Blog

I got to play in a five episode Buffy RPG game with Shadows of Nox for their Twitch channel. I’m playing Bethany Dubois, a psychic who has just come into her power and really doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. This means she doesn’t know what she shouldn’t be able to do. As an outsider, things are scary, but she’s got a bunch of cool new friends!

• Monday 2/12: Piper’s one-on-one will be released on YouTube.
• Tuesday 2/13: Bethany and Simon will be streamed on Shadows of Nox 7pm CST
• Wednesday 2/14: Fiona and Jason will be streamed on Shadows of Nox 7pm CST
• Thursday 2/15: Game session 1, mostly full cast will be streamed 7pm CST
• Friday 2/16: Game session 2, full cast, streamed 7pm CST
• Saturday 2/17: Game session 3, full cast, streamed 7pm CST
• Sunday 2/18: Finale, streamed 7pm CST

Afterwards, you will be able to find them all on the Shadow of Nox YouTube channel.

Also, enjoy this Broken Hearts Club Mix Tape! (It’s a playlist on YouTube.)

Meet author Amanda Cherry. A good friend of mine who I have worked with before. Today, she tells us something most of us authors know but need to re-learn from time to time. Especially when writing the second or third (or, ahem, fifteenth) book.

Trust The Process.

That is a piece of advice all creatives hear at one time or another. It’s meant to be encouraging—to remind us that whatever mess we’re looking at can and will turn into the beautiful thing we’re intending to build. It’s a reminder that even the most exquisite painting likely started life as a rough sketch; that your favorite song probably started as a bit of melody stuck in a composer’s head or a catchy couplet scrawled into a notebook or onto a diner napkin.

Trust the process is the phrase that says: “The only way out is through, so keep going!”

The problem, when someone is new to creating things, is that the process is a stranger. And we’ve been conditioned all our lives not to trust strangers—especially not with things that are dear to us.The first time I traveled in Europe, we wound up taking an overnight train. The procedure on that train was for someone to collect all the passports in the evening so the railroad handles all the border crossings while the passengers sleep. This sounds good in theory, but in practice, it’s terrifying.

Here I was, in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, being told to surrender the one and only document that could prove my identity and my right to be there to a middle-aged woman in polyester pants.

I didn’t sleep so well that first night.

But the next morning my passport was returned to me over a cup of espresso, stamped with the names of the countries we’d passed through while we slept. All was well.

So the second time we took an overnight train, it was a little bit easier to hand my documents over—because I’d done it before, and everything had worked out fine. It turned out the person who collects the documents was in uniform—it just wasn’t my expectation of a railroad uniform. I recognized the uniform. I recognized the process.

By the third time I took an overnight train across several borders, I had zero anxiety left when asked to hand over my passport. Because I’d learned to trust the process.

Writing books has turned out to be a lot like that.

When I first had the idea for TIME & AGAIN, I had just released its predecessor (my debut) and I only had the vaguest idea of what I wanted the sequel to be. I knew I wanted a time travel story, and I knew I wanted a second chance romance.

But I had no idea of anything beyond that. Most critically, I had no idea who the time travelers were nor what they wanted with my main character.

It took me nearly five years to sit down and write this book in earnest. Because it took me finishing three more books, and seeing them published, to trust the process. Just like the overnight border crossing, my ability to get through draft after draft became familiar and trustworthy with time and repetition. And, sure enough, the answers revealed themselves as soon as I let myself sit down and do the work.

And I think y’all will enjoy the result.

—

Amanda Cherry is a Seattle-area queer, disabled nerd who still can’t believe people pay her to write stories. She is the author of five published novels as well as TTRPGs, screenplays, and short fiction, and a cast member in the Dungeon Scrawlers GREYMANTLE game on Twitch. Her nonfiction writing has been featured on ToscheStation.net, ElevenThirtyEight.com, and StarTrek.com. Amanda is a member of SAG-AFTRA, SFWA, & Broad Universe. Follow Amanda’s geekery on Twitter, BlueSky & TikTok @MandaTheGinger or visit www.thegingervillain.com

Still deep in the weeds of my novel in progress, but I can see the end of it! In the meantime, here is a Bubble & Squeek. This one has a couple of hats-in-hands with requests for money. I know these people personally, have worked with them, and they need the help if you can afford it. Otherwise, please share the message.

