Monica Valentinelli's Blog: booksofm.com, page 8

Clarion Write-A-Thon Week 2: Draft Done! On to Liombruno

Dear readers,

I finished a first draft of my “Caterina the Wise” retelling for the Clarion Write-A-Thon. This week, I randomly selected a story called “Liombruno” from Basilicata. My Italian geography is not very good, so I researched the city and learned its geography is really cool. It is a southern Italian region in the lower middle part of the boot, and has over 140 rock-cut churches, mountains, and forests.

I hadn’t heard this story before, so I did a little bit of research. I did find an article snippet on Encyclopedia Brittanica (it’s buried behind a paywall so I can’t share it, unfortunately), but it was cited as exemplary of a popular folk style combining irony and common sense.

The story is about a fisherman who pledges his firstborn son, Liombruno, to the Evil One on his thirteenth birthday. Following this, Liombruno refuses to serve the Evil One and proves his worth. He is then rescued by a shapeshifting fairy named Fata Aquilina, who takes pity on Liombruno and showers him with riches. Missing his parents, Liombruno begs to go home and is given a magical ruby–an icon of her power–to call upon her magic. Only, the fairy warned Liombruno not to expose her for who she truly was. Which, after a time, he did.

The ending of the tale drips with forgiveness. She is dying from grief because she lost Liombruno and he betrayed her. When he reappears, he doesn’t not apologize. She pretty much forgave him and then went back to living happily ever after.

Hmmmm… This’ll be interesting to tackle. The heart of the story is really about the couple’s relationship, but at the same time any repentance story I’d write would absolutely have an apology in it. I’m just not sure repentance is the theme I want to lean into, because that feels off to me. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

‘Til next time!

Other Clarion Write-A-Thon Posts

Week Zero: Outlining the Project
Week One: Brainstorming and Selection
Week One: More on Catarina the Wise

Week Two: Getting More Out of Habitica

About this Post: In exchange for sponsor support, I promised to highlight how I’m processing my identity as an Italian-American and daughter of an immigrant through brainstorming, story selection, and first drafts. If you’re keen on following my progress, warts and all, I encourage you to become my sponsor and sign up for my newsletter.

Clarion Write-A-Thon Week 2: Getting More Out of Habitica

As I mentioned in my initial post, I planned to use this Write-A-Thon to assess and evaluate what’s working for me and what isn’t. Part of that evaluation is to assess my productivity tools. I was thinking about writing sprints, for example, and how they affect my word count goals.

To that end, I’ve realized that a lot of the times notebooks and planners don’t work for me. I’d love to say: “Yes! Putting pen to paper is the best idea ever!” Except, I have a thousand notebooks, post-its, etc. filled with all kinds of lists. Unless it’s a to-do list, it just doesn’t work for me.

Focusing on that part of my productivity, I circled back to Habitica and am now using it more regularly. (I am @booksofm) on that platform if you want to quest with me.) One tiny aspect of Habitica I hadn’t leveraged in the past is the negative points value, or the damage taken from Habits and Dailies. When I started using that, I got more out of it because it wasn’t just about getting things done. It was also about not doing specific things.

For clarification, Habitica has four categories: Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and Rewards. Habits are a plus or minus feature that has built-in streaks. Dailies are routine-oriented tasks. The way I use Dailies is to plug in things like my newsletter or something that has more gravitas, like exercise, because those are more concerted efforts than taking my vitamins or doing the dishes. The To-Dos section I use to plug in projects that have deadlines or items on my To-Do list. These are things that often take considerable effort and have multiple steps. Finally, Rewards is your in-game loot, which you get for completing items. You can also create custom Rewards as well.

To gamify Habitica further, there are four things I would love to see. I will probably suggest these at some point; I’m not really active in that community and don’t have the programming skills to help. Right now, this is just me “musing” out loud.

Assign Damage to Missed Deadlines on To-Dos: One of the nice features about To-Dos is that you can assign a Deadline. I really like the “Scheduled” view for To-Dos

which re-orders the items based on due date. I’d love to take that a step further, and have damage taken for a missed deadline. (Even something small like a quarter point per day would be valuable.)
Optional: Assign Rewards to To-Dos: Sometimes, there’s To-Dos I have to complete that I really don’t want to. By assigning a Reward to a To-Dos, it’d be a specific reminder that action has consequences.
Optional: Add a Projects Category: For me, To-Dos is a combination one-off projects and multi-tiered assignments, so being able to use the existing functionality as another category would help me separate the one-off To-Dos from the larger projects. This functionality already exists within the To-Dos category; you can add multiple steps to a To-Dos that you’d need to check off. Basically, I just want the bigger ones broken out from the one-offs visually, and I’d sacrifice Habits to do that. But, I can see how some people need Habits, which is why I’m suggesting that be optional.
Optional: Calendar Integration: I would love to have the ability to integrate my digital calendar with the deadline functionality, but as an option. Again, I’m looking at those longer-term projects I’m already plugging in to get reminders on. If there isn’t a way to do that, I’d take alerts or reminders instead.

