#i wrote three and a bit a4 pages

[zaddyazula]

i finally got my english essay back and it got read out of the class and i get chocolate from my teacher!!!

[moonlightcrossesonyourbody]

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[daydreamgoddess14]

The Syndicate

MASTERLIST

Ted Lasso/Rebecca Welton, fluff & romance. S3 departure after the Amsterdam episode.

Prompt: All of AFC Richmond is shipping Ted & Rebecca ... before there’s even anything to ship yet.

~~~~~~~~~

April 2022

It's a habit by now. Every Friday, Will comes around and collects the subs, and Leslie maintains the book. It's been a while since anything new was added apart from people moving their dates. The book has claimed many wishful thinkers, many die-hard romantics, and even Roy. Once a week, Leslie sits with the book and checks for missed dates or special bets, which are certain not to happen, and he draws a neat pencil line through them. For over two years, he's kept this book going. It's looking pretty battered and bruised. The glitter Keeley had added has faded and mostly been rubbed off. The tin (more of a small safe now) sits and grows fatter and fatter, its winnings unclaimed. Everyone has had to review their timings at least once, even Beard. Some have added new dates three or four times. The lure of super weird, obscure, or just obscene bets has passed. Only a few of those remain. Leslie is pleased to be getting out the book this week - he gets to add Nate back into the fold. 

January 2020

Leslie Higgins watched another morning biscuit delivery arrive and braced for impact. Rebecca hated this biscuits with the Boss situation. She hated Ted Lasso, Leslie could see it in her eyes. He knew it well, she hated him with the same intensity. She was ferocious and venomous, but with one bite of those buttery biscuits each morning, she was a new woman. It was a week or so before the Gala, roughly a month into Ted's tenure, that Leslie first took note that Rebecca’s demeanour was beginning to… change (he absolutely daren’t say soften). He popped down to the stationary cupboard and got out a new A4 lined notebook. Innocent enough. He stole back up his office and opened up the fresh, crisp book. The Syndicate he wrote in the top centre of the first page. He got out a ruler and carefully drew a sharp pencil line all the way down the page on the left-hand side, leaving enough space for names. He added another two lines down the page. Then, he added the headers: name, date, description, and amount. He wrote his own name on the first line, along with the date. Under description, he wrote January 2021, and then in the amount column, he put £5.00. Then he put the book in his bottom desk drawer, under a stack of financial papers and a crisp £5 note in an old empty metal tin, and then he tried to forget about both items.  

Keeley wasn't quite sure what prompted it initially, but around the Gala and bonding with Rebecca, something started changing. She noticed Leslie watching Rebecca rather intently, and that makes her watch Leslie more intently. At first, she thinks the worst. Has Leslie truly got a crush on Rebecca? Impossible! Then, when she meets Julie, she's convinced that she got the wrong end of the stick. With 5 kids and a 30-year marriage, the Higgins' couldn't be more in love. He definitely doesn't have a crush. She leaves the odd thoughts to marinade in her mind, the Jamie situation weighing more heavily. When Rebecca offers her a job and a chance to deepen their friendship, Keeley grabs it with both hands.

"I saw Rupert in the pub the other day." Rebecca states over a cup of tea while they're sorting out Keeley’s contract.

"How did it go?" Leslie asks before Keeley can. 

"He challenged Ted to a darts game. Ted said that if he won, Rupert could choose the team for the next matches, but if he lost, he could never come to the owner's box again while I'm in charge." Leslie's cup practically vibrates off the saucer, Keeley frowns at the sound.

"And?"

"Ted won! It was wonderful!"

"Hmmm. Interesting." Leslie says into his teacup.

"Well, at least you won't have him creeping up on you for a bit!" Keeley says brightly. It's not until she and Leslie leave Rebecca to her afternoon meetings that Keeley has the chance to be alone with him. She follows him to his office, "Whatever you've got going on, I want in." She tells him, staring him down. Leslie lets out a strange choked sound. 

"I… I… don't know what you're talking about." He stutters. Keeley arches an eyebrow. 

"Alright, fine. There's a weekly Syndicate running on Rebecca and Ted. £5 a week for any date of your choosing plus specials if there's anything in particular you want to add." 

"Who else is in?"

"Coach Beard. Nate. Me. That's it for now."

"Beard? Interesting. Put me in, and I'll have a special as well, I'll go for…" She taps her finger to her lips, "March 2021. I give it a year. And my special is… he goes first, but she goes hard."

"Bold, I like it."

"What did the others go for?" She asks, looking over his shoulder as he digs the book out from its hiding place. 

"Beard has gone for the end of next season - May 2021. Nate has gone early�� - this Christmas coming, December 2020."

"Big range of dates there. Any specials?"

"Nothing wild, Beard put in £200 that we'll all find out from a paparazzi shot rather than from them."

"Fair. Could happen, for sure."

"Nate's special is that it first happens in the boot room."

"Eww. Smelly."

"Quite."

"Bet I can get us some more interested parties…" Keeley muses. 

"As long as we keep it quiet."

"Quiet is… not my middle name, but I'll do my best!" 

The next time Leslie gets the book out, it's been Keeley-fied. His hands come away covered in glitter, and there are feathers stuck to the front of the book. He's got three names to add - Bumbercatch, Isaac, and Mae from the pub have all collared him. He's going to need help with collecting the subs each week at this rate. He adds the dates they've requested from where he'd scribbled them on a post-it note and puts their £15 total into the kitty. 

May 2020

In April, he quits and leaves the book with Keeley. When he returns over a month later, just about the whole team has been added to the book, and Will has been appointed Debt Collector. Over the course of the next 7 months, every member of the club staff and team are in. Except Ted and Rebecca. The specials list has grown a little wild, and Leslie is not quite sure how he'd pay those out should any of them come true. There's well in excess of £10k in the tin. He's had to upgrade to a small safe. Every Friday, Will arrives with the weekly subs. They're easily putting in £250 a week - across 50 people, not including special bets. He's amazed that none of it has reached Rebecca and Ted yet. It's shortly after the first Truthbomb that Rebecca first approaches Keeley.

"So now that we're all good again…" She begins hopefully,

"Uhuh?" Keeley looks up from her phone. She's been propping Roy up on the decisions regarding his future. 

"What's the Syndicate?" Rebecca whispered. Keeley drops the phone. 

"Umm, I don't know? What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure. I've heard lots of people talking about it for ages now. It's not a cult, is it? Or do we have another curse?" Keeley's eyes are like saucers. 

"Noooo! Of course we don't have another curse. And I'm fairly sure we're not home to a cult either." She sips her tea. "But I've no idea what the Syndicate is." She lies.

December 2020

Nate is the first to fall. His eager date passes with no results. Unperturbed, he re-adds his name to the bottom of the list with a new date: April 2021. Nate's date did hold a lot of promise though - seeing Ted and Rebecca turn up on Leslie's doorstep singing Christmas songs evoked a flurry of bets and an optimism which carried them all through till the spring.

2021

If Sassy was a spanner in the works, Sam is the fly in the ointment. Keeley was beside herself with the knowledge that Rebecca had been sleeping with him. He'd been putting into the Syndicate! He'd chosen a date of late summer 2021, with a special bet stating that it would happen when Ted returned from his summer break in Kansas! The ending of the relationship, the second Truthbomb, and the promotion back into the Premier League led to a new outpouring of bets, which by summer had fizzled out again, and poor Sam had his date crossed out. He went for December 2021 for his next turn. 

With Ted's return from his summer break, he paid his usual visit to Rebecca - with biscuits.

"Hey boss, what's a Syndicate?" Rebecca froze with a biscuit halfway to her mouth. 

"It's ummm…  well t's a… umm… Oh Ted, I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I think it's like a lottery? So the more people who put into it, the better chance there is of winning."

"So it's just a lottery? The guys downstairs  are all just playing the lottery? They're millionaires. That don't seem quite right, Betty White."

"Maybe it's the thrill of the gamble?"

"I ain't an expert, boss, but wouldn't they be better goin' for horses? Or poker?" Rebecca shrugged. 

"Oohh! Maybe it's a team specific thing? Maybe they're betting on how the club will do next season?" She tapped the newspaper, one of the many which had them estimated to finish the season last in the table. 

"Hmmm, nah. I just had to take them to the sewer to get them to believe in us."

"You don't think? How many we'll win? Or score?" She suggests. Ted leans forwards, elbows on knees to get closer,

"Y'know, I heard somethin' about specials?" He says quietly. Rebecca gasped.

"Maybe they mean hat tricks or Jamie's hair changes?" She muses. He points excitedly, 

"Yeah! Yeah, yeah, boss! You got it!"

"We should tell them we want in."

"We should tell them we want in."

"Cos we're going to win the whole thing, Ted."

"We're gonna win the whole fucking thing. We are. And we want in on that Syndicate."

"Yes we fucking do." Once Trent has been sent off down to the locker room and Rebecca and Ted are alone with Leslie, they tag team him. 

"Put us down Higgy, we want in." Ted said solemnly. 

"You… what?!"

"We know about the Syndicate, Leslie. We want in." Rebecca said.

"You know about the Syndicate?"

"Yes, how many games we'll win, how many goals-"

"Where we'll finish, how many hairbands Jamie will get through?"

"And we want in. What is it, a fiver?" Leslie nods, dumbfounded. Ted hands him a ten pound note. 

"The boss don't carry cash so I'll get this week for us both."

"Thanks Ted. I'll get you back next week."

And so began the regular pattern of Ted usually adding in an extra fiver to cover Rebecca on the weeks she didn't have any cash, and vice versa. 

"Uhh what date did you want?"

"Date? Oh, the date we'll win the league?" Rebecca questioned. "I think I'll go for the last game of the season, is that still available?" Leslie nodded, still unable to find his voice.

"I'll go for the day before. We play our game on the Sunday but if other results go our way then we could win the day before?" Rebecca points, copying Ted's move from earlier.

"Ooh that's a good shout, Ted. Between us, we've got this."

"We sure do Doctor Who, high five!" They clash palms excitedly. 

"Yep, I think you're pretty well covered between you." Leslie agrees.

2022

The book had just dragged on into another year when Leslie once again noticed the shift between Rebecca and Ted. They'd seemingly gotten into a holding pattern based purely on friendship until the Amsterdam trip. The return journey had come to life with song after song led from the back of the bus. The smile had lit up Ted's eyes when Rebecca apologised for missing his messages. It had ignited something in their friendship which had them teetering on the edge and thus had the team in a similar way. 

"I want £200 on next weekend." Isaac slammed the cash onto Leslie's desk. 

"Is that in addition to your existing date or did you want to bring that forward?"

"Addition, I'm keepin' my date as a backup. No one's takin' that from me." Isaac said adamantly. A couple of days later, Jamie put down £500 on Ted falling hard for Rebecca during Henry’s visit. When Beard showed up the morning after he'd been in the pub with Ted and Henry, he was buzzing with excitement. 

"It was poetry, it's a sign! She called him right as the busker sang 'remember to let her into your heart'. It's gonna happen soon, man. I know it." He slapped £250 into the safe. "My bet is that Rebecca is already there."

"Coach, how exactly do you expect me to pay out for that? I'm not a mind reader?!"

"We can ask her afterwards."

"Afterwards," Leslie tsked and shook his head, "we'll see."

"I've got a plan for Manchester, my friend."

"No influencing the result! I've already had to ban Roy from bullying Ted into telling her."

"Ted's not there yet, man. Rebecca is. Hang on," he put down another £50, "Rebecca goes first but Ted goes hard."

"That's funny, Keeley had it the other way round 2 years ago."

"Long time ago, they've both changed."

"They have indeed. OK Coach, I'll allow it." Leslie added the lines to the book. 

April 2022

In Manchester, Keeley joins Trent at the hotel bar before movie night. 

"I ship them so hard, Trent. I'm fully invested."

"They're so easy to ship together, it's so obvious. There's talk in the locker room that Rebecca’s already there - care to comment?"

"Not sure about that, but I do think she's closer than Ted. Plus his mum turning up might have fucked things for the people who'd bet on this weekend."

"I know, talk about a cock block."

"Trent Crimm, I'm guessing you put this weekend?! You're so right, she is! Anyway, I heard that Beard has chosen a romcom for tonight. I'll ply Rebecca with some wine, Ted can do the whole 'just stretching my arm' bullshit and before you know it, the hotel room is a-rockin! I'll get you your win, babe!" They clinked their glasses together. 

Rebecca passed by the stained glass panel unnoticed, hovering just the other side until the glasses clinked and Keeley's giggles ran out around the bar. She joined them a few minutes later in the small function room they'd converted into a cinema, smiling at Ted. She needed to speak to him quickly. She cried at the end of the movie, she always did. Ted had covered her hand with his and given it a gentle squeeze. Once everyone had dispersed, she crept along the hotel corridor to his room and knocked gently on the door. It had been just over 2 years to the day since he'd desperately hoped it was Rebecca at his hotel door in Liverpool. He sure as hell hadn't been expecting her in Manchester. Fresh from the shower, he looked stressed and tired. She smiled apologetically. 

"May I come in?" He held the door open and stood to one side. "I overheard something this evening."

"Was it Colin and Isaac? Cos I heard them too."

"No, Keeley and Trent. Why, what did you hear?" Ted hesitated, gesturing to the chair across from the end of the bed. 

"They were talkin' about ships, and bets? I wasn't really listenin' so I'm not really sure-"

"Keeley and Trent were on about the same thing."

"Huh. Weird."

"Weird. What do you think it means? What did they say?" She pushed for more information, suspecting that she had the upper hand in terms of knowledge gained. 

"Colin was excited that he might win this weekend? But I don't see how, we can't win the league tomorrow."

"Ted. I don't think it's about the league."

"Well, what the heck else are we paying for each week?" Rebecca blushed. 

"I think… I think they're betting on… us." She said weakly. 

"Us? What the-, I'll go and put them so right on this, boss. That just ain't fair on you. I'll put a stop to this right now," he reached for his phone to call Beard and rally the team. She put her hand over the screen, 

"Jesus christ, they were right." She whispered. 

"Who? About what?" She can't help but stare, his hair falling onto his forehead, "Rebecca?" He all but murmurs. It's the first time she's heard him say her name like that, so softly, intimately. It sends a shockwave of heat through her body. 

"I've gone first. How did I not notice?"

"You've gone where first? Forgive me, Rebecca but I'm lost here."

"Nevermind, Ted. We'll talk about it another time. You should get some rest before the match. Big day tomorrow." She can't resist pushing his hair back, her hand moves entirely of its own accord. "Goodnight, Ted." She leaves the room, leaves him lost to his own thoughts.

The 3 hour drive back from Manchester the next day is wild. There's booze from somewhere and they all seem to fall out of the bus and into the club where they party happily together. Ted excuses himself, and while Rebecca is desperate to follow, she knows he needs to confront his mother alone. They'd spent much of the journey home unpacking Ted's thoughts on her arrival and interference. It's not until his final 'fuck you' to his mother that he sits and re-evaluates his situation. While he does so, he receives a message from Rebecca. 

You are loved here Ted, so loved. I hope you know that. 💜 It helps him decide what he wants to do next. He's not really surprised to see her the following morning. It’s early, but he knows the date and assumes that she does too. 

"Sorry Ted, I don't have one for you." He can see that it's not the whole truth, she's looking slightly off eye contact - barely noticeable.

"That's OK, I've got one." He can see the tension in her shoulders, the anxious clench of her fists. "I'm gonna stay. If you'll have me, once the season is over." If the relieved breath she lets out didn't knock him over, the force of her hug nearly does. Her hands are tight around him, clinging to him and the shake of her shoulders is a dead giveaway that she's crying. 

"Oh thank god for that, Ted. Thank fuck for that."

"I mean, I need more time with Henry, I want him to come here more and I need to spend the summer working that out with Michelle. But I ain't ready to give this up either." His words in her ear send a shiver through her and she leans further into him, burying her nose into his neck. When she speaks, her lips brush against his skin. 

"Whatever you need, whatever I can do, Ted. I'll do it." And suddenly, there it is. Oh. He feels everything all at once, all night he hadn’t been able to put a finger on why he needed to stay. Yes, the team and yes, winning the whole fucking thing but nothing seemed quite enough. There was something missing and he hadn't worked out what until it was in his arms, clinging to him. Until she was in his arms. She's why he needs to stay. 

"You sure you ain't got nothin' for me, Rebecca?" He asks. She lets go of him enough to look at him, glancing at his mouth. 

"The Syndicate is about us. The whole club are betting on us. Not whether we'll get together - they're way past that, they're on about when, how. There's not a single person in this whole place that doesn't think that we'll end up together."

"Does that include you? You said the whole place?" She flusters slightly before nodding. "They're saying that I'm already there."

"That so? Any insights on what they're sayin' 'bout me?"

"That you're not ready yet?" Her voice drops to a nervous whisper.

"Don't you wanna be the one to ask that  question?"

"Are you there yet, Ted?"

"Yeah I am, you helped catch me up." He smiles broadly and leans in to capture her lips in all fierce kiss. His arms tight around her waist mean she barely notices when her knees buckle. 

"I won." A voice behind Ted mumbles. "I WON, I fucking won! I said today - I knew it would be today!" Will throws the training shirts into the air and runs past them through Roy's office door and into the corridor. "I WON!"

"How much you think we just helped him win?"

"An absolute fortune if it's been going on as long as I think it has. Maybe around 30 grand?"

"I'm sorry it took me so long."

"Well, I appreciate you didn't hurry, Ted. And so does Will."

