Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 5

Shorts: Captain’s Log Red Sea Witch

Day 2 in a Red Sea Witch bay

Dark and stormy nights they said. Maelstroms and typhoons they warn about. Anything and everything that can tear the sails and overload the bilge pump. What they don’t warn you about are the crosses along the shores. The ones far and away from any proper lighthouse. There you find the graveyards. Towering masts bleached white from the sea. Limp rope colonized by algae and decay.

I had the ill luck of finding myself floating near one of these desolate patches. A storm like any other, one that had no use for my attention that I had left to the lueftenant in charge, had somehow gotten away from us. Blown us from our course and clear off the map. The land mass we found ourselves against had not been charted by any cartography our monarch felt fit to pay.

Or maybe we are dead and don’t realize it yet. You don’t see a red sea witch unless you’ve perished. Out to sea is Davy’s domain. Here against the beach head is up for grabs. A lighthouse keeper would have your body taken to the kirk for a proper plot. Sea witches, they bury you between the worlds. Feet below the waterline, head toward the land. And that is limbo. Never in one or the other. Left to wander the shores wishing to watch the waves tack below you. Never to enter the forests and groves, but to see the trees from a distance.

The wind has calmed and left us here, stuck in a bay filled with crosses and gutted ships. The sun came and went twice and now we wait. Wait for wind, wait for rain, wait for her.

Day 3 in a Red Sea Witch bay

The lueftenant brought me news this morn while I consulted yet another useless map. A person has hailed us from the beach. Long hair and tattered clothes might mean they’re a survivor of a downed ship. Sailors were sent out in a rowboat to make contact. With luck on our side, we may just find out where we are.

Following up on the person:

Sea witch to be exact, and a man of all things. This is his bay. And I am lucky to get my sailors back. Though he did send back a bottle of brandy and a satchel of coconuts. He left a note in a script I have no hopes of deciphering. I will be gathering the crew at supper to pass it around. One of these new hires might know it.

After supper:

Of all the people who would recognize it, it would be the Parson, wouldn’t it? He knew the language from his time as a missionary. The sea witch left note that he would check his library for a map of the area.

Day 4 in a Red Sea Witch bay

The sailors sent to meet with the sea witch have not been added to the beach graveyard. I had feared pestilence and set a watch on them once it was known that the island resident was a Red Sea Witch. I must face even my small suspicion of the supernatural and step foot on this cursed shore. The sea witch has scrolls to share.

Day 5

Four knots out from that creepy bay and I am pleased to report that we have survived the encounter with a sea witch. I don’t think I would disregard the warnings just because of one man, but he was helpful. He gave us a scroll to navigate our way out and around this island. The shole was a terrible keel cutter if ever there was one. He also provided us with a series of papers of ship names. Some have people’s names on them. He wanted us to take them back to report them lost so the family could have peace.

With no kirk in sight and no way to keep bodies from floating back to the beach, maybe a sea witch’s duty isn’t to keep a spirit trapped in limbo, but to give them both worlds, even if it is on a thin strip between.

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ITKZ: The Titan’s Bride

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The Titan’s Bride is a mature content boys love manga written by ITKZ, with it’s original release run in 2019. I read the first couple chapters as they released and then forgot about it, as one does when flicking through lots of just-starting manga. I ran back into recently and finally plowed through all the chapters I could get hold of.

It has the coercion problem that a lot of boys love tends to have. I do wish that would be addressed in the genre. After a handful of chapters, the characters are less ‘coercion through obligation’ to genuinely seeing each other as thinking, emotional beings and develop feelings for each other. So, there’s your heads up warning if you were looking for a coercion free read…this one isn’t going to tick that box.

The setting is magical royal fantasy. I do enjoy this type of scene setting, and it is used as the justification behind many of the compromising interactions that take place in this oh so very spicy piece.

The pacing can linger a bit in spots and sometimes rush in others where it would have been nice to expand. But those areas where I feel it should have been expanded are often forgone for the sake of the chapter page limit and the obligatory spicy scene that readers come to expect with these types of manga.

I would say there is a solid story in this, but it really is more of the subplot to the main purpose of an on page explicit manga. If you are looking for more plot than not, this isn’t going to sate your appetite. If your desire is more towards the raunchy side of life, this’ll probably do a bit of a trick.