Shoutout: Artist Jeff Sturgeon is in a bad way and could use a little help. His family set up a GoFundMe. You have seen his art of the last 30 years.

Shoutout: Writer and editor Lezli Robyn is very sick and could use some help. Help her get better. She works so hard and this is tough for her.

Blog: Being in my fifties now, I thought it would be a good thing to think about some thoughts I’ve learned that I’ve incorporated into my life—or try to. I’m not perfect. I’ve broken these 50 things in to five groups: Emotions, Habits, Love, Career, and Perspective. I posted one section a week for five weeks.

Pre-Order: My novel, Shadowrun: Auditions (The Mosaic Run Collection) is up for pre-order (ebook) and will be released on February 15 in ebook and paperback.

Kickstarter BackerKit: I am launching a Kickstarter for in late March 2024 called “Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980.” It is a cozy, Middle Grade appropriate, ghost story, loosely based on fictionalized me at ten years old while living in a 300-year-old manor house in Belgium. Won’t you be my penpal?

Kickstarter ZNB Presents Tuckerization: Would you like to be immortalized in a story that will be published in ZNB Presents: Year 3? I am one of the anchor authors this year and there are multiple tuckerizations available!

Kickstarter: Shifting, Swirling, HERitage. An anthology about “what if” situations about famous women in history. This one looks interesting.

Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.

Esme. My favorite picture of her.

Being in my fifties now, I thought it would be a good thing to think about some thoughts I’ve learned that I’ve incorporated into my life—or try to. I’m not perfect. I’ve broken these 50 things in to five groups: Emotions, Habits, Love, Career, and Perspective. I will post one section a week for five weeks. This week’s section is: Perspective.

The thing about perspective is that its wisdom only comes in retrospect. It is experience from the past that allows you to manage the present and mitigate future problems before they can become problems. It is this ability to compare and contrast situations while extrapolating the possible outcomes before they happen. At the same time, it is an ability to think and act instead of merely reacting.

Perspective is when a younger person goes to an older person for advice and there is a look of recognition in that older person’s eyes, but their words are tempered with the knowledge that how it happened to them, the details of how it could happen for another are different. The devil is in the details, but human nature has its commonalities.

These bits of perspective are based on my experiences, but I think they hold wisdom for those who recognize the situations.

1. Perspective: When someone tells you who they are by their jokes, actions, or words…believe them. It will be better for you in the long run. Especially if their “jokes” are mean or punch down. This is what they will do to you when they no longer feel the need to impress.
2. Perspective: When I learned to lose (or fail) with grace, life got a lot more pleasant. A non-success is not the end of the world. Sometimes, it’s the only way we learn.
3. Perspective: Food is weirdly personal. Don’t tell anyone about the diet you follow unless you want to hear (from mostly non-professionals) why you are wrong. I mean both diet as in “what you eat on a regular basis” and “what you eat for X health reason.”
4. Perspective: There is nothing more enticing that belonging to an exclusive group; to be chosen. Be sure that the group you are joining is worthy of you and your values before you join. If you discover they are not after you have joined, do everything in your power to leave.
5. Perspective: If someone gossips about everyone around them to you, you can bet they are gossiping about you to everyone else.
6. Perspective: Once you figure out ultimatums are all about what you control, the better you will be at drawing lines in the sand—personally and professionally. If they do X, you will do Y. You cannot control what other people do. All you can do is inform them how you will act if they cross your line. Sometimes, they don’t deserve even that much information.
7. Perspective: You are never too old to learn (or relearn) the basics. I finally learned how to properly blow-dry my hair at the age of fifty. I had my hairdresser show me how she would do it.
8. Perspective: If you can travel, do it. Get out of your comfort zone. Experience a different culture. It will expand your world in more ways than one.
9. Perspective: When you learn how to say “no” your life will be so much better for it.
10. Perspective: When things get rough, ask yourself “Will this matter in a day, a week, a month, a year, 5 years from now?” It helps you get perspective on what is happening in the immediate. If that is too abstract, think about where you were 1, 5, 10 years ago and how your life has changed.

So much writing. So many balls in the air. Have a Bubble & Squeek!

Announcement: Pre-order for Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run Auditions is live! I’m so happy with this book! Look at this beautiful cover! Release date is 15 Feb but you can pre-order it now.