~~~~~~~~~

[evaxoxoblog]

8/2/24

happy birthday jeongin and jungwon <3 love them both. i finished TSH today. omfg. i think it was the best book I've ever read. donna tartt is out of this world. i wrote an a4 page about it as soon as i'd finished it to get my thoughts down, which i might post here. all i have to say for now is that if you are coming across this post and you haven't read it yet, please, please read it. it will change your life, likely for the better. similar to A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (please read this too- so so underrated), it has changed my way of thinking and i feel like a more developed human being after experiencing these stories.

on another topic, i have started listening to p1h recently and their music is so good. i really like emergency, countdown to love and 2nite from their newest album. i have also been listening to ateez for a while, but haven't really involved myself w the members, but they are all actually so funny. i like san and wooyoung (we have a similar way of laughing which is funny to me) atm. i want to learn more about them all though too. I also can't believe it has been three weeks since TWS debuted. I've been a fan since the day they debuted which is cool, and I'm really glad I found them early on; they are all so sweet. i love the upbeat vibe to their music and it really fills me with so much joy-- and the reaction to their mv!!!! oml they are the cutest. i love them all but my favourites are dohoon and youngjae.

I've also been watching more of WHAT? DOOR! which slaps as always. oh! and the newest ep of skzcode came out today. that was so funny- though they didn't include half their strengths in the sheet!! i can think of so many other positive things that make them unique and incredible, but I understand why they are being modest.

this post has fr turned into a music fan page, but I do want to write about my life as well. I feel like I am a nice person in general; I am good at school, and since I have become more confident with myself (getting out of my shitty friend group a year ago rlly sped that up too), I have noticed more people start to talk to me, and I hope it is because they are positively drawn to me. I remember when I was getting out of an anxiety-ish slump sort of thing, this one girl i'd never spoken to before wished me a happy birthday, and since then we have talked a lot and I would consider her more than an acquaintance at this point.

I really do hope this reaches any people who are in a similar place to where I was this time last year because I promise it will get better. it will be hard, but every bit of effort you put in will come back to you in really positive ways. This time last year I couldn't go to half of my classes because of my anxiety, but through help from others, and mostly my own mindset, I believe I am happier than I have ever been in the past few years. I have met so many people who have impacted me greatly, and I really feel so much more confident in myself. (I want to thank skz partly for this. they saved me in the last few months fr)

wow, i've written a lot today.

x eva

[weaverofthreads]

On the process of writing a novel...

Ok, so this began as a DM to a very dear friend who had said they were super excited to work on a novel of theirs that they'd abandoned for years, but they felt a bit lost when looking at the project again. They had "too many characters, too many intrigues" and they didn't "know how to create order" for all their ideas. They didn't know "what to keep, what to remove, what to change" and wanted to know if I had any tips.  

I began to reply in messages and then realised I needed to make a whole post out of it, so here it is! All 3k words of it. This is for you, darling! I hope it helps.

Things I found extremely helpful when planning my novel for NaNoWriMo this year, after also taking some time off from it.  

Most of this comes from Alicia Lidwina’s Four-Part article on her NaNoWriMo prep process, and setting up a writer’s notebook, for 2018. You can find the link to the first part here and I highly recommend you check out the whole series of articles for a more in-depth read. 

Content of this ‘essay’: 

Preparation, Groundwork, and Materials

Project 'Stats' & Overview  

Mood, Moodboards, and Key Imagery

Things to Consider, and Important Bullet Points

Get to Know Your Characters  

Chronological Order

Tangential and Preceding Events

Basic Premise, Plot Definition, Sub Plot Ideas  

List of Locations

Scenes

Chapter Outline

NaNo Plan

Additional Notes and Tips for Writing

Ok. Let's begin.  

First of all, I'm not saying that this is the only way to write or organise a novel. It can be tackled in as many ways as there are writers in the universe. This is just the method I used to get my ideas crystallised and organised. 

Preparation, Groundwork, and Materials.  

Take your preparation seriously. I bought a cheap but still nice A4 sketchbook with blank paper for maybe £2 at the local hobby store, and used it solely for the purposes of being my Novel Notebook. It doesn’t have to be a pretty, perfect, Aesthetic(TM) journal at all. Its function is to act as a route-guide through the process.  

I bought a cute sticker from Etsy and used it as the front cover design so that I liked the book and that it felt a little bit special, without being too intimidating to put a mark in. Then I left the very first page blank, and opened it to the first double page. On the left, I wrote ‘Contents’ and then moved on to the right and wrote ‘Project Stats and Overview’.  

I used a pen that was comfortable to write with, which for me was important. I’m a very tactile person, and having nice paper and pens (not necessarily fancy), made the process feel good.

Project Stats and Overview

This is the bare bones of the book, and includes details such as:

Project Working Title: (in my case it’s Weaver of Threads)

Targeted Wordcount: (to give yourself an idea of the scope, but it’s not necessary. For me it’s 50-100k)

Genre: (for me, fantasy)

Series: (will it be one book or more? For me, probably more than one, and at least two).  

Inspiration: (here you can jot down all sorts of things which inspire your world and your writing, and it can be anything. In my case, I began with “density and lore, and feeling of being grounded in a real world from LOTR and Tolkien.” And I went on to include other writers and novels in the fantasy genre, as well as elements from our own world, such as Mongolian herding communities and way of life, the history of the Persian Empire, and Renaissance Florence!).  

Project Timeline: Give yourself a structure, and be realistic. If you know you’re a slow writer who’s prone to distractions, be generous, but if you’re someone who responds well to short deadlines, tighten the time frame up a bit. I said “November 2020 - November 2021 for the whole manuscript” because I know I’m a procrastinator who gets dejected if they shoot past intense deadlines….

Editing Deadline: December 2021-January 2022. I know I can edit fairly quickly, so I made this one much shorter.  

Main Requirements Prior to Starting: What do you need to get sorted before you can get going? It could be purchasing a laptop or figuring out a magic system. In my case, it was the latter.  

What Happens in your novel?: This is not ‘what do your characters do?’, but what, in one sentence, actually happens in the book. For Fellowship of the Ring, you could say ‘a diverse group of people assemble and set off together with the goal of destroying the Ring’. LOADS more stuff actually takes place, obviously, but that’s probably the key thing that happens in that book. So, write the same thing for yours. I’m not going to tell you what happens in mine, because that would spoil it :).  

That took up the first A4 page of my writer’s notebook, and after that, I moved on to Mood and Key Imagery. 

Mood, Moodboards, and Key Imagery

On the left hand side of the page, I wrote down the words and concepts that sprang to mind when I thought of the novel itself. These were in no particular order or placement — just a random cloud of ideas in a rough column on the left hand side of the page — and they included: history, mystery, love, friendship, betrayal, nostalgic, homesick, sense of belonging, sense of place, searching, closeness, secrets… etc. etc.

Then on the right hand side, I wrote down five key words that I wanted to associate with the novel. These would form the ‘visual aesthetic’ in the background of my mind, and could be very easily expressed with a moodboard.

This same process (writing down words and creating a moodboard) could be achieved on a website like Pinterest. Take your time with it, find the right visual clues that really match the essence of your story, and create a final mood board with a limited number of panels that will be your novel’s ‘true north’ when it comes to feelings. If you're artistically inclined too, you could draw sketches of things relevant to your world too.  

While this stage is really important for solidifying the feeling and mood of the novel, don’t get stuck here and spend forever procrastinating on Pinterest or whatever. Once you’ve crystallised that ambiance, it’s time to move on. It’s also perfectly fine to come back to this at a later stage if you find yourself running out of inspiration or drifting a bit. Daydreaming, drawing, mood-board-ing are all great ways to work on your novel on days when you don’t feel like writing.

Things to Consider:

Alicia Lidwina asked herself some questions which helped me get past the ‘block’ that I’d created when thinking about the novel, and those were:

What scares me about this story? (in my case it was the scope of it - it was easy for me to get lost in over-thinking tiny details and get too overwhelmed to handle the big picture)

What will readers take away from it? (in my case, I hoped that it was a sense of friendship, people from desperate cultures finding common ground, and a sense of being grounded in a real, tangible world.

What is its selling point? (essentially, why would an agent/publisher choose yours over the next one in the pile?). Don’t be bashful about this. This is your notebook, so if you’re proud of a feature or aspect of the story, write it down. In my case, there is no ‘Big Bad come to destroy the world’, no Chosen One who is the only one who can stop it. There is an antagonist, but it’s on a personal scale, and that’s the selling point. It’s about two people going on a personal journey to uncover a lost piece of knowledge that’s arguably not all that world-changing on its own, but which means the world to them.  

What will be the three biggest issues in writing the first draft? Identify the three biggest roadblocks, and then take a bulldozer to them. For me, it was time management, getting mentally stuck, and the sheer darned effort of it becoming overwhelming!

Important Bullet Points  

These are five key facts about your novel, distilled from the sections above. They include: What’s at the heart of the story? How long is the story? What’s the narrative focus of the story? What are the maximum number of main characters? And the maximum number of supporting characters (this obviously doesn’t mean you can’t have other, less important characters too!)?  

Relationship between the two main characters is forefront

50-100k words

The novel’s focus is on the characters’ main goal (had to be more vague here so I didn't give it away)

2 main characters

3 supporting characters  

If you find you’ve got too many main characters (not necessarily a bad thing to have a lot of characters - look at A Song of Ice and Fire after all!), then figure out whose story you want to tell here. You can always write another story with other characters in a connected novel, or a sequel. You don’t have to tell everything all at the same time.  