This isn’t necessarily one I would add to my shelf, but I’m still reading the ongoing chapters every once in a while when I remember it’s there. If someone bought it for my through My Amazon Book Request List, I would write a very happy thank you on here for doing that because that would be absolutely awesome to get something off my list, but that’s about the closest way that I would go about getting the book on my shelf.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Mexican Gothic

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Released in the era of Covid 2020, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a fantastically grizzly thriller that steps into the world of horror fantasy while providing the reader a legitimization of the events through scientific understanding of the 1950s. It touches on some hard to digest topics such as eugenics and sexual assault – so if those are triggers, proceed with cautions.

I spent a few of my grade school years in New Mexico and had two semesters of Spanish in high school. That’s practically all of my knowledge of Mexico if we don’t count copious documentaries. Lets say we don’t in this instance. Silvia Moreno-Garcia has been a gold mine of accessible information about a location I’ve never considered seeing, and know very little about culturally. And I love her for it. I would have never considered mountains in Mexico, even though fundamentally I knew they were there from geography classes. I never would have thought about cold environments, though it makes perfect sense for said mountains. I don’t think I’ve ever even considered Mexico City as anywhere advanced. Everything that I have ever been presented in documentaries and house hunter international shows has always felt like Mexico City is stagnant and third world. Her writing in Gods of Jade and Shadow and in Mexican Gothic is a culture and bias check for me. It’s reminding me that Mexico does have advancements and that there are wealth structures within the society that made their money in something other than ranching. I need more of these types of books to offset the culture I’ve been presented with of immigrants and day labourors. That preconceived notion can really be detrimental.

Her dialogue structure blends in to her world building so seamlessly. I really do enjoy the pacing that takes place because of this. It keeps the story from dragging along. The trippiness of the scenes works wonderfully for what the villain in the story is. It can feel off kilter and I like that it does. Grant it I did have a great case of motion sickness style nausea by the end of the read because my imagination plus that level of strange decided to have a field day. Wore off after a bit.

Is Mexican Gothic one I would suggest? Definitely. More so for adult audiences over young adult just because of some of the trigger warnings. College age would really get into it. This is appropriate for autumn/pumpkin season (even though there were no pumpkins). But haunted Victorian houses in misty mountain villages with culty families and strange sacrifices is just spot on for the gloomy time of year. Or if you just need a bit of gloom because it’s still 100F out and you are sick of sunlight and swimming pools.

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Isao Takahata: Pom Poko

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Pom Poko, produced in 1994 is my favorite of the Ghibli movies. It’s a bit lesser known compared to Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service – also great movies.

This one deals with a pack of Tanuki living in Tama Hills and how their lives change as developers come into the forest to create neighborhoods for people. There was some popularity back in the 80s and 90s with making morality cartoons that asked people to consider how animals were doing with the drastic changes industrialization was having on habitats or the lives of animals. The Secret of NIMH comes to mind, another of my favorite movies. That is probably a part of why the story appeals to me.

It is a longer video and is well worth the time, but not something you want to start too late into the evening if you don’t plan on staying up.

One of the reasons I have for liking it so much is the incorporation of ukiyo-e yokai during the night parade and the mythology surrounding the transformative ability of the tanuki and foxes. I love the transitional art where the tanuki go from extremely cartoonized to realistic and back again to help convey mood. I enjoy the playfulness they exhibit in challenging mankind’s coming to the forest. The setting is lush and deep. The characters are fleshed out and exhibit a wide range of emotions. The story is easy to follow along and engaging.

To me, this is a fall favorite. It covers all four seasons, but it is a fall favorite to me. I think it has much to do with the ending of an age, and that tends to be what autumn represents.

I would say, if you haven’t had a chance to watch this Studio Ghibli movie, that it is well worth the time. Might see if you can borrow a copy through your library before dropping a chunk of change on the disc to make sure you like it. Some people get weirded out by the tanuki’s use of their scrotal tissue for creating flying parachutes and such what have you’s but that’s part of the tanuki mythos and culutral background to the story – so….

Anyways, give this one a try. I need more people who also like Pom Poko.

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Supergiant Games: Hades

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Released in 2018, Supergiant Games’s roguelike Hades is a deeply saturated fukinuki yatai style masterpiece. And I cannot get enough of it. The story follows the son of Hades, Zagreus as he battles through several levels of the underworld to get out of his dad’s house and learn about his mom. A vague coming of age story, a little bit of mystery, and a whole lot of mobs to slay.

