Tues. July 11, 2023: Writing and Reading
image courtesy of Ptra via pixabay.comTuesday, July 11, 2023
Waning Moon
Pluto, Saturn, and Neptune Retrograde
Sunny and hot
Hello, and I hope you had a great weekend. It’s time for our usual Tuesday catch-up.
Today’s serial episode is from Legerdemain:
Episode 101: Ninel’s Visitors
Ninel’s friends finally show up. But why does Brone think they look familiar?
Friday seems very far away, somehow. Probably because it was so hot.
I flipped my usual plan and did the client work in the morning before it got too hot. I edited, polished, uploaded, and scheduled four more episodes of DEADLY DRAMATICS. I did episode graphics and loglines for next week’s Legerdemain.
By then, it was lunchtime, and after lunch, I crashed on the couch to read for fun for a few hours, an urban fantasy that’s mostly good, but I’m glad I got it on sale.
Hauled myself down to First Friday. I walked, which wasn’t a good idea in the heat and humidity. I visited one gallery, but they were too busy having private conversations to acknowledge anyone coming in, so I left pretty fast. I visited the artist I met over last weekend, the one I promised to show up for on First Friday, and saw the rest of her work. Which was very interesting, and I’m glad I fulfilled that promise.
And then I went home, because I was nearly at the point of collapse.
I decided to try a sushi place not too far away. I should have gone and picked up the order myself, but I felt so awful after roaming around in the humidity that I ordered via DoorDash delivery, even though the place was only about 2 blocks away. I added a big tip. I mean, since the pandemic started, I’ve added big tips to all deliveries, because we’re all struggling. The order took 45 minutes beyond the promised delivery time, which was frustrating, but it was a Friday night, and it happens. On top of that, though, instead of driving the two blocks to deliver my order, the driver went seven miles in a different direction to drop off someone else’s order first. I was ON THE WAY to the other delivery but nope. Heaven forbid you drop off the order two blocks from the restaurant first. Oh, AND the contact number given for the driver was wrong. By the time my order got here, it was not in good shape. The hot and cold had been packed in the same bag, which meant that the hot food was tepid and the cold food (the sushi) was too warm and getting slimy. Considering how expensive the whole order was in the first place, it was mediocre quality, to say the least. I let DoorDash know, and they reimbursed a small portion of the price. Which is better than nothing, but I won’t order from that restaurant again.
Saturday morning was a little cooler, at least to start off. I edited, polished, uploaded, and scheduled four more episodes of DEADLY DRAMATICS. I did the episode videos for next week’s episodes of Legerdemain and ANGEL HUNT, and uploaded and scheduled them on TikTok. I did three more catch-up videos for Legerdemain. I only have 2 more to do for next weekend, and we’re all caught up. I posted and scheduled those I made this weekend.
I did the intro videos both wide and tall for DEADLY DRAMATICS, and I kind of love them. I had trouble with FlexClip, so I started them in Canva, then uploaded them to FlexClip to add audio and polish. I’m so excited to share those (but also don’t want to start the promos too soon). I created the episode template for DEADLY DRAMATICS, and got the first 4 episodes (the first week’s work) done. I can’t yet upload them, though. I uploaded next week’s episode promos to Tweetdeck for Legerdemain and ANGEL HUNT. I’m going to use the heck out of that mofo before the mofo who owns it starts charging.
I then read the rest of the paranormal series I’d started the day before. While I really liked the first book and pretty much liked the second book, the overall series was disappointing. Too much evangelical Christianity, which should have been in the blurb, so those of us who don’t like it aren’t stuck with it. At first, it was just a few references to God and church here and there, but turned more and more rightwing evangelical as the series continued, and by the time it blamed ancient Egyptian religion for all the evils of the world, I was angry. What a cop-out bullshit concept. On top of that, it switched POV a few books in, from the female protagonist of the central couple to the male. The (male) author had gotten plenty wrong with the female protagonist but one of the reasons the male protagonist worked was the slow reveal of his facets through the woman’s experience. It skipped a huge, life-changing, terrible experience of her abduction to switch to his POV and never shifted back. The readers needed to know what she went through, and not in euphemisms. The author made her sound like a fallen woman because she’d been abducted and tortured, and like the guy was even more of a hero for not shunning her for something that wasn’t her fault. Big red flag. Plus, for a character who was supposed to be strong and gain strength over the course of the series, she needed rescuing an awful lot, instead of them rescuing each other as needed. Once it shifted to his POV, it was just a series of repetitive scenes of him beating up supernatural creatures and being beaten up by them. Then there was the whole sexual purity element, which didn’t work, and that all the women outside of the female protagonist of the couple being horrible, manipulative human beings BECAUSE THEY WERE IN CHARGE OF THEIR OWN SEXUALITY. Huge red flag. And repeatedly using “witch” as a slur against the women, even though there were no actual witches in a supposedly paranormal series. And this hot guy? Is supposedly a virgin well into his thirties and won’t have sex until he’s married? Not buying it at all. Along with the Pro-NRA stuff. Supposedly, there were rotating villains leading to Big Bad, but they were all too similar. The series started out strong, but was a huge disappointment, and that author is crossed off my list permanently. Also, about halfway through the series, the books stopped standing on their own while being part of a series, and only served as overly long chapters in the series arc.