Speaking of characters��� 

…Get to Know Your Main Characters:  

Here you can write character sheets for each of your main characters and cast. There are hundreds of these templates available on the internet, asking questions like ‘how would your character react to [insert event]?’ etc. to get to know your character. If this isn’t your thing (it isn’t mine) then at least write down some useful information about them. Rough height and weight, hair, eye and skin colour, general temperament, and any other defining physical or mental traits. 

Next came the Chronological Order

This does not have to represent the final order of the novel’s structure, nor the order in which you write the manuscript, but you need to know what happened within the timeline, and when, in order to be really clear when you’re telling the story. You can write the manuscript out of order, and you can tell the story with flashbacks or in a different order, but you need to have the underlying chronology securely in place so that your writing makes sense and so that you don’t confuse yourself or the readers in the process.  

Preceding and Tangential Events

These don’t need to be in the novel itself, but it may be important to define the sequence of events that also led up to the moment where we pick up your story, and what is happening elsewhere so that you can be sure of these too. In my case, I defined the events that concerned one of the supporting characters’ lives so that I knew how and why they were at the point they are in the story. It relates directly to - and heavily influences - the events of the novel, so I needed to have this person’s history nailed down as well, even though I don't tell it all explicitly in the book (because that would be unnecessary and a bit dull).  

Basic Premise, Plot Definition, and Sub-Plot Ideas (plus writing a synopsis)

Alicia Lidwina defined the story premise helpfully with the following formula:

Story Premise = Main Character + Desire + Obstacle

Pick a different colour for each of these components, and write a short paragraph to explain them in the context of the novel. Alicia Lidwina used the following:

[Main Character] “Harry, an orphan who didn’t know that he’s a wizard, [Desire] got invited into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and wanted to live his school life to its fullest, [Obstacle] but a certain Dark Lord who killed his parents is trying to rise into powers again and kill him in revenge.

Do this for your novel, and keep it really short.  

Plot Definition: This is even shorter than that! It’s a single sentence!! It’s most closely tied to the desire of the character, and lies at the heart of the story. It’s most likely a distilled version of the ‘what happens in the story’ from the Project Stats page, so check that to see what you wrote there.  

Sub Plot Ideas  

Five bullet points (no more) for things that are happening concurrently and which are related in some way to the main story. For me, Kae and Tomas are doing their research, so that’s the main theme, but beneath that there are a few other related incidents.

Writing a Synopsis - developed out of the points in this section, and includes:

Who the main character is

What the stakes are (the story premise is your guideline)

What the main plot line is

How the MC resolves the problem in the main plot line

How the book ends.

List of Locations  

Start with the main ones and add to it as you go on. Write a little bit of information about them so that you have something to refer back to. I also drew a big old map which I found very helpful and also really fun to do.

List of Scenes

It’s very important to map out every single scene that happens in the novel. Use your timeline to help with this, but remember a scene is not necessarily a chapter. You can have more than one scene within a chapter, but try not to have too many.  

I used small post-it notes (sticky notes) and wrote down things like “M joins K’s clan at the fire and K learns about magic” and “K studies at Citadel, intro to Citadel, magic, and characters” as separate scenes. Once you’ve written down everything that is going to happen (this will take some time! Get a drink and some snacks ready, and go slow), you can stick them into your notebook in the order you’d like to tell the story. Some chapters may have just one scene, while others may have two or three. I didn’t have more than two in any of my chapters, and actually ended up splitting some scenes that I’d made too vague in this section into more chapters. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but it will form a road map.  

Additions and Notes:  

I left a section of the Scene Outline bit of the notebook blank for things to add in as I went along. I haven’t used it yet, but I might.  

Chapter Outline

I arranged the scenes into the chapters already by sticking them in order, but you could do a chapter outline separately after this. It’s up to you. 

NaNoWriMo plan:  

I did this back in October, and wrote down the main goal for nanoprep, which was to finish the background info. Breaking that down further, I listed - magic (how does it work exactly), geography, and politics. 

After that, it was just a case of writing the 1667 words a day. *spoilers, I got distracted and didn’t do NaNo this year* . What I should have done, was break it up into chunks and write down my goals so that I had something tangible to use as a road map, and I will be doing that now for the novel as I take it up again outside of NaNo. Having check boxes and manageable goals really works for me. Find what will work for you, and if it turns out not to, adapt!

Some final pointers and tips:

Set regular goals for yourself. Whether you work by saying ‘I’ll write 1000 words a day’ or ‘I’ll write something every day’, make a structure for yourself. If you slip and miss a day, week, or month (I didn’t meet NaNo this year because I chose to work on another project instead *slaps forehead*), don’t beat yourself up. Writing is a craft and it takes a long time and a lot of discipline to master a craft.  

Your first draft does not have to be good. At all. Your first draft is just words on paper. A first draft is the block of marble taken from the quarry, and subsequent edits and reworking is the process of carving the sculpture itself. The editing that is done by the publisher or the professional you employ to edit it for you later, is the final polishing. Don’t be demoralised if the block of marble seems very rough when it first lands in your studio. That’s ok!  

Take regular breaks. Writing is hard work, and most people can’t concentrate on something successfully for longer than 55 min's, and if you’re doing that, you’re already doing really well. Personally, I’m at 15-20 on a good day. Write in little sprints of ten minutes or so, and then get up and stretch, look out the window, maybe leave the room, come back in with a fresh approach.  

Stretch your hands, and wear wrist braces when you work. Seriously. I gave myself tendinitis on my first major project, and couldn’t use either hand properly for weeks. The ones I have are these, and they allow me to work safely for much longer.  

Keep hydrated. Have a bottle of water on the desk in front of you between your arms as you type and sip it, otherwise you’ll forget. 2 litres a day is usually recommended, but know your body and drink accordingly.  

Treat yourself. Whether that’s something as simple as a decadent hot chocolate after your first chapter/chunk/sprint is done, or a new notebook or a pen or that sticker set you wanted on Etsy or literally anything nice, reward yourself for the hard work you’ve put in, with tangible things you can look at or experience and say ‘I have that because I did the work’. It’ll help with your sense of achievement, especially if the project is a long one.  

Join a local writer’s group for feedback. With the current Covid-19 chaos, this is probably not possible right now, but getting constructive feedback on your work from someone who hasn’t been cocooned in the project in the way you are, but who respects you as a writer and wants to help you grow, will be invaluable. It’s too easy to exist in a little isolated bubble and think you’re doing ok, when in reality you could be creating bad habits which will be difficult to break later. By these, I mean things like ‘filler words’ you don’t realise you use, or other pit-falls it’s easy to tumble into when you can’t see the wood for the trees…It’s intimidating, and it might take some courage to work up and do, but I promise it’ll help you grow. You don’t have to do what the people suggest, but it’s great to get outside opinions all the same.

Submit work to writing competitions. This will help with showing agents and publishers later down the line that you’re not only committed, but hopefully talented, and will help you to push yourself. Use the world of your novel for the setting, and get to know it by writing short stories on the competition’s theme set there.  

Read. Read the writers you admire, and read them ‘actively’ - figure out exactly what it is about ‘that’ sentence that made you shiver, and use the same techniques in your own work (don’t plagiarise, obviously, but if it was alliteration that made the sentence work so well, use it yourself! Perhaps it was the metre of the line? Great, now you know a rhythm that will drive a sentence forward or slow it down etc.)

Enjoy it. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, it’ll show in the work. Take a step back if you start floundering, and ‘interview’ yourself about why it’s not fun any more. Refer back to the sections in the notebook that helped to clarify the plot/process, and see if you’ve wandered away from them. Make yourself answer questions like: ‘What is the main reason I don’t want to do this?’ ‘What is the character’s motivation?’ ‘Should I scrap this section?’ (don’t delete it, but cut and paste it into another ‘scraps’ document, and then start afresh from the last place you were happy with. Nothing is wasted - it all goes into building the world and getting to know the characters, even if it doesn’t get explicitly told in the finished product, so don’t be afraid to do that last bit).  

Good luck!

I hope you found this helpful, and if you have any questions or things you’d like to add to this, please feel free to send me an ask here on Tumblr.

If you’re a new writer hoping to get an agent or publisher, you might also find this post on ‘talking to a published author’ helpful or interesting.

If you would like to keep up to date with my own novel’s progress, you can follow me here on Tumblr, as well as on my writing Instagram @rnpeacock

[sunscreenstudies]

hey ik this is random but I was scrolling thru the leaving cert tag and saw your post abt your results. Firstly congrats (even if it is 3 years late haha), secondly I’m currently in 6th year and was wondering if I could ask for some English advice? I’m looking to go up a grade (h3->h2) and was wondering if you have any particular tips for studying english, the exam, technique, or for literally anything relevant to the subject. There’s no pressure to answer this, ty either way :)))

Hey! Thank you so much for the ask and i am so sorry i’ve only gotten round to it now XD

LC English tips below!

Okay so it’s been a while since I did the LC but if things are more or less the same, then you’ve got your three texts to answer a question on.

Tip #1: Even though there is an awful lot to learn, you just need to remember key words, and you’ll sail through! 

In the comparative, you need to compare your texts in every. single. paragraph. You could write a fantastic essay, but if you don’t say “In comparison to this…” “Text 2 however differs from this…” “Similarly…” “The two texts are different in the sense that…” etc. you will get zero marks at all.

When answering your poetry question, you need to keep referring to the style of the poet. Every past poetry question can be broken down into two simple questions: What did the poet write about? and how did they say it? If you can answer both these questions on every poem you learn, you’ll do great! 

Also, do not learn any more than 5 poems per poet and don’t learn any more than 5 poets to begin with. This covers you completely no matter who appears on the day!

Tip #2: Please please pleaseee remember that for the comphrehension section, you must answer one question A and one question B from two different texts! If you answer from the same text you will get 0 and worse than that, this section is worth 12.5% of your total paper which means you will be down an entire grade immediately.

The length of your answer needs to correspond to the marks going for that question. In question A you usually have three parts, worth 15m, 15m, and 20m. Your 20 mark answer must be longer than your 15 mark questions.

For every 5 marks a question is worth, you need 1 A4-page pararaph. Unless you’ve got tiny writing, this is usually 5 to 7 lines of the page.

Your teacher has undoubtedly told you all about timing and “don’t spend any longer than 40 minutes on your question A” and yea they have a point, to an extent. I spent about an hour answering my question A and then sailed through question B because for me, I found the second question a lot easier to answer. Don’t panic if you don’t stick to the “recommended time” because every single person is different and what you find easy might be difficult for someone else.

In saying that, if you are spending loadsss of time on one particular section and you can feel the clock ticking, then move the heck on. Take a deep breath, leave a blank page for yourself to come back to that question later, and start your next part. Every question has a finite amount of marks, so no matter how brilliant your 20 mark answer is, you can only ever get 20 marks for it, and if that answer came at the expense of not getting question B done at all, then you’re down a grade already.

Tip #3: They want your opinion. Let me repeat that. They want your opinion. No matter what the heck they ask you, whether it’s about poetry or your novel or a Shakespearean text, the examiner will be checking to see what you thought of the text. I know firsthand how weird writing things like “In my opion...” or “I believe that...” but this is how you get the marks. Don’t lose the H2 you’re aiming for cause you’re feeling a bit awkward. After the exam, that feeling will never matter again, but your grade will!

Link every single paragraph in every single answer. This doesn’t have to be complicated, you don’t even need to write an entire sentence. Just start every new paragraph with phrases like “However...” or  “Therefore...” or “In contrast to this...”. If you don’t link your paragraphs, the examiner will think that you don’t know what you’re talking about and that you have no opinion of your own (see Tip #3) so use those joining phrases!

Tip #4: For that letter/article/diary entry question B, make sure that whatever part of it you answer, you know the layout for that style. Reports must have a title, introduction, work carried out, findings, suggestions, recommendations, and conclusion sections. Essays need to have a clear introduction, 5+ paragraphs, and closing. Even diary entries should begin with ‘Dear Diary’ which physically causes me pain to write, but it’s what gets you the marks!

Letters are the most asked question B but the most diffuclt to get good marks in. First things first: Figure out if it’s formal or informal. Formal will be editors, principals, government, or anyone that you would address as “sir” or “ma’am” in real life. Informal will be your friends, close family members, penpals, or anyone you’d hug goodbye and laugh with in real life.

Formal letters begin with your own name in the right hand corner of the page, with your own address directly below it. Skip a line, and then write the date below it, always in the format of “01 January 2020″ and be sure to check the question for any hint about what this date should be. If you’re writing a letter to your boss asking about organising a staff barbarcue for staff morale, then you wouldn’t date it in the middle of December, right? Sign off with something professional like “Kind regards” or “Thank you for your time”

Informal letters begin with your own address on the top right-hand corner of the page but do not write your name! It’s an informal letter to your friend; they know who you are.  Skip a line, and then write the date below it, always in the format of “01 January 2020″ and pay attention to the time of year again. Sign off with something casual like “see you later!” or “talk soon!”

Tip #5: Section 2′s composing section is worth an entire 25% of your paper. If you want to get a good grade, you need to get a good grade in this. If you’re aiming for a H2, then you need to get a H2 in this section minimum.

Your essay  should be between 4 to 6 pages, or 1000 to 1250 words. At least.

Always open with a quote, a rhetorical question, or a shocking statistic. I went online the night before my Paper One exam, and wrote down 10 quotes from well-known people about the most popular topics in life, eg. Education, Love, Money, Travelling, Death, Youth & Aging, etc. and just learnt them off in half an hour. I ended up using three of them on the day, and you have no idea the relief you feel when you’re guaranteed that at least one thing in your composition will get you marks!