I appreciate how much effort went into the audio production. I’m used to a great number of games not having much audio dialogue. It saves cost and timing in the code. This thing has depth. There is an amazing amount of dialogue from quite a few characters without much repetition – if it’s got an exclamation point, it’s going to be new dialogue.

The game play itself is roguelike. You die. You die a lot. You get used to it. And the rooms are variable. There’s a certain set that are randomly generated for each region with a certain set of mob types for each zone. You have weapon and ‘armor’ options that can make the game play different every time you go into the lands of the dead. I say armor. They are rings that give you different buffs.

I think, at this point, I’ve put in about 70 hours on it. I got a late heads up that putting on God-mode is a good thing (not like other games where that means expert mode, this one actually lets you work on your defenses and makes it easier to get through the levels over time). I was about 50 hours in when someone told me about that. That helped a lot. So, that would be my main hint for you if you take the game up.

If you like roguelikes or fukinuki yatai (blown off roof) perspective style, I’d point you at this game. It’s decent play mechanics. It’s got a good storyline. It lets you try new things. There’s a bit of rail-work to it, but that’s the nature of trying to ‘escape the dungeon’ so to speak.

I haven’t beaten the game yet. Yes, I know there’s a speed runner who blew through the whole thing in 30 minutes on a fresh save – I watched the commentary episode by the game designers over it. I’m just not that version of dedicated to developing that skill. Saying I haven’t finished it yet, I’m still excited about the second installment coming out soon.

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Autumn Craft Shows

I’m getting nervous. That’s the best word for it.

I have a booth at a very small consignment shop in Sapulpa, OK where I sell my tea towels – well, hope to sell. I haven’t made much more than two sales from there, but that might have a lot to do with location. They are moving to a different building, which is supposed to be closer to the thoroughfare where the Sapulpa Chute takes place. Fingers crossed my sales start going up.

So, one would think I would be a little less nervous going into my first craft show with this business. I tried a show before when I was working on becoming a professional photographer. I was hoping to get on with moms needing senior photos done, seeing as the fair was at a high school building. I ended up doing a few people’s engagement photos from a different promotional outlet, but really never got anywhere with that fair for photo promotion. That dream fell by the wayside (probably for the best, talking to people, let alone giving them directions, gives me the heebeejeebees).

Anyways. I signed up for this same place’s craft show, but this year I’m doing my embroidered tea towels. And I’m really hoping to sell some. I haven’t made much of a go of the Etsy shop. Honestly, the tea towels are probably ‘overpriced’ at $15 a piece. The logic for me there is that Etsy has so freaking many fees, packaging, getting in materials, and then the literal 1-3 hours on running it through a very finicky machine that I have to sit at and mind for that time, that charging less than that feels…invalidating. I’m not even making minimum wage on these things at that rate. I sold $60 in towels a couple of weeks back, but after Etsy took out all their fees for the advertisements I was running and the discount that brought people to the site and all their hidden fees, I made $20. That’s it. And the three towels sold took me 7 hours to run through my machine, each one having at least a 30 color swap. I cried. I did. I legit cried. That was so demoralizing.

That’s part of why I set up a booth at a consignment shop, and why I’m selling at a craft show. I sell my towels at the shop for $13, because I’m not making up for the packaging that I do with my shipped towels. I bought really pretty floral shipping bags, tissue paper, holographic thank you stickers, twine, floral ‘gift’ stickers, business cards, thank you from a small business cards, and invoice envelopes to make the sale experience feel luxurious and pampering. It was designed with the outlook of Youtube box haul openings. I wanted it to show up nice on camera, and by virtue, let people feel like they were spoiling themselves. I know. It’s a dish towel with some nice thread embroidery on it. But these types of towels, if maintained, can last upwards of 10 years in a kitchen (ask me how I know, I’ve used these types of towels since I was five and legit had some I embroidered at 14 that lasted all the way until I was in my 30s).

So, that craft show is coming at the end of the month and I just really want to at least sell 6 towels to make up for the cost of the booth rental. It’s not profitable at that rate, but it will make me feel less bad about the money spent.