Classes: I have two new classes scheduled with the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers! 11 Feb, 9:30am, Project Management for Creatives and 10 Mar, 9:30am, Money Management for Creatives. There are slots and scholarships available for each class.

Interview: Podcast Interview with Lancer Kind with me and Cat Rambo about The Reinvented Detective. This was a really fun one.

Kickstarter/BackerKit: I am launching a Kickstarter for in late March 2024 called “Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980.” It is a cozy, Middle Grade appropriate, ghost story, loosely based on fictionalized me at ten years old while living in a 300-year-old manor house in Belgium. Won’t you be my penpal?

Shoutout: Writing Speculative Stories by Cat Rambo. I enjoyed reading this article.

Twitch: The Broken Hearts Club, Buffy RPG mini-series starting on Feb 13 on Shadows of Nox. I’m playing the psychic, Bethany Dubois. She’s having a terrible time, but she has a bunch of cool, new friends.  

YouTube: Here’s a sneak peek at the mix tape for the Broken Hearts Club. I had fun putting this together.

Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.

Being in my fifties now, I thought it would be a good thing to think about some thoughts I’ve learned that I’ve incorporated into my life—or try to. I’m not perfect. I’ve broken these 50 things in to five groups: Emotions, Habits, Love, Career, and Perspective. I will post one section a week for five weeks. This week’s section is: Career.

A “career” is officially defined as “an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.” This used to mean you picked a job and a company and you did the same thing for the same company, progressing up a defined ladder of success for the rest of your life. It does not mean this anymore. A career is what you make of it. A career now means (to me) a general topic of industry you work in for yourself and others that changes over time.

I, myself, am in the third part of my third career. The first was everything I did before and during college to support myself (retail, server, TA, computer center tech). The second was as a Software QA engineer (Game tester, black box tester, Test lead, QA Manager). The third is as a publishing industry professional. First as solely an author, then author and editor, then author, editor, and publisher. The rest (twitch streaming, podcasting, blogging, etc…) are incidentals in my publishing career. They are not the mainstay. Nor do they pay the bills. But they enhance my publishing career and give me other opportunities.

These lessons are just ten of the many lessons I have learned over time. I think the more I learn about my chosen career, the more I understand what I don’t actually know about it. That realization, in and of itself, is priceless.

1. Career: Learn when you work best, then build your schedule around that.
2. Career: You get determine what equals “Success” for you. No one else. Don’t compare your success to another because they have not lived the life you have lived nor have the same values you have.
3. Career: Learning to use the word “No” is both vital and a privilege. Sometimes you cannot say “no” when you want to. Sometimes you must say “no” in order to protect yourself, your time, your (chosen) family, and your sanity. “No, thank you.” is such a powerful phrase.
4. Career: It is important to volunteer to teach your expert knowledge to schools and libraries. The more you teach, the more you learn. More importantly, you impart your knowledge to people who have a different perspective than you and can use that information in their future.
5. Career: Never be afraid to ask an expert about something. Experts usually love to talk about the thing they are good at. They have a wealth of knowledge and are happy to share.
6. Career: Knowing what you are worth is everything. Figure out what your time is worth then charge that much plus 10%. If the person hiring you is an asshole, add 30%.
7. Career: Be willing to let jobs go. Figure out what your time is worth. At the same time, figure out how much you will actually accept for that job based on the circumstances. Set that boundary and don’t move it for anyone.
8. Career: Never be the smartest person in the room. You always want to be learning from someone.
9. Career: Leveling up to a “better class of problem” doesn’t mean it is any less of a problem to be dealt with.
10. Career: Remember, unsolicited advice is always a critique. This goes both ways—offering or receiving unsolicited advice.

I’m pleased to present Sarah Day to you. She was once one of my mentees. Now she is someone I look forward to reading. She is a fabulous author and I can’t wait to read her newest novella, Greyhowler. Today, she tells us why she wanted to write a monster book and what makes her monster special.

Greyhowler is a monster book. Okay, it’s a bunch of other things too, but it started as a monster book.

