InterNutter

Indie writer seeks audience with an audience. Paying customers welcome. [pronouns: ze/hir] Daily free stories happen because it is an excellent counter to Writers' Block.

Burpengary East http://www.cmweller.com 12161 posts

Slow start

Since nobody gets out of bed before 5:30 anyway, I'm re-setting my alarm to that time and not waking up early for half an hour of heartbreaking inertia. And that's all I have this morning. Inertia has me in its wicked claws today.

I woke up at around 3 and tried and failed to get back to sleep. A combo of Beloved's snoring and the various little annoying lights in the room kept me awake. The phone makes the body lotion glow in the freaking dark. It's downright disturbing.

I am going to get some foam and make little covers for the annoying things in my room that glow when I don't want them to. Absolute darkness is a fantastic sleep aid, it seems. And now that I know it... I need it.

Yes, I have a sleep mask. That little shit has a tendency to slip off in the night and then all the firkin glow wakes me up. Bleh. Homemade glowy thing covers with optional heat vents cut into the sides where I shouldn't see the light... seems to be the way to go.

And if Beloved removes them... We'll have to talk about that.

I have a thousand words to write, art to work on, shopping to do, a comic to make, a book to read through (the artificial voice is invading my thoughts! HELP!) and, if I can overcome inertia enough, today, taking an entire hour to just firkin chill.

It's not looking too good for that. But it's the least-effort self-care that I have.

Beloved is taking a day off so they can help their Mum. MeMum is in Clucky Chook mode about everything, and the communication lines between sides of the family right now seems... very unreliable. I guess I'm the buffer between Beloved's Mum and MeMum's anxious buckaw-ing. No slight intended on MeMum, honestly, but sometimes a Clucky Chook is the last thing you need when dealing with the aftermath of shit plus fan.

I should reblog, retweet and re-whatever-facebook-does the call to arms for beta-readers. Because only one person has answered it so far. Either everyone's too busy to read (likely) or I'm not that great and nobody wants to proof my books. The latter of which, of course, my inner hatred takes as proof positive that I suck and I don't really deserve to exist, that I'm a drain on humanity, etc. etc. etc.

I really wish my inner hatred would stop pulling this shit. It needs to chill, too. This is why I need a me-hour to just fart around and enjoy myself. I always feel better after I've fulfilled a few quests in WoW or chipped further away at another layer of mountain in Minecraft. It's something that can be accomplished when nothing else seems to be working.

Maybe I should take that hour and make up the rest of it later on. Definitely after I've done my Instant, though. Nobody knows when I work on my novel, and nobody minds when I post my art. If I post my art. The Hatchworth animation is taking forever and a week. It's pure accident that makes it look like his arms are moving and I'm glad of it. Pretty certain that folks don't want to see what five more frames look like, every other day.

Speaking of animation, I'm doing five more frames, today. Hatchworth's hatch should finally dawn over the top of the hill I drew, and then I have to watch out for when his jacket stops. It's going to be weeks before I have to fret about his pants or his walk cycle.

Meanwhile, One Leap Year of Instants (2016) has finally entered the premium catalogue after I purged any reference to Amazon out of the "Also by this author" part of the novel. Do me a favour and go buy my Amazon exclusive novella. If you've already done so, please leave a positive review. Even if you think it sucked, think up a very nice way to say that it sucked.

But now... it is time to bull my way through the day. Wish me all the luck you have. I think I need it.

Challenge #01534-D073: Wyrd Customs

"How normal is this occurrence that there's automated vocal procedures to talk about the demonic presence?" -- RecklessPrudence

This lot of magicians had graduated through technology and out the other side, never once stopping in at Global Pollution Station for a long debate about how dangerous pollution was, when you really got down to it. Shayde was impressed. Not many worlds actually noticed the long-term effects of certain technologies and decided to look at other ways to do things while the water

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Struggle to juggle

I think I should probably try to do a "head space" comic per day. As well as the other stuff. I've learned I can only handle animation in small doses, so maybe five frames a go is my limit. And I still haven't posted the progress pix for the latest art piece I'm working on.

I know that it looks like a bag of suck at the moment, which is why I haven't posted it.

Bag of suck or not, I feel

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Challenge #01533-D072: Sufficiently Confusing Circuitry

The Magic/More Magic switch. Details here. -- RecklessPrudence

Rael, fresh into independant JOATing, stared at the switch on the homebrew cabinet. A human had to have made this. The pencilled annotation on the toggle switch had two options. Magic and More Magic. Experimentally, he flipped the switch to More Magic and rebooted the kludge of a machine.

It worked perfectly.

Rael was not content to receive a handful of Seconds for this much work, and took the outer casing off to

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Murgledy...