I started the business within a month of my FIL passing and me watching my MIL struggle to realize, as a farmer’s wife whose cattle had all been sold the month before, how she, in her 60s, was going to bring in an income to her house. This made me realize – as an artist with low commissions, as an editor with even lower commissions because thank you AI, and as a house spouse with enough medical issues going on for the last decade to make holding an out of house job difficult, that I needed to push hard to get work that would let me contribute to my social security.

I looked at CNC machines, laser engravers, thermal printers, all of it. I had some money left over from when I last had an editing commission, and with that, I knew I would need to outfit out a small office area, pay for the LLC, and buy a machine that would help me make something. Anything. I needed in on the capitalist market plan. I couldn’t afford the CNC, laser engravers, thermal printers, Cricuts, any of it. I couldn’t afford the base cost of materials over time with what I had for a budget.

What I could afford was a new-in-box from eBay 2012 Brother PE500 embroidery machine. It is the easy-bake-oven of the embroidery world. It has a 4″x4″ bed size, so it limits what I can embroider to small objects, and man is it finicky. But I bought it. With my money. That I earned from working hard on three people’s stories.

The next challenge was figuring out exactly what I was embroidering. Initially I wanted to do baby blankets, taggy blankets, and baby toys. That was where I new the market was ripe for sales. Custom names on things like that are very popular. Even with birth rate decline, people will still buy stuff like that for nieces, grandkids, etc.

The cost to buy that stuff in bulk? No. Nope. Absolutely not. No, thank you. I couldn’t do that with my budget. But what I could buy in bulk: tea towels. The dish towels I grew up with my grandmother teaching me to hand embroider every summer during my childhood because it would keep me from ping-ponging all over her house when she had to babysit me.

And I knew they were good quality and would last the buyer a long time.

This leaves me with today, looking at the inventory I have made, and the inventory I still want to get done before that day and yelling at my machine because the tension is being screwy. If the temperature changes (like it did this week) the thing turns into a rats nest and I have to walk away from it for the day. I can unstring, clean, lubricate it, all of that, but if the temperature is fluctuating, it won’t do diddly squat. I have boxes of 12-days-of-Christmas and 10-days-of-Halloween tea towels I’m trying to finish, but I can’t waste towels on tension failure. I only have a limited inventory of blanks I can afford to keep wasting money on.

Fingers crossed I can get some work done today. The 30 minutes-2 hours of remote work a day I’m doing for a vet clinic as a personal assistant is going to at least contribute a bit to this business getting off the ground, but it’s not about to help me pay for a $6k embroidery machine so I can do bigger pieces or $600 -$1K digitizing software so I can do my own art.

I have dreams. This isn’t how I thought my life would go. But I’m here treading up this path. So, my daydream – my ultimate daydream if I keep up with the embroidery is to set up a little shop in Santa Fe/Pigeon Forge/Eureka Springs/Galvestone somewhere- you know, somewhere tourist trap like that is WALKABLE where people go in and out of shops as retail therapy and they walk into my shop where I would have several small businesses for kitchen wares – I want a potter for doing bowls, and wood turner who has utensils, a quilter (significantly better than me) for place mats and table linens, and for me to have a massive wall of tea towels, aprons, and farmers market bags. If I found someone who did spices/pickles/and jams, that would probably also be a good addition, though I don’t know what kind of chaos dealing in handmade food products is. I’ll leave that fear for another day. I just don’t want to order bulk decor from Alibaba. I want decor to be from a local business – like the people who handmake Primitive shelves, and such. I’m not interested in carrying vintage kitchen goods, but I want the pieces to support small business people who are handmaking products. I don’t want sublimation tumblers. I want thrown mugs. You get the picture. I’m tired of flipping over ‘wood’ ducks in stores to find out they’re resin from China/Bangladesh/Vietnam, etc. etc. I want to support local makers. Then again, I’m one to talk, I think the brand of tea towels I order in are from Pakistan and I use polyester embroidery thread. Someday I hope to have the towels made in America and use cotton embroidery thread. Ideals, right?

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Short: A Meeting

“So, what did he do to you?” A young, white-haired man asked over the coffee table.

“Do you really want to know?” The redhead grouched, flicking a glance to the brass bell over the door ringing. A tall man, the type with padded muscle who would never look like a bodybuilder but could bend steel, ducked a nod in their direction. Black hair fell around his shoulder as he pulled a small chair out from the table and settled into it.

