as possible and, of course, your website.

Some newsletter tips:

Don't overdo it or underdo it - I do it every two weeks.

Find a "feel" for your newsletter - a roundup, personal, chatty, serious, etc. Judge what works.

Include any vital updates about your work. Link to your blog, new books, cool things.

Give away "Lead Magnets" - basically free stuff like samples, an occasional free book copy, downloadable cool stuff, etc.

Use it to promote other cool things - help folks out.

Remember that most newsletter software gives you all sorts of statistics and data - you can use this to improve reaching people!

Have A Blog

Blogs are ways to post thoughts, essays, and more, turning your web presence into a kind of personal magazine/announcement/discussion board. Most authors use them, though at various rates of usage, from constant posts to "occasional speaking updates."

A blog is usually part of your author website, and thus is another reason to come there - and to go and check out your work and your other media. Most blog setups can act as your author page as well (which is what I do).

I use blogs to:

Give weekly updates on myself.

Post various essays and thoughts.

Review or promote interesting things.

In a few cases, blog posts then became other books, or I round them up to publish free "compendiums."

You can set up blogs at the following sites, with various advantages and limits. Some allow you to use your own domain name, some don't.

Most webhosts.

Wordpress.com

Blogspot.com

A few techniques:

You can get a domain and just point it at your blog or a similar site (like your Tumblr) and save time.

Some authors and artists do blog tours where they post across each other's blogs.

If you have related social media accounts (LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) consider posting your blog entries to all of them when appropriate. Just make sure they redirect to your site.

Set up an RSS feed (or find it's address in a standard setup) and put a link on your blog. I also recommend www.feedburner.com despite it being sort of static by now.

Mailchimp.com and some other mail software programs let people subscribe to a blog feed so they get email updates. You can also load those with helpful extras and information.

An important caveat - if you're a prolific writer, you have to find the blogging/writing balance. It's not an easy call because a few long blog posts can take as much time to set up as a small fiction piece. In some cases small books may be like blog posts so you have to ask “write a book or write a set of blog posts.”  I cover that more later.

Physical Media

Many authors and artists give away cards, bookmarks, etc.  I find these different giveaways vary in effectiveness, so I’m not sure how well they work for me or you.  However, it doesn’t stop me from doing them as they’re easy, and sometimes expected.  I also figure saturating the world with references to my work helps.

The one challenge is that this costs money, and you may not want to spend money on business cards, bookmarks, etc.  So you want to balance your choices.

Here’s what I try and what I find works:

Business Cards – These are a must if you’re serious, and the only physical media I can truly say that about.  Business Cards are cheap to get, easy to give out, and even expected.  Most print shops and office supply stores have quick options.

Bookmarks – This is popular among the book crowd for obvious reasons.  I’m not sure how well they work, but they do make it easy to set out information, give them away in panels, leave at interested shops, etc.  They can be a bit pricey depending on the deal you swing,

Mini-pictures – I’ve seen artists give away small cards with their art and contact information, sort of a sample/bookmark/business card fusion.  This may be worth trying.

For printed bookmarks and the like I recommend www.clubflyers.com.

I always have business cards with me, keep some bookmarks in my car, and take bookmarks to any events I speak at.

Giveaways And Promotionals (Mostly Authors)

A great way to get people's attention is to give out stuff like free books, extras, samples, and more. With these properly done (and linked back to other works), its a great way to get attention, meet people, and of course get sales.

There's two services I recommend for authors.  For artists you may have to look for other methods.

Prolificworks.com - having both free and subscription modes, it lets you give away work and join (or create) promotions. The paid version lets you tie giveaways into your mailing list as well. It does get a bit pricey beyond the Free level ($20 to $50 a month), so I recommend paid tiers for serious authors nly.

www.bookfunnel.com - Is a cheap ($20 a year to start) way to do book giveaways in a variety of formats, and higher tiers include features like Prolificworks.com. I'm fond of the starter tier as its a great way to make book giveaways easier (and if you don't want to host your giveaways).

To make these work you have to obviously be dedicated to it and work out strategies. I use them to:

Give away free stuff and samples to my newsletter subscribers.

Give away a few copies of new books via Prolificworks.com

Have promotional giveaways (often samples) that people can sign up to my newsletter to get.

I join groups on Prolificworks.com to do team giveaways.

I use both - Instafreebie lets me set up easy giveaways, and Prolificworks gives me all sorts of options.

If you use KDP, there's a KDP Exclusive you can use for eBooks. In exchange for making your work exclusive with Amazon, you get some tools to set up sales and giveaways.  It’s easy for starting authors.

Have A Portfolio

If you're a visual artist of any kind, have a portfolio. Put it on your website, use a social media site like Deviantart.com, whatever. People want to see your work and maybe buy it, so make it easy to do. If you take commissions, it's pretty much a way to market yourself.

Non-visual artists like authors may want a portfolio as well. This would contain:

Cover art.