Habitica’s strength is that it does gamify your to-do list and it is fun. I love the 8-bit look and feel to Habitica; it’s very old school. If interested, check out Habitica.com.

Other Clarion Write-A-Thon Posts

Week Zero: Outlining the Project
Week One: Brainstorming and Selection
Week One: More on Catarina the Wise

About this Post: In exchange for sponsor support, I promised to highlight how I’m processing my identity as an Italian-American and daughter of an immigrant through brainstorming, story selection, and first drafts. If you’re keen on following my progress, warts and all, I encourage you to become my sponsor and sign up for my newsletter.

Clarion Write-A-Thon: More on Retelling Catarina the Wise

Readers,

Last time, I gave you some initial thoughts on “Catarina the Wise”. Today I want to dig a little deeper, because there’s something eating away at the heart of my process. Simply, the question: “Should this be a literal retelling, beat for beat, or should I capture the essence of it?”

I thought about the story’s themes related to equality and how they’re presented. The idea that education should be free for everyone, regardless of class, is not the “point” of the tale–but it is a message that is more powerful to a reader in the past than it is today. While the gender equality message is present, I feel it’s specific to cishet marital relationships and the father-daughter bond. It’s for this reason I think the story’s lesson has two different audiences. First, it’s a story about Italian, family-minded cishet men. My take is that fathers and husbands shouldn’t regard their daughters and wives as anything but equal. However, Caterina the Wise also presents as a lesson for the cishet women in these relationships, too. That is: it’s better to bend the existing rules than to try and change them.

I want to point out that Catarina doesn’t interact with other women in the story; her mother passes away off-screen early on. Her worth and value is shared through the perspective of her father and her abusive husband, the prince. When she gets in trouble, she does ask her father for help, which he provides, he then stops helping. I don’t know how much you know about Italian families, but the fact that the father left Catarina to her own devices is a huge deal. Huge.

After re-reading the story, Catarina’s methodology to teach her abuser a life-changing lesson feels wrong to me, because she lies about who she is, sleeps with the Prince, and has several children she then uses as leverage. She doesn’t simply leave him. She stays and changes him by teaching him a lesson–which…well, that’s problematic AF. In this specific instance, the fact that she is not the villain flips the trope that cishet women who use their sexual power are evil. Catarina is not depicted as such. Instead, she’s the heroine of a tale who beat the Prince at his own game.

Here’s where these resonate tones get complicated: I made a pledge to not include cishet white men in my stories to challenge myself. I’ve already decided I’m not going to simply flip the genders because that’s the easy way out for me; I don’t know enough about the power dynamics in queer relationships to write them well and provide the necessary, authentic subtext either. Instead, I’m looking at the essence of this story to see if that’s portable to 2020. Then, I’ll build characters around the abuser-victim dynamic who make sense for the story. So far, I’ve been leaning into the heroine’s name–Caterina the Wise–and the lesson of entitlement with respect to class. I don’t believe that lesson requires a sexual relationship (or the use of children as leverage).

Oh! I don’t think I mentioned this before, but the reason why I am not choosing the name ‘Barbara’ from Calvino’s retelling is because of its meaning. Barbara is a Greek name that is the root of the term “barbarian”. I don’t regard Catarina as being the villain in this story, and changing her name to Barbara (strange or foreign) from the Italian version of Catherine (pure) feels like an odd choice for her character.

Anyway, blogging about “Caterina the Wise” has been interesting for me; I hope you’re enjoying this look into my process. Short stories, in particular, are something I must read a couple of times to fully appreciate, understand, and unlock all their complexities.

Other Clarion Write-A-Thon Posts

Week Zero: Outlining the Project
Week One: Brainstorming and Selection

About this Post: In exchange for sponsor support, I promised to highlight how I’m processing my identity as an Italian-American and daughter of an immigrant through brainstorming, story selection, and first drafts. If you’re keen on following my progress, warts and all, I encourage you to become my sponsor and sign up for my newsletter.