“Hi.”

“You must be Dmitri?” The redhead cocked his head to give the man a once-over.

“Um…yeah. Kinda weird hearing someone use it. Call me Lunam. It’s what everyone does.” He glanced between the two men’s coffee cups. “Are you Eoin and Fane?”

“I’m Fane, that’s Eoin.” The redhead flicked a finger for the server. The tiny woman beamed a smile and nodded, letting them know she would be over.

“Hi.” Lunam swallowed again.

“Seen the other guys?” Fane asked.

“Merin, Tylwyn, and Thaddeus? Not yet. Oh, and the couple of new folk too. Roman said he’d have to miss for the night.” Lunam gave the server his order for black coffee and a sticky bun.

The clock was overly loud in the silent bubble as they all stared at each other and the change in the group dynamic. “Fane was just about to tell me what Author did to him,” Eoin tried to open up the conversation after the twentieth tick.

“Gave me a terrible childhood, ptsd, and a fucking tentacle monster is what he did,” Fane hissed. “Well, not the fucking part. Wasn’t that type of story. Heard that was Merin’s story. Dark. Action. Adventure. Hot boyfriend turned into hot husband, so would like to not complain entirely, but jeez, Author has a dark spot.”

The bell on the door rang again. This time a twig of a man with strawberry blond hair down to his shoulders joins them at the table.

“Nat!” Eoin’s smile broadened.

“Gonna need a bigger booth.” Fane motioned for everyone to shift over to the large booth in the corner now that they knew they had enough people for it to be polite.

“Hey, Fane, good seeing you again. Nice to finally meet you, Eoin.” Nat shook the white-haired man’s hand.

“And you,” Eoin’s smile could break hearts.

“So, is Author done with our stories then? He’s moved on to other people, new stories. Feel like we’ve kinda been waiting for a while.” Nat slipped into the chair rather than the booth that Fane, Lunam, and Eoin had already slid across.

“I heard something on my end recently,” Lunam kept his voice low.

“The Egypt-Japan thing?” Fane regarded the black-haired man warily.

“Yeah, well, kinda. I mean, The Library of Thoth is supposed to reference things that’ll get expanded in three more books with a big conclusion regarding Corbin and yours and Ishan’s fate. I’m supposed to be doing something in this upcoming story, but Author’s not sure if he wants me to be speaking in it or having Temp translate.”

Eoin rubbed a hand across his head. “Not more italics.”

“Yeah, more italics.”

“That one is always a pain in the ass. Tell Author no. Don’t do it. Go with the translating.”

Fane perked up. “What’s wrong with italics?”

“Everything.” “Formatting.” The two answered simultaneously.

“So, is that whats-” Fane was interrupted by another bell.

In ducked a shaggy-haired blond man with a multitude of glowing blue circles spiraling across his hands and disappearing under his long-sleeved white shirt. Fane waived him over. “Merin! Over here.”

“Hey,” Merin’s response of nerves was almost mirror perfect to Lunam’s.

“Welcome,” Eoin smiled.

“Oh, woah. I thought Author shot your throat out? Sorry, that was rude. Nice to finally meet you, Eoin. Um…Lunam, Nat, Fane. We still waiting on more or someone pop over to the bathroom?” He cast a glance toward the far end of the cafe where an alcove hid a pair of doors.

“In my main story with Fearchar and Seonaid, I’m mute. My internal monologue, so me here, is the one before getting my throat shot.”

“Huh, okay.”

“I hear tell Author is stumped with your story.” Lunam regarded Merin with a raised eyebrow.

“Rushed a…um…” Merin coughed, cheeks going bright red, “rushed the intimate scene and didn’t have a plan for after that because the battle with Keris was actually supposed to be part of the climax, and I was supposed to meet with my progenitor before that, but no, Author went and got himself stuck up a tree mucking about with a perfectly good storyline. So, now he’s been sat in his chair staring at his computer demanding I give him something to work with, and I’m over here going ‘you’re an idiot, Author, and it’s showing’.”

All the men let out a heavy sigh of shared exasperation.

“He does that.” “Why does he always?” “Story. Line. Storyline, you dunce.”

“The guys from the short stories have at least been enjoying their time in the sun,” Nat offered.

“I heard Author is sad about those. He was enjoying his time playing with those but was getting annoyed that he couldn’t get anyone close to him to read any of his bigger pieces. That he was feeling used.” Lunam supplied.

