On Friday afternoon, August 1st, 2025, I said good-bye to my precious Keely. There was no one reason why. It was simply a matter of age and mortality.

She was ready.

I never will be.

I hoped she would live to August 15th, an entirely selfish desire that one could easily assume, once you know the date, was based on wanting her to make it to my birthday. But no. Since my childhood, I have had little love lost for the date of my birth, which for me has been more of a blank mile-marker than a celebration.

The real reason I was reaching for that date is that August 15, 2016, was the day I emailed Tallahassee Big Dog Rescue immediately after seeing Keely’s photo on their website:

When I saw that pic, I was taken by the feeling that she was just waiting for me, after all this time. I did not look at any other listings, I did not go anywhere else. I opened their homepage, saw her photo, made my decision. All told, it took about 30 seconds!

For years, I had wanted a dog of my own, which sounds weird if you know that I was raised around dogs. My parents always had at least one in the house, but the thing is, they were never my dogs. They were family dogs who generally favored one adult over the other. I loved them, but they weren’t mine.

After my parents’ deaths, I had to put their dogs down due to their own failing health. I talk about this in my book Grieving Futures, and it still breaks my heart that I had to lose them so soon. Yet, their deaths felt like just another checkbox for tragedy in those days. I thought, naively, that in a couple of years I would be settled down with a house and a job, and I’d be able to get my own dog. Like a normal person!

(The gods laughed.)

There were a lot of reasons that did not happen, and year after year I assumed that “next year” the stars would align, and I’d get a dog. Someday!

In fact, back in 2001, I tried to adopt a dog. (The year alone should give you some foreshadowing.)

Curious George was a delightful one-year-old, forty-pound Lab/Doberman mix I found wandering the streets of downtown Orlando while driving home from work. The search for his owners was unsuccessful, and I had immediately fallen for his adorable, high-energy personality. Unfortunately, my husband, despite initially agreeing, did not want the responsibility of a dog (or, I realized far too late, a marriage), and he abstained from anything having to do with George’s care. I eventually realized I could not raise a rambunctious mostly-still-a-puppy alone while working full time, so we ended up giving him away. I hope Curious George went on to bigger yards and a better family.

I was devastated by the failure and simply refused to reconsider the idea of having another dog, even after our divorce in 2010.

By 2016, I had been in therapy for a couple of years and had a decent desk-jockey job at FSU, but I was still putting off the idea of owning a dog for a variety of reasons which, I think, mostly had to do with self-flagellation. (Guilt is a hell of a drug.)

As August 15th rolled around, I was feeling like change was in the air. Life wasn’t great and, as I said, I don’t put much stock into my birthday, good or bad. But I was turning forty-seven that year, and I felt like I was finally pulling myself together like a goddamn adult! I wasn’t sure what was on the horizon, but I just knew something grand was coming my way.

As I walked into my office that morning, I was struck by the thought, “Wait a damn second. I am an adult who has a job, a home, and no other obligations. I can totally own a dog if I want to!”

And I did want to.

Determined to make a massive life change with zero notice or preparation, I sat down and before I even opened my work email, I pulled up Big Dog Rescue’s website. There she was! Right there on the homepage!

I was unaware at the time, but the photo had gone up only that morning, and I was the third person who contacted them about her. The other two never inquired further, so I won the raffle by default! I still believe that luck was on my side that day. Best birthday ever!

I got to meet Keely a week later at the local PetSmart, where the organization was holding a meet-and-greet. As far as I was concerned, this was the start of a beautiful friendship. I walked her around the store and then sat on the ground with her for a while. She was easygoing and somewhat confused but entirely trusting. Admittedly, part of that was due to her not being a puppy. They told me she was ten years old (we’ll get back to that) so while I knew I would likely not have her for long, I was excited to be giving an older dog a chance at a happier life.

This was also the start of my attempts to get around her dislike of being photographed. 😂

Obviously, a dog does not understand what a photograph is, so I’ve always wondered what was going through her mind when she avoided being in the frame. Eventually, she grew more accustomed to it, but never comfortable. Catching a photo of her looking at the lens became quite a game for me!

Sadly, I could not leave PetSmart with her that day. She was suffering from a life-threatening case of heartworms, and they feared the treatment regimen would be too much for her heart. I knew in my heart that she would pull through. She was MY DOG. She was a survivor, and she was meant to be with me!

I threw down my money and we waited.

I wasn’t wrong about her being a survivor. She had been picked up wandering the streets “down south” (Brevard County, iirc) and had been in a kill shelter. Her fear response at the time was so severe that she was never put up for adoption, so they were counting down her days when—for some reason I’ll never know—a rescue group yoinked her out and put her in a foster home. Her Great Migration to North Florida had begun!

After our initial meet-and-greet, treatment continued for over a month. She reacted well to it, as expected (at least by me). I pestered the fosters with emails about her and counted down the days. The wait had a side benefit in allowing me time to prepare to bring her into the house.

By that point, my memories of being a dog owner were dim, and honestly, my parents had not been great dog owners. They loved their dogs and treated them well, but they never invested time or money in training them and did only the bare minimum for their health. I wanted to do better than that. But I had no idea what I was doing.

With the power of google, though, I knew all things were possible!

First, I installed a fence across the entrance to the kitchen to serve as a “cage” because I did not know if she was housebroken or how she would deal with being left alone all day while I was at work. I wanted an older dog just for that reason, knowing it would be cruel to crate a young, high-energy dog for 10 to 12 hours a day five days a week. (I worked a regular schedule, but commuting ate up the rest.) Curious George had taught me that much, at least.