Take an entire A4 page and plan your essay before you start. Not only is it just common sense and super helpful to get all your ideas down before you forget them, but if you run out of time for whatever reason, then the examiner will be able to see what you were planning to write, and will give you an extra mark or two. Your plan doens’t have to be complicated and you definitely shouldn’t spend any longer than 5 minutes on it. Just throw down a few words, organise them based on paragraph, and then start writing.

And finally (i’m so sorry that you had to read all that) remain calm! No matter what happens, whether you get a H1 or a H7, as long as you do your best then no one can say anything to you! You are more than your grade and you are more than some English exam that won’t matter in ten years anyway. Stay calm, always put your mental and physical health first, and remember that this paper is not the end all be all of anything. You’ve got this.

[myhoneststudyblr]

Introduction

With mocks all over now and the run up for GCSEs well underway in my school and many others, it’s got me thinking about last year when I was in this position like all the year 11s this year. I remember it being such a stressful and quite obscure thing because I had never done external exams before and I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought I would share some of my own experiences and advice and maybe quash some myths. I hope this will help and if anyone has anymore advice or specific questions feel free to message me or add a comment below.

Also while I will be focusing on GCSEs because they are exams that I have experience with, a lot of this advice will apply to other exams so don’t be put off!

*disclaimer*

these are just my own experiences with GCSEs and therefore are by no means universal. I have tried to draw from the experiences of friends and other people I know as well but everybody is unique so not everyone is going to be the same. BECAUSE OF THIS, not all of the advice will suit you and the way you learn. But I would suggest that you try at least a few of the tips just to see if it works.

Mocks - What do I do with them?

By this point, I think everyone will have done their GCSE mocks and probably have their grades back for them. Mocks were a very stressful experience for me because I hurt my hand literally the night before my first exam so I could barely write and I was in a lot of pain for the whole week of doing them. Because of this, I got very very stressed and then started to get worried that the same thing would happen in my GCSEs.

This leads me into my first point mocks are not the real thing: they are very much a trial run and I would say that nothing can really compare to the real exams. By the time you get to your second or third actual GCSE exam you reach a point where you don’t even think about the actual process of all the stuff you have to do before the exam because you are so focussed on the information. Furthermore, if you get grades that you are disappointed with, try not to be worried by that because they, in the grand scheme of things, do not matter

Do - learn from where you went wrong

Don’t - see a mock grade and get stressed out that you are going to fail the whole subject at GCSE

I know this is very easy to say but genuinely lots of people I know went up at least one grade from their mocks. Your mock grade is not an iron clad prediction of what you will get at GCSE

Now that you have got your grade, what do you do with the exam???

First, all of my teachers gave us back the paper to look through and then went through the mark scheme for each questions. THIS WAS SO SO HELPFUL!

If you get the paper, and you get a bad grade or one that is lower than what you were expecting, this is what I would you suggest you do:

Take a deep breath

Remember that this is only your mock grade not the final thing

Resolve yourself to actually learn from this

Read through the paper: did you make a silly mistakes? Did you keep making the same mistakes? Was there a particular question and topic that you lost lots of marks on?

Make notes on the mistakes

Ask the teacher to either give you the mark scheme or through the paper with you - I personally found this really useful because a lot of the time you can use the mark scheme to make notes for each topic and write processes, definitions, etc, using exactly what they want

Make a list of the topics that you found particularly difficult so that these can be your priority for revision

Key point - use your mocks as the spring board for your revision. They are there to point out any weak areas of your knowledge.

Pre-Study Leave Revision - “I haven’t done anything!”

After mocks I planned to get very serious with revision. I was going to dedicate 5 hours a week for all my revision during school time. In the Easter holidays i was going to stick to my revision timetable and I was going to do 6 hours a day. I was going to finish all of my notes for all of my subjects by the end of the Easter holidays.

I did not manage to do ANY OF THAT

My biggest advice for revision before study leave is to give yourself a break. Remember that you are still in school and are in probably the most stressful school year you’ve had yet.

You need to prioritise your studying and use your time wisely rather than put impossible standards on yourself which only make you more stressed when you can’t achieve them.

What should your priorities be:

Do you have any exams before study leave starts? If so, dedicate a little bit of time each weekend to revise that. For me, these were my German and French oral exams and these were the exams people in my school got most stressed about so make sure you’ve had plenty of practise

HOMEWORK!!! This may seem odd because at this point you may be thinking that your teachers shouldn’t be giving you homework and should just let you revise, but actually the homework they give, in my experience, can be really helpful. It is basically revision but you also know that someone is probably going to check whether you’ve done it so you’re more likely to actually do it

If you have time, but DON’T stress yourself trying to make time, do some past papers or make some notes

Revision Techniques: Past Papers vs Notes

Which method is better?

Honestly, neither. In fact you need to use a mixture of both to get the best out of your revision.

Note Taking

Pros:

writing out information is a good way to learn it

you need to know the information at least vaguely to properly be able to do past papers

it’s more studyblr aesthetic

Cons:

it’s very time consuming

you could be focusing more on making the notes look pretty than actually absorbing the information

there is the danger that you could spend so much time learning the information that you don’t actually have time to practise exam technique

Past Papers

Pros:

exam technique and learning to recognise what the question is asking for is really really important

you need to be able to practise doing the papers under timed conditions

you can start to see trends in the types of questions that they put on the papers

Cons:

they’re pretty difficult to do if you don’t know the information

sometimes it can feel like you are just answering questions rather than actually learning and revising

it’s a lot harder to refer back to the past papers to check information

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both so you can’t just rely on one method to get you through exams. here’s how I combined the two to maximise my revision:

I downloaded/printed off the specification for each of my subjects

I went through all of my class notes to see if there were any gaps in my class notes compared to the specification - if there were I would use my textbooks to make notes on it

Go through the specification again. Rank (eg through traffic light colours) each sub-topic on how confident you feel with it. [note: think carefully about this one and actually be honest with yourself. It’s very easy to just think you don’t know anything and make it all red- but in reality you are going to know quite a lot)

Make notes on your worst topics. And try to make notes in a way that is actually constructive and lays it out in a way that you can conceptualise it more. For example, in chemistry, I just could not ‘rates of reaction’ to click. It was one of the easiest topics but for some reason I could never answer the questions right so I make a mind map (before I had just written bullet points) and condensed my notes to one A4 page so I could refer to one the most important pieces of information.

Once you have finished making notes on your worst topics, do two past papers without any notes

Go through the past papers completely with the mark scheme. In a different colour pen to the one you wrote with, actually write the answers from the mark scheme on the past papers

Then, make your notes for the topics from the past paper mark schemes. For example, in biology, which has loads of content to learn, I would write processes, such as protein synthesis and generic experiments, using all of the key words given in the mark scheme. This meant that I always would hit all the key marks

Repeat this for each past paper you do and eventually you will see that you are no longer losing marks

Why this works:

You are making sure you know enough before starting the past papers

You are practising exam technique

You are making notes on the gaps in your knowledge using exactly what examiners want- which means lots of marks

Because you are doing lots of past papers, you can start to see themes and trends in past papers and the types questions that come up all the time

Study Leave

before my study leave, I didn’t think I would get much work done because I had been so bad at doing work and focusing on revision In half term and Easter but here’s a little bit of reassurance if you are thinking along the same lines as I was: study leave is completely different to a half term

I’m not entirely sure what exactly makes it so different but for me and pretty much everyone I know, it wasn’t actually that difficult to revise and stay focused during study leave. Maybe it’s because all you really have to think about are GCSEs or maybe it’s the sort of adrenaline of exam season but I was able to be more focused than I have ever been before.

Here’s my tips to help you:

Stay off your phone: you can either use an app like forest to make sure you stay off your phone during revision time or just turn it off completely

Prioritise your study schedule: there is no point studying for a biology exam that you have in three weeks if you have a history exam this week

Prioritise your studying: there is no point studying a topic that you already know like the palm of your hand if there are three other topics that you are not sure on

Stay hydrated and well fed: have healthy study snacks and lots of water. Also don’t feel bad if you need some more unhealthy snacks As a treat after exams or after finishing a particularly long day

Get a good night sleep as often as possible: taking GCSEs is extremely tiring. I can’t tell you the number of times I came home after a long day or week of exams and just completely wiped out. So it’s really important to sleep as much as possible even though I know pulling that all nighter is very tempting

Lean on your friends and others in your year: everyone is going through the same thing and there is also going to be someone who can help you. I found GCSEs to be one of the most uniting experiences in my school life

Summary

Use mocks to find the gaps in your knowledge

Before study leave, don’t set unrealistic revision goals, instead focus on completing homework

During study leave, use a mixture of notes taking and past papers to revise

Use past paper marks schemes to guide your notes

Prioritise your studying during study leave

Sleep well and stayed healthy

I hope this was helpful and if anyone has any other questions or more tips feel free to reblog or send me an ask/message

- Sophie x

[mcrmadness]

Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the “Alleine in der Nacht” die ärzte fan comic.

A few weeks ago I posted this comic:

This post is yet again just another drawing behind-the-scenes post but You can go and reblog the original post here.

And as always, all my ramblings are under the cut!

This one was relatively easy to do because I just woke up one morning and internally died from laughter because this idea just happened like a random pop up window in my brain. I wrote it down to my phone notes and later on also into my sketchbook:

I was laughing out loud when I was drawing those images, Bela’s face still is cracking me up :D And because I’m yet again trilingual with my comics, there’s only one word in my mother tongue and it’s: Bela laulaa = Bela sings.

And other fans might recognize the lyrics of the song, I needed to write them down in order to decide which ones would fit the comic the best.

This one is then again me trying to see how it will fit on a A4 paper. Originally I saw it in my head more like a short, regular comic strip with 3 panels but somehow I couldn’t get it to fit into 3 panels. And 4 panels was too many in a row so I decided to go for a full page then. That caused bits of trouble to me because I normally don’t draw the comic book faces THAT big and it’s surprisingly hard to draw them in bigger scale. (With pencil drawings it’s the opposite, the bigger the better. It’s much easier to draw an eye the size of a finger instead of a size of a tip of a needle.)

Here’s the first sketch! Just the shapes to see how and what I need to draw. Sorry for the awful photo quality again, my phone’s camera has really gotten really bad after these 3 years of use...

Anyhow, the third panel caused me some troubles because I knew how I wanted Bela’s arms and hands to be but I didn’t see them that good in my head so what I did next was to try different postures into my sketchbook:

I also tried this foreshortening technique I saw in a video of after a Tumblr post, even tho I don’t find that too hard to do myself anymore but it was still interesting and can really help making the eye and brain to see the image in 3D. So here I finally figured that I wanted Bela to have is arms like he was singing something very theatrically. I think it turned out pretty good.

Next I struggled with the bedsheets and I figured that I am a bit too good at blocking out information when I draw because I tried to draw unmade beds from reference photos and I’m able to follow a line but also able to completely not see any other lines around the line I’m following. Like I’d often follow a line to somewhere and suddenly notice that wtf there’s SO MUCH MORE lines all over the place in the photo but I just did not see them.

^Here’s two pages in my other sketchbook that I got for the comic stuff especially because the paper is actually white. The bigger sketchbook has light yellow tint to the paper so it can mess up with the colors when I need to try out and look for perfect colors from the colored pencils. (This sketchbook is also smaller aka A5 because Derwent sketchbooks are expensive but this was the only A5 one with a bit grainy paper in white. The A4 one is cheaper and from Mont Marte.)

After a while I was done with the besheet and the rest of the second sketch. I don’t have a photo of the comic with just the lineart, only a photo where the first panel is already colored and now I actually need to talk about the coloring.

That caused me lots of trouble because I really love playing with lights and shadows in everything (drawing, photographing... everything) and I do know how to do the night effect in black and white, but I have only once before done that with colors and it’s never that easy. Plus that one was my first comic when I started drawing again in 2018 and it was not that good to begin with.

I run some tests with the pencils, as well as some shading tests:

Käsi = hand, iho = skin. I use Derwent Flesh Pink (I have a 72 set of Derwent Watercolour pencils) for the skin color and was then trying out other colors to see which one would look the best for shading. It was actually really difficult to do and my sister suggested that I’d use only cold colors but like... how do you use cold colors on a skin without making the character look dead? :D

I imagined that there’s a moon shining in from a window that would be behind the “camera”. I almost ruined the first panel because I wasn’t exactly sure what was I even doing and what did I want from the colors:

Here’s the lineart and almost finished first panel in colors. I really liked the lineart and this would have looked so nice in black and white too, maybe even better. But I just saw that blue background so strongly in my mind that I just had to go for it.

The first panel was really difficult to do like I said and I almost ruined it at some point. But it also taught me something because with the rest of the panels I knew to start with the skincolors and end with the black (I started the first panel with black, I think... kids, never do that, always start with the light colors! :D) and I think the last panel is the best what comes to the colors in the final comic. I also added light blue here and there to make it look more like the colors of a moon at night:

I’m actually very happy with all of the other colors in this panel! It also reminds me of a book I had and used to read as a child. It was about this girl that went to an appendix surgery and all the images were drawn with either colored pencils, pastels or crayons and it looked grainy the exact same way as this one too. It also had lots of red and orange and brown colors in it. (I wonder if I still have the book here...)

Then there’s also the title and “Das Ende”. Originally I was going to do the late 80s logo they have e.g. on the 80s live vhs/dvd but then I just saw another post in my dä blog’s queue and I just needed to do this logo instead!