Sample works.

Free giveaways.

Summaries of your work (with links to purchase it). For instance, I have a press website a lot like this.

Do Series

If you're doing fiction, you probably already have a series in mind. If your books are non-fiction, you may want to group them into series, because various bookselling sites will remind people that "X book is part of Y" series.  If you’re an artist, this may help as well.

The advantage of the series are:

A series promotes the books within it.  When people seem a book is in a series, they may check out another.

A series creates cross-promotion as it sells.  When one book gets another book to sell, the various websites that sell them may refer books to other readers.

A series shows commitment.  When you’re doing a series it shows that you care and plan to stick around – or did stick around.

It takes time for a series to “take off.”  Once it starts getting attention and people buy other books, then they get more recommendations, more attention, etc.  On Amazon and other book distribution services, this results in more promotion over time.

A series can even act as a kind of low-profit loss-leader or self-promotional.  If someone buys small books in a series, or you write a series to focus on a popular subject, then it gets attention to your other works.

Do Multiple Formats

One of the challenges of selling media is that people want to consume it in different formats.  Unless you’re very sure that your target audience wants a certain format, try out different ways to sell things.  

If you write books, then consider ebooks, different ebook formats, and print.

If you do art, maybe your art can be in several sizes and formats.

For instance, I’ve found some of my physical books sell well around the holidays as people use them as gifts.  Others are the kind of thing people want in print for easy review or taking notes.  So over time I’ve branched out in my book formats.

Remember every sale helps – though some formats (like print) are hard and costly to set up, so evaluate their worth.

Calculated Distribution (Authors)

This part is pretty much only for authors – and for book distribution.

For print books, your usual choices are Amazon and IngramSpark (or IngramSpark via Lulu).  Amazon doesn’t charge, the other services do, but bookstores don’t always like to stock Amazon books as it’s a competitor.

For ebooks, your choices are:

Go with Amazon’s KDP Select, where you only go through Amazon but get marketing tools like sales.  Amazon is the majority of the market, so if you go Amazon its easier.

Distribute incredibly widely.  This takes time, and you don’t get Amazon’s marketing tools, but you get the chance to make more sales.  Some authors I know find they sell more books outside of Amazon, but I haven’t figured out any rules or principles to this.

If you go broad here’s my take

Draft2Digital is the easiest way to go broad, but only does eBooks.  I also recommend managing your Amazon account separately.  Draft2Digital doesn’t have the broadest range, but it’s free (taking a cut of your sales) and very, very well done.

Smashwords is also free, but takes a larger cut and doesn’t have the extras of Draft2Digital.  It does get into a few unusual areas of distribution.

Lulu.com will do full service, but partners with Ingrahm, and there are charges.

Ingrahm is full service as well, and charges.  It’s probably a better choice than Lulu these days.

Publish Lots Of Stuff

Like it or not your goal as a creator is to be noticed so people get ahold of your work and benefit from it.  This means that you may need to create lots of works to get attention – or use work that you aren’t making public to do the same.

For instance, I realized that a lot of my blog ideas were better off as books – or could be turned into books.  There was far more benefit to turning certain ideas into small books (or expanding existing work into books) than letting things sit.  Some things just work better as a book anyway, and I have more works that people can get their hands on.

(Plus, the polishing that goes into a book made them, honestly, higher quality.)

If you’re an artist it’s probably the same thing, depending on your market.  If you have lots of different things to sell and buy and do you increase your chance to get more sold.  

Remember that this ties into having series as well.  Don’t just publish lots of stuff, tie it together as series.

Advertising (Mostly for Authors)

I’ve used both Google ads and Amazon for books, though it’s been awhile since I’ve done Google (and I may want to try again).  I have done a lot with AMS, or Amazon Marketing Services.

AMS lets you set up promotional ads to appear during searches or on pages of specific projects, and you can set up keywords, targets, and even decide what to pay for a clickthrough.  It’s a pretty advanced tool, and though it obviously only targets Amazon, that’s a pretty big market!  The challenge is that you have to figure out the right words, monitor progress (to avoid overspending or waste), and tweak marketing for each book.

I’ve found it effective, but it takes a lot of work.  What I do is update AMS every month or so with new terms, shut off ones that aren’t working, and try to get an idea of what works.  You can download data from each ad you set up, and then make a new ad with just the data that worked.  You honestly need to start with 100-200 search terms to get it working.

Paragraph

Done right, I find AMS yields roughly $2 in sales or more for each $1 spent – as long as you tweak the advertising, cancel bad projects, and keep learning.

More To Come

That’s my latest!  I hope it helps you out!

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

[kamino-ink]

Wither | Kim Woojin

genre ⌁ dystopian, sci-fi, adventure, dystopian!au, angst, fluff, inspired by The Hunger Games!

summary ⌁ What’s left of the two Koreas is now the pit of entertainment for the rest of the world, built upon corpses, natural disasters, and lost wars - the scattered districts now fight to survive each day. When your name is plucked from the hundreds of thousands in the country, you are left no choice but to comply to your fate - either kill and win, or die trying.

word count ⌁ 3k

warning ⌁ incredibly violent w/ lots of gore, crude humor, suggestive at times, etc.