Clarion Write-A-Thon: Initial Brainstorming and Selecting the First Italian Fairy Tale

Hello readers,

Last week, I talked about what I’m writing for the Clarion Write-A-Thon. I spent some time this weekend thinking about the negative experiences I’ve had, and have been mulling over Colorism because it’s something I want to be mindful of when writing these stories.

Italian-Americans are sometimes treated differently because we’re not deemed white enough. There are stereotypes that shape this toxic view; Italians from the top of the boot are thought to be lighter-skinned than those in the south. The further south you go, the darker the skin tone–with Calabria and Sardinia residents being the darkest. In other words, where your family is originally from sometimes acts as a signpost for your perceived worth. (Which is nonsense.)

My own experiences have been really weird. Though I am white, I have olive undertones to my skin. There have definitely been times where I haven’t been white “enough” or, alternatively, not tan “enough” to call myself Italian. Mind you, I have never experienced these moments among people of color, and since I changed my hair color to blonde (which I did because I’m mostly grey and occasionally vain) I didn’t have as many issues as I once did. Now, I’ve managed to unpack some of those experiences and learn more about Othering, mostly to confirm: “Okay, so that’s what happened.”

Thankfully, I’m past the pain of my experiences–so much so they’ve faded to a small watermark. That said, I do know Colorism still exists. I just don’t know how Colorism started for Italian immigrants, nor do I know enough about the subject to speak to it authoritatively. Of course, Colorism and Racism aren’t the same, either, even though sometimes they’re conflated. It doesn’t help that Italian pop culture references often reinforce harmful stereotypes while, at the same time, whitewashing Italian cultures–especially anything that smacks of “Rome”. The adverse effect of that is reinforcing Colorism–either intentionally or unintentionally.

Choosing the Fairy Tale

Deep topics, right? So, how the F*&$ do I choose which fairy tale to retell? Well readers–I decided not to. Instead, I pulled out my copy of Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales. This 763-page book is a collection that includes fairytales like The Three Crones from Venice along with non-magical folktales. Then, I closed my eyes and opened it up. Whatever random page I opened up to? That’d be the fairy tale I selected for the week.

And so, the first story I’m retelling is called “Barbara the Wise” from Palermo, Sicily. The moral to this particular tale is quite interesting, because the lesson intersects with class-and-gender based stereotypes while championing a free and public education. I did some preliminary research about the Sicilian fairy tale, and found it by an alternative name: “Catarina the Wise” in Giuseppe Pitre’s Catarina the Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales translated by Jack Zipes. (Apologies for the misspelling of Pitre’s surname. There should be an accent grave over the “e”, but I couldn’t get the accent to stick.)

I dug a little deeper to see if I could find any women writing about this story and came up unsurprisingly empty. What I did learn, is that Guiseppe Pitre (1847-1916) is literally an unknown champion of Sicilian culture and folklore in the 19th century. This is a huge deal. Anti-Italianism was rampant and deadly at the time. It’s also subtext in Little Women that often gets ignored or misunderstood, because Anti-Italianism doesn’t have the same meaning in modern times as it did to a 19th century resident. (See: Laurie.) If you’re looking for highlights, the anti-italianism page on Wikipedia has a good overview of how Italian-Americans were treated historically, and how that’s changed during-and-post WWII. Pointedly, there’s a long list of resources at the bottom you can check out yourself.

After reading “Catarina the Wise”, I wanted to learn more about its origins because I was surprised by how feminist it was. This story proudly declares gender and class equality–that’s literally the lesson. Prince and pauper both deserve an equal education and fair treatment, and the prince who doesn’t agree and tries to punish Catarina is taught quite the lesson. The locations mentioned–Palermo, Venezia, Genoa, Napoli–don’t read as an accident to me, either. The story tells me that Sicilians are no different from other Italians and are valued the same. Not should be. Are. Ugh! It’s a perfect folktale. Now, I just have to figure out how to retell it. Yeah, no pressure. No pressure at all. *whistles*

About this Post: In exchange for sponsor support, I promised to highlight how I’m processing my identity as an Italian-American and daughter of an immigrant through brainstorming, story selection, and first drafts. If you’re keen on following my progress, warts and all, I encourage you to become my sponsor and sign up for my newsletter.

