I shouldn’t be tired.

As my first weekend of ‘fulltime writing’ (yes, I took it before the writing started) I spent it mostly resting. I didn’t write, but I did have to run errands so I could have food for the coming weeks. And that did include food prep, which meant, because this was the first one, that I spent 5 hours on my feet this morning, and I am only now, as I write this in the evening, starting to feel that strain on my body leaving.

That’s about all the life stuff I have to talk about. No writing related stuff since I have exhausted the subjects for that.

SO, tomorrow I will be starting my fulltime writing. 2 3.5 hours block a day, Monday to Friday. Starting at 8am, with the second block starting at 12:30PM that’s Eastern time. I will be streaming them https://www.twitch.tv/kindar11 so feel free to drop by at any point. It will be litRPG in the morning, and Urban Fantay in the afternoon with something different on Tuesday and Thurdays.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day

Posted using PostyBirb

The TigerWrites is returning to Twitch

https://www.twitch.tv/kindar11

Monday, September 13th, 8 am

Do Not Miss the Writing!

Posted using PostyBirb

A few weeks ago I listened to a few episodes of Writing Excuses (https://writingexcuses.com/) where they talked about ‘first paragraphs’ and it made me realize that I never really ‘got’ the concept of the first paragraph.

The convention is that it has to grab the reader and never make them want to stop reading. The agreement from the general community is that it had to be a poignant scene. Action or emotion, or something else grabby like that.

But what the people on the podcast talked about was how the first paragraph has to tell the reader what kind of story they are getting into. That might mean action, if that’s the kind of story, but even then, the start of that story doesn’t have to be all action. It can be a setting of the tone, establishing the mystery to come. Getting the reader to ask questions.

Listening doesn’t mean I know how to start a book anymore than I used to, but it is making me at least ask questions about how it should start, and indirectly, where it should start.

On the life front, the office is basically set up. I did my morning writing at the walking desk for the last 3 days, and will continue to do so. The big discovery there is how uncomfortable the stool I bought is, even with “Purple” Cushion I have on it. Which isn’t a bad thing since the goal is to be standing as much as possible. The stool is just there when I need the occasional rest.

I had my cancer check up, which came up clean. 2nd time in a row, and the first time since I was diagnosed with cancer that I have had 2 clean checks in a row. Hopefully it’s the start of a trend.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

Actions have consequences, we all know that. Many stories center around a character trying to avoid the consequences of their actions or decisions.

But I think there’s one group of people who tend to forget about the consequences of their decisions.

That group is Writers.

Any time you feel a main character is action out of character, there’s a writer behind them not respecting the consequence of a decision they made along the way, and it’s easy to understand how writers can fall into such a trap. We created the world the characters live in; we decide what happens to them, so of course they have to do what we want.

The problems occur when we, as writers, forget that decisions we make in creating the world, in directing the characters, have consequences.

I encountered such a situation recently. Those who support me on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/kindar) at the 5$ level will already have the chance to read Chapter 32 and see how it turned out. What you aren’t seeing is the 2 weeks of worry I had after it sunk in that the situation could have a much more disastrous conclusion, and I couldn’t see a way out of until only a day or two before I wrote the chapter.

I’m keeping things vague to avoid spoiling things for those will have to wait a week and 2 to read the chapter.

I made the decision Sto would act the way he did, which led to said situation, back at the end of book 1, as a direct consequence of what he suffered. What I hadn’t realized then, and for a long time, were the consequences of Sto doing what he did. I knew it would lead to the confrontation of chapter 32, but when I envisioned it, it was always something close to what I ended up having, but it was going to be ‘easy’. When I thought about it, the ‘good’ conclusion was always the only possible conclusion; until 2 weeks ago when I realized that there was no way for the conversation to be easy, not after everything that happened to Tibs and the people around him since the start of book 2.

As I said, the result I saw then, was a disaster and for a while I couldn’t see a way to avoid it, so I was trying to look at the ramification for Tibs, Sto, the Town and, more importantly, the plot. That wasn’t a fork in the road. This was someone blowing up the intersection. The story would have kept going, but I suspect it would have been hard to get back to anything resembling the plot.

It could make for an interesting “what if?”

If I did my job correctly, the resolution of chapter 32 doesn’t feel out of character for either Tibs or Sto. If it does, then I’m going to have work to do in draft 2.

I’m not going to say what let to the resolution we have, instead of the disaster, but I think it’d obvious when you read it.

And on to the life part of the post

As I mentioned previously, I am no longer a truck driver.

Writing full time was always the plan. It’s the reason I started my Patreon, the hope it would reach the point where it would let me walk away from trucking. I’d given myself 5 years, and it’s been 6 years now. Covid almost certainly played a part in delaying it.

Rationally, I should now have quit my job. The border is still mostly closed, conventions aren’t really happening reliably, and I don’t even know if book fairs are a thing at the moment. I should really have kept on working until everything was resolved.

What happened is that I have just enough income coming from other source to let me survive without work. It’s not ideal, but it’s doable.

And with that, situations that were tolerable at work because more and more difficult to endure, until, last Monday, I almost walked away from my truck after the trailer I was sent to pickup was blocked by another trailer because a driver just left it there even if there were plenty of parky space available, then the paperwork for the trailer wasn’t sent to the office by the previous driver as is policy, and they never scaled the load. All that on a load that had no leeway whatsoever for the delivery.

Needless to say, the load was late.

But the fact I was tempted to just walk away from the job there and then forced me to reconsider my plan to wait any longer, because it was a sign that every eccentricity from the company that was tolerable before would piss me off each time.

When I was routed to Brampton after the delivery, I decided I was going to tell the manager I was leaving.

It didn’t happen exactly that way, since the manager was at the hospital and I had to deal with the HR rep instead, but it happened.

The manager did call me when he was informed, mainly to find out if it was something the company had done that caused me to leave. I explained the situation, and told him that if writing full time doesn’t work out, I will be working for them again.

I do love trucking, and in an industry where there are no perfect employers, this company isn’t that bad.

Now, what does it mean for my writing and posting schedule.

The official start date for me writing full time is September 13th. It is also when my twitch will be restarting. https://www.twitch.tv/kindar11. like when I was on medical leave, I will have 2 writing blocks Monday to Friday. So I am going from 7 blocks to 10. Monday to Friday, 8 to noon, and 12:30 to 4.

The current posting schedule won’t change. It will still be “Stepping up” on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and “Faith in the Family” Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. That leaves 4 writing block, at least 1 of which will be intermittent since Thursday afternoon will be the day I plan on having ‘medical’ stuff dealt with whenever I can control it.