01

Check out my masterlist!

 When you wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. The only visible evidence of a body having been laying there the previous night is a strewn section of the tattered sheet and a single pillow with a bit of a dent in it. An afterglow of the morning light seeps through the cracks of the wooden walls, spreading across your warm cheeks, one of which was still pressed against the pillow under your head. You prop yourself up onto an elbow, tired gaze searching for Seungmin.

 You sit up begrudgingly from the stale comfort of the mattress, ignoring the small wince of pain that jolts up your spine and the distinct pop of your wrists as you push yourself up. Finally your gaze manages to focus on the span of the tiny room, the younger boy in question stood in front of a broken mirror by the foot of the bed. Clad in only a pair of shredded sweatpants, his bare back is open for the world to see. Dark scars run down his melanin skin, leaving no space for healing.

 Sitting at his exposed feet is a giant beast of a dog - he insists that it’s a mixed bastard, though by the appearance of the damn things drooling canines and scratchy pelt, you still think he picked up the runt of a coyote. As if it can sense your gaze burning daggers into the boy’s back, the dog lifts its muzzle and curls its lip, showing off the cracked teeth and his lolled tongue. His green gaze meets yours, as if challenging you to approach.

 Deciding not to risk pissing off the runt, you instead slide off the ancient mattress, a slight squeak from the springs making you flinch just a little. “Seungmin, you should be getting ready.”

 “So should you, Y/N.” He retorts quickly, thankfully tearing his harsh stare from his shattered reflection of the dusty mirror to look you up and down. “I would say sorry for letting you sleep in, but... then I would be lying.”

 “And we do not tell lies in this home, Minnie. Good on you.” You tease him lightheartedly as you go to the closet door, which has been permanently stuck to be open ever since the sliding door had jammed after an earthquake a few years back. You listen to his quiet scoff at your teasing words while you shuffle through the closet, searching for an appropriate outfit for the day’s big event. Your fingertips brush against what feels like a cardboard box near the back of the closet, which you subtly bring out.

 The top is riddled with dust and grime, though you were used to the germs and murk covering just about anything in the house. Of course you couldn't help but gag a little in pure disgust at the sight of whatever god forsaken substance had rubbed onto your fingers from the lid. Still, you slide the lid off the box, only to hesitate when you see the clothing inside.

 The hesitation to bring out whatever might be in the box is obvious to your brother, to which he sends you a solemn look before his cold gaze travels down to the box. It’s clear that he recognizes it by the flash of emotion in his eyes, but he doesn’t discourage you from exploring what’s inside. “It’s Amber’s dress, the one that Henry gave her before the annual ball,” the brunette explains quietly, “he gave it to me after the funeral. Said s’mthing about Amber wanting to give it to you when it got to be too small.”

 Amber... god you missed her.

 “I - what if Henry sees me in her dress?” You question him almost inaudibly, though you decide to go ahead and grip the material of the wool dress and slowly bring it out of its lone container. “I don’t want to bring up those memories, Minnie. You know damn well that he’s been trying to forget everything for years now.”

 “Then don’t wear it. You’re the one making a big deal out of it, Y/N.” The younger retorts in a dry tone. He opts to let the room fall into strange but comfortable silence as you stare idly at the dress now dangling from your fingertips, and he follows your actions in the way of haphazardly throwing a shirt over his top half, effectively covering the scars dotting a majority of his body.

“... the dress suits you, Y/N. You’ll look beautiful - maybe a person of the opposite gender might actually give you the time of day.”

 “Uh huh, like who? Kino?”

 “Definitely not Kino - I mean you’d catch his attention, but I’d beat the shit outta him before he got the chance to talk to you.” Seungmin says immediately, ruffling the top of your head of hair as he walks out of the bedroom, the stinky dog following at his heels. “Hurry up and get dressed, though. Baekhyun and Chanyeol said they’d be waiting by the records hall for us.”

 And then he’s gone, having let the curtain separating the bedroom from the rest of the house fall back into the entryway behind him. You look back to the wool dress sitting in the palms of your hands - the dress that belonged to your older sister all those years ago. She had always wanted you to wear her clothes, mostly the knitted dresses her love Henry had made, but when you were younger you had vehemently refused; you were a child who favored the common tattered jackets and clothes of your district rather than the better looking cloth Amber’s wealthy beau had made himself.

 She had never gotten the chance to see you wearing her clothes. She never got to see how you would look in the fashion that she adored simply because they came from the man she loved. In fact, she was like you, preferring the thin cloth and ripped pants most seen hanging off the bodies of other Chester residents; but when it came to Henry, she wouldn’t hesitate to try on the dresses he designed.