Ever since I was tiny, I’ve loved a scary monster. Or rather, I’ve loved being scared by a monster. I saw both JAWS and ALIENS when I was much too young to see movies with that many teeth in them, and sharks and xenomorphs chased me through my dreams for years afterward. To this day, I watch every creature movie I can, probably because I’m looking for something to replace the monsters that hunt me in my dreams.

(We all have dreams where something is hunting us, right? It’s not just me?) (Editor: No, it’s not just you.)

Now that I’m an adult, I can look at my fixation with monsters with a more clinical eye. Monsters give me a container to pour my constant low-grade anxiety into, something I can point at (or boop on the nose) and say “This is it, this right here, this is the thing I’m afraid of.” A monster condenses ambient fear about concepts (death! helplessness! mutilation! oblivion!) into something observable, but still inescapable.

Y’see, I want a monster that looms. I do not want a monster that’s basically “what if a human, but more powerful and more evil.” Not for me, the werewolf and the vampire. I want a monster that’s an extension of nature, with all of nature’s beautiful ambivalence to human life. A slow monster, a creeping monster, a monster that can slide up behind me and wait for me to notice it, patient as the grave.

The fun part of being a discovery writer (or a “pantser,” if you prefer an inelegant term, or a “gardener,” if you prefer a more elegant term) is that I maintain the ability to scare myself. Greyhowler started as a 10,000 word short story unwisely titled “The Wild World Has Room for All Manner of Things,” which I later revised into a trim novella. As I wrote my way through those first 10,000 words, the greyhowler prowled around the outer edge of my brain. It’s a constant question on the protagonist’s mind: does the greyhowler exist, or is it just a folktale? Up until I finished the first draft, I didn’t know the answer to that question myself.

When I started writing Greyhowler, it wasn’t about religious trauma. It wasn’t about friendship, or a mystery, or betrayal, or murder, or magic. All of those things are in the book now, but when it started it was because I had this persistent mental image: A woman arriving at the border of a small town, far away from home, out in the remote and golden prairie. A woman, and something just off the side of the road, crouched in the tall grass, waiting.

The greyhowler found me first, you see. I didn’t have to invent it. It was waiting for me.

—
Sarah Day lives in the SF Bay Area with her cat and too many LED lights. She is an author of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and many other flavors of speculative fiction. Her work is heavily influenced by festival culture, body modification, mental illness, family trauma, non-traditional relationships, and scary ghosts. She’s been published in PseudoPod, Cosmic Horror Monthly, The Future Fire, Underland Arcana, and many other great places. She’s terrified all the time and considers that an asset.

Being in my fifties now, I thought it would be a good thing to think about some thoughts I’ve learned that I’ve incorporated into my life—or try to. I’m not perfect. I’ve broken these 50 things in to five groups: Emotions, Habits, Love, Career, and Perspective. I will post one section a week for five weeks. This week’s section is: Love.

Love, in all its myriad forms, is complex, messy, beautiful, life-giving, soul-rending, and a thousand-thousand other adjectives, metaphors, and thoughts. I think, in essence, love is what makes us human. Family love, platonic love, ardent love, self-love (can’t forget that last one even though so many of us do for so much of our lives). I think love is one of the most important things we can recognize. Here are some of the things I’ve learned.

1. Love: Love that one thing. I mean, really love it. Unabashedly. Wholeheartedly. That hobby, that fandom, that sport, that craft. Love it with all of yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not okay.
2. Love: Tell your beloveds that you love them. Use your words and your actions.
3. Love: Love does not solve all problems, but it does help facilitate patience, empathy, compassion, understanding, and a host of other emotions and feelings between people.
4. Love: In all relationships, manners matter. Especially with those closest to you, the ones you love the most. “Please.” and “Thank you.” go a long way.
5. Love: Learning to declutter what you do not absolutely love/want in your life is such a valuable skill. I mean this physically, emotionally, and mentally. That way you surround yourself with only those things you appreciate.
6. Love: Sometimes the best way to love someone is to listen to them with an open heart and a closed mouth.
7. Love: When you are comfortable enough to discuss body fluid issues with someone, that is love—be it platonic, familial, or eros. Love includes all the disgusting stuff we go through, too. It’s part of what makes us human.
8. Love: Loving yourself in all shapes, sizes, and ages is an act of rebellion tempered with the need to keep yourself healthy physically, emotionally, and mentally in a culture designed to gaslight you into buying things you don’t really want or need so that corporations can turn a profit.
9. Love: If you wouldn’t say it to your best friend, don’t say it to yourself. You are worth that much love.
10. Love: Use pet names for yourself (Dearheart, Sweetie, Hunkaluv, etc…) and not insults. Especially when self-correcting. “No, Dearheart, today is Tuesday, not Friday.”