I had just a couple of weeks prior ordered a pack of white Sakura Gelly Roll pens and needed to test what would make the best compination and with which black!

I also had bought a white paint pen but it’s useless. As you see, it just looks grey after it dries and it just... doesn’t look nice. Plus it takes so much time to dry AND it’s extremely messy and I have paint more in my hands and a puddle on the paper but barely none where it should be. So my choice for the logo was to use either Pigma Microns or Promarkers (I think I chose the latter) and the thickest Gelly Roll aka 10. This was the result:

And I’m actually super happy about how it came out! Couldn’t do that good looking spots on the letters because can’t make splashes with a gel pen so I did a few bigger ones here and there and then just poked everywhere with the pen to make it look more random. You can actually see how it’s slightly whiter than the paper if you look closely, but it’s not too strongly whiter so it looks pretty nice like this.

So, this was less work than the “Widumihei” one but it was also an interesting piece to draw. And I think I have now this comic drawing more freshly in mind so that drawing the next ones (there’s three waiting for sketching already) will be much easier as well :)

[falselyprofound]

So... 2020, huh?

Saying it was rough is an understatement. But also, it’s December 31st, there’s three hours left in the year, and I am far too tired to find the words that carry the proper amount of weight to describe... whatever all that was.

That said, I’m going to try my hardest not to write it off. It was a difficult year, but as with any NYE, taking a step back to think about the things I did accomplish helps keep me sane. Makes me think I’m still moving forward.

So, without further ado...

The World is Weird got nominated for an AGS award! I stayed up until about five am watching the awards ceremony, timezones and Australian wifi be damned. Good times, good times.

Made myself a website! It’s still a little bare-bones but it shows off some of my art and game projects.

Made an OC ask blog! Given how this year went, I very much did not have the mental headspace for writing out any of the comics I’ve been planning. But it is genuinely so nice to have a place to post small tidbits here and there. (Big thanks to everyone who’s sent in asks! I have a few more answers in the works, but feel free to send in more stuff if u feel so inclined)

Finished storyboarding the first act of Buy-r-Die. While that doesn’t sound all that impressive, the game’s had several drastic presentation overhauls this year. I’ve finally settled on something I like - sort of a mix between visual novel and motion comic - and personally I think it adds a lot to the more action-y scenes! I can’t show too much off just yet, but I’m really excited with how things are progressing. In the meantime, the dev log is up on the AGS forums.

Illustrated, wrote, and programmed like half a visual novel for Art Fight. I’ve been chipping away at it in my own time since the fight ended, and while I’ve still got quite a bit of work to do on Spice’s side I’d say it’s coming along p well. Most of the post-fight adjustments aren’t up on GameJolt yet, but you can play the original prototype and read the devlog over here.

Speaking of Art Fight, I earned 1443.62 points this year! That’s about triple the amount of art I did over the past few fights combined. Not bad, considering I had to take two weeks off for an elective.

I also drew some much-needed reference sheets for (most of) my main OCs. One day I’ll update Clarissa’s art. One day.

Played a lot of D&D. Like... a lot. Not all of it turned out to be good, and sadly a lot of games died out due to COVID and/or uni scheduling. But Mel finally escaped her vacation from hell, Sloane finally made it to the town of Barovia, Maya avoided starting an international incident, and I finally managed to drop some Lavinia lore that i’ve been sitting on for four years. Delicious drama.

Finally had a chance to run Monster of the Week! My first attempt was... not all that great, mostly because I was trying to write a scenario from scratch without really understanding the rules. But I’ve now moved on to Damn Dirty Apes, and am having an absolute blast.

Small town superhero OC RPs. You wouldn’t know it from reading this blog but I got, like, really into those this year. Think I wrote something around 40 A4-pages worth of fic for one server, and that’s not counting the actual threads I did with other people. Now I just need to channel that kind of productivity into my solo work...

Lots of digital painting work this year, mostly for personal projects. I like to think my grasp of colour and lighting is getting better, though I still have a long way to go. Regardless, here’s some of it.

Kept on top of my university work, with a distinction average. Barring unforseen bullshit, I should be done with my Masters’ Degree within the next six months!

Did not keep on top of MMB, unfortunately. There was just... too much to do, with too little personal energy to do it with. That said, I’ve started sketching out ideas for a relatively light mini-game. Fingers crossed that’ll surface relatively early into 2021.

It is a little frustrating to see that this is yet another year of half-finished projects, but I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. The mental strain of lockdown, juggling several bouts of drama at once, and uni study all at once is... a lot. And while I’m upset I never completed anything -- jesus christ, it’s a miracle I managed to even start things when my brain was already this full.

Felt like I spent most of this year fighting metaphorical fires... and I don’t know if that’s going to stop any time soon. But anyway.

All that aside, I feel as though my game development workflow is really improving. My code isn’t industry standard, but it’s significantly cleaner, easier, and faster to work with than ever. I’ve gotten some slight animation practice under my belt. And I’ve also dealt with the terrifying world of optimization.

(My games have option menus now! Incredible!)

What’s more, I’m getting better at achieving personal goals without any external pressures or hard deadlines -- which is comforting, as the latest spike in COVID cases has got me worried that I might not be able to get an offline job any time soon. I might need to look into Patreon, advertising my commissions more, or otherwise monetizing smaller projects of mine... we’ll see.

For now, I’m going to go play Animal Crossing and eat chocolate.

‘Cause there’s no fireworks out tonight and I have nowhere to be.

[sarkywoman]

I was tagged by @unrememberedskies! Answer 10, ask 10, tag 10 people. Except I’m just gonna answer 10. 

1. What was your first fandom? Are you still a part of it?

Depends. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first time I engaged with other fans consuming fan content and making my own. That was back when I was about 14. The school librarian thought I was so studious lol, on those computers all the time... alas, I was looking at webrings about Spike and Xander. One could make a case for Red Dwarf, which I loved my whole life, owned merchandise and VHS tapes of the blooper reels and watched every ep, memorised the scripts etc, but I think of fandom as something creative/interpretive, which I never did with RD. I wouldn’t say I’m still part of either fandom, though I never stopped being a fan.

2. Current self care method(s)?

Uhh, I do to-do lists. Start of the year I set some goals like I was in an MMO: dailies, weeklies, monthlys, an annual goal and the lifetime love: writing. I try and strike off four things a day, changing up what those things are every once in a while to tackle new issues. I suffer hard with depression and doing something makes me feel I’m not totally failing at life. 

3. What are three (3) shows you keep meaning to binge watch but haven’t yet?

I have an A4 page with three columns of show titles to watch... ;_; I have zero attention span for new shows lol, I literally have to put ‘watch TV’ on my to-do list or I won’t do it.

4. Do you stay active in fandoms after a new one catches your eye, or are you more a one at a time person?

Oh, I try. Lord how I try. But no, I move on. Someone actually once posted a fandom secret on LJ about how they hoped my new fixation would crash and burn so I’d go back to writing for my old fandom. I took it as a compliment XD

5. What was the last movie you saw with someone else? What would you rate it?

I think it was Birds of Prey? I enjoyed it, then actually enjoyed it more on the rewatch, once I knew what was going to happen and could look at the themes and appreciate the way they’ve written Harley without being at the edge of my seat growling “WHERE IS HUNTRESS SHE IS WHY I’M HERE?!?!”

6. Favorite guilty pleasure?

Um, I dunno. There are a few people who try to make me feel bad for liking things that they deem ‘childish’ but I figure I’ll just keep making it clear they can fuck right off. I only get one life and it’s not turning out great, if I want to read comics and play computer games in between trying to get tedious adult shit sorted out, then I will.

7. What’s a highly underrated show/movie/book series that you would recommend?

Show: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Specifically season one, which was just so damn weird and wonderful and had Samuel Barnett acting his socks off as an adorable sunshine man while telling an unusual story about not being perfect but making the effort to be better. Season two was okay, but didn’t thrill me in quite the same way.

Movie: This won awards and has been critically acclaimed so probably doesn’t count, but I see a lot on tumblr about how Joker sucked or was problematic or whatever. As a neurodivergent person in a few ways, that film blew my fucking socks off. I cried. I went to see it four times. He gets seen, but only once he’s beyond saving. 

Book: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is the only fantasy I’ve ever felt worth reading. Again, I struggle to determine what’s ‘underrated’, the question probably wants something obscure, but I’m not hipster enough for that XD So I qualify this as if anyone hasn’t read Discworld novels, they’re being unfairly underrated because everyone should read them. I like the night watch ones best and I’m gutted they’re making a show inspired by them that will look nothing like them and carry nothing of the themes and fun. 

8. Any new hobbies you’ve started during quarantine? Any you want to start?

I’m still working :/ Other than that, keeping up with my usual. Writing, studying very basic Law, gaming, tidying/cleaning. This week I’ve cracked out my old roleplay books and started generating UA character templates for fun. Oh, I vaguely started studying Latin too. I read Great Expectations, which was kind of dull. Now I’m reading a book about Nuclear War propaganda in the UK. 

9. What meme do you wish would just die already?

Tiger King ones because I haven’t seen it and I’m out of the loop XD

10. Spread the love to your followers and post at least one link to a fic you’re reading/have read/wish to read/you’ve written yourself/etc.

I don’t read nearly enough these days but All That I have to Lose by @unrememberedskies is a delightful piece of Kliego angst, @spikeymarshmallows recently wrote an OD Kliego bit called a steady beep that’s a bit of angst set in her otherwise-mostly-peaceful/sexy museum ‘verse. Now that netflix is showing Community again let me tell you that @freshgratednutmeg wrote me whore!Jeff once, Transactional Methods and Theories. As for my own fic, it’s on my AO3 here. (My highest kudos work is an utterly self-indulgent vampire Game of Thrones AU called ‘Noble Blood’, go figure, but my writing improves as time goes on. If you’re into Borderlands, I’m still very proud of my Rhack fic, ‘Young God’.)

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do it!

[christinaengela]

Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 45th newsletter – September 2020!

On A Personal Note

August was a blurry month – it really doesn’t feel like September, it feels more like March the 342nd! Know what I mean? Anyway, between work and everything else I have going on the side, the last six months or so have literally disappeared! For most people, this year has been a complete loss, for me I’ve at least published 7 new titles. Not to brag, but this brings my tally up to 30 books!

On the home front, my workshop is where I indulge my creative side in wood and metal work. Some years ago however, I got sick and tired of sharing my workspace with the rest of the garage! When it rained, it meant I couldn’t run my vintage bug outside, and the small space available meant I wouldn’t be able to work in there that day! About two years ago, I built a greenhouse against the side of the house across the alleyway between the house wall and the boundary wall, bordering on the back garden, which in the end my love convinced me to use as a workshop space instead! For the past two years, this has been where I worked on various projects, regardless of the weather. The only problem with that was again, space. While I had more permanently accessible space to keep my tools and to work, quite a lot of my tools were actually kept in shelving under the work benches. I needed more space – or to be more specific, a broader room to work in.

So, finally, last week I finally gave up on the bar area. It was where we entertained friends and it consisted of an actual bar room with an adjoining dining area with casual benches and a table for when we had barbeques etc. It’s been a considerable amount of time since we’ve entertained anyone who drinks, and neither of us actually drinks much more than a brandy now and then – scarcely enough to warrant wasting the useful premium real-estate on a bar! It would be far better to just dedicate a cupboard inside the house to housing the drinks, glasses and accoutrements – and all my collectibles, antique cameras and telephones etc. on the walls could be redistributed around the rest of the house.

That said, Wendy could have her greenhouse back – and so last week I relocated my workshop to the larger space where I have more room to work on projects and store and organize my tools and materials! For the first time, I feel I actually have the right space to indulge my creativity! The adjoining stoop will still be reserved for chats, game nights and barbeques – should they ever arise again.

Aside from that little personal ramble ,I also have some very good writing-related news to share with you this time – another two of my books have come out as audiobooks, and I’ve also published a new novelette called “Lifetime”! Moon Books also released an anthology I was the Editor for, so it’s really been a productive year for me so far!

Art

I also indulge in painting from time to time – and no, I don’t mean walls! The following paintings are in my portfolio:

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“Human Nature” 2017 A4 acrylic canvas

“Balancier” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“Rescuer” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“The Awakening” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“The Earth Wept” 2020 40x40cm acrylic on canvas

You can read more about my art projects on the Art page.

What do you think of them? Feel free to let me know!

Music

Yes – I also make music from time to time!

A selection of music tracks I made using eJay and other similar apps between 1999 – 2008 are available on my YouTube channel.

You can read more on the Music page on my website!

Activism

For those of you interested in my activism-related posts and activities, you can follow them at “Sour Grapes: The Fruit Of Ignorance“.

Current Writing Projects 

On a suggestion of Brandon Mullins from Moon Books, I agreed to a combined edition of “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room”, to replace the two novellas published in February this year. The new book is novel length at over 46000 words, and I also wrote a short foreword and an introductory portion to precede the first part of the story.

As I mentioned several times previously, I have still a lot of work to do! I have a number of part-way completed stories awaiting my loving attention! Unfortunately, life and work have a nasty habit of getting in the way!

Also, thanks to Lulu.com’s spite in throwing their entire publishing platform into a mincer and expecting users to just shut up and like it, I have left the platform entirely – but aside from the immense amount of work that precipitated on my side with having to relocate all my books from there to other platforms, it also means I’ll have to rebuild one of my books entirely from the ground up! “The Pitfalls of South African Self-Publishing” is now out of print thanks to Lulu. Why? Because the second half of the book details the ease of self-publishing using Lulu’s old platform – the one they entirely scrapped and replaced with a vague, useless monstrosity – and gives a step-by-step example with screenshots, and is practically a love-letter to Lulu! I will now have to redraft that entire portion of the book, thanks to them!