 With a soft sigh you start to strip yourself of the nightgown with holes in it and a ripped trim, letting it fall to the floor and coil around your bare feet. Taking the dress and sliding it over your naked body, you wonder if perhaps your sister is watching - maybe she could finally see her little sister wearing the dress she adored so much - albeit for a day of sorrow and nightmares.

 Chester was known for its gloomy atmosphere and just as chilly temperatures. The older district was in the heart of South Korea, stretching from what was once known as Seoul all the way to Busan. Arguably the better option of all the accumulated districts, the cold days and nights were heaven compared to some of the nuclear fallout to the west or south. In the other districts, it was rare to find food or even proper shelter - being accepted to reside in Chester was a diamond in the rough for many families, including yours.

 After the nuclear fallout between North and South Korea almost a century ago, both countries turned to dust - those who somehow survived the war unified both halves of the whole as best as they could, seeking assistance or asylum from other countries and world powers.

 But the help never came - at least, not after the disease had started to spread.

 It started when the United States flew out military personnel and some doctors to help rebuild or save lives. No one had been aware of it back then, but the lingering radiation that didn’t automatically kill the survivors had seeped into their cells, staining their genetic makeup somehow. Yet when those who came from the outside came in contact with those they were sent to help, their skin would blister with bubbles that popped within seconds, spraying contaminated blood and pus onto their skin. In the first twenty-four hours of recovery efforts, anyone from the outside either died or escaped back to their home countries before they became infected. What was left of the two Koreas became outcastes to the world, with no help coming in that century or the next.

 And now your generation, along with every generation after that, was known as the Alien Bloods - not very creative in your opinion, or too witty; but in any case it was true. You and your brother, along with anyone else in North and South Korea, had tainted blood.

 So how were any cities still alive? How did the districts come about? If no help ever came, how was it that you were even alive?

 Entertainment. That was what the two countries became to the entirety of the healthy population. Apparently the economy of literally every other country had started to collapse due to the annihilation of the war, and the world powers thought it best to create something from the ashes - something that would bring in commercial success from every corner of the globe. And thus, The Radiation Games was born - stolen right from the title of an ancient novel dubbed The Hunger Games, though they switched it to be a tad bit more fitting with the nuclear situation at hand.

 There were districts instead of cities or towns, and you happened to be... “lucky” enough to live in Chester district; only those who had less of the genetic mutation than the rest of the population were permitted to reside in the giant sector of the country, and your family was part of that closed circle. Chester was the hub, so to speak, of what was left of South Korea while North Korea became the black-market central, namely the district of Nixvar. Two halves of a whole indeed.

 Walking out of the stone and wood block you called home, the first thing you spotted was a crowd of US soldiers, white and yellow radiation suits clinging to every inch of their bodies. They donned familiar helmets similar to that of an astronaut’s, the yellow skull signa a trademark of their line of work; being dubbed as Cybs by pretty much everyone.

 “’bout time you got done changing.” Seungmin snorted in amusement, kicking himself back up from the gray wall beside the doorway once you step outside. He follows your dead gaze that pierces the suits of the Cybs, almost laughing to himself when one of the bigger ones notices your glare and quickly whips their attention back to their formation. “Come on, Baekhyun and Chanyeol will never let us live it down if we’re late.”

 You nod in silence, watching as the boy sends his dog away and makes sure that it doesn’t follow the two of you into the hub - if a Cyb caught sight of an animal like that in Chester, the damn runt would be shot down without hesitation.

 Seungmin leads the way, as he always has when it was Reaping day, one of his callused hands tugging gently on your own. Any sort of crowd blocking the paths into the central hub during their walk to the event split away upon seeing your brother, their gazes either admiring, fearful, or filled with burning rage.

 You notice as clear as day how his grip tightens on your hand, the way he straightens his posture in front of the beady glares directed at him. Any time the two of you would leave the house it was similar to this exact situation - the other residents of Chester would watch as their past victor strolled through the district perfectly alive and well, though they wished he was six feet under.

 The pair of you get to the records hall faster than expected, and of course, there are two much taller people waiting for you.

 “I was wondering if you idiots would be late - hell Baekhyun took nearly an hour getting ready-”

 “I did not, dipshit! I simply took careful time to make sure I looked good for the cameras; I mean, one of them might catch my youthful innocence and make me a star in the other countries!”

 You laugh quietly to yourself under your breath, breaking apart from an amused Seungmin to give quick hugs to the slightly older men who you both called your friends. “I’m sure that all the cameras will be focused on you, Baek.”

 The blonde makes a noise of agreement, wildly waving his hands in the air. “Aha! See Yeollie, Y/N agrees!”

 “She’s humoring you, dumbass,” the tallest of your group deadpans, quirking an eyebrow in your direction, “we’ll talk more after this whole thing is over. I snuck in some deer meat from Nixvar, we can cook that and see if Jaebum finally got that old TV working.”