Being in my fifties now, I thought it would be a good thing to think about some thoughts I’ve learned that I’ve incorporated into my life—or try to. I’m not perfect. I’ve broken these 50 things in to five groups: Emotions, Habits, Love, Career, and Perspective. I will post one section a week for five weeks. This week’s section is: Habits.

Habits. These are the buttons that we (and other people) program into ourselves so we do things without thinking too hard about it. It’s a little like driving on autopilot. Get up and brush your teeth. Make coffee before going to work. Brush your hair before you go out the door. Wash clothing on Wednesday. The list of mundanity goes on. They keep life moving. These are all habits.

Most of these habits start out as accidental or something that our parents drilled into us as children. As adults, after we have learned just how useful healthy habits are, we need to force them into being. It’s not as easy as when we were children. As adults, when we want to establish a new habit, we need to work at it, plan it, and take deliberate action to plant the seeds. It takes time and mental energy to create these new patterns. Here are some of my most important habits.

1. Habit: Don’t put it down, put it away. This will save you so much time in the long run.
2. Habit: Do the hardest thing first. Especially if you really don’t want to do it. (This is the “eat the frog first” thought.)
3. Habit: If you shouldn’t have it, don’t have it in the house. Life is so much easier that way.
4. Habit: Get a fifteen minute timer. You can survive anything for fifteen minutes. Use for cleaning/tidying, writing, decluttering, meditating. Anything you have resistance to. Fifteen minutes is such a doable timeframe.
5. Habit: If it’s really important, note it down somewhere (handwritten or typed) where you regularly look for what you have forgotten. Otherwise, you will forget it. Trust me.
6. Habit: Pill sorters and phone/computer alarms/calendars will save you a lot of pain and sometimes save you embarrassment. These tools aren’t just for old people. Use the tools at your disposal and make life easier.
7. Habit: Keep a five year journal at least once in your life. This habit will give you snapshots of memory to look back on as well as perspective.
8. Habit: At least once a day, when eating, focus on the meal and do nothing else except listen to music or have a good conversation. Not only will your body be fed, your mind will be rested and you will remember what you ate.
9. Habit: Understand the difference between doing something because you enjoy it versus doing something because you “always” do that thing—whether it is your morning routine, a hobby, or date night activities.
10. Habit: Once a day, remind yourself three things you are grateful for. It’s a good way to start a day. It’s a good way to end a day. You don’t have to write it down if you don’t want to. You just have to bring it to mind.

Next up: Love.

Bubble and Squeek for 8 Jan 2024. I’m so deep into the weeds of not only writing this current Shadowrun novel, I’m editing a different Shadowrun novel by another author who writes very densely. It’s a hell of a good read, too.

50 Things: In case you missed it, 50 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years, Part 1 (Emotions).

BackerKit: I am launching a kickstarter for in late March 2024 called “Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980.” It is a cozy, Middle Grade appropriate, ghost story, loosely based on fictionalized me at ten years old while living in a 300-year-old manor house in Belgium. Won’t you be my penpal?
—–BackerKit PR: In Amazing Stories. It’s always a thrill to see my stuff in SF magazines.

Interview: Exclusive Interview: “The Reinvented Detective” Editors Jennifer Brozek & Cat Rambo by Paul Semel. This was a fun interview.
—–Interview: Here’s a YouTube blurb for the interview that I think is quite snazzy.

Review: Review of The Reinvented Detective from Richard Pearce Moses on Bluesky: “Twenty three short stories that with a noir take set in the future. Some exceptional pieces in here, and all of them worthwhile take on the genre.”

Shout-out: This was an unexpected shout-out to me from Brian C.E. Buhl. It almost made me cry. I remember some of the comments I made. Jennifer Brozek Made Me a Better Writer. This is one of the reasons I keep teaching, helping, editing other authors.

Support: As always… if you appreciate my work and would like to support me, I love coffee. I am made of caffeine. This is the quickest way to brighten my day.