Even faced with Keely’s apparently laid-back demeanor, horror stories I had read online of dogs with severe separation anxiety haunted me.

I also bought a harness because I did not know what I would be dealing with when walking her around the neighborhood. Was she a “tugger”? How would she behave around dogs we saw on our walks? Would she chase ducks and cats and children?

The answer was no, but I was prepared.

Finally, on September 23rd, 2016, my dear friend Martha drove me out to the boondocks to pick up my soul dog. I am still annoyed that I only had a very cheap, shitty phone camera at the time, as most of the photos I took were blurry. This is the best of the bunch:

While I had been told she was ten years old, her new vet said she was likely around eight years old instead. Either way, I thought I would only have her for maybe three to four years. She was an older dog with a hard past, after all.

That was nine years ago.

When I say I was lucky to get her, I don’t just mean the timing of it all. The other part is that, honestly, I had no business adopting a dog as big as she was (thirty-five pounds!) without a yard for her to roam in. My townhome is spacious (at least for the neighborhood) but I do not have a yard at all, much less an enclosed one. Since I swore I would walk her often, they let me take her home anyway.

Which means that, short of hurricanes and other bad weather, I have walked her twice, sometimes three times a day since September 2016. That is about 3,200 days in a row. I never missed a day except when I was out of town or sick in bed (even then, sometimes, if no one I trusted was available to stop by and walk her—thank you, Kim and Paul and Ann).

This year, I even got to walk her in the snow!!!!

Having Keely in my life has been a lesson in patience and personal growth, because she arrived extremely, if quietly, traumatized. When I got her, she was unsure of everything, rather timid, and always on high alert. She did not even start barking at anyone or anything until a couple of years ago, and even then, I had to constantly let her know it was okay. Surprisingly, thunderstorms did not bother her in the least, but this is the look I got from her for the first two years every time I touched her without warning:

For a long time, I could not touch her tail at all. To this day, several BB pellets are embedded under her skin in various places; not worth the trauma of removing them, the vet decided. Her teeth were worn down in ways that suggested she had spent a lot of time gnawing at cage wire. She had no idea what to do with chew toys, so I had to teach her how to play.

She was super wary of being on the bed, with or without me in it. I felt triumphant if I could coax her up (usually with treats) and get her to stay there for more than ten minutes. It took years before she was willing to hop up on the bed of her own accord and join me for a nap.

Interestingly, she refused to stay overnight—once the light was turned off, she jumped off the bed and hustled into the living room. I suspect a former owner somewhere along the line taught her that she was not allowed in the bedroom at night, and that stuck for whatever reason. It wasn’t until the pandemic lockdown era that she started sneaking back into the bedroom early in the morning to cuddle up with me while we slept. By that point, we had been together for over three years.

I did not want a dog that barked a lot, but that’s a natural behavior in dogs that was unnaturally absent in Keely until just a couple of years ago. The first time she barked at the postal carrier, I stood there in shock and then (perhaps unwisely) rewarded her. Whenever anyone or anything got her started, given her hyper-alertness, I had to constantly assure her everything was okay.

She eventually allowed me to brush her tail, but again, it took years of slowly convincing her that I could be trusted with such a vulnerability.

Between all these milestones were long stretches of no change in her behavior. I never set out with a goal to “help her recover” from one issue or another, I just tried my damnedest to make her feel safe, protected, and loved.

The incontinence crept up on us slowly. She had issues with it during the Great Crisis of 2019, when her immune system collapsed and she nearly died. The vet believed it was due to a tick bite, but we’ll never know for sure. She spent five days in “doggy ICU” and was put on a number of incredibly potent medicines to save her life. They worked, but the price was her bladder control. Off and on since then, she had recurring bladder infections and a slowly progressing problem with incontinence.

In May 2024, I went on a five-day work-related trip to Sarasota and left her in the care of a neighbor. When I got home, she was literally on death’s door with what I assume was a severe bladder infection. I honestly thought she would not make it, and at the time, I was so broke I was afraid I was going to be homeless by July. I had no money to take her to the vet and decided that if it was her time to go, then I would let her go.

But she stayed, by dint of pure dogged stubbornness. She recovered like a storybook character after a very rough, long dark night of the soul where I spent sitting on the floor by her dog bed until dawn. Soon I had my precious boo-bear back!

The incontinence was there to stay, though, and I’ve since figured out that it was a sign of the end times. While her overall health wasn’t terrible, she was getting too old to keep on keeping on.

Like most pet owners, I waffled about “when is the right time to make the call?” She was still eating and drinking, she was still begging for treats, she was still rolling over into Dead Bug Pose for belly rubs:

But over the past two months, the downward-dog slide became pronounced. The various meds did nothing to touch the arthritis or the incontinence. The distance she was able to walk without slowing down to a crawl got shorter and shorter. She started bumping into things around the house because she could not see them, and I had to hand-feed her treats because she could not sniff them out if I put them on the floor. She was getting bladder infection after bladder infection, requiring stronger and stronger antibiotics.

Not for nothing, Keely hated being incontinent. She disliked being covered in pee and she also hated baths (not a water dog!!!!). So every day was a race for me to keep ahead of diaper leaks and diaper rash. It got to the point where I had to change her out every three hours or so. I was getting up every night at 2:00 am to change her because if I didn’t, I’d wake up to a pee-soaked dog and a mound of sopping-wet, dirty bedding to clean