 Everyone hums at that, picturing the cooked deer meat and an old movie at Chanyeol’s place above the White Clover Bar. Seungmin and Baekhyun walk ahead, the blonde pestering the younger boy by poking at his sides and messing with his hair.

 “How was it today?” Chanyeol asks you under his breath as he walks beside you, having to glance down since you didn’t exactly come near his towering height. “I mean, with the crowds. Did everyone just...?”

 “Yeah, but when don’t they?” You grumble in response, watching your little brother with diligent eyes just in case someone tried anything. Ever since Seungmin had won last year’s games it was as if the world had turned against him, all because of the way he’d done it. “Who knows, maybe they’ll be too busy watching people slaughter each other this year to care for a hot minute.”

 The pink haired boy sighs at your sharp words, comfortingly resting one of his palms on your shoulder, leading you to the other two boys who’d found a clear spot in the crowd - likely since most of them had parted to make a good few feet between themselves and Seungmin. You go to stand beside your brother, Chanyeol going beside you while Baekhyun remains on the other side of the youngest.

 Then you hear it - the unmistakable sound of platform boots clacking against the stone stage in front of the courthouse. Any and all conversation falls silent to the stadium as the main host finally makes his appearance, his bouncy blonde hair cut a different style than last year’s games. A couple of shiny rings curl around his thin fingers, and the young boy is donning a black skirt that swung down to his knees alongside a frilly sort of red shirt with sleeves that encased his hands like paws.

 He saunters over to the microphone in the middle of the stage, tapping on it once to give it a quick test. “Ah, it’s working - good, good... in that case; welcome, welcome! As many of you know, I am Han Jisung, your favorite Radiation Games host and occasional interviewer! Today is Reaping day, where one male and one female contestant will be chosen to represent Chester in this year’s games. Now, for the ground rules: anyone is open to be chosen for the games, young or old, victor or not, it’s a fair game out here folks-”

 Twelve districts, twenty-four competitors - it was as if the world powers had truly taken the concept from The Hunger Games and made it their own, in a way. How... admirable.

 “Now, let’s start with the ladies!” Jisung hums brightly, leaning over to pick a single slip of paper from the giant glass bowl. He shuffles around for a moment, his tongue poking out from between his lips until he finally picks a name. Slowly, he unfolds the paper, and for a split second you can see the look of surprise and guilt flashing across his face. “O-oh! It looks as if the Reaping is becoming a fam-family tradition!”

 “Y/N Y/L/N, please come forward!”

 No. This couldn’t be happening.

 You were supposed to leave with Seungmin, Baekhyun, and Chanyeol. You were supposed to go have fun with your brother and best friends, eating deer meat and watching shitty movies all night while those who hadn’t fallen victim to the reaping partied in the bar below Chanyeol’s block.

 You weren’t supposed to be picked.

 “M-miss Y/N, please hurry along now-”

 “NO!” Seungmin screams from beside you, blocking the incoming Cybs from being able to reach you. His voice cracks as he shouts curses at everyone, going as far as to nearly lunge at a Cyb that tries to pull him away from your frozen body. “You fucking bastards already took Amber away from me, you’re not going to take my only other sister! I’ll fucking slaughter all of you dirty rats-”

 Baekhyun somehow manages to pull the furious boy away, though his eyes are wide in shock, too. Chanyeol gently pushes you forward to the waiting Cybs, but not before giving you a tight squeeze of reassurance. He’s saying goodbye.

 You let the men and women wearing radiation suits escort you to the front stage. You watch yourself on the screen above the stage as your feet subconsciously carry you to stand beside the waiting host.

 “-moving right along, let’s pick from the gentleman!”

 Who would take care of Seungmin? Sure he insisted that he would be just fine by himself most times, but he was still a kid in your eyes; though you supposed Baekhyun and Chanyeol would make sure to keep an eye on him in your place.

 “Byun Baekhyun, please come forward!”

 Another cry of outrage comes from Seungmin, and you're positive that you’ve let out a small noise of disbelief. For some reason, you torture yourself by watching as one of the men you called your best friend determinedly walks onto the stage, watching as his chest begins to rise and fall in waves of panic. Baekhyun shouldn’t be up here - you shouldn't be up here, waiting until you were forced to fight for your lives in an arena.

 “... no volunteers? Well then - give a warm round of applause to your contestants from Chester; Y/N Y/L/N and Byun Baekhyun! May the odds be ever in your favor!”

 From the looks of things, it was as if the odds were never in your favor.

[kattie309558514-blog]

Video To Audio Converter, Avi, Mpg To Mp3, Aac, Wav, Ogg And Wma.