My Clarion Write-A-Thon Project

Hiya! This year, I signed up to help the Clarion Write-A-Thon raise funds and support the workshop. I just decided what I’ll be writing about and have opted to select six, unique Italian fairy tales to retell. I want to share with you what this means to me in the hopes you’ll follow along and support my work.

Clarion’s six week-long Write-a-Thon is the perfect opportunity to explore a part of my identity while consciously avoiding tropes. I’m pledging six short story drafts in this time period; I’ll be releasing the drafts, one per week, under a password protected area on my website for sponsors to read. The rules? Simply, this: for the project, I will not include cisgendered white male characters.

I have complicated feelings about being Italian-American and the daughter of an immigrant due to past experiences. I’m also fed up with media depictions that focus on a razor-thin section of the entire culture, both here and abroad. In America, the dominant Italian-American stereotype in artistic media is a cartoonish “wise guy” or sometimes “gal”. Over and over again, these stereotypes of Italian-Americans depict cisgendered white men and few cisgendered white women. Of the men, Italian-Americans must be the hyper-masculine, violent tough guy/hottie or the devoted, politically shrewd Catholic priest. Of those few Italian women, we must be sexy mothers or nuns.

In exchange for your support, you’ll read how I process this part of my identity through my brainstorming, story selection, and first drafts. If you’re keen on following my progress, warts and all, I encourage you to become my sponsor and sign up for my newsletter.

If you’re not, that’s okay! There are dozens of other writers you can support, too, and I will always encourage you to back the writer you want to read. Here’s the link to the full list.

New Class for Novelists: Adapting Your Novel into a Game

Hello!

I am teaching a new class through the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers on Sunday, July 12th.

Adapting Your Novel into a Game with Monica Valentinelli

July 12, 2020

9:30 am – 11:30 am PST

Are you a novelist with a fascinating world? Have you thought about turning your novel into an RPG? In this class, gaming industry veteran will walk you through the ins and outs of adapting your novel to fit a gaming world. This class is customized for authors who have published at least one original novel or novella. It is not designed for adaptations of someone else’s work.

Join Monica Valentinelli to learn how to turn your book into a game. Limited enrollment (15); scholarships available!

To sign up for this class, please visit: How to Register for “Adapting Your Novel into a Game”.

Game Producer Journals: New Players and 5 Steps to Quickstart Design

Two of the ongoing needs in game production are to retain players and attract new players. In video games, short interactive demos give players the feel and basic functionality of the game. Part-marketing/part-preview, player demos are arguably the best way for them to understand gameplay outside of actual play reels.

In hobby gaming, there’s a number of ways to preview a game before a title debuts ranging from actual play videos to hands on demos at conventions or retail stores. This introduces a lot of challenges for veterans. After a while, it’s easy to associate who’s playing a game with personal interactions online and off. This can skew a designer’s perspective and lend to design decisions geared toward the audience you’ve encountered and not the people who play the game but never contact the publisher. Setting sample data set analyses aside, the people that interact with a publisher are not typically new players, either.

Jump starts, quick starts, convention demos (live, recorded, and in print), and actual play videos work well when they’re designed to attract new players–people who don’t typically interact with your company. Otherwise, you’re targeting players in the same audience at different times. Though existing players and player retention are both incredibly important, new players are crucial to the overall health of the industry. If you’re having trouble understanding why, please remember that gaming is a dynamic industry. New players often become core fans integral to the community in direct and indirect ways.

Attracting new players is a complex process that requires a multi-pronged approach. It is often intimidating to be a new player because they don’t know the culture (of the publisher, fans, and intersecting micro-communities) or the linguistics on top of not knowing how to play that game. These are barriers to new players that can be resolved in multiple ways, but doing so requires intent and knowledge of both community management and basic marketing techniques.

This process is easier for new games that don’t have previous editions attached and becomes increasingly more challenging the older the game (or property) is. These legacy games (Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade, Dungeons and Dragons) are more complex to manage because of their multi-year, multi-edition spanning history. Each edition that debuts, which is healthy for a publisher to consider, has a core audience and the potential to welcome new players. If the game is primarily being played solely by legacy players with few to no new players added, then over time the core base will shrink.

Using Product to Attract New Players

One product that can help reach out to new players is a quickstart. Here’s where it gets fuzzy: the words “jumpstart” and “quickstart” are often used interchangeably, even among publishers. I asked Matt M McElroy, the Operations Manager for Onyx Path Publishing, what the difference was. He said that: “Jumpstarts are more robust, and are basically starter sets in book form. Quickstarts are very light introductions with some marketing attached.” The jumpstart can also serve as a quickstart and often does, which is partly why the terms are swapped so often.