In the past week or so I’ve been working on an editing project for Moon Books, and you can read more about that in the next section.

Editing

I completed editing an anthology for Moon Books in mid-August entitled “Moon Books Horror Anthology V”. This book contains 7 short stories filled with pure dread – and it was released on 20 August. It’s already available in eBook and paperback.

Currently I’m close to finishing the edit of a sci-fi tale for Moon Books. “Avenging Aranis” is by UK writer Steve McElhenny, and it’s the first part of a trilogy!

Marketing – The Dreaded “M” Word! 

Portfolio 2020!

I thought it would be nice if I could produce a neat, organized catalog of all my books that interested parties could download and browse – a free, distributable and shareable catalog, and so I created “Portfolio 2020!” – a listing of all my currently available titles!

Portfolio is more than that though, because it also contains a biography as well as synopses for most of my titles – and I have a plan to update it regularly, perhaps on an annual basis! Portfolio 2020 is available as a free download from my website.

Videos

In August, Nigel Peever made this amazing audiobook trailer video for the newly released “Demonspawn” – have a look, isn’t it beautiful?

https://christinaengela.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/demonspawn-video-by-nigel-peever.mp4

Sales

Let’s start with the good news! Audiobook sales over July were truly amazing – with a massive (by my previous standards) 42 copies of “Blachart” sold from Audible during that month! This frenetic surge in sales didn’t last very long, just to the end of July, with just 3 sales of that book in August. I realize a slowdown is inevitable as a new title stops being new. In fact, August proved to be rather dull in comparison, with just 3 sales of “Blachart“, and 3 sales of a new audiobook title, “When Darkness Calls“. This of course led me to formulate a new personal theory regarding sales, popularity and choice of narrator when publishing an audiobook – one I will probably explore later in the second edition of “The Pitfalls of South African Self-publishing”, which I am working on as time allows.

But I digress! Ebooks sales on Ebooks2go have picked up a bit over August since I transferred my titles there at the start of the month, culminating in three whole sales (sarcasm definitely intended). To give you an idea how writers get ripped off by some distribution channels, just check out the screenshot below:

The three top-most entries show three eBook sales via Hoopla – and each of those titles sold for $2.99. What do I get out of it? 14 US cents out of $2.99 per sale! It’s positively downright bloody criminal! For comparison, the one beneath that – a sale via B&N at least gave me $1.64 out of $2.99 – but only one of those from July. No wonder so many writers give up!

Over-all though, I’ve got the idea that sales have been dwindling globally and not just for me, so I’m by no means feeling picked on. I realize that with economies teetering on the brink of disaster – and so many of my contacts on Facebook posting the sad news that they will be homeless and sleeping in their cars or on the streets within days – how very, very lucky I am. I may not be raking it in as an author – but at least I have a secure job, for which I’m very thankful indeed!

Publishing

These are the books I’ve released so far this year!

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Between January and September 2020 I released eight new titles! Of these, two – “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” have been replaced by one combined title, “Mirror, Mirror” which includes both of them. Of course, this reduces my count back to 30 again – but when you already have 30 or so books to your name, what’s one here or there?

New Releases:

“Lifetime”

On August 07 Moon Books Publishing released a novella of mine called “Lifetime“, bringing my title-count up to 30! Here’s a look at the back cover blurb for the book:

“An entrepreneurial couple, happily married, run their deep-space prospecting company together. They are unexpectedly separated when the ship one of them is aboard is lost during a prospecting voyage. The other spares no effort in an attempt to find her, and immediately sets out on another ship to find her. Meanwhile on a remote planet, surrounded by wreckage and the bodies of her crewmates, she has survived and treated her injuries, and fights to stay alive while she awaits rescue…”

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook (coming soon)

“Lifetime” is available in ebook and paperback and will be coming out in audiobook format soon, narrated by Miciah Dodge.

“Mirror, Mirror”

This was shortly thereafter followed by another new title “Mirror, Mirror”, on August 11, which repackages “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” into one single novel-length book. “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” are also now out of print – being henceforth exclusively available in “Mirror, Mirror”.

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook (coming soon)

Here’s a look at the description:

“Things aren’t always as they seem. Neither was Charlie Branson – or Andy Niksn.

Outwardly, Charlie appeared to be the successful, respected, somewhat over-paid Captain of a commercial space liner.

In truth, it was 2025 – space liners did not yet exist, and the space liner Freedom was really just a very expensive set – a fancy simulator for wealthy clients the company took on simulated cruises into deep space to forget the real world for a while, to get away from it all – and they loved them for it!

In an atmosphere where people were locked away from reality for weeks at a time, and cos-playing and roleplaying redefined ‘normal’, telling fact and fantasy apart became more complicated than expected. For those who preferred the pleasant escape from the harsh realities of life outside, like Charlie, wishing it could all just be real became something almost like a prayer.

Andy Niksn, by contrast, was the very successful respected and somewhat over-paid Captain of an actual commercial space liner in the year 2773. Trouble was, Andy felt trapped! He was in a relationship – a dead-end partnership that had no future and promised both even less happiness. On top of that, his friend Jim had died recently, leaving Andy in the darkest place he’d ever been – and he didn’t mean space!

Andy wished he could just wake up to a different reality where everything could make sense again! For Andy, this too became something almost like a prayer!

As it turned out, someone heard them.

The answer wasn’t quite what they expected.”

Audiobooks

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“All That Remains” JEA (2019)

“See Them Aliens” MBP (2019)

“Blachart” MBP (2020)

“When Darkness Calls” (2020)

“Demonspawn” MBP (2020)

On August 7th I received the completed audiobook of book 2 in the Galaxii series, “Demonspawn“, narrated (and dramatized) by Nigel Peever! The audiobook was finally released on August 31, and it was worth every minute I waited for it!

Nigel has also committed to narrating book 3 in Galaxii, after the five or so other books he has waiting in the queue, so he should only get round to that one somewhere around January ’21. In the meantime, that gives me time to work on Galaxii book 4! 😉

On August 20, “When Darkness Calls“, narrated by Miciah Dodge, was released via Audible! You can read more about it here.

Coming Soon

In the meantime, here’s a look at the covers for hot new audiobooks currently in the pipeline:

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“Malice!” (2020) COMING SOON!

“Lifetime” (2020) COMING SOON!

Stay tuned for updates!

Reviews

You can see all my previous reviews here.

Currently Available Titles

I now have 30 unique titles available in 4 series (not including books I’ve been the editor for, and my 16 free promotional items)! My books are available in three different formats: EBooks, Paperbacks and Audiobooks. Click the links or images below to view titles available in these formats.

Communication

Below are links to a few of my most recent posts and articles since my last newsletter:

New Release: Demonspawn Audiobook

New Release: When Darkness Calls Audiobook

New Release: Horror Anthology V

Sinotec SJ86C LED Projector Review

New Release: Lifetime by Christina Engela

New Release: Mirror, Mirror by Christina Engela

“Demonspawn” Audiobook Now In For Review!

New Release: Lifetime by Christina Engela

Some Great Resources For Writers

Another Round At The Crow Bar #44 August 2020

If you want to see more articles, just click on the category links below:

Elements of Horror

FAQ Answered

Fun Facts

LGBT Heroes

The Tech Side

Secret Weapons of the Resistance

Writing Advice

Guest Writers

Newsletters

Interactions

Fan Mail, Reader Reviews & Honorable Mentions

I found the following awesome items to show you this month!

Great Book July 20, 2020 review on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook):

Excellent story! “This is a very well written Sci-Fi tale that is told by an awesome narrator. I can’t wait to hear book 2!” – D. Sturgeon, Aug 13, 2020 on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook).

Epic!!! “Another great tale told by narrator Nigel Peever. I look forward to the continuing Adventures of Blachart and Michael.” – Justin Bradley, Aug 16, 2020 on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook).

Great Narrator “The story is pretty creepy, it takes place in South Africa. I’ve never heard haunting stories from this area. It’s a fun little story if you’re doing a drive on a dark night. The narration sounded excellent, and the protagonist in the story wasn’t taking no crap from the evil dead!” – Jeff Spencer, Aug 21, 2020 on Audible for “When Darkness Calls” (audiobook).

I display my Fan Mail, Reviews & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You’re always welcome to have a look.

Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review my collection here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking, or you might choke while laughing!

Interviews

All my interviews are linked to from this page. If you would like to do an interview with me about my work, please do get in touch!

In Closing

Well, that’s all for this time, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction!

Feel free to email or message me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn if you have any comments or questions!

Until next time, keep reading!

Cheers! 🙂

Catch me on social media!

Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Academia | Minds | Instagram | GoodReads | Author’s Database | Library Thing | YouTube | Pintrest | Stage32 | The Book Marketing Network

If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.

If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to christinaengela@gmail.com or use the Contact form.

Show your appreciation for Christina’s work!

All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2020.

Another Round At The Crow Bar #45 September 2020 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 45th newsletter - September 2020!

[deardragonbook]

How much did it cost me to self-publish my book on KDP?

So, you thought self-publishing on Amazon was free? 

You’d technically be correct actually. 

At least if you have a vast array of talents. 

But, that wasn’t my case and statistically speaking, it probably isn’t yours. So let’s get into it. 

There are six parts of your book that could cost you money: writing, editing, formatting, cover design, publishing costs and advertising. 

I wrote the book myself, so that part was completely free (other than years of time, obliviously). 

I was very lucky to have people close to me for beta reading so I didn’t have to pay anybody, I gave PDF copies to the younger readers and printed some copies on standard A4 paper for my family, this would have cost perhaps 1 euro between paper and ink. Add an extra 1 euro to this budget on post-its over a series of drafts. 

So far so good, formatting, again, I did this myself. You could pay somebody to do this and if you have money to spare, well, it’s tedious work, but it’s pretty easy. Amazon has several pages dedicated to explaining how to do this with several programs and other than being a bit fiddly it’s easy enough. 

Cover design. Okay, this is where the money goes. At least for me. I considered designing my own cover as I’ve said before, but a cover really is going to be a big selling point so unless you’re really confident in your abilities I have to recommend you commission a profesional. In my case, I went to fiver which is a site I’ve spent a lot of time on as a seller but never bought anything on. I commissioned Banana Art Studios and it cost me a total of 104,95 euros (applying a coupon). I think this is super cheap for the amazing cover I got! But it is the most expensive step, so be prepared for that! 

Publishing costs, well, like I said at the beginning, technically free... but, if like me as well as an ebook you are offering a paperback, I have to recommend buy at least one proof copy! A proof copy is basically just a printed copy that says no resale and allows you to check everything looks good. I had to buy two, the first copy my name was out of frame and the margins were too big, the second looked a lot more like I wanted it to, I also took the opportunity to order a different type of cover (glossy instead of mate) and different page colours (cream instead of white). Just to see which I preferred. Good thing I did because I ultimately went with glossy and cream coloured paper! They only charge you printing cost plus delivery (yes, even if you have prime), which came to about 13 euros each proof, so 26 euros for the two. 

Once you’ve pressed publish, you can order author copies at the same price, I ordered ten of these to give to me beta readers so this can be considered extra editing costs, 60 euros in total. 

Advertising, this again is another costly part of self-publishing, nobody else is going to sell your book! And platforms are hard to build, I still don’t know how to do that. But I do know a thing or two about marketing, right now I’m still adding up data and testing different sites, I’ll get back to you with more information later. But for now the most cost-effective site for me has been Pinterest, I’ve started of with a 10 euro budget and plan to increase once I’ve sold a couple more copies. I also used some ad credit Facebook gave me for free, but in twelve hours it pulled of less than Pinterest did in it’s first five minutes. So take that as you will. 

Let’s add this up (rounded up for simplicity sake): 

Writing....................0€

Editing....................62€

Formating..............0€

Cover Design..........105€

Publishing Costs.....26€

Advertising.............10€ (so far)

Total.......................203€

Is that a lot? Is that a little? Well, probably depends on who you are and your financial capacity. But to put that number into perspective let’s see how many copies I have to sell to make that money back! 

I sell my copies at about 5,99$ for Ebook and 14,99$ for Paperback. This results in royalties approximately 3€ per copy. 

So to make my money back I have to sell approximately 70 copies. 

And I’m not going to lie, that’s a pretty scary number. As of this moment I’ve sold three copies, which is amazing, I’m super happy to have sold any, because I’m not going to lie even thought I’m proud of my book, the scariest thing is will I sell even one? 

From what I’ve found online, and let’s be honest, this isn’t really trustworthy information, most KDP authors won’t sell much. Most will sell next to nothing. 

Do I expect to make this money back? 

Maybe, over the entire life-span of the book. But then you have to keep in mind taxes and other stuff. 

I guess what I’m trying to say here is, if you wrote a book, and querying isn’t going anywhere because the marketplace is over-saturated and you perhaps don’t fit the molde, and you really want to publish it, go ahead! It’s not that expensive and you can cut down on some of the costs I previously mentioned. But you should be prepared to lose money. 

I’m three days into this experience, I may make my money back, I may even make money, I’ll keep you all updated for sure! But I’m being realistic and not holding high expectations. 

I think the best way to help someone understand the difficulty of self-publishing and amazon specifically, is how little sales it takes to be a top seller. I’ve seen many authors proudly announce being best-sellers when only selling a couple of copies a day, what does this mean? It means most aren’t selling any. 