One block is going to be dedicated to being Bottom Rung up to Full draft 2 status now that I will have the time, and the other 2 will probably be for my ‘pleasure projects’. I do have plans to start on restarting/continuing the previous LitRPG books I started, but for at least 1 of them, I need to find a collaborator who knows the base building type games. Turns out my knowledge of it is much lower than I expected.

I am also considering attempting one of them directly to Royal Road, but that’s… well, it’s still early.

So that’s it, the full update to what’s going on with me. I’ll be setting stuff up over the next two weeks and see those who will join me on Twitch there.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

as of right now, I am no longer a truck driver.

I'll give more information on my weekly journal.

right now I just need to crash

Posted using PostyBirb

If this was a podcast, I’d try for the Ch-CH-CH-Changes, from the David Bowie song, and I would almost certainly screw it up.

I am anxious.

I am not a fan of changes.

No, that’s not right.

I’m not a fan of planning changes. I can deal fine with those that are dumped on me. I’ll complain, but I’ll deal with them. It’s the changes I am contemplating that make me nervous. Those I have time to think about; see the consequences of.

Writing full-time is coming. I’m now thinking in weeks, rather than months now. Every little problem I encounter while on the road feels like a giant aggravation. They scratch away at my will to continue doing this job until the overall situation is better.

I’m going to be home in a week or two for work stuff and the possibility is high I will hand in my resignation then. As much as I enjoy driving, it’s just no longer what I want to do.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

I’m lucky to have a collaborator, honestly, I’d recommend collaboration to every writer out there if not for one little thing.

Collaborating isn’t easy.

Ben isn’t the first person I collaborated with. I remember 2 others for sure, and I can’t shake the feeling there’s a 3 I forgot.

The first one was someone who also write, I met him at a con and we kept talking online afterward. Really knowledgeable. I suggested we work together in a Private Detective story set in a world where magic and science coexist and he quickly pointed out flaws in my plan for the story, and then we quickly hit a problem that seemed insurmountable.

He felt that no private Detective would ever call a police officer a ‘Cop’ since it’s insulting. As far as I was concerned, that’s just common parlance, and, a few years after the fact, I was able to confirm it with a police officer. But yeah, I discovered that if he considered he was in the right, he became unbendable. It was his way or nothing at all.

So I thanked him for trying this with me, but said out difference in how we approached storytelling was too different for it to work. He has never spoken to me since then.

The second time, it was with my boyfriend of the time. because I’m the road so much I’d call him every Saturday and we’d speak for hours. I’d also send him the chapters I’d written and we’d talk about it. He’s a visual artist so he has a different way of approaching storytelling and he often brought up interesting point in what I did. So I though that we could collaborate.

It didn’t work out, in the end I think we were both too attached to how we wanted the story to go. Fortunately, he still talks to me.

Then came Ben, first as someone who commented the stories posted online, then as a beta reader and, because of how good his comments were, then as someone who helped with building the outlines for my stories and now we’re cowriting a trilogy.

The thing I found out through those attempts is that the principal thing that is needed for collaboration to work is a lack of ego. You have to be able to let go of your ideas and accept that the suggestions might improve the story.

The thing that make this even harder is that this mindset had to be on both side, otherwise one ends up always giving in and the other takes and takes until the story is basically theirs alone.

Another thing that makes this difficult is that this isn’t something you can simply ask about when talking about collaborating. It’s something you discover as you work, and once you’ve started working with someone else it can be difficult to end the collaboration because of what you’ve already invested in it.

I still think everyone should try collaborating, since with the right collaborator, it can really improve the end result, but you have to be willing to let go of the collaborators who don’t work the moment you realize this so you can move on to someone else, or just go back to working on your own.

Posted using PostyBirb

Those who have read Bottom Rung on Royal Road (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36484/dungeon-runner) and read Stepping Up on my Patreon (you are reading it, right?) will have noted a difference in the size of each chapter. I think that on Royal Road they average at 5k words, while on Patreon they are around 2k.

The reason is simple, and why I want to write full time. how much time I have available per writing session. When I’m on the road, I have 2 hours a day to write, except on Sundays. When I wrote full time, each block is 3.5 hours, and because I have two of them a day, it’s easy to postpose whatever was in that block to keep writing. After a full day of driving, I can’t get back to writing.

So, because I write about 1000 word an hour, when on the road, my chapters are about 2k words in length.

It is definitelty a part of my decision to transition to writing fulltime, that and having more writing blocks in the week.

On the work front, and definitely an indication I am caring less and less about work, I was asked for an ETA on the delivery I’d pickup after I was unloaded, and because this was asked before the unloaded even started, and I would have to do a pick up to being to Laredo before I got the load taking me to Calgary. I said Friday the 13th without even bothering to look because I figure that if I left Laredo on Monday I could make it happen.

Was that what I realistically expected to happen? Not at all, but I wasn’t going to try for something closer to expectation and then find out I’d miscalculated and would have to drive hard to make it happen.

As a result, they scheduled it for the 16th. So I’ll get to have another weekend off at my friend’s place in Calgary. a year ago I’d have made sure to make the delivery happen earlier so I could rutn around a drive more.

Now, I am going to take the time off an enjoy it.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

On Last week’s post, CB commented asking if I ever get stuck. If I encounter places where a story doesn’t want to be written. Thanks for the question CB.

The answer is that of course this happens. I expect every writer out there encounters a similar situation throught writing a stories.

He didn’t ask how I dealt with it, but I need something to write this week so I’ll talk about that.

First, why so I get stuck on a story?

That will vary. It could be as simple as overall exhaustion, or exhaustion as it relates to that specific story. It could be that the story simply doesn’t work, and I’m realzing that.

Exhaustion is probably the simplest to handle. I take a break…… if I can afford to. I don’t have deadlines, but I know myself well enough to know that if I stop writing for too long, It’s difficult to get back into it. It’s the main reason I write every day, to maintain the momentum. Avoiding exhaustion is also why I allow myself two 0-word days a month. That way if I feel myself getting tired on a project I can’t really afford to stop I can take a day off and usually that’s enough.

If it’s story specific and it isn’t a main project, as happened today, then I’ll switch to another project, either only for the day, or until I’m tiired of that project. Sundays should be Hemirtal, but it’s been getting tougher to work on it, and today I reached the point where I didn’t want to write it, so I switched to Wyatt’s story. I expect I’ll with on that until part 6 is done, then… who knows. Wyatt’s story is very fluid so I might stick with it and have him visit Denver once he’s done with Amarillo.