Thank goodness I got the series on sale. And I learned a lot about what I don’t want to do in my own work.
I hesitate to get anything that’s KDP because of all the AI-generated books being uploaded.
I’m reading THE BODY BY THE SEA, by Jean-Luc Bannalec, translated by Sorcha McDonagh, and that’s really good. His series is set in Brittany, a region of France that fascinates me (I did extensive research on it when I wrote “Courting the Lioness” about the pirate Jeanne de Clisson, from that area). It’s really good, but I had trouble concentrating in the humidity.
Sunday morning was a little cooler and less humid. I’ve had some characters wandering around my brain on two different projects. I made some notes on one of them (an action/romance). I know the opening. I know the lead-in to the climactic sequence. But I need to figure out the rest.
The second set of characters was pretty strong in my head. I wrote a few pages of notes, and then wrote a little over 3K (two chapters) to see if it’s viable. Possibly, but I’m not yet convinced.
I did a quick trip to the grocery store and the liquor store.
I polished, uploaded, and scheduled four more episodes of DEADLY DRAMATICS. That gets me into October. Wrote the loglines. The more I get done ahead of time, the easier to just promote. And the more time I will have to focus on Legerdemain.
Read some more in the book for review. It’s in a genre I don’t usually read or enjoy, and, even though it’s fairly well done, it takes me longer than some other genres.
The humidity sucked the life out of me. I went too bed way too early, knowing I would regret it.
After a series of weird dreams, I woke up around midnight, due to the pounding rain. The streets were flooded, although my car was safe, at least for the moment. I went back to bed. Although I had trouble getting back to sleep, once I did, I slept hard until about quarter to six on Monday.
The prediction was heavy rain from 2 PM Sunday through 2 PM Tuesday. I cancelled out of the economic development council meeting over in Pittsfield. I don’t know the streets or alternate routes well enough to navigate flooded roads. I don’t have GPS, and Google Maps is ALWAYS wrong. I would have driven straight into the river more than once if I relied on them.
Re-read the two chapters I wrote the previous day and mostly liked them. They’ll need editing, if the project moves forward, but it sets a good foundation and I like the voice.
I polished, uploaded, and scheduled another Process Muse post.
I edited, polished, uploaded, and scheduled four more DEADLY DRAMATICS episodes, which gets me to the end of October. A steady, regular pace of uploads means I can pay more attention to the details as I go.
I finally did the follow-up on all the cards I gathered at the Small Business Expo. On most of the cards, I’d jotted a note on what to follow up on, which helped. By the end of the day, I got two responses back: one to be part of a focus group on Internet Equity (hell yeah), and one to set up a coffee meeting next week.
I looked over my section of the poem for Sunday’s event. I’m going to work on it a little bit every day, so the rhythm becomes ingrained, and I’ll print it out in large print and add breath marks today.
Last week, Scriptapalooza opened an AI script-writing contest. They shut it down within a day because of the furor from real writers and the WGA. They’re trying to walk it back, saying it was an “unfortunate mistake.” Bullshit. AI is one of the points in the WGA contract that is the most highly contested. To open a contest DURING THE STRIKE is sending up a test balloon for the producers. No one believes it was a “mistake.” What a load of crap.
The beginning of my day will be centered around writing and getting up the next episodes of DEADLY DRAMATICS. I have to do the social media rounds for Legerdemain. And then I’ll go from there. It supposed to be really hot again, so I’ll see how much I can get done before I turn into a limp dishrag. I also have to scan some images connected to the project at the Clark.
I’m almost finished with the book for review. It’s definitely over 100K, and, even though it’s good, sometimes feels as though it will never end.
I have yoga tonight at the studio, and then an additional meditation session. I’m looking forward to it.
Have a good one, my friends!