And that’s a reality you just need to be prepared for! 

Remember your first social media post? Bet nobody saw it! The same might happen to your book, it hurts more because it can take years to write, but that’s the reality of it. So, if you’re going in for money, maybe don’t. 

If you love writing with a passion and it’s not about the money but the book, then do! Self-publish! Whether I make my money back or not, just holding this book that I worked for years on in my hands is an experience I wouldn’t swap for the world. 

[paulinedorchester]

So, guess what?

Mills, Jon. Within the Island Fortress: The Uniforms, Insignia & Ephemera of the Home Front in Britain 1939-1945. No. 4: The Mechanised Transport Corps (MTC). Orpington, Kent: Wardens Publishing, 2008.

I am extremely grateful to Roger Miles of Home Front Collection for putting a copy of this up for sale at a much more reasonable price than previous examples that I’ve seen and helping me through a technical glitch during the ordering process and to Ronald Thomas of the U.S. Postal Service’s Henry W. McGee Post Office for solving a last-minute delivery snafu. (Heartfelt thanks also to @peonymoss, for humoring me through my discovery of some Tumblr technical stuff that I’ve used in this post.)

This 36-page, A4-sized book is probably the closest thing we’ll ever have to an official history of the MTC. Mills has done a vast amount of research, including examining this and more than a dozen relevant files in the National Archives. He even mentions Resy Peake, OBE, the MTC’s second Corps Commandant - who died 14 years before this book was published - in his acknowledgments! Mills structures his description of MTC paraphernalia around a capsule history of the MYC itself, with the result that there is a tremendous amount to be learned about both subjects from reading this book. Some of what I’ve picked up here, though, has sent me into a bit of a tizzy. Here’s a sampling:

Lesson learned: as important as old newspapers are for historical research, they don’t always get the facts right. For one thing, a widely syndicated item from 1942 stated that the given name of Mrs. G.M. Cook, OBE, was Gertrude Muriel, while Mills gives her first name as Grace. Armed with Mills’ statement that Mrs. Cook was "second in command of the [Women’s] Legion in France during the First War [sic]” (about which, more momentarily), I was able to confirm that he is indeed correct:

I hereby acknowledge having made bad assumptions or drawn incorrect inclusions about many, even most, of the MTC uniforms, badges, etc., whose images I’ve posted here. Clearly, I need to repost them all with corrected information. (<sarcasm>Aren’t you all just thrilled?</sarcasm>)

My imaginary account of the MTC’s early history in When Thou Goest Forth to War, cooked up almost three years ago with little information in hand, is so far from historical fact that I’m now experiencing a very strong urge to rewrite that story, along with Sam’s Christmas reminiscence in Someone You Know and possibly parts of other stories as well. Here’s a sampling:

Mills explains that the MTC emerged from the Women’s Legion, whose founder, the Marchioness of Londonderry, relaunched it in 1934, to train potential officers for any such future force [of women volunteers] and to provide trained, experienced drivers for government service from its MT [mechanical transport] section. This new force was given limited recognition by the War Office. ... Mrs Grace Cook ... now set up and commanded the Legion’s MT Division in London. In September 1938 the Legion was dealt a blow by the creation of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) ... When Lady Londonderry asked if the Legion might have a role in this new War Office scheme, she was told that none existed and that she should encourage  younger members to join the ATS. Lady Londonderry wrote to Mrs Cook: ‘If we stay in the Legion there is no certainly of our ever being deployed, but you are perfectly at liberty to run an independent organisation under another name.’ Thus the MTC - originally the Mechanised Transport Training Corps - was born in February 1939.

On top of this, we learn from Mills that the MTTC was active only in and around London when the war broke out, and apparently personnel were sent to France many weeks or even months before companies were set up elsewhere in Britain. “By the end of May 1940,” Mills writes, “membership of the Corps exceeded 700 with several units established outside London.” That leaves us wondering how long before May any of those units came into existence. (May 1940, of course, is when Foyle’s War canon begins. The earliest announcement of regional recruitment that I’ve found comes from mid-July 1940, in Birmingham.) In any event, the implication seems to be that Sam would have had to go to London for MTC training, and would then have served there for some months before moving to Hastings.  

But wait, there’s more! I’ve been unable to find a linkable image of the 1930s Women’s Legion service dress uniform, but Mills includes a photo of a Legion unit on parade in 1938, and it clearly shows that their uniform - Khaki officer’s tunic, matching skirt, leather belt, and peaked cap with what I’ve been calling a “pie crust” crown - was essentially identical to that of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and was adopted more or less wholesale by the ATS (which substituted a fabric belt for the leather one) and, of course, the MTC - which likewise introduced a variation, at least for most personnel: Those who transferred to the MTTC from the Legion continued to wear the Legion’s style of cap (recognisable by the gathered material above the headband) and simply exchanged their cap badge for that of the MTTC. By early 1940 a unique new MTTC cap modelled on a ski cap and available from the London sports outfitters Lillywhites had been introduced for new members. Since Sam wears the Women’s Legion cap (much more flattering, IMHO), the implication is that she spent some time in the Legion prior to joining the MTC. This isn’t impossible: an item in the Hastings and St Leonards Observer for September 10th, 1938, notes that the Women’s Legion Mechanical Transport Section was recruiting women between 18 and 40. I’ve posited that Sam was born in 1919, so that would work. But that, too, requires a rewrite of my fic. (Seriously, I’ve been thinking about this for a while.)

Mills also tells us about the MTC’s financial crisis in the wake of the fall of France (they had to abandon a great deal of equipment during the retreat), which is something that I hadn’t come across before. He reproduces the cover of a fundraising brochure from that period; it carries a list of members of the MTC’s council, and it’s a tad dispiriting to learn that most of them were men.

He also goes at least part-way towards clearing up the mystery of why it often appears that not all MTC uniforms were the same color: beginning in 1942 large numbers of MTC personnel were seconded to American troops (who couldn’t cope with driving in the blackout, apparently), where they earned far higher pay than they could get doing anything else. Many of them splurged on new uniforms in US Army regulation olive-drab. While Mills acknowledges that many MTC members could easily afford such an indulgence, he also includes a fascinating newspaper clipping from June 1939 that I haven’s seen elsewhere, showing recruitment and preliminary training of two MTC companies in Streatham, London - not a neighborhood likely to produce many debutantes!

There are a few frustrating omissions. We read not a word here about the MTC’s crisis of August 1943. It would be nice to know more about certain peculiarities laid down in the MTC’s rules: why one’s superiors were to be addressed as Madam rather than Ma’am, for example, or why married MTC personnel were allowed to wear either wedding or engagement rings, but not both. And Mills never mentions the one-piece, apparently lighter-weight version of the uniform that we see here. (It also shows up in that 1938 Women’s Legion photo that I mentioned.) Nevertheless, this is a terrific book for anyone interested in this subject, and if you find a copy for sale I’d encourage you to go for it. (As I write this it appears that Home Front Collection has another copy for sale ... )

[letsdiscoverkitty]

03/08/17: Grieving

In my session today, E mentioned something that I had not really thought of before and it was to do with ‘grieving’. I think I am beginning to see/accept that I am currently in a state of grieving that is not too dissimilar to when you lose a family member. I am having to delete photos and documents, get rid of clothes that are becoming too small and let go of something I have held onto/has been part of my life for years. I am grieving for anorexia. For the ‘existence’ that it brought me. For the life I ‘could’ have had if it had not have come into my life. For the years that I have missed. For the experiences that anorexia has stolen from me. For the person I used to be. And I am grieving for myself. As I begin to take more steps away from anorexia, the fear of not knowing ‘who’ I am without it is extremely strong and I am scared. I am scared of the future as well as the present; but also of the possibility of spending the rest of my life in the grips of anorexia. E also mentioned about feeling fearful of failure (after the discussion that came up in my appointment with S about a relapse plan for when I am at uni) which really struck a chord with me as a huge part of my struggles stems from the fear of failure/letting people down and thus anorexia became my ‘excuse’ and a reason for me to avoid even the chance of failing because I couldn’t even start.  I am beginning to ‘wake up’ as they loosely of call it. My mind is no longer a brain-fog. The mute button has been turned off and my head is flooded with thoughts, emotions and feelings, which can be terrifying and exhausting, and there is little time when it is not raging. This is making me want to revert back to old coping mechanisms to numb out the pain, and I am going to openly admit that I have slipped a few places on certain days - but I am trying to not beat myself up over those slips because they are not full blown relapses, they are lapses but no one said that it was going to be plain-sailing. I cannot express how much I needed today’s appointment. E mad me feel ‘safe’, she made me feel heard, my thoughts/emotions/feelings valid and just to have someone that I wasn’t trying to put huge wall up to helped. I really trust her. When we met, she found me sitting on the floor with my headphones in, typing a note on my phone and crying. I rarely cry and I never show my emotions to professionals/in appointments, but she saw today how things really are and as hard as it is, I am glad I was able to let down that wall a little. My depression has been incredibly strong lately so I might bring up about my meds at my CPA, however I am wary of trying to play around with medication just before University.

After a bit of coxing/help I managed to get myself up off the floor and we made it to Pret. I am going to make another post about the goals I have for the next 6 days before I see her next so to keep these separate. In all honesty it is hard to think about what we talked about as I was feeling so low/out of it and just wanted to sleep. I can’t even remember half of it. Luckily E wrote down a lot for me (it ended up being 3 A4 pages worth O.o) so I can look back and reflect as well as remind me of my focuses. In short we wrote out a plan for when my mood dips as to what can help me (she wrote three sections: behaviour, physiological and thinking) and we then moved onto meal plan and home life. It’s hard and I felt so torn in the appointment, but I was as honest as I could be and despite my issue with communication throughout, we made it through and I felt a little bit more positive afterwards. 

[urukyra]

Min’atoa: The Story

Ideation week 

Ideation week was: “come up with a bunch of ideas, not just one”, so that we didn’t get fixated on one idea. It was amazing to see how easy it was to generate a bunch of ideas, with the pressure of having to pitch our best three to the class on Friday. 

Next week was choose which one idea to “work on for 6 months of your life”. 

This was a terrifying prospect. It really puts into perspective the true cost of making a game. Not money, not tools, not self esteem but… my life, that I can’t get back. The “opportunity cost” of that six months. 

6 months is a strange deadline. It’s good that its finite, not falling into the trap of fiddling around making a game for years. As with gamejams, deadlines force faster decisions, brutal choices eg simpler mechanics, reuse of assets. 

On the other hand, its quite a long time: seductively long. I saw the previous class aim for too big a game, very ambitious, and yet its so long it takes the pressure off. And six months “of my life” is a not a trivial commitment. What else could I do with that time? If I invested that time in learning Houdini, formal coding theory, Substance Painter, Zbrush, even Illustrator. What price six months? 

My goal is to make games for working people, people who are stressed out enough in their lives and want to relax. My ideas were::

Idea 1: colour puzzle game, with additive and subtractive colour mixing: 

could include light bending into rainbows, and liquids mixing and flowing, to escape a room.

Idea 2: narrative game (the rest of the blog will cover this)

Idea 3: creative sandbox game, where you

collect extinct plant fossils, revive them as viable seeds, plant and nurture teeming gardens to bring life back to a barren island, post your results.

Idea 4 Massive Lost in the dark, procedural cave  

Challenge areas: run out of air, falling rocks, flood, completely dark 

Dragon hoard with intelligent dragon; cave beings (burrowing, mining)

Idea 5 reality TV music game

design music acts, perform them, select your top four acts to mentor, pit them against three other teams for public votes weekly until a winner. 

Idea 6: Abstract art splashy game; 

Mix paint splashes in different 3D splot shapes and textures, (brush strokes) colour gradients 

add stamps and sparkles; share on Social media

Pitch week

I chose the narrative game concept. I’ve had it in mind for ages, written background story over the last two years.

I wrote the story beats in sticky note form into a linear timeline then added red (spoilers) orange (misdirection or mild spoilers) and green (general background) tags so I could work out which bits would go in which locations in the game. 

I then typed out the story beats into a paper prototype using A4 pages for each game location, and playtested it on a couple of people. The playtesters LOVED it, but then, they’re mates.

I got generous pointers from actual game narrative designers and authors: Turns out, narrative is a complex arcane skill that writers hone over years. Note to self:  “You know nothing, Jon Snow”. Ygritte from GoT (George RR Martin Esq).

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I have a habit of optimistically tackling I things I know nothing about. I’ve written maybe three cool short stories; my experience is policy papers and scientific writing.

But my Daily Dream Machine and Trello lists don’t lie: I’m staring down the barrel of a 5 July deadline for alpha in Unity 3D. My hard earned Min’atoa station (Unity 2019) crashes in Unity 2018; no time for embarrassment! I grabbed some old assets, made textures from screenshots of typed up story bits, pasted them onto cubes and presto! Mocked up notes, signs, posters and books. 

I made 2D UI textures for the up close, and even found a free ‘book’ plug-in (2D UI with turnable pages) in the Asset store.

Without further ado, here’s a sneak peek - the WIP of the alpha. Already you can pick up readables and unlock doors and drawers. How exciting dear fans!

Until next time, toodle pip!

[astralmouseart]

2018 Book Haul

So, 2018 is over and the new year sucks so far, so it’s time to take a look back at it. Was writing it since January and only now I got to finishing it XD .

I managed to rebuild most important parts of my military history/science library after selling 90% of it in 2017. 

Books that I finished reading are marked by / and books that I re-bought for my military history library are marked * .