When the issue is that the story doesn’t seem to work, then my method is to keep on writing.

If the story has an outline, then I have guide so I’ll muscle theough the ‘bad part’, knowing that when I do the second draft I’ll now know enough about the story to resolve whatever the problem was. In his comment/question, CB mentioned that he’ll go back and rewrite it until the story flows again. That is something I don’t do. Primarily because I need to maintain the momentum. If I have an idea of how it should be fixed, I’ll leave notes in the document to help with dreaft 2.

If the story doesn’t have an outline, then it’s a little more difficult, because even with having an idea of where the story is heading, it’s usually vague enough it could got anywhere until then.

My usual method with those stories is to have my characters talk. Characters in my stories LOVE to talk. At times getting them to stop so the story till progress can be most of the challenge, but when I don’t know where the story’s going, I just let them talk, if nothing else, it fills the page, but usually something in the conversation will indicate where the story needs to go and I can pick up from there.

For those who’ve read Bottom Rung and some of my published books, you’ll note how much more I let the characters just talk in Bottom Rung compared to the published books. That’s mainly a result of having ‘limited’ space in published books compared to the web novel format. My editor had no issue cutting down needless conversation before a book is published, and with those, I let him do it.

When I publish Bottom Rung, as well as the following novels in the Dungeon Runner series, they will not be shrunk. They will be as large as they need to be, long conversation included.

Again, thanks for the comment CB

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

On last week’s post, someone commented they liked learning some of my method, and while normally that would cause my mind to go blank and not able to do anything about it, this time around I actually know what to write about, based on discussions and observations of how other writers write.

So, how do I write a chapter? The quick answer is, I have no idea.

For the longer answer, I’m going to use Chapter 16 of Stepping up, as well as no specific chapters of Faith in the Family and Hemirtal.

At it’s core, my writing was described by someone, many, many years ago, as vomit on the page. I think of it as Improv in written form.

I have a few things I keep in mind when writing a chapter. “something” needs to happen. It can be action, drama, or new information, but I do my best to keep chapters relevant to the story. One thing I’ve noticed with Web Novels is that sometimes the characters are simply “going through the motion” of their lives.

After that, the process depends on the project, because I almost never approach them in the same way. Stepping up started with three or four events I knew I needed to happen through out the book. And I knew the starting point was Tibs in a city, trying to find “His Street”. With each chapter that I wrote, idea for needed seens got added to a list, and when I start a chapter I look at that list to decide with ones I’ll address.

For Chapter 16 it was “Jackal’s father arrives” “Pyan grieves the loss of Geoff” and “The new schedule for the dungeon is up”

If you’ve read it, you know it didn’t quite happen that way. For one thing, I realized I needed to address the events of chapter 15. Then I had Pyan’s scene, and then Jacka’s father, by which point I was out of time, so the new schedule is pushed to the next session.

Except that this chapter led to adding a scene to the list that will have to be addressed first thing next chapter, and that’s the fallout of Sebastian’s arrival, at least in how it affects Jackal, and I have no idea if 1) I’ll be able to have that on the page, since I need Tibs to be there for that to happen, and 2) if I manage it, how long that will be.

Those come about because I just let the character go about what they ‘want’.

For Faith in the Family, I have a full outline from my co-scripter and creator of the story. So I have fairly solid fences I have to remain within, but within that, I let the characters do as they will, which, since they aren’t mine leads to interesting situation where my co-scripter will nudge them back where he feels they should be going in his rewrite.

Hemital is… Honestly, that one is pure Improv on the spot. I have a 2k work “treatment” that indicates the direction I want th story to take, but unlike Stepping Up, writing a chapter isn’t giving me a list of things that will then need to happen, although not in this book. My mind working the way it does, already has plans for book 2 and 3.

So with this story, I look at where the previous chapter ended, figure out what James wants, and let him go in that direction, putting things in his way. This is a story that I know the second draft will be about tightening the plot. With draft 1 I am stepping extremely close to having James “go through the motion” at times.

So yeah, that’s it for this week, if you have specific questions you’d like answered, please ask. As I’m horrible at coming up with ideas for this posts.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

Pantsing, also refered to as Discovery Writing, and “Are You <Bleeping> Insane?,” is a method of writing where the writer knows little ahead of time as to what the story is about. At the extreme, the writer sits down with no idea of what they will work on, write and end up with a story. There are varying gradiant, with more and more planning coming in to play, heading toward the full on Planner (I’m leaving that discussion to someone more qualified thant I).

A Warning going forward, there will be spoilers for Stepping Up, Book 2 of the Dungeon Runner series, as well as The Broken Step, book 3 of that series.

Pantsing has its reward and pitfalls.

When left to my own devices, I am very high on the pantsing scale, although none of the stories I’ve written falls exactly in the same position there. I wrote one out of order, without any idea where I was going. I wrote others with a variety of points I knew I needed to hit.

The way it usually works for me is that I have an idea of what I want, it might be a sense of the story(A feel I’m going for) or a scene. I will often have the first scene of a story and everything will progress from there. Or a scene taking place somewhere in it, and everything leads to it. Once Broken, Book 6 in the Tristan series if the latter, there is a chapter around the ¾ mark that I wanted and I just had to write a story leading to it (That’s before the series was reworked into 6 book) Demons, book 1 of the same named series, had an opening scene and a feel I wanted to go for.

Bottom Rung (book 1 in the Dungeon Runner series) is a little odd in that it came as a reaction to other Dungeon Core books I read. They all had the “Hero” as this happy go lucky guy for whom everything went his way, and no one ever took advantage of. That’s always been the most difficuly part of those stories for me to swallow.

When the conscept for Bottom Rung struck, I had the sense of Tibs, and the knowledge his life would be a tough one and would resolve around a dungeon and the town being build to accommodate ewverythign needed for it. I didn’t have a story when I started writing it. I didn’t even know what the main conflict would be, the big battle.

One of the rewards of pantsing is starting from that and watching the story evolve. Before the halfway point I made the sedicions that the big battle would revolve around monsters attacking, possibly sent by a competing dungeon. In the last fifth of the book I discovered I had it all wrong. Those who had read that book know how that final battle went, if you haven’t read it, go do so: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36484/dungeon-runner

Stepping Up, book 2 if giving me one of the pittfalls of Pantsing. And this is where we’re falling into Spoiler territory. I want Tibs to comint a heist in the Guild building, More Specifically, in Tirana’s office. I know what I want him to take, although I’ve yet to justify the reason to my satisfaction.