“Feeling used, yeah. But who the hell wants to read gay stories by a trans author? Especially with explicit stuff. It’s just not what normal people palette.” Merin crossed his arms over his chest, his lights fading.

“He finds it a good way to figure out conversations with people, and the stories are stuck in his head,” Eoin placated.

“Author left you with Marduk. How are you even okay with the situation?” Merin shot back.

Eoin rolled his shoulders. “It’s the story that needed to be told. I don’t hold it against Author.”

“You are amazingly forgiving,” Fane growled.

“You sound ticked.” Lunam motioned for the server for a refill.

“The way Author plays, he’s gonna do something mean to Ishan, and I’m not looking forward to it,” Fane hissed.

“Mean is a soft way of putting it.”

“Ya’ll have some bad stories?” Merin took a sip of coffee from a fresh mug.

“Who doesn’t when Author gets involved?” Nat muttered.

“Don’t think he has anything bad planned for me.”

“Not that he has anything planned right now anyways,” Lunam sighed, turning his focus to the gridiron and plaster ceiling.

“Took a pretty good hit to the feels recently?” Eoin guessed.

“Not recently. The rejection dysphoria hit pretty hard last October or September, I think. You know, you get a nice handful of people who are pleased with the writing, and then just a couple negative comments completely crumpled him. He needs to get a thicker skin. Seriously, not everyone is going to like a person’s writing.” Marin frowned at his coffee, grabbed a salt shaker and added in the crystals.

“Heard he did another stay at the hospital,” Lunam provided.

“He got that AVM resectioned; seizures show up again?” Eoin retrieved the salt shaker before Marin could twist the cap off and dump it.

“Hey!” Merin protested.

“You’re part-Kraken; doesn’t mean you have to eat all the salt in the restaurant.”

“So, why hospital?”

“Oh, he’s been trying to pin down some bad dizzy spells. Saw a heart doc who said it wasn’t his heart and wasn’t sure if it was disautonomia. So, he went to visit with the neurologist, you know, to do a follow up on the resection and talking to the guy, comes to find out he’s got chronic migraines. That led to a nice round of trying out medications. Had an EEG. No more seizures, at least. None that could be triggered anyway. One of those meds landed him in a hospital because of a bad stomach ache. Nothing learned at that point, but a couple weeks later ended up back in the same room with the same docs and getting a lovely diagnosis of colitis. Which got him admitted overnight and triggering his ptsd.” Merin gave the other men the run down.

“Bad stomach ache was the colitis, I guess?” Fane asked.

“No, called it pelvic congestion syndrome, which got him spiralling on a different ptsd avenue dealing with reproductive organ docs. That one’s gonna be fun. He just wants the organs out entirely so no one can go mucking with them anymore. Has enough dysphoria to deal with on a good day. Then there’s the politics going down. He thinks the docs are wrong about the pcs and instead firmly believes it was the med that had a warning about excessively bad stomach aches. I don’t know which to believe, but at least another episode of ptsd going off the charts will narrow down one or the other.”

Eoin sighed. “I can understand why Author is struggling to get a story out.”

“Doesn’t help he’s dealing with trying to get an Etsy business up and running along with general house care, cooking, and education,” Merin tacked in. “Apparently, the med giving him the stomach ache at least let him have a level of productive focus he hadn’t seen in years.”

“I thought Author was doing Line and Substance editing. Why is he trying to open up an Etsy site?” Lunam tipped his empty cup in hopes it wasn’t as empty as it was.

“Was. Doesn’t trust people to actually read the contracts. Doesn’t want to deal with people complaining about commas when what he does is look for repetitive grammatical patterns. Pretty much is just not sure how to advertise his services. Wants to do the work, but with all the medical and personal life stuff going down, doesn’t know how to carve time to do what he’s good at. And doesn’t want to keep doing free stuff because it just adds stress, and ‘if he’s going to be stressed, he might as well be paid to be stressed.'” Merin slid down in his seat.

“Uh, that’s just giving up on yet another idea. He does that a lot,” Fane grouched.

“I don’t think he wanted to give up on this one. He doesn’t know how to advertise his services, and-“

“Those are excuses. He can do the editing. He can get another social media account and actually advertise. He’s not trying hard enough.” Fane slammed his cup on the table.