So, when it comes to books, in 2018, I bought:

February

24 February

Hitchcock / Truffaut - Francois Truffaut.

This was after I sold some of my comic book albums - Incal, Metabaron saga and Castaka. Actually I wonder what I did with the rest of the money. Oh, I know. I bought a collector’s edition of Torment: Tides of Numenora for 1/5 of the original price. Sold them because I considered them decadent. Regretting selling Incal now.

Original post about it.

March

20 March

J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illustrator - Wayne G. Hammond

Got it on my birthday. That’s something that was on my to-buy list for a few years.

Here are my two posts about it. post1  post2 .

April

In April, I started the course. Also, I got my first smartphone since there was a new phone deal and my mother still haven’t started using hers from the last one so I finally got one as a part of the new deal.

April was when the contracts finally started and also the course/internship thing started for me. So, I started having some money.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain

This book really pissed me off because it was a lot about the author showing off her privilege. For example not being subjected to psychological liquidation. So I have sold it.

19 April

The Tale of Kullervo  - J.R.R. Tolkien

May

12 May

Durer - Ruth Dangelmaier

An album and biography of Albrecht Durer. Turned out to be a horrible disappointment because the illustrations were low resolution with visible raster. Sold it immediately.

Delta Venus - Anaïs Nin

Diary 1934-1939 - Anaïs Nin

I don’t quite understand how it happened, but I bought my first Anaïs Nin diary - 1931-1934 in November 2017. I don’t remember how it happened. The era of purity has ended only on 20180426, so it makes no sense. Though maybe I bought it without intention of indulging in decadence. I remembered reading the redacted version of the diaries around 2003 and not encountering anything especially sexual there. Perhaps I bought it out of curiosity or to enjoy her writing once again. Oh, now I remember. I saw that diary on used books market. Then it got sold before I decided to buy it so I ordered it from the internet.

My first incident with damaged book this year. Sold it in used book store because I was too exhausted to report it.

Anyway, apparently I was already reading the diary 1931-1934 because I wrote this on the same day:

link

22 May

This is where I got my course stipend. My mother allowed me to keep it all. I very rarely have this kind of money (it was, like, 100$).

HTML & CSS: design and build websites   - Jon Duckett This book was very helpful for me. It’s very nice and colour and big. I could take it to coffee houses. I got it because I always ended up forgetting the basics. Unfortunately it’s a bit outdated because it was written in the early days of HTML5 and CSS3.

books webpage

Diary 1939-1944, Diary 1944-1947 - Anaïs Nin

Nicoletto Giganti’s The School of the Sword - Nicoletto Giganti

About rapier fencing.

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 1 - Shuzo Oshimi /

Finally! One of mangas that I actually found monocle got published in 2017! It’s the one after which I named the current era of my life.

June

02 June

Little Birds - Anaïs Nin

Henry and June - Anaïs Nin /

Actually have read it and it was quite messed up and made me feel much worse. Lots of lying and cheating and she was getting worse and worse ideas with every page. From what I understand, the publication of these underacted diaries in 90s made lots of readers/critics turn against her and made her fade into obscurity. I finished reading it on 01 October. My impressions were following:

“Finally finished reading it. It was very interesting, but also very sad and twisted. Anaïs Nin had some serious issues and unfortunately she ended up making some seriously evil decisions basing on twisted way of thinking. From what I understand. From one side it was like watching a trainwreck, from another it was just distasteful, but the third side was seeing the amazing inspiring relationship between two writers - Anaïs and Henry. It was a real tragedy that they couldn't just live together but she was stuck with a wagecuck banker husband, he was stuck with a woman with which they were a horrible anti-inspiration for each other. I guess it was very interesting reading this knowing who Anaïs and Henry were on level of their inherent nature and why that stuff that happened was possibly happening on level of social alchemy. Anyway could be treated as a sordid warning tale about cost of ignorance and degeneracy. Like the level of neuroticism she experienced just from not knowing the human nature, not knowing social alchemy and living in environment poisoned with sexist memes was sad. And add to that childhood trauma and degenerate ideologies by some psychoanalyst and you get a complete trainwreck. The ending was getting more and more disjointed with her getting worse and worse ideas, like every day.”

11 June

Schhneider CA, St. Chamond - Witold J. Ławrynowicz *

24 June

Emperor’s Mercy - Henry Zou /

Pretty nice Wh40k novel about an Inquisitor. Lots of brutal combat and named characters dying left and right.

26 June

Angels of Darkness - Gav Thorpe /

Enjoyed it a lot because of discussions between characters.

War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

Armoured Platoon of Battalion Zośka - Anna Wyganowska-Eriksson

29 June

Red Tithe - Robbie Macniven /

Another very brutal Wh40k novel.

July

July is when I got my first internship stipend. I received the stipend for three months. Being able to spend 1/5 of the stipend (again about 100$ per month) for myself was what kept me going through the whole internship and allowed me to finish the Responsive Web Design Certification (300 hours) course on freeCodeCamp.

02 July

Renault FT Tank - Witold J. Ławrynowicz *

06 July

Fall of King Arthur  - J.R.R. Tolkien

Bryan Peterson's Understanding Composition Field Guide: How to See and Photograph Images with Impact - Bryan Peterson

11 July

Battle of Monte Cassino - Melchior Wańkowicz

Polish Armour in 1939 - Krzysztof M. Gaj *

This was the most precious book from my military history/science book collection. A PHD paper about organization and equipment of Polish armoured forces in 1939. Amazing stuff. The big blue book - 800 A4 pages. Ranging from detailed tables of organization and equipment prices to information about optics and gun accuracy.

Port Arthur - Tsushima 1904-1905 - Józef W. Dyskant, Andrzej Michałek *

Another precious big book. Sold both of these only because I have quit military history.

13 July

Blackwing: The Raven’s Mark Book One - Ed McDonald /

A nice dark fantasy book written by a HEMA practitioner. Awesome! Recently finished reading it.

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 2 - Shuzo Oshimi /

It’s What I Do - Lynsey Addario

An autobiography of a war photographer.

20 July

Catechism of Hate - Gav Thorpe /

A Wh40k novella. Quite nice.

28 July

Churchill Vol 1. - Leszek Moczulski

JavaScript & jQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development - Jon Duckett

31 July

Iran - Iraq War 1980-1988 - Jarosław Dobrzelewski

August

04 August

Infantry Combat - Emile Allehaut

11 August

The First Tank Crews: The Lives of the Tankmen Who Fought at the Battle of Flers Courcelette 15 September 1916  - Stephen Pope

Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth - John Garth

Milton’s Paradise Lost - John Milton, illustrated by Gustave Dore

12 August

Tales of Heresy - Nick Kyme and Lyndsey Priestley

16 August

Japanese-Soviet Conflict at Khalkin Ghol River *

17 August

Tank War - Ludwik von Eimannsberger *

I remember this book especially fondly because it introduced me to the excellent Polish military history/science book publisher - NapoleonV - in 2012, I think. I was looking for new interesting books about WWI in a local history book store and saw the cover with A7V on it and immediately knew I have to have it!

I loved the theories of the author - especially that he predicted the need of massive saturation of infantry units with AT guns. He proposed giving each infantry battalion an organic AT gun company of 6 47mm infantry guns and then attaching even multiple companies of 47mm infantry guns to infantry battalions.

It’s very similar to the American tank destroyer doctrine. 

T-55AM Tank And The Derived (T-55AD-1M, T-55AD-2M, T-55AMS) - Krzysztof M. Gaj *

Another super detailed book by that author. I wish he’d publish more!

28 August

Sketchbook for the Artist - Sarah Simblet

29 August

Warhammer 40000 Rulebook 3rd and 5th editions.

Tanks in The Great War, 1914-1918 - J.F.C. Fuller *

A7V and Precursors Of German Armour - Witold J. Ławrynowicz *

September

In September I got the last payment for the internship.

04 September

Blitzkrieg Legend - Karl-Heinz Frieser *

Nuclear Weapons in Shaping of International Security - Zarychta Stanisław *

07 September

I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft - S.T. Joshi

09 September

Ways of Seeing - John Berger

Fear: A Novel of World War I - Gabriel Chevallier

Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany 1919-1945 - David French.

13 September

Mechanicum /, Thousand Sons - Graham McNeill

24 September

Outer Dark - Robbie Macniven

25 September

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 3 - Shuzo Oshimi /

27 September

Berem and Luthien  - J.R.R. Tolkien

Forever War - Marvano, Haldeman

28 September

Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling (the illustrated one)

29 September

Permanent Fortification - Karol Kleczke, Władysław Wyszyński

Tigers, Sturmeshutzes and Jagdpanthers - Daniel Koreś *

Imperator: Wrath of Ommissiah - Gav Thorpe /

30 September

Spy in a House of Love - Anaïs Nin

Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art - Susan Aberth

October

02 October

Passchendaele the Campaign in Flanders - Krzysztof Marcinek *

03 October

Handbook of WWII German Military Symbols and Abbreviations 1943-45 - Booth Terry

04 October

The Bachman Books - Richard Bachman, Stephen King

This one contains his infamous novella - Rage.

05 October

At The Mountains of Madness - Tanabe Gou /

Amazing manga adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella. I only finished reading it in March because when I first started reading it I paid way too much attention to the details of the excellent graphics. When I’ve read it in March it took me an hour or so to finish it.

10 October

Incest - Anaïs Nin

That book was basically the breaking point where I decided I just can’t continue reading that stuff. Also, a big mistake since I already was disturbed by Henry and June.

12 October

Used ebook reader with wifi and working buttons. The cover is cracked but it doesn’t seem to affect its functioning. My old reader doesn’t have wifi and apps and has malfunctioning buttons that work randomly.

It was a great purchase because it allows browsing the internet - which means reading text-heavy blogs on e-ink screen. Also, allows me to do it from bed which puts less burden on my bad back.

I installed Brave browser on it. Have read a lot of internet fiction and blog entries on it. Great stuff. Except that it’s still basically the cheapest ebook reader with wifi and touchscreen with outdated android and is somewhat crude.

I wish more websites would be designed to be ebook reader friendly, though.

18 October

Diary 1934-1939 - Anaïs Nin

25 October

Tirant lo Blanc - Joanot Martorell, Marti Joan De Galba, D.H. Rosenthal

A medieval novel about a knight.

That was the last month where I had larger amount of money because internships and work was over.

November

02 November

Nuclear Weapons and Development of Tactics. Anti-tank Warfare

An old publication of ministry of defence from 1969. Very interesting.

Flesh and Iron - Henry Zou

Blood Gorgons - Henry Zou 

05 November

Sold almost all of Anaïs Nin books I got because of how disturbing the un-redacted diaries were.

27 November

The Flowers of Evil COMPLETE vol 4 - Shuzo Oshimi /

Great manga. Wish there was more stuff like this out there.

December

04 December

T-35 Su 14 - Maksim Kołomyjec, Ilja Moszczański

07 December

Total Sell Out - Brian Michael Bendis

Wanted to see how he draws.

Yoshitaka Amano : Illustrations - Yoshitaka Amano

Another artist I wanted to check out. He seems to be somewhat dysgraphic and draws on ridiculously large formats for the amount of details he does.

He’s the reason why I tried out brush markers.

When it comes to music:

February:

Lana Del Rey - Hollywood

Tove Styrke - KIDDO

October:

Melanie Martinez - Crybaby

November:

Grimes - Art Angels

Grimes - Visions

Send Request - Perspectives

December:

The Pretty Reckless - Light Me Up

The Pretty Reckless - Who Are You Selling For

The Pretty Reckless - Going to Hell

Aurora - All My Demons Greeting Me A Friend

All used except for Kiddo, Who Are You Selling For and All My Demons Greeting Me A Friend and got pretty sweet deals on these. Got Kiddo with a 75% discount.

It’s weird to realise that books got so much less expensive here that if I’d have a minimal wage job, for like two years, I’d fill all of my shelves.

In 2008 a Wh40k novel would cost 81% of daily minimum wage I was earning cleaning in a factory. Nowadays same novel would not only be physically cheaper - the old price in bookstore after inflation would be 44pln and new price ordered and collected in a bookstore within 1 day of order would be 31pln.

So it would cost 40% of today's daily minimum wage. It’s funny how privilege works.

Anyway, when I sold the Anaïs Nin books, I got 1/7,7th of cover price for them. When I was selling my Forgotten Realms books in 2006, I got 1/3 of cover price for them. So, nowadays, selling books essentially just buys shelf space.

Even when I was selling out my military history book collection, in the beginning, I’d get 1/4-1/3 for them but then the prices just collapsed because it would be norm for books to be available for, like 1/2 of cover prices on auction sites.

Additionally, all the cheap bookstores created a bizarre situation where ebooks are more expensive than paper or even hardcover books sent from another end of Europe.

Big problem was fear of missing out due to books going out of print and disappearing from the market. Saw multiple books disappear from stores during the first half of they year, so when I got money, I was buying everything I could.

As a result, I wasted quite a lot of money on Anaïs Nin books because I got all the diaries and erotic stories instead of buying them after finishing previous ones. So, when I gave up mid-first expunged diary/in the beginning of the second unexpunged diary, it turned out I’ll have to sell whole collection. I actually saw some disappear from a local bookstore chain to never appear again and it scared me into buying the whole thing ASAP.

The threat of books disappearing from the market is a big problem with printed books. tfw ebooks are more expensive and also not the same as hardcovers.

It’s generally a big problem because I have literally, like 90 unread books.

Though I’m slowly going through the ones I have accumulated. At least I have something to enjoy when I’m broke.