real life

A 3761-post collection

Ugh.

The real trouble with overnight accommodations is the shit you're willing to put up with for "just one night". The pillow's understuffed for me, but it's just one night. The bed's too hard for me, but it's just one night. The air con has no middle ground between freezing cold and stuffy warmth, but it's just one night...

And on it goes. Little minor annoyances that mount up to sleeping tense, sleeping really lightly, and not getting in a good sleep at all. I gave up at what should have been a weekday awakening time [5:30] and headed for my lappy to do this noise.

After a diversion to check out my fandom crap, of course.

Because nothing says "workaholic writer" like procrastinating for an hour by looking up fanfics and fanart of someone else's hard work.

...lord knows, I don't have much from my own creations.

I'm pretty certain that I may have bit myself in the buttocks with this Agent Hunt of mine, but I need an agent to get wider word out and get better notice to actually have a career at what I'm good at...

On the plus side, I still have my Instants, so it's not like I suddenly vanished off the map for this long. I still have output. I talk about what I'm doing on the pro scene, but like... four people read this blog at all, so... Yeah. I'm missing out on doing something important. Something that could get me Noticed. And just... writing nonstop for ten years [and more] isn't it.

I've seen all of those "Ten things a writer needs to do to get popular" lists and... I'm doing them. Or most of them. All of them that don't cost me money.

  1. Twitter feed
  2. Facebook page
  3. Medium
  4. Wordpress blog (that I really need to contribute to regularly)
  5. Pro-looking homepage with my penname all over it (that I need to learn how to update)
  6. Patreon
  7. Ko-fi
  8. A regular blog in social media where I'm gathering followers (some of whom are real people! And not porn-bots!)
  9. advertising regularly on said social media platform (I need to get back on to that)
  10. Knowing my audience -- My audience is the people who are sick of the same ol' same ol'. And I do NOT know where they are wont to hang out.

(eight out of ten is still a pass, right?)

Finding people to love my stuff involves throwing the Instants out there on the interwebs like bread upon the waters, and waiting for it to return a thousandfold, as the scripture would say.

Starting next week, I shall be investigating means of getting the word out. Advertising. Anything under my self-imposed budget of $50 a week gets my attention. So for assorted platforms, I'll be working on that. Paying for one dose if possible, measuring the results afterwards in the form of sales ticks on Smashwords and Lulu. Scientific. Figuring out the best bang for my bucks.

And really hoping that'll actually work.

Fingers crossed that it does.

Adventure?

We're travelling this weekend, and all my faithful readers here will know that I do not travel well. It's a long way to Bundaberg, and we will be staying overnight.

So therefore, I will be a wreck by Monday.

If I'm driving, we will be listening to MBMBAM, pronounced, M' bimbam. And short for My Brother, My Brother, and Me another brilliantly hilarious podcast by the Brothers McElroy. They take daft questions from the interwebs and turn them into ridiculous answers. It's

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So close...

I have 1 721 Steem. One thousand, seven hundred and twenty one. I need a solid eighteen hundred to have enough steem to get enough bitcoin to change into enough money to FINALLY get my Compy fixeded.

And buy my very own laptop that's 100% mine and I never have to worry about what sacrifices to make ever again. Yay.

Or it would have been if Bitcoin's value hadn't sunk like a stone, recently.

Now I have to save up to 2K

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I Need a Break

Financial, emotional, whatever. No matter what relief I need, the only break I'm ever offered is skeletal.

We're overspending. And my finances mount up to a quarter of Beloved's income. The remainder of that does not cover the bills. And to put things into perspective, I can't just go out and flip burgers. I'm forty-five. I have few marketable skills. I'm not going to be preferred over someone else who can work for less, for longer.

Should I try to re-enter the

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LATE!

I should have posted my Patreon stuff yesterday, but the distraction of being a lazy goldbrick got in my way. So I made myself post it this morning.

Yay.

And I can't help thinking that I skipped a week. Can't fathom how or when that happened. Nobody talks to me about this stuff. Even MeMum has stopped bothering me about the tardy stuff.