“He doesn’t even know how to try. So he’s making an effort at something tangible,” Lunam came up to the defence.

“What a waste,” Fane muttered.

The conversation stalled at that. Merin finished his coffee and pushed his mug to the center of the table so the server wouldn’t come back and refill it. “What are we going to do about the stories? I want mine finished. And if anything, Author does always give us a happy ending.”

Nat sniffed at that. “Ruben would like to have a word with you on that.”

“You did get a happy ending, just in Fane’s story,” Eoin pointed out.

“I don’t know. He seems keen to work on Tynwyn and Jaegar’s stories at the moment. He’s got other story ideas, like an expansion of Roman and Jule’s world.” Lunam set his mug next to Marin’s.

“He likes the honeymoon phase of his stories, doesn’t he? Author likes developing chemistry between us mains and our LIs. Then he actually has to get a story down and hits a brick wall,” Eoin snickered.

“Slow writers are slow,” Fane bemoaned the fact.

“Eh, ten weeks on my story, so I wouldn’t say he’s slow,” Lunam smiled.

“Lucky. He wrote mine for a decade and a half before he brought you in and finally figured out how he was going to finish it.” Nat pointed at Fane in a blaming way.

“What about Jian’s story? Is he going to work on that for Cashia? I remember him mentioning that once.” Eoin stacked his mug on Lunam and Merin’s.

“I don’t know. He wants to do the Glendweller’s arc, but having so many other stories already active and dealing with all the other regular life stuff, he hasn’t figured out more than a paragraph worth of an outline,” Fane provided, finally dropping his gruff persona.

“Wanna go see what’s taking the rest of the guys so long? If they’re at the coffee shop across the street, I’m gonna laugh.” Merin scooted out of the booth to let Lunam out.

“Might as well go on a look-see. About time for dinner anyways.” Nat got up to follow Merin, whose blue lights were glowing merrily.

“Is he still trying to learn Gaeilge?” Nat opened the door.

Fane rolled his eyes. “Wants to. Keeps getting a few weeks in at a time, then getting off track. Wants to keep up with Japanese and Scots, and on top of that, wants to take up Danish, French, German, oh and Welsh. Can you imagine? He needs to figure out where his focus needs to lay.”

“Hurray for neurodivergence,” Lunam sighed heavily, closing the door behind the group.

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Acorn Quilt

Here’s one of the physical projects I’ve been working on this year. This is my acorn quilt. As you can tell, I found fabric with acorns. This originally was meant to be a backer for a different quilt that I’ll be sharing later next week. It’s not really in a color palette that I honestly like, but it was fabric that was within my budget when I walked into Joann’s that day. It was cheaper than buying backer fabric that day at the very least.

Problem is, when I finally had all the pieces assembled – I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I wanted to quilt it with the other topper I had made. A difference between tiny squares and massive triangles. After talking it out with my SO and then with my folks, we all came to the consensus that I just needed to wait until there was a good sale on backer fabric and buy it for both this quilt top and the other quilt top.

I did have extra fabric after making this (I think I could have made a king, but I have a queen) so, instead of adding it to my fabric stash, I threw together a pair of 18″x18″ pillow cases for the couch. That’s where this quilt is supposed to live. I hate throw blankets. They never cover my toes and my shoulders when I’m curled up on the couch. So, I decided to make double/queen size quilts – the size I like curling up under, for the couch. It may yet live on the bed anyways. I’m backing it this week with a pine themed green flannel that is sort of Christmas adjacent. I think it’ll work well for a November into December quilt.

This one I am hand quilting down with bulky thread so you can really see the stitches and am in love with this process, though it takes quite a bit of time. It’s going faster than an art quilt I’m very slowly hand quilting because that one has finer threads with more intent on the pattern to denote waves and umbrellas and such what have yous. That one I’ll share in a different post. That one is more of a summer theme.

Anyways. It’s been fun trying different styles of quilting. I’ll probably settle on one that I prefer doing and stick to it eventually, but for now, trying a wide variety of methods is a good way of learning.