Methods to convert AAC to APE online with AAC to APE Converter? APE , often known as Monkey's Audio, is a free lossless audio compression format together with theape file extension created by Matthew T. Ashland ape to aac converter in 2000. It's a highly competitive compression algorithm extensively used by Home windows customers principally. In contract to any lossy audio file like MP3 , OGG, WMA as well as ACC, APE does not lose knowledge info during the encoding process and due to this fact, it could actually create digital audio files that faithfully reproduce the original sound supply throughout playback. FLAC, ape to aac converter quick for Free Lossless Audio Codec, not only affords the same quality as the original audio file, however takes up a lot less space on your hard drive. Nevertheless, its restricted compatibiliy often push folks to convert FLAC to MP3 or different extra extensively-used audio format. Such inconveniences seem to be exaggerated for Mac users as Apple gadget cannot recognize nor play it. To help you out, we collect 6 FLAC converter for you to convert FLAC to Mac supported formats with none hassle. Repair difficulty in converting TIVO files to audio codecs. Added help to alter sample price and bit depth for output audio information. Whereas the primary purpose of an audio converter software is to convert audio from one format to a different, there are different features you must look for to better manipulate the audio. As an example, a program that may extract audio from video can prevent time as you don't have to make use of a separate program to do the same. When you're okay with good enough" music quality, in case your audio file doesn't have any music, or if you have to preserve disk space, use lossy audio compression. Most individuals actually cannot hear the distinction between lossy and lossless compression. Compress FLAC information to smaller measurement without dropping any quality. 5.Audio recorder :Lets you record any audio supply, similar to Internet radio streams, directly to a digital audio file, resembling the popular MP3 format. I used iDealshare VideoGo to convert APE information to MP3, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, WMA, M4A, Apple Lossless and and many others. Several handbook enhancements will be made to exported audio information, together with audio quality, channels, Sample Rate, Quantity and so on. Supports playback of all the audio recordsdata with the built-in participant to overview the impact. This text will describe a step by step guide on how one can break up CUE associated APE, FLAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, and etc album, podcast or compilation into separate audio tracks. Just simply download and have a attempt. There are many CUE Splitters accessible online, however, most of them are only suitable with Home windows. Usually, Mac users cannot discover a way to split CUE associated MP3, APE, WAV, FLAC, and many others. What's more, most of CUE Splitters support splitting only one or two sorts quite than almost all common audio information with CUE sheet. AAC is similar to MP3. It basically cuts out, or compresses, data that the human ear cannot choose up thereby making digital files smaller and extra easily managed and therefore faster to download. AAC is about half the size of MP3 however with higher quality. It's no less than one tenth the scale of CD digital knowledge. Apple are the largest customers of this format and when you've got an iPod or iPhone then you'll have come throughout this format as it's iTunes default audio format. Final Media Player additionally helps more than 40 audio file formats: AAC, AC3, ACT, AEA, AIFF, AMR, APC, APE, AU, CAF, CAFF, DTS, EAC3, FLAC, GSM, H261, H263, H264, IRCAM, M4A, MKA, MLP, MP2 , MP3, MPA, MPC, OFR, OGG, OPUS, PAF, PVF, QCP, RA, RM , SHN, SPX, TTA, VOC, VQF, W64, WAV , WMA, WV, XA and XWMA. In File Affiliation section you possibly can affiliate theAAC format with this player so it is going to be used as a default player to play AAC file in the future whenever you click on an AAC file. This association settings can be modified and re-associated anytime.

The app is straightforward to make use of: upload the original file, select your required format and quality, and obtain the output file to your pc. Nevertheless software program audio gamers and hardware digital audio gamers usually treat every audio file as a single playlist entry, which might make it troublesome to pick and identify the individual tracks. A common solution is to separate authentic audio file into a series of separate recordsdata, one per track, and we should want the Cue file for help. Simply drag & drop audio information or even audio folders to add into the conversion checklist. This WAV Converter integrates into Windows, so you possibly can convert your ape To aac Converter files to WAV right from the desktop. Right-click on on an APE file and select Convert to in the popup menu. The program also features command line option, by help of which you'll be able to handle your information from under some other application.

[kentcranford71-blog]