I know I'm getting to sleep. I know I'm sleeping the night... but it's not working as much as it used to. Maybe it's the change of seasons. Maybe it's the time I spend reading in bed. Maybe I just need a coffee. Whatever it is, I'm not as fully "charged" as I'm used to.

Which means I'm back to functioning on low battery.

I know how to do it... I'd just rather not. You know?

My shrink gave me more homework,

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Challenge #01532-D071: Unseen Flaws

"What? What is it?" "Give me a minute. I've been an idiot and I'm trying to compensate." -- RecklessPrudence

"No, no, no, no, no!" Paper snowed from its fountaining upwards. Judging by the look of things, inspiration had been going in entirely in the wrong direction. "It's all shit! It's nonsense! Rubbish! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish..." And then Maester Kadfel fell to sobbing at her desk.

Thaldrik fielded as many pages as he could catch, and laboriously rounded up the others. Months of

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Challenge #01531-D070: Danger in an Underground Cavern

This is an [ancient race] construct, and it's a great honour to be murdered by it. We're gonna try and avoid that, anyway. -- RecklessPrudence

"Atlantis is real," breathed Carraway.

"Yes, yes. We have established this. However, that sixty-ton construct is coming our way and it could easily squash us flat with one limb. Run, Carraway."

Carraway was still entranced, even though his feet moved away from the impending threat of the moving machine. "It's so beautiful. And functioning after thousands of

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So much to do

I'm still doing the read-through of Beauties, and aim to get to the halfway point before the end of the day. Each chapter takes fifteen minutes away from other things.

Other things like writing my Instant, or working on the first five hundred words of the new book, Rael. And I haven't even written the nut notes.

They'll evolve as time goes by.

I've always needed nut notes to keep things straight. As I introduce people, I'll take notes.

And everything is

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Challenge #01530-D069: Wit of the Ages

Stuff found written on walls. -- Knitnan

Corridor 3278B had been marked as a Paradox Hazard by the local representatives of the AI Alliance, thus causing something of a traffic snarl in the adjacent byways. Since she was in the neighbourhood, Officer Lyr Marken investigated, reading everything there that was still legible.

She found it easily. Beautiful, artistic script that read, Everyone writes on walls except me!

Lyr instantly went for the first suspect, dialling up Ambassador Shayde's personal comms. "Ambassador Shayde

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Road trip!

I'm off to MeMum's today. To deliver a few things, sort out her compy troubles, and possibly help with whatever happens to be happening at the time. It's a long and tiring trip for me, and I don't expect much creativity to be done today.

As it is, I am hurrying to get the Instant done so I can be on my way,

I've only done a read through of one chapter of Beauties. It takes a lot of time and focus

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Challenge #01529-D068: Crisis in the Wee Small Hours

You'd be surprised who you find in your family tree. -- Knitnan

Rael had not expected his genes to turn up in any of the current series of released Faiize infants. The one currently in its relaxation tank was, according to the gene scan, twenty-five percent his. Kint, the primary genetic contributor, had a whopping sixty-three percent of his personal genome involved.

There was a small community of sudden parentals, lost without a manual, working out how to parent a Faiize without

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...dagnabbit

Good news: I have found a way to do an efficient read-through of Beauties before I send it off to my dear, dedicated Beta-readers.

Bad news: It sucks balls and takes an age to do.

The method? I get my computer to read my book to me and follow along. Chapter by chapter. I have to take the time to devote myself to this so that my Betas have more to enjoy and less to do. Y'all should be backup to make

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Challenge #01528-D067: World-threatening

What do they eat, anyway?

::snort:: Anything. They don't care. They're roaming, poisonous, armoured, Dark Magic-spawned garbage disposals. -- RecklessPrudence

"Dark Magic is extinct. It's been extinct for thousands of years," objected Thaldrik.

"And they've been around that long," said Maester Kadfel. "Possibly longer. It was their creation that lead to the uprising against Dark Magic and its subsequent elimination." She tapped the illustration. "For now, they seem content to remain in the calderas of Mount Seethe, and eat... whatever they find

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Yoiks and Away, I guess.

Before I wanted to write a draft of the very polite letter I sent to the most recent A2B, I thought I'd check in on their website to see what their responses were likely to be like in the first place.

if we are interested in discussing possible representation, we will contact you by email or phone—typically within 6 weeks.

The time limit has run out. They haven't contacted me. So...

I pick another A2B and try again. At least the

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Challenge #01527-D066: Virtual Friend

'Sixty-two years old, and you find a kindred spirit in a block of programming,' they thought wryly, shaking their head. -- RecklessPrudence

It hadn't started that way, of course. Her grandchildren had got her into the video games. Things had gone a long way since the Space Invaders. There was no more coin in the slot or press A to start, to begin with. She could play by typing on the keyboard, and the machine code understood her and responded.

Denny

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