Think on this, Tibs, who is at most, the equivalent of a Lambda Runner, will need to take on a Building with the kind of security on it set by people who will be multiuple ranks about him. Tirania herself is rank Beta, the highest in the guild since I’ve established there are no Alpha Adventurers.

I need Tibs to go in, get when he wants, take it to the dungeon for Sto to copy it, and return it to Tirania’s office before she realizes it was gone.

I have no idea how I’m going to pull that off.

In The Broken Step, Book 3, I have an even bigger challenge, because as the results of events in book 2, Tibs will decide to take down “the Guild”. Now, I know he’s making the mistake of not realizing how large the guild actually is, so ultimately, he’ll fail, but he will still take down something. And 1) I have no idea how I’m going to have that happen, and 2) the one Idea I have ends up with Tibs being a murderer… do I really want to do that? Can I find a way to make that death justifiable since it wouldn’t be someone directly involved in what starts Tibs’s vendetta?

Those are pittfalls the pantser finds themselves confronting. Those situation where a story turns into a direction they never saw coming, or saw and were helpless to change, and they have to trust in their skill and the characters to pull of the impossible.

When I can tell you from experience, is that when I do manage to pull that off, the feeling in indescribably.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

I apologize for the lack of journal last week. it was an uneventful week, and I couldn’t find anything to talk about.

This week thought…

I knew this week was going to end on an interesting note. Anytime I deliver in BC on a Friday, it’s interesting because I never know if they’re going to find me a reload or I’m going to spend the weekend there. It used to bother me, because the only 2 truckstop in the area are Petro-pass, and they only allow customers to park there overnight, but we now deal with them, so I don’t mind.

What I didn’t realize was that this is a long weekend, actually, I didn’t realize that until after everything was resolved.

And the company was dealing with another problem(screw up) they were going to send my way.

Here is the situation I was offered. the company missed a pickup in South Dakota on Friday, the customer absolutely needs the load in Gramby, QC, by the time they open their doors this coming Friday otherwise it will cause a shut down of the production line (this is what’s called dumping your inventory on the carrier, or the official term “Just in Time Delivery”) and my company isn't willing to sell the load to another carrier so they can ensure it's there on time. (this is my guess, not what I've been told)

The plan on how to execute this is to give me a reload in BC that I’ll drop in Calgary, grab a new trailer and drive enoty to South Dakota for the pickup on Tuesday, since they are closed on Monday (due to the holiday, but I hadn’t realized that at that point). I ran the numbers, it meant running hard, but I was okay with it, I tend to be more liniant when with the company when I’m given time to work things out. It’s the “youi have to do this now” that makes me balk.

So I said yes, with the addition that any delay would screw things up. I wasn’t surprised when the reply was “well then, make sure you don’t have delays”. Like I’m the one who controls that.

Once I’m at he dock, first thing Friday morning, I check for my reload, and there’s nothing assigned to me yet. I check with the scheduler, and they are still working on it.

This is why Fridays are interesting. Because it’s now looking like I’ll be dealing with a delay, and it might be a big one.

Half an hour before the unloading is done (I know this company quite well) I check in again, still nothing, so Again I contact the scheduler. In the mean time I get my next assignement, which is the pickup in South Dakota.

Instead of wasting time with calls to confirm, I immediately ask for my paperwork to cross the border empty, and I’ll admit I’m surprised when I get it. At the same time as the scheduler replies to my email explaiing that because they can’t find anything, and that having me sit for 3 days (this is when I learned about the long holiday) would end up costing them about the same as paying me to drive empty, they want me to just drive to South Dakota for the pickup.

Which is what I’m doing. Somewhat surprisingly, the rest fo Friday went without major problems, and because I drove in the US, my long day ended 2 hours earlier than it would have if I’d driven to Calgary. (IN Canada I can drive for 13 hours, while in the US it’s only 11)

Writing wise, this coming week should be when Stepping Up will move to posting every other day. there should be 2 posting this week, after that it will be 3 a week.

Also, Fenclaw named another character. Johanna Cross will be making her Debut in chapter 12 of Stepping Up.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

This is going to sound like something I posted before, and it is similar, just from a different party.

My crossing the border this week was delayed, again. This time, if I am to believe the office, the party responsible is the shipper, and the customs broker, neither of whom seemed to know how to deal with paperwork for crossing the border.

And because of past experiences, I have no reason to doubt the office (not that they are all that trustworthy on the whole)

Shippers never know how to deal with sending freight over the border the first time they do it, which is what I suspect was the case with this shipper, so the responsibility fell on the broker to deal with it and educate them, and at one point the office mentioned the broker didn’t even know what a PAPS was (is a code that is used anytime something is shipped from Canada to the US.

I want to say it’s impossible the broker doesn’t know how to handle a PAPS, but there was a time, years ago, when drivers dealt with the broker directly, and more than once I’ve had to educate a broker on how things should be done. Usually, it was a smaller company, but there were a lot of those, and I suspect still are.

At least I’m no longer the one dealing with it directly, although it does mean I’m no longer in control of how hard the broker is pressed on to get things done.

Writing-wise, things are going okay. I passed the halfway point on Demons 3, do in 2 weeks plus 1 day, I will be done with this book, and Stepping up will pick up steam.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

What follows is personal opinion.

LitRPG is often a fun read. It mixes genre with gaming and some writers can do really interesting things with that. Others… not so much.

I started on a science fiction litRPG book on Friday, and I had to abandon it a few hours later and return it because it simply didn’t work. Looking at the reviews (I check them after I read a book) I gathered that the author has a successful fantasy litRPG series, and knowing that I suspect that they simply went, “I’m going to do that, but in space” and it did not work.

Here is why.

When an author starts a book, they have to establish the tone and the setting in the first chapter, I’m generous and I tend to give books two chapters. What the first two chapters of this book gave me was a space fleet arriving into a new system, back story about how humanity accidentally discovered space travel and they were on the “low tech” side of science fiction. Then a space battle following those rules (why the alien ship didn’t have anything more high tech than the humans… irrelevant?) so, a “real” science fiction setting.

Then they introduce the litRPG aspect, dungeon core, and things stop making sense. Suddenly we have magical nano-tech, an alien symbiote that that somehow knows everything about human culture, kobolts, fantasy races in space, the ability to power organic being with ‘energy’ (no need to eat) and, the final straw, to me, experience points. Which is explained as the character learning and becoming ‘better’. Only they get experience points when they kill someone. How does that lead to learning anything?