Autumn has more or less officially begun. Translated - I have put on Jeans for the first time this

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Okay. I can do this.

Ever had one of those days when inertia feels like the better option?

I'm feeling the thrall of soft pillows and warm blankets. And maybe a big burly bloke named Bruce to straighten my spine out for a change. And his "good pal" Sven to work the knots outta my muscles.

...ah, fantasy...

Ahem.

What I want to do and what I must do are two different things. Despite the fact that lounging around all day and scrolling through Tumblr is way

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Onwards, ever onwards.

My 2nd-hand lappy has run out of disk space. Again. None of the adjustments I've made are having an effect. I still can't get Beloved to decide which programs on there are superfluous to their needs for the thing, if any actually exist.

In nine days, I should have the Steem needed to have some bitcoins to turn into cashola to buy my very own compy and laptop.

And I STILL can't verify my gorram bank account on the transfer system as

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...focus? What focus?

I was having a lovely lie-in this morning and realised -hey- I should probably do that instant story thing.

Two hours later and I'm reading other people's fanfics and getting even more ideas for stories that I shouldn't be writing because I still have these other ones I'm working on and -- wow, that's a real pretty headcannon they have going there...

Whoops.

I guess I'd rather be fanficcing today. Or just blowing the entire day off and lounging around and not

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Back to what passes for normal

You're all caught up, and my archives are a little skewiff, but every Instant I've written is officially UP on this site. Yay.

It's not in chronological order any more, but whatever. It's UP. And I'm done with that. And I'm sincerely hoping that the return to the old pattern doesn't flakk things up as badly as the transfer to the new pattern did.

But I know me. I like having patterns of behaviour. Going back can be just as jarring as

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Wouldn't you know it?

I just got into the new rhythm and it's almost over. Will be over today, actually.

And then I can fluff up the old rhythm because I'm that big of a doofus. You just watch.

I have been having a lot of fun with my WIPs. Both professional and non. Extracting the evil potential out of the professional one and extracting the humour potential out of the non-professional one.

Either way, I'm cackling all day long, today.

Oh, I wish I could

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That was a new way to fuck up...

So I remembered to post both of the catch-up linkages. Yay. Unfortunately, I forgot to post the linkage to yesterday's story. Whoops.

This will all no longer be a problem once I've caught up with the missing fictions.

What MIGHT be a problem is the fact that I keep the catch-up Instants' prompt count at thirteen and the "real" count on the present day fiction. One story will have thirteen prompts left, and another says less than ten.

That will also soon

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A Special Wednesday

It's Valentine's Day. The day to celebrate love in all its forms. Familial, platonic, romantic... it's all in there somewhere. And it's time to give something to someone you love. Your time, your care, a kiss... it's all good.

And remember to care for yourself as well. Loving who you are is just as important as loving the one you're with. So make that self-love official. Treat yourself. Get yourself a li'l somethin-somethin that makes your day just that little smidge brighter.

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Whoopsy Doopsy. Again.

The story you just saw posted should have been posted before the one that links to the most recent of my tales.

I simply forgot to make sure it had posted.

Derpity derpity doo.

This is a change in schedule for me and, like all changes in schedule, it messes me up. And I'll be messed up again when the change is over and I get back to what once was. Huzzah.

With all going well, despite the heatwave, the tortuous humidity,

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We're ba-ack!

Yes, my dear darling readers, this site is back up and running.

And, until I can catch up on the gap, I plan to be posting two links to stories you may have missed if this was your only window to my activities on the interwebs.

Hint for the future: Pull down the menu over there on the top right, and go bookmark each and every one of those links except the Iris&Peter one. That's staying on this site. If

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This time for sure...

I skipped out on buying mince for last night's dinner. Fortunately, Beloved had invested in a leg of lamb at some point in the past, so we were set.

Yesterday... wore me out.

And it wasn't anything new. At all. It was just... crowded.

The round trip to Mayhem's school. Waiting for Chaos' bus. Round trip to the bank because I forgot to get this weeks' money... Then I barely get a breath and it's cleaning time.

After that, I spent the

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