Be part of MP3, Merge MP3, Combine MP3

I am trying to merge mp3 audio files However not successful. If that's the case, there are many programs out there for Windows 10, and other platforms, that enable you to affix varied file formats together. More options like fast music video enhancing like video and audio conversion, player, compressor and recorder and so forth are additionally available. Every single day, numerous folks spare no effort to hunt a robust MP3 Joiner with the intention to be part of tons of MP3 clips into one for storage or playback or join songs together online or merge two mp3 information online. Good free audio enhancing software program will allow you to to supply superior music. • You may lower totally different videos and audios seamlessly. Step 4. Begin Merging audio recordsdata into one. Add one or multiple audio recordsdata to MixPad. You'll be able to lower one large file into components and join the video clips collectively quickly. Lower and be part of video recordsdata to AVI, MPEG, MOV, MP4, and FLV format. It might copy & save audio tag from the source files to the destination ones, MP3 Splitter is able to writing ID3v1, ID3v2 and APE MP3 tag. 2. Use the radio buttons to select both Computer audio or Cellphone call. Useful Audio Editor is a Multi-practical tool for modifying your audio information. If this ends in audio that is too quiet or in any other case unbalanced then the input file volumes can be set manually as described above. There is no limit on the variety of mp3 information you may be part of or merge. MP3 Merger : Audio Joiner 1.zero.four apk requires following permissions on your android system. Any separated audio recordsdata could be joined to the most well-liked audio formats as MP3, OGG, WMA, WAV, etc. It joins numerous sorts of audio clips into one giant file with out recompressing and high quality loss. This online audio merger requires no tech abilities, making the whole becoming a member of process simpler. 5. Allows so as to add fade in, fade out or both function to the audio observe. In the event you simply need to combine audio and video information, you might want to try a unique software. The layout is clean and welcoming, and the straightforward-to-navigate toolbar will be discovered atop the audio editor. Magic Audio Joiner is one app for mixing any audio file that runs on Windows, but it is a paid app. You could select to remain the unique audio formats or change to different audio codecs. The Audio Joiner Plus shouldn't be an advanced program and it can be used even by a newbie. It allows to chop an audio joiner download apk with an accurate beginning time and ending time in milliseconds. It supports lots of media file formats which embrace MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WAV, M4A and lots of different extra, so simply import the audio and re-create it immediately. In addition, you may choose the audio output format as nicely, change its configuration and even apply fundamental effects.

Mp3DirectCut is a quick and extensive audio editor and recorder for compressed mp3. Then press the Be part of the files in the record button to merge all of the MP3s within the selected folder collectively. MP3 Cutter Joiner Free has several options for customers to use when selecting the area of the audio. SoX is a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, etc.) command line utility that can convert numerous codecs of computer audio recordsdata in to other codecs. WinX Video Converter is a well known and all-rounded free video converter with video reducing and becoming a member of options. 1. Appropriate with a lot of the audio codecs. • Audio Joiner + Video Joiner: Wish to be part of audio recordsdata? Lastly, the appliance also can extract audio from video files and put it aside as an MP3 file which can be useful to some customers. => You may share your audio files in multiple audio formats. Cut up audio utilizing a CUE file CUE sheets can be utilized with all supported formats. You can also open an audio file in quicktime — Command-click on or proper-click it, point to Open With, and select QuickTime. HiFi MP3 Recorder Joiner builds mp3 Recorder, MP3 Joiner(MP3 merger) and ID3-Editor in one, you probably can makes excessive-prime quality recordings instantly out of your sound card and save the recording instantly into MP3 recordsdata. Subsequently, once you cut out a section of video and be part of the two left over segments collectively, the sound carries on being in synchronisation with the edited video. You may join information of different codecs and merge them into one. Besides combing audio recordsdata , the crossfade feature of makes the merged songs move one into one other seamlessly. For MP3 Merger, it doesn't matter if the audio recordsdata you're merging are available in a single or completely different codecs. There are times after we would want to merge an audio observe to its source video to have the ability to overlap the audio of the video file with one other audio. The software program is excessive for easy audio trimming or ringtone making Reside 9 audio editor isn't utterly free; a 30-day trial is accessible without paying. Luckily for you, the application has a Demux feature so you can simply separate audio from video and use the extracted video for mixing.Suggestions: Drag and drop the folder where the MP3 recordsdata are to this MP3 Joiner, for many who do not want to add recordsdata one after the opposite. Namely, the web MP3 Joiner Software program ranked in this listing is rigorously chosen by us. Choose anybody you fulfill at present. Audio Editor : Cut,Merge,Combine Extract Convert Audio 1.eleven apk requires following permissions in your android machine. All widespread audio codecs: MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, AC3, DTS, etc. So Free Audio Dub could are available helpful for iTunes recordsdata.

[alannamcleod65-blog]

Purchase Cheap Ape Flac Participant Lots From China Ape Flac Player Suppliers On Aliexpress.com

Learn how to convert APE to FLAC online with APE to FLAC Converter? Play FLAC on iPhone - It's really cool to benefit from the flawless high quality of FLAC on iPhone. Nonetheless, FLAC can't be opened on iPhone straight. Before enjoying FLAC on iPhone, you need to convert FLAC to compatible file codecs. One program you should utilize is the Apowersoft Free Online Video Converter for its nice convenience. Should you want an offline solution to transform FLAC, chances are you'll think about using Video Converter Studio that may modify recordsdata without shedding quality. Each of us might encounter problems when downloading audio tracks within the format of FLAC however it is incompatible with the participant. The reason being that the participant cannot decode FLAC. Importantly, with a view to decompress the FLAC files, we need to search for FLAC converter for converting FLAC to MP3, WAV and so forth. Under is a list of one of the best FLAC converter evaluate of 2018. We are going to speak about not only desktop programs but in addition online FLAC converter. Total Audio MP3 Converter converts APE to FLAC simply and shortly. The software helps more than ninety audio and video formats as enter, and converts to well-liked audio formats corresponding to AAC, AIFF, M4A, M4B, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA, and so forth. If you want to convert your FLAC audio file with great and high-quality results, then Wondershare FLAC Converter is the perfect converter software program for your concern. It stands out among different video converter packages with 30X instances sooner pace with out quality loss. In the event you usually visit video-hosting websites like YouTube, you'll love their one-click download, which allows you to download movies instantly for offline playback. MediaHuman Audio Converter has a simple and straightforward-to-use interface, it lets you drag and drop the audio information you need transformed immediately into this system, choose an output format, after which start the conversion. What's more, it's is designed to work properly with iTunes, if all of your songs are based mostly on a Mac, this can be a versatile and reliable converter.