Oh! Almost forgot. When I went in two weeks ago to pick up the backer for this quilt (huzzah for paydays, am I right?), I needed to buy binding fabric. I went back into the section where the Acorn fabric was to come to find out that fabric had a matching fabric of SQUIRRELS that weren’t there when I originally bought the fabric. They had gotten in the match sometime after I had last gone shopping. The pattern is a bit large for binding, but dang it I am binding this quilt with squirrels. I have some regrets of not having that fabric when I first made the quilt or else it would have been squirrels and acorns in the triangle pattern, but I’m accepting that I didn’t know about them and it is okay. Hopefully I’ll start the binding process sometime in November. For now, I’m hand binding a different quilt and that is taking up my evenings when I’m watching anime with my SO.

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Naoya Matsumoto: Kaiju No. 8

Ah yes, the year of every freaking person having to wear a facemask because viruses absolutely suck. Originally released in July of 2020, the masks in this are prevalent, though at times they feel purely decorative. Man, weird times. I say that, and this entire anime is a dystopic modern Tokyo afflicted by a War of the World’s level kaiju infestation and the main character, Kafka is a rather well named reference to the Metamorphosis. I deeply love this bizarre scifi crossover thing going on here.

I have read the manga all the way up to date (chapter 108) at this point and can say that it’s pretty great. It really gives Dorohedoro and Fireforce – which is perfect when you want action and are sick and tired for all the Isekai that is popular right now. Look, I’m glad that the Gundam era has gone by and now we have character development, but at a certain point, I want the magic and scifi to be on planet earth.

Anyways, the pacing of the arcs is decent. It doesn’t feel like they are overly building up on anxiety in any one moment. The bad guy is growing in depth and complexity while allowing you to get that superhero feel to it and not fear it’s going to turn into Bleach/Naruto/Black Clover/My Hero Academia. Those have a time and a place, but sometimes we want an actual answer.

That, and all the female characters aren’t just fan service. The strong female leads are strong female leads. They can lean and depend, but they can hold their own and I am here for it. The number of times where intelligent female characters become uwu housewife in an apron at the slightest presence of testosterone shows shoddy workmanship on the auther, the editor, and the marketing department in this day and age and I despise it so much.

So, yes, I would suggest it for those who enjoy scifi/action with a military lean. It has gore. Lots of gore, but so far the characters themselves don’t get eviscerated on screen – it’s the monsters. So, if that’s not your bag, I wouldn’t point you to it.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Gods of Jade and Shadow

This post contains affiliate links.

Published in February of 2020, Gods of Jade and Shadow is a headlong ride into Mexican mythology, a slow burn romance with a logical ending, and beautiful prose that might lean a bit floral, but it is beautiful to behold none the less.

The main character is a women in need of her own coming of age story. This slow burn provides her the time to develop her wants, desires, and to test her core philosophies when confronted with adversarial situations different from those she was already subjected to. The conclusion for the slow burn is one that I rather appreciated and it made good solid sense the way it did end.

The editing was handled quite well, though there were pacing issues in some sections that would have benefitted from a little bit more of a deft hand in shrinking the floral prose. Not all of it, mind you, just a little bit in some sections.

I don’t often encounter books within my reading familiarity written about Mexico that is presented by a BIPOC author. Often the adventure books I encounter and mass market white guy books with high octane levels of spy/archaeology/who-done-its. This was refreshing. It gave me culture, perspective, and an introduction into a mythology that other than for a few archaeology shows and The Road to El Dorado movie (questionable at the very least), I am entirely unfamiliar with.

I liked the Neil Gaiman style interpretation of the gods and their fallibilities. The stylization and depth that the story went into could be an interesting religious philosophies and social structures of the 1920s study. But, if you aren’t into it for the deeper meanings and symbolism, it still reads as a very good general slow burn with pretty adventure settings.

I finally bought myself a Kobo Libra 2 and rented the book through my local library Libby app. This one I could very much see people putting on a bookshelf. I might buy the ebook at some point. The imagery is really what sold me on the story, and I’d love to revisit that. The cover art is magnificent, but I’m also a sucker for Art Deco and Southwest/Mission style art – which is part of what drew me to look at the story in the first place.

I will say, the Kobo is going to revolutionize my library. I pretty much ditched some hundred and fifty physical books over the winter break. I had wrist surgery a couple years back and holding physical books open hurts after about twenty minutes, which meant my library was getting dusty from disuse. Being able to sit and enjoy this story on an ereader was so much more pleasant.

Would I suggest this book?

Oh yes, yes I would. I liked it a lot.

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