Going forward, I’ll use the word quickstart to mean “a short standalone marketing product designed to demonstrate the core rules and feel of a game” and a jumpstart as “a robust starter set for a game that includes an adventure, characters, etc.”

Quickstarts are almost always free and are treated as a marketing expense; jumpstarts can be free, but are often not due to the costs involved. Often, jumpstarts must hold more perceived value for the consumer than a free product because of the cost.

Designing the Quickstart

Designing a quickstart is one-part game design, one-part marketing. I personally feel that game designers shouldn’t develop the quickstart’s outline by themselves. This task is something the publisher and marketer should be involved with for a few reasons. They typically 1) know their core fanbase 2) have a rough budget in mind and 3) know how to brand their game. Who works on the quickstart, in particular, is less about skill and more about perspective.

Step One: Identify Your Audience

How a team is set up to handle production won’t matter unless the publisher has a clear idea of who the quickstart is for. Typically, that answer is one or more slices of an overall audience. Just saying “new players” is pretty generic. New players who like “X” system can be too specific if that fanbase is small or insular.

To figure out audience, I recommend reviewing a minimum of five similar products produced by different companies. In this way, you establish a marketing baseline for your game by analyzing what others have already produced.

Step Two: Determine Your Message

Once you have your audience in mind, you can then brainstorm your message. Saying “we have the best game evah!” is not a good message and, quite frankly, is challenging for engagement. Rephrase that to be: “here are the reasons why this title is the best game of its kind”. Then, list the reasons.

Unpacking my last statement, here’s what my rephrased statement means:

* here are the reasons – you’re presenting the meat of what your audience needs to know in order to purchase your game.

* why this title – you’re focusing on revealing more about this game and not previous editions, similar settings, etc. This keeps your focus on the present.

* is the best game – you’re acknowledging the hard work that went into making your game. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of what you created.

* of its kind – you’re acknowledging this game has its own style/feel and will be compared to other games in this vertical regardless of publisher.

Codifying these reasons will force you to think about your game from the perspective of someone who’s never heard of it–which is typically the hardest audience to write for.

Step Three: Identify Components

While an outline is valuable and typically follows next, I feel that quickstarts necessitate a different conversation before it can be finalized. Components are key elements of a game that are important to the audience and messaging.

Items might include:

* Ad for the corebook

* Sample player character

* Sample NPC

* Highlights of gameplay: damage, advancement, combat, investigation, social conflict, player vs. player, success/fail, etc.

* Condensed setting

* Iconic art

* Flash fiction or character sketch

* Corebook chapter preview

* A DM-facing section

* Sample adventure hooks

* Sample loot

* Sample equipment

* Sample map

* Mini-scene

* Gameplay examples

* Graphs/icons of dice rolls

* Full page ad for company (with links to social media, streaming channels, etc.)

* Ad for upcoming products or Kickstarters

* Interview questions with the producer/developer

* …and more!

I recommend that this stage occurs without a clear page count or product spec to freely allow for brainstorming.

Step Four: Outlining

This phase is where the nuts and bolts shape the quickstart. I personally believe a sample layout here is crucial, because knowing how many words are on a page will impact the outline. Once the production parameters are known and a page count is determined, then content can be assigned on each page.

Here, it’s also smart to figure out how you intend to distribute your quickstart, because that will affect its intent and budget. Saddle-stitched and digital quickstarts are the two most common types and are used for different reasons. Printed quickstarts are great for conventions/retail distribution and may attract people who have never heard of that game or publisher before. Digital quickstarts can do the same thing, depending upon where it’s offered and what the perceived value is.

If you’re on the fence during the outlining phase and find you’re adding more information, you might want to consider a hybrid jump/quickstart that you can charge for. This is the perfect step to make this decision!

Step Five: Production

Following this, it’s time for production to begin. I would treat this product just as you would a gaming supplement by hiring a writer who can simplify setting and rules into a condensed space. Less is usually more. The quickstart is a slice of what your game is all about and why it’s unique. I would absolutely lean into that to best inform potential players.

If you’re worried about art, I agree with your instinct. People make decisions to buy games for all kinds of reasons and mentally associate gameplay with emotions that are invoked through their experiences. Art can invoke emotion and is important to their impressions of value and setting.