Whereas I am unable to answer on error "resilience" capabilities of flac vs. ape, I have seen that wavpack compression is much less efficient that both flac and ape. There's an option to use the identical folder the place your source information (APE) are saved. Alternatively, you possibly can choose any folder on your computer (1). You have to have sufficient privileges to create files within the chosen folder, otherwise the program will not be able to avoid wasting converted files. Utilizing , it's easy to transform APE files to a variety of different codecs. fre:ac is a free audio converter with numerous popular audio formats and encoders, also it is a CD ripper for Mac OS, you not solely can load the FLAC audio files, can also import MP3, WMA, AAC, etc. At the same time, you can rip your audio CDs to MP3 or WMA files. What's the file identify of the mac program that needs installing? I am operating debian and might't discover anything in the repositories that appears applicable. Compression Ratio: the difference between uncompressed and compressed file, applies to Lossless only, ape to flac converter free download full version 32 bit the decrease - the better.

Added changing Wav (PCM 8, 16, 24, 32 bits, DSP, GSM, IMA ADPCM, MS ADPCM, AC3, MP3, MP2, OGG, A-LEGISLATION, u-LAW) to FLAC information. In the Open Media dialog, click on on the Add button and browse to your music file. Then click on Open. LL2MP3 is a frontend utility that converts flac, ape and wav audio information to mp3. Completely different from other lossless codecs like WAV, FLAC is error resistant. Faasoft CUE Splitter is designed for each Home windows users and Mac customers to separate CUE related audio file like break up MP3 CUE, split FLAC CUE, break up M4A CUE, break up APE CUE, split WAV CUE, Break up OGG CUE, MPC, WV, TAK, TTA, AMR, AAC, AIFF, AU, RA, and so on. With it, you'll never have trouble in the best way to play lengthy audio recordsdata. For transcription purposes, MP3 is essentially the most optimum selection, especially for long recordings. It's going to each scale back the dimensions of the file and in flip cut back the uploading time, when you select to upload it to our site for transcription. I'm curious as to why that you must downgrade lossless music as you'll be able to burn ape or falc on cd's also. Merge several APE information into one FLAC file: Click "Merge" button to hitch a number of APE files into one big FLAC file. Šta je krajnji rezultat: audio ili information disk? Jer, ako režeš audio CD, onda nema potrebe da konvertuješ ape u flac jer softver svakako na kraju pravi CD-A format iz WAV-a koji raspakuje iz flac-a. There are many CUE Splitters out there online, nonetheless, most of them are solely compatible with Home windows. Usually, Mac customers can't find a technique to break up CUE related MP3, APE, WAV, FLAC, etc. What's extra, most of CUE Splitters support splitting only one or two sorts fairly than almost all common audio recordsdata with CUE sheet. Hamster is a free audio converter that installs quickly, has a minimal interface, and isn't laborious to use. PowerISO will begin converting the files to APE format. You may see the detailed progress information when changing. Sometimes you could get huge APE or www.audio-transcoder.com FLAC files containing complete albums. These information could come with small CUE files having the identical identify. If you want to convert such FLAC to particular person MP3 tracks, just start AudioConverter Studio and open the CUE file as an alternative of the massive FLAC or APE. This system will acknowledge the tracks, convert them to particular person files and save data like title, artist, etc. to ID3 tags of the converted MP3s. Both ID3v1 and ID3v2 variations of tags are supported.

Common ape flac participant of Good Quality and at Inexpensive Prices You'll be able to Buy on AliExpress. I all the time feel like I ought to have something good so as to add to this discussion, but the main lossless codecs are all good choices. Zamzar is an internet audio converter service that supports most typical music and audio formats. Just upload FLAC file from your laptop or enter a URL to a web based file, after converting, it could actually output WAV, MP3 information etc. We didn't find results for: Convert APE To FLAC (On-line. Attempt the recommendations beneath or sort a brand new query above. Yahoo gives you a variety of services for little or no value. We're prepared to do this as a result of our promoting revenue. This additionally makes it attainable to offer certain companies and content which may in any other case be unavailable to you through Yahoo corporations.