Now, this isn’t a case of the universe suddenly changing, System Apocalypse litRPG works because the entire world changes to become a gaming system. Here, it’s made clear that only the character and his ship have become so. Everything else is supposed to run normally.

When the character was told that he’d have to create “mob bosses” because “explorers” would board him looking for loot that he’d create and he needed to defeat them to become stronger. (which is around the point that experience points were explained) I had to stop.

So, what’s the problem here?

Well, it’s a problem of not taking into account the consequences of decisions, in this case the authors’. You can’t take a fantasy dungeon core setting and just transpose it into science fiction without changing anything and expect it to work. Science and magic are not the same.

Could the author have made it work? I don’t know. I don’t know what they were going for, I don’t know their motivations in writing it. The next question is “could such a story be made to work?”

I believe so. I wouldn’t be surprised that other authors out there have made it work. But even if no one has, I think it can be done, and I have an idea how.

Yes, that means I’ve added a new story to my queue. Who knows when I will get to it.

Other than that, the weeks went well. so with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

Before anyone panics, this isn’t about writing or the stories I’m working on.

One of the “signal behavior” with me, when I get bored with something is that I stop caring about how well I do it. That can be a game, dealing with other, and yes, it can also apply to writing, and it can definitely apply to my job, and it is applying.

Normally, and I put that at anytime before February 2021, when I went on medical leave for my cancer, I’d take any load I was given, just so I’d keep driving. I’d call to get the load sooner, or walk to the office if I was in the yard.

I ended up in the yard on Friday, after delivering 15 minutes away. Now, no one told mew to return to the yard. They would happily have left me sitting at the customer, when I asked if there was anything assigned to me, they said no. I told them I was heading to the yard, gave them 10 minutes to reply, then drove there.

A driver I’d run across in Laredo happened to be parked next to me so we chatted for a while, still waiting for an assignment. As we talked the thought of “do I really want to do this anymore?” kept bouncing in my head. And I thought back on how I’d driven recently. Not trying very hard to be on time, not double checking that I was handed all the paperwork (turned out some were missing that day, actually and I had to call the customer to have them fax the papers to the office) and now, not trying very hard to get my next load. To the point that when I went in the office to hand in my trip envelopes, I’d decided that if they didn’t have a load for me, I was head home for the weekend.

I can’t recall when the last time was that I have decided to head home instead of going back on the road.

They had a load going to Laredo, TX in the yard, ready for me, which, of course, they hadn’t sent to my truck, and I can bet that if I hadn’t checked in, wouldn’t have been sent, ever. I took it, and I’m not regretting it.

But I have been noticing that anytime I have to deal with the office, there is this thought of “do I really want to do this anymore?” bubbling up, and it’s getting louder and louder.

I still love my job. I life driving the truck, just not dealing with the people in the company. And I love writing more than I love my job, and that’s making justifying sticking with it harder and harder.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

I don’t know if there is such a thing a video game playing addiction, or, if there is, if it’s what I have. And ultimately, it isn’t relevant to what I’m going to talk about, other than it involves video games, because it isn’t affecting my work, both the writing and what’s paying the bills. (still not the same thing, soon hopefully)

Something happens with me and video. When I start playing, I can keep going so long as it doesn’t affect my work or my writing, then I’ll purposely stop. and no, stopping isn’t hard. I make the decision and it happens. the next week will find me thinking about the game a fair bit, then that fades and I’m good until I decide to start playing again, usually years later, or if I find myself at home for an extended period of time. that’s what happened while I was on medical leave.

I build a stable schedule and I stuck to it fairly well.

When I went back on the road I kept to the schedule as well as I could, considering my schedule is impossible to stabilize. And still, it didn’t get in the way of my writing (on the toad gaming has never gotten in the way of my work)

Due to circumstances, this week I wasn’t able to play at all. (my approved gaming schedule is 6pm to 8pm) and as I approached day 5, I began to notice something I’ve felt on precious times, but which I hadn’t paid too much attention to.

I began feeling a reluctance to play again.

There isn’t really another way to describe it. I saw Sunday approach, and I always have time to play on that day, and I started questioning if I should play. I still enjoy the game, so it wasn’t about being bored with it, which was an aspect of the previous times, I’d grown bored with the game.

What would I do if I didn’t play? Nothing? It isn’t like I’d do more writing. I’m set on that schedule too. I only write in the morning and once I’m done, I am done. So what would I do? Surf Youtube? Binge TV shows? What? I know myself enough to know the goal would be to just relax, so gaming made as much sense as anything else.

And yet, that reluctance.

I did end up playing. I had fun, although by the end things got chaotic enough, I suspect I need to rebuild my factory (I’m playing Satisfactory at the moment). I need a better way to keep track of what I’m building, how many and so on. I have ideas of how I’ll rebuild it.

And now I’m looking forward to playing again, and hopefully I will be able to this week. if not at the end of the day, while I’m being loaded/unloaded at customers is another time I can play.

If I can’t play this week, I’ll have to see how the reluctance to play develops.

On the writing front, I finished A Fraudulent Death and sent that to the editor. I have started book 3 of Demons. that’s 2 chapters out of 28 done. So I’m looking at a little more than 5 weeks to do until Stepping Up switches back to 3 times a week.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

Here’s the thing about being a truck driver. A lot of your work life is out of your control. I can’t control when the truck will break down, when there will be an accident, a storm, breakdown in equipment needed to make what I’ll be carrying. A lot of stuff can happen that will impact how my day does, and for the most part, I’ve learned to accept it and go with it.

The one aspect that still gets to me, probably always will, if when a delay is caused by someone. I know people will make mistakes, and really this isn’t about the people themselves, it’s about my company. About how there’s an atmosphere of incompetence there that means even a small mistake will ruin a day.

Case in point, and while I’m using this as an example, it’s more indicative of how things go than this specific event.

I did a pickup Wednesday morning. It delivers in Laredo on Tuesday morning, and I need to do a reset (36 hours without driving) before then (I do my best to arrange it to take Sunday off) for all intent and purposes, it's 40 hours of driving. So, a full day on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and I’m there. Or, preferably, since all of Monday available, I drive 8 hours a day or so on those days, take Sunday off, and drive Monday, and I’m at the delivery early on Tuesday.

I like to plan ahead.

As soon as I do the pick-up, I confirm with the office they have the papers for the border. I’m told they do, and that’s it a T&E Bond (a specific type of crossing for loads that pick up outside the US and ultimately deliver outside the US, this is going to Mexico). So I start driving because those always take a few hours to get done.