Lastly, you might get to this point and realize you don’t know how to market your game. That’s okay! It’s for this reason you’ll want to plan a quickstart even if you don’t go through with production. The elements you decide during this project further shape how you want to present your game. If you need to stop and rethink a detail, that’s a good thing to happen early on.

Thanks for joining me and good luck!

Magic Monday Dispatches No 1

Welcome to Monica’s Magic Monday Dispatches where I dive into magic, magic systems, and worldbuilding! Behold, the first dispatch.

What is magic, anyway? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it’s “the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces” (1). That power, then, is wielded by a practitioner–witch, wizard, sorcerer, mage, etc.–to affect themselves, other people, or the organic and inorganic in their environment.

Science, on the other hand, is “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” (

[New Release] Dark Eras 2

Rebellions swell and vampires feed. Casualties of war draw Reapers to blood-soaked battlefields. Gilded ages benefit mortals and monsters alike.

How? Why? What role do the monsters play with us —- and each other?

Dark Eras 2 explores 13 new eras scattered throughout the history of the Chronicles of Darkness. This supplement was developed by Monica Valentinelli, Matthew Dawkins, and Meghan Fitgerald. Each chapter features two to three game lines which include Vampire: The Requiem, Mage: The Awakening, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Lost, and more!

The rules in Dark Eras 2 are compatible with second edition Chronicles of Darkness. Each terrifying time period and location is examined through the supernatural creatures that dwell there. Inside, you’ll find historically-inspired settings, story hooks, character-creation tips, gameplay advice, new Tilts, Conditions, and era-appropriate rules–and more!

Unlock the past. Find out what hides in the shadows. Dark Eras 2 is available now!

My Jan-Apr 2020 Progress Report

Hello readers,

It’s been a while since I’ve submitted a 2020 progress report and I thought I’d change that. (Yes, even during a pandemic.) It’s been the longest couple of months I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing due to COVID-19. That aside, I did write and develop some pieces I’m proud to share with you.

In January, I re-mixed a soundtrack to accompany a short, interactive fiction experience. It feels ironic to mention Underwater Memories, because its theme is grief and loss. Had I been in quarantine, I’m not sure I would’ve picked this same subject. I probably would’ve chosen something whimsical instead.

In February, I participated in the promotion of the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter. I developed this tabletop RPG with an eye toward existing fans who love Hunter as much as I do. We funded quickly and managed to knock off a few stretch goals, too. I’m going through the chapters to add backer names and make cosmetic changes before handing in the final manuscript with art notes.

March was fairly chaotic and includes a long and sordid story about a writing retreat-turned-sitcom. On the first day, the sun shines, the hibiscus blooms, the hawk perches on a branch nearby. By the time I left, I’d fallen ill for a few weeks and was in quarantine (both during that time and when I returned home). ICFA, which I’d planned to attend, was cancelled. Sadly, there is no way to know what I had as testing wasn’t available.

While I was on retreat, Haunting Shadows, a collection of short stories for Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition debuted. The collection includes my story “Scritch, Scratch” set at the House on the Rock. I also announced I was running for the SFWA Director-At-Large position; I’m pleased to report I did win–thanks to the voting members.

Two interactive fiction stories I wrote for middle grade readers then debuted in April through the Wonder Stories app. You can read “The Case of the Popped Balloons” and “The Case of the Multiplying Bunnies” on your mobile phone. This app was set to debut at SXSW which was also cancelled due to COVID-19. My friend Greg Stolze launched a successful Million Dollar Podmate Kickstarter to fund new podcasts–including one with yours truly.

On a more personal note: I spent the first two weeks of April in strict quarantine and began journalling for our local historical society. I posted about my project availability as well, though I should mention I raised my rates. I’m now safer-at-home and have been spending quite a bit of time rearranging, sorting, etc. to tackle apartment therapy and spring cleaning. I’ve been feeling pretty “meh” lately, if only because there’s been a lot of news–both good and bad–in the past month. The cold spring weather isn’t helping: it’s a damp chill that seeps into your bones.

Looking ahead, I don’t know what the rest of Q2 will bring (other than a lot of writing). Forecasting seems premature. It is an uncertain time and this pandemic-caused turbulence is not exclusive nor personal to me. In the smallest of ways, that detail’s both sobering and comforting. It also means I’m focusing on shorter-term goals (what I can accomplish) to offset the uncertainty. I’ll continue to be conservative in any new announcements as well, because the pitch-to-production cycle has also been disrupted. What will this mean long-term for me? For any of us? I honestly don’t know, but I’m confident we’ll figure that out together.