Onward and Upward and OW!

As mentioned before: Champagne Books has folded. I will start by saying thank you to Ellen and Cassie; Renee I never really got to work with you. I knew change was on the horizon my two cents were to give her a chance to figure things out as I have plenty of other responsibilities to keep myself occupied and in general, I believe in moving forward not looking back. Thanks to everyone who made the covers and the editors even though we often disagreed I tried to keep things professional. I don’t believe in talking sour or sugar coating things; it was a decent learning experience.

I got my rights back. I’d love to say, “And we’re going to be back with new covers by Date X!” but the reality is: I hurt myself this year, and I am still sore, so me picking up a bunch of easy overtime isn’t an option at the moment (overtime pays for things like covers) I need to focus on exercising this injury and getting the strength at least back to where it was. Now, most of you haven’t met me but if you did you’d probably think there’s nothing wrong with me physically, and I have really zero health concerns beyond wear and tear and I want to keep it that way. I also want to do my books right; I doubt I’ll find another publisher who wants what I have floating around, plus this is a decent chance to if there’s any typos or whatnot fix. Not impossible, but more like “time needed”.

My sister asked how I felt looking back on the publishing process and how I feel I’ve improved skills-wise story telling. My immediate family seldom if ever reads for pleasure (besides the two nieces, but one’s in University now so the odds of her reading for pleasure much is going to be slim for a while) so, love them but they aren’t exactly going to be a complete snob when it comes to what I’m producing, either. Closest thing is, I’m super sensitive if I suspect someone is being a dick because they just don’t like me, which sounds immature but you’d be surprised how often people like to try to domineer. I would rather have honest disagreement than an uneasy peace where I have to diminish for your sake.  

To be honest I saw a massive jump in my control of words after I took a course on stylistics, but I was twenty so that was way before anyone knew me short of my cute little articles in the University of Winnipeg’s Student Newspaper. If anything, I’d say my problem is I’m way too likely to tell a story I would enjoy as opposed to thinking about the reader but, if I wanted to pander I have plenty of options to do so. If my goal is making the book public it can’t just be for me, so I need feedback from like-minded people who aren’t interested in making a book fit a different mould. I’d say I’ve generally improved but, if you’re waiting for a project to be perfect you probably don’t want to read anything by me for oh, probably a few centuries.

I learned part of this has to be not giving myself impossible standards; [insert joke about MS Word Gremlins here] but also to not take criticism from anyone you wouldn’t take advice from. What this means essentially is: everyone has their preferences, and it’s not a good idea to use every spice and herb from your pantry when you’re making something. If you’re making something that’s got a particular ingredient, say blueberries, people who hate blueberries probably won’t like it, no matter how good the dish is. Conversely, if I’m making blueberry pie and someone who likes blueberries but doesn’t normally care for pie, may give me positive feedback on some of the dessert. Someone who understands pie, and likes blueberries? That feedback is golden; unless of course they’re just happy to have desert they could care less how good it was.

I feel like I’m still years away from my magnum opus. I absolutely love the world I crafted for The Mermaid and the Unicorns and The Puppetmaster Duology, more plans to visit it with new (mostly, cameos are fun) characters and work on Rogue Healer again, but I’m not committing to a timeline.

If I’m honest, I feel like the world’s changing, and it’s hard to think about a year, two, three years from now. I mentioned before in a previous post I’m a Christian, and with so many things converging worldwide I feel like we’re on the verge of The Book of Revelation kicking off in full force but, I’m nobody who has personal insight on the matter; this slow drip and march towards evil may be a while yet. When I was protesting vaccine mandates back in 2021 at one of the rallies someone said the world still needs artists who are willing to tell the truth in a world of deception. I don’t know if my art says much to anyone but me but, that’s not an excuse not to make it.

In the meantime, take care, and may God Bless each and every one of you reading this.

Media Needs to Do Better

Unreliable narrators are fun for me as a reader, because I like seeing what you did there. I shouldn’t have to second guess what is being put out in the news.

The first bit of commentary I put out the day of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a news commentator saying, “We have no idea what this could be and that it could easily be someone firing a gun in the air to celebrate the event”. That genius has since been fired and says his words were misconstrued.

I agree with waiting for evidence and even if it seems obvious, sometimes we don’t know the whole story. Saying something like that makes me believe you’re either a paid shill or incredibly stupid; and my patience for paid liars who think they’re more clever than they are is at an all-time low.

I’m not expecting some people to be as precise in their words as others; when I was in University I learned to be careful with not only what I wrote but said because some people would attack everything and everything if it came from me. If you are being paid to write articles or are putting a book out I expect you to have some control over the written word. If you are paid to speak, maybe you should learn to think before you talk. I am bored with weak rhetorical conjecture; if you cannot keep up with someone who doesn’t do it for a living perhaps this is out of your league. If your goal is to gaslight or try to control the narrative, I have been kind up until this point for your sake; we cannot commit to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

I’m not saying you can’t speculate, but in general, there’s a time and a place for you to report what you saw (what we know so far) and additional venues for you to speak frankly. Consider if I were to give my opinion to a friend over coffee: we are equals, assuming we didn’t drive together the worst is we leave and go our separate ways. If I give my same opinion as a teacher (especially to children who are still learning to be articulate), as a paramedic to a sick patient, or as a news commentator, there’s an inherent power difference; do you dare speak back to the person who controls what grade you will obtain? I’d love to say I’d encourage free thinking but, let’s be real for as many people who are genuinely able to hold themselves in a debate, there’s plenty who pick their team or tribe over the truth.

We can get there, but you have to realize that not everyone is reasonable or reach first for truth. I haven’t watched much paid-for Canadian media in years because it is so egregiously propaganda.

I think that’s why I am such a huge fan of alternative media. One of the issues I think I’ve run into is when I’m at events, is that I meet a lot of people who want to keep reaching for what’s popular. I think part of why I’m frustrated is that I don’t want to make my work more like what’s out there; believe me I’ve been told my writing’s decent enough, if only I’d use my talents to do something else.

I don’t know about you but, there’s plenty of them doing that. And, let’s also be honest: just because it’s not at the forefront doesn’t mean there’s no audience for it. I’m trying to explain the explosion in popularity of LitRPG (which I haven’t really read, if I’m honest) when Romantasy seems to be the market dominator this year in the Spec Fic markets, yes it probably will outperform other markets, but that doesn’t mean other markets don’t exist.

So yeah: Media needs to be better and be responsible and try to tell the whole story, even the inconvenience parts. Treat your readers with respect.

In other news: My first publisher, Champagne Books, has folded so I have gotten the rights back to everything. That deserves its own post, so probably get another one of these sooner than later. I also don’t know how much I’ve mentioned it but I injured myself back in April and, while I have been back on truck since end of June I was feeling pain last week. I stretched it out waited for pay day to go for a massage, and my hips were completely out of alignment. I was able to kayak this summer just fine but the Stand Up Paddleboard was weaaaaaak, so the short and dirty is that my glutes are imbalanced. I’m plenty strong and have lots to work with, so I need to focus on fixing them.