3 hours after I start driving, I ask for an update since I know I’ll be taking a break at a coming truckstop and I can print my papers. I find out that something went wrong. The custom broker processed it as a different kind of crossing, so they have to redo it.

And this is how regular what’s going to happen is that as soon as I read this, I know, I’m not crossing the border today even though I’ll have the hours, and my initial plan counted on me driving 2 hours in the US to work. The closest, practical, parking place is an hour away from the border. I can get closer, but that means parking on a pull-out without even a bathroom.

I send a message a few hours later, not only isn’t it resolved, but I’m told custom isn’t even working on it, so they are going to escalate. (now, here I have to take dispatch at their word. For all I know no one even told the broker to redo the paperwork when I first message them. It’s happened before. Dispatch is great at shifting the blame to other people) an hour away from where I’ll park if I can’t cross the border, still nothing done.

I park and shut down for the night and now my main concern is how much of the next day will be wasted with me sitting and waiting, because nothing will get done overnight, even though Brokers are 24 hours. And no one in dispatch will push them to resolve this.

Next morning, I ask for an update and, big surprise, nothing has been done, so they are going to escalate to the supervisor. Not check with them to find out what they did when the supervisor was contacted the previous day. No, escalate. As in. no one did it before.

See where I have a certain level of distrust with my company?

An hour after my usual start time, it’s finally resolved. It gave me a bit more time to write. And, as Murphy likes to do, my printer decides to stop working then, so I can’t print my paperwork, and there are no fax machines at this parking place or at any of the other fuel places I know of. (this isn’t the first time I’ve had to get something faxed because I couldn’t print it) Fortunately, the Duty-Free will receive faxes so I have it sent there. That goes without problems and I cross the border.

All this means I had to rework my entire route, and it still works, I’m just going to get to the delivery a bit later than I initially planned. No, I’m not sacrificing my workday for a screwup I had no part in.

Oh, and I had to drive through a snowstorm on my way to the border. I keep forgetting that Alberta is at a higher elevation and that the temperature is a lot lower for mid-May and I’m used to.



On the Writing front, I expect that in three months, Stepping Up will go back to being posted 3 days a week. I’m going to finish draft two of A Fraudulent Death this coming week, and I expect book 3 of the Demons series to take around 2 months, maybe a bit more, to finish.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

Let’s start with writing stuff, despite what the post title implies.

Don’t get whiplash, but I’ve already changed my mind on how I’m going to proceed for the writing the next non-litRPG series. I’m going to slow the production of that series, with the approval of the other person involved, so that I can work on Stepping Up three days a week. so, at some point before the end of the year, once I’m done with the current book and the next one on the schedule, Stepping Up will go back to a 3-times a peek posting schedule.

On the work front. Getting back to work took more out of me than I expected, but not where I expected it. I thought it would be the driving itself that would be difficult to get back into the habit off, after 3 months without driving, but that went fine, which reminded me that Highway Driving isn’t work for me, it’s relaxing.

Where the shock came was at the end of the day. while I was home, I had a fixed schedule. Write until 4pm, with a buffer of 5pm for when I had to stretched things. Have dinner while watching a TV episode, then game until 9 or so, then get ready for bed.

Driving a truck doesn’t come with a fixed schedule. I do my best to set one, but in the end, I’m at the mercy of the load requirement, the laws and if I want to make having a day off on Sunday or not a priority. So I had to push hard this week to make everything happen, and that lead to irregular evenings without time for much other than eating and a little relaxing. Definitely no gaming.

That, more than anything this week was the surprise. How used I’d gotten to ending my day with some video game (currently it’s Satisfactory).

I’m getting used again to not always having time at the end of the day to do what I’d prefer, but it does serve as another reason as to why I want to switch to writing fulltime, At home.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

Heads up, I’m tired. Exhausted even, from 4+ hours of moving my stuff into the new truck that was assigned to me. I really hope that isn’t something I will have to do again anytime soon.

So yes, I am back in the truck, I officially start tomorrow, but with moving my stuff in, it’s simpler to spend the night in it. The truck is an automatic, which I wasn’t expecting. They aren’t common and I didn’t know my company had some. Otherwise, the layout is similar to my previous truck.

One thing that vanished in the transition (I wasn’t the one who took my stuff out of the old truck, since I was at home, resting) is the laptop board I made years ago to accommodate the laptop on my lap and the trackball, since I have no table. I’m using the previous experiment now, which is fine, except for not having space for my trackball, so it’s on the bed next to me. I’ll make another one when I have the time.

Work wise, that’s it.

On the side of Patreon something happened that irked me more than I expected it to. Someone stopped supporting me, right after the previous journal, where I mentioned going back to work and having to limit Stepping Up to one chapter a week, and where I mentioned I’d add Hemirtal.

Now, the leaving part, I’m fine with. I said in the post I expected it to happen. It’s some of the comments that they made in the exit interview. Basically, they said the I claim not to have the time to work as much on Stepping Up, BUT I go and start a new story. So that’s why they left. Somehow, they decided that I owe it to them to work only on the thing they’re here for. There’s a sense of ownership?(I don’t think that’s the right word) of my stories on their part. Like, they knew my mind, the why I do things, and clearly, I do it to annoy them.

So, with that in mind, I thought I’d give you a sense of why I work the way I do.

First off, I have ADHD. It means that I can focus pretty damn hard on something I like, and not at all on everything else. I’m not on medication, because it’s not that severe in me, and I’ve learned to work with and around it.

For anyone who’s dropped by my stream (I am going to miss doing them, big time) you saw that I always work on multiple stories over the week. I always have three stories going at all time. (I actually have a few hundred more, but three is what I allow myself to write so I can finish something.) one story will get the majority of the time, another a bit less and the last will usually only get one writing session a week.

What story gets what blocks depend on a variety of factors. The main one is, which story makes me money. Then there would be what’s currently ongoing that I need to conclude, or that I’m under contract to finish. And finally, what do I need to work on to relax?

At this time, Dungeon Runner (Bottom Rung and Stepping Up) is making me about 50$ (this is based on when the influx happened, and the comments I’m getting) a month off Patreon. The rest is from people supporting me for my other books. Because Patreon is the only place where Bottom Rung the story can be read if I’m paid, that it the only place I’m looking to see which side earns me more.

Then there are my commitments. I’m writing the last book in the Death by Predation series right now. After it, I have to write the last book in the Demons Series. I’m hoping to have both done by the end of this year, early 2022 at the latest. This means that even if supports of Dungeon Runner were to flock to my Patreon tomorrow, I’d still have to finish these books before I could put Dungeon Runner in front. Right now, there is a trilogy schedule for after I’m done with Demons, but I will be looking at which side the money’s coming from then before making the final decision. The people directly affected by have been informed.

Hemirtal is going to remain last no matter what happens. I started working on it a few month ago as what I call a ‘pleasure project’.

So, what does all that means to the schedule? I went from writing seven hours a day, five days a week, to writing 2 hours a day, seven days a week. that from 35 hours, down to 14. As much as I’d like to devote more time, I don’t have it. (before someone points out I can always make time. I’m a truck driver and my days average 11 hours of work. There might be time after that to write, but there’s no energy left.) Because I have commitments to them, and they bring in more money, Death by Predation and Demon will have to get the bulk of the time. that’s five days a week so I can meat the timelines. Hemirtal gets Saturday, and Dungeon Runner Sunday, because I don’t normally work on Sunday, so I can spend more time on the story (that’s a couple of hours more, if nothing happens)

So yeah. There’s the way I schedule my time. hopefully it will help you understand why Dungeon Runner is going to have a slower posting schedule until, at least, when I’m done with these two books.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

TL:DR I will be going back to work, so I will have to write less.

On Thursday, I will have my check-up, and unless I get bad news, I will be heading back to work on the 10th.

The main thing it means for you, my supporters, is that I will go from writing daily, 7 hours Monday to Friday, to writing seven days a week, but only 2 hours each day. The main change this will cause is for my supporters here to follow Bottom Rung/Stepping Up (the Dungeon Runner Series) as I will have to drop from 3 chapters a week to 1. I understand that runs the risk of costing me supporters, but it’s unavoidable since I have prior commitments that necessitate putting the bulk of my writing time toward them. I’ll also start posting a new VR MMO LitRPG story in first draft stage (Hemirtal)

The new Schedule for Stepping Up every Monday, starting on may 17th, with a gap between May 8th and then, which I’ll see about filling with some of the backlog on Hemirtal.

One the housemates front. I consider myself ‘slow’. Not in the ‘stupid’ definition, just in that it takes me a while to notice that the way I might be doing isn’t the best one, or that there are more efficient ways to do/arrange things… stuff like that.

This week, I was made to realize that I’m not actually the slowest person in the house.

We have a problem with clogged drains with the kitchen sink. The reason is simple, people dump stuff in there that doesn’t go there, like large pieces of food, peels from potatoes, and far more stuff. I got tired of dealing with it, since everyone else’s way to deal with it is to complain about the clog, then walk away.

I unclogged it and bought strainers to put over the drains, figuring it would make it easier to keep stuff out of the drain. And dumps the foodstuff in the garbage.

A few days later, as I’m prepping food, one of the housemates removes the drain, dumps their stuff in the drain, then puts it back in place. they weren’t even furtive about it. Somehow it didn’t occur to them the strainer had a purpose until I explain what it was for.

People amaze me something.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

This is going to be a bit of a busy post as quite a few things have happened this week.

First, I want to welcome my new supporters from the LitRPG community and Royal Road. If you are interested in watching the writing process, for the next few week, I will be Streaming the writing of Bottom Rung on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/kindar11 on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 12:30 pm, EST. Thursday is Hemirtal, a new VR MMO story(I will be starting to post it here shortly), and Friday is something of a random day as I’m still not used to working on that day.

I have received another piece of fan art from https://twitter.com/FruitzJam . This time, it’s of Arnold and his brothers, who are probably the most dysfunctional family in the world. https://twitter.com/FruitzJam/status/1383217964049002496

On to the decision I have made.

After my last cancer treatment, my doctor recommended I stay at home until my next check-up, which will be in early May. The fact that I didn’t even fight the suggestion made me realize that I really want to stay home and write.

I’ve been looking over my finances, and because of the rent I’m getting from the housemates, I have enough to cover all my bills, with a little left over to enjoy life.

So, the moment Covid if over, I will be walking away from Trucking and into Writing fulltime.

And the last thing to address is the final call from Dell, where they asked if they could consider me a happy and satisfied customer of Dell. I laughed in their face. When they ask to explain why I wasn’t satisfied, since I had received a working computer, I happily told them about Dell trying to extort money from me, Dell suddenly no longer being able to get the piece after I reminded them the laptop was under warranty. He told me, very smugly, that the laptop wasn’t under warranty, and that I should be very happy it was repaired and that I didn’t pay for it.

When I reminded him I had the Premium Warranty from Dell, and that it expired after they’d received my laptop because they kept delaying things he agreed with me, then added that the basic warranty on my laptop expired two years ago, and that covered the parts, not the Premium Warranty.

So, if nothing else, I now know how Dell justified trying to con me. They decided that a Basic Warranty covered more than a Premium Warranty (I checked their website after the call, it doesn’t). He never got me to say I was satisfied with Dell’s services, and I will continue advising people to stay away from Dell as if they were Covid Positive.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.

Posted using PostyBirb

So, Dell Screwed up?

I really don’t know what to make of this. After all the phone calls ending with Dell telling me I was screwed, and they were returning my laptop unrepaired, all I was hoping for was that since the problem was just the battery not charging, they hadn’t broken it in other ways so I could still use it, with a UPC (uninterruptable Power Supply) power supply to make up for the lack of a working battery.

On Monday the laptop was delivered, and instead of a laptop with a charging problem what I got was …

A fully repaired laptop.

Weird, right?

I mean, when I opened the box and saw the repair report indicating everything they replaced on it (it’s all parts code so it was meaningless to me other than there were a lot of parts replaced), I figured they were trying to make themselves look good by replacing everything that didn’t have a problem (or just claiming they had, this is Dell after all).

When I plugged it in, I fully expected nothing to happen, but I was surprised to find it powered up. It had to go through the windows initiation sequence since as part of repairing it they reinstalled Windows, so I waited until that was done to poke around the system and see the state of the battery. I was already happy the system powered up, so I wasn’t expecting anything.

Definitely not to see a battery fully charged. I even unplugged it to see if the battery would immediately drop to 0, since that was something that it had done before, but no, it dropped to 99%, and when I plugged it in, it went back to 100. I haven’t done an extensive test yet because I want to set it up completely first and I don’t have the right monitor cables for it (they have been ordered) but as far as I’m concerned, I have a fully functioning laptop.

I should be happy.

What I am is confused.

Did they do that in the day and a half between me posting my Facebook post? (I did post a copy on Dell’s Facebook page) if so, 1) that’s damned impressive and 2) why didn’t anyone from Dell contact me to say they’d seen my concerns and would ensure I had a working laptop? Or was my laptop always ready for repairs and the customer service department just didn’t know about it? Or worse yet, were actively trying to con me out of money. Were they calling me about the wrong laptop entirely?

As I said, I should be happy I have a working laptop, and really, I am. I’m just not able to be happy at Dell because I can’t tell if they intended for me to get a working laptop, or if they are so screwed up in how they work that they were planning on screwing me over completely and screwed that up too.

So, no, I can’t find it in myself to be happy at Dell.

But who I am happy for are the Ladies of the Fates. I once again bow to you Ladies for taking a situation I was willing to live with and making it so much better.

(amusingly, as I am finishing writing this, I started my stream and got an advertising for Alienware, which Dell owns)

This Friday, so a few days after I wrote this, I got a call from Dell asking if I was satisfied with my repair.

Now. I’ll be honest here and say that really felt like adding insult to injury. Yes, my laptop WAS repaired, but I wasn’t told that, I was told I was getting an unrepaired system back. fortunately for me, I wasn’t home when I got the call so I was able to make the rep’s life a little difficult by asking her why she was asking me about a repaired computer when Dell told me they were returning an unrepaired computer to me.

She had to put me on hold to go ask what that was about, and returned to say they’d found the right piece to repair it, so did the repair before sending it. I then asked how come no one contacted me to inform me and she said that they were, that she was contacting me (this was one week after the ‘repair was done’ AND she’s started the call asking if I was satisfied, not that I’d be receiving a repaired computer).

When she asked me to turn the computer on so I could check if it was repaired satisfactorily, I said I wasn’t home so I couldn’t turn it on (I will point out that was entirely true) That threw or off and she went on to explain what had been repaired, basically, the motherboard that was out of stock and out of life that Dell couldn’t find and therefore the reason they were returning it to me not repaired. And she asked when she could call back.

I said Saturday and she hesitated before saying she didn’t work on that day. She asked to call Monday and I agreed.

I definitely hope she isn’t expecting me to say good things after all this, even if Dell did return to me a repaired computer, because, no, I still am not happy with Dell and I will not be doing business with them again.

And that’s it for now, so I’ll see you on the next one.

Posted using PostyBirb

I think that we all set goalposts. We probably all have different words for them, ‘resolutions’ ‘accomplishments’ ‘markers’ I expect that those as but a small sample of the multitude of words used identify them, just in the English language. I’m not even going to guess at other languages.

I’ve discovered I call mine Tiers. Almost certainly something I picked up from Gaming. I say discovered because it’s not been something I’ve thought about until I encountered one and I had to explain how meaningful the event was for me.

That event? Someone drew fan art based on two of my books. Finding the Line and Toeing the Line. The links to them are below.

People who know me will tell you I’m not someone who gets excited. Excitement and me have a rocky history, at best. I’ve made a lot of mistakes when I was excited about something, I’d say I made most of them in that state, so as a defense, I avoid getting excited. Good thing? Bad thing? That’s for the shrinks to decide.

But on looking at the tweet with the art on it, I was so unprepared for it that I didn’t understand what I was looking at for a few seconds. Nice are, for certain, but why was I tagged on it? Then I read the tweet itself.

I was speechless, I was ecstatic, I was overjoyed. I kid you not, I SQEEED. (https://i.gifer.com/CJH.gif) I do NOT squee. I am not that kind of person. I was streaming my writing at the time, so my viewers got quite a show, and then I find myself having to explain why I reacted that way

I used ‘tiers’ to explain the stages of my ‘writing success’. First I wrote. Then I showed my stuff to others. Then someone told me how much one of my stories touched them, after that was my first sale.

I thought that was it. I knew of fan art. The art websites I frequent are filled with art of shows the artists like, or art from other artist they like, of books they read, but I never thought I’d get some, unless I paid an artist to draw something specific, which I have done.

Then I was tagged in those tweets and I was touched. The art is amazing, the fact someone enjoyed the book enough to want to draw them is amazing. I think it’s one of those things you don’t realize how important it is to you, until it happens.

I’m also happy I wrote the title to this post the day that happened, because when I opened the document all I could think of was how I’m now touch typing easier, and that really doesn’t measure up to the art.

So that’s it for now, so I’ll see you on the next one.

https://twitter.com/FruitzJam/status/1365180816867921920

https://twitter.com/FruitzJam/status/136582930303275827

Posted using PostyBirb

I Have Fan Art!

https://twitter.com/FruitzJam/status/1365180816867921920

There are things in life that would be nice, I never expect to get. If I have to give a reason it would be something vague like “I’m not that kind of guy.” I’m not the guy who runs into someone famous. I’m not the guy who does stuff that’ll make him famous.

And in that vein, I’m not the author who gets fanart.

Now, that’s not to say I don’t think my books don’t deserve fanart, they absolutely do, but I’m not a popular author. I’m not the guy whose books are talks about even within the fandom the books are aimed at. As mentioned before, I’m just not that guy.

Except, that it seems I might be. Friday morning when I checked my Twitter feed, it was there waiting for me to see it. It was so unexpected that I didn’t understand what I was looking at for a good 10 seconds. Then I couldn’t stop squealing.

It’s one of those thresholds I never thought I’d cross, or that I would be so affected by it.

The feeling of someone liking a story so much they do art of it is very much indescribable.

And a minor work-related note to end the week on.

Yesterday I had to go to the yard because since I was only expecting to be out of my truck for a day or two, I’d left the new permits on my bed to deal with when I got back. I forgot about it, so when I was informed my truck would be cleaned and my stuff packed and shelved so they could lend the book, I didn’t think to mention them, and because they use an outside company to clean the truck, they packed the permits away with my stuff. So I was asked to go through my stuff to find 2 of them so the truck could roll, the rest could be printed since they are fully electronic now

When I got to the yard I found both of the needed permits a on the driver’s seat of my truck, and no one knew how they’d gotten there. It would have been known for them to be informed by whoever found them so I wouldn’t have to spend 2 hours bussing there and back, but it did get me to smell the fresh city air and feel the sun on my face.

And to pick up the chocolate I keep in my truck.

And that’s it for now, so I’ll see you on the next one.

Posted using PostyBirb

Right, there are no holidays at the moment.

I am home for medical reasons. I had my checkup on Wednesday, and as far as what my doctor said, it went well, but he still decided to put me through the 6-week preventive treatment. So, it’s me at home writing full time for a while.

I really wish there was more to say, but I have a boring life 😊

So that’s it for now, so I’ll see you on the next one.

Posted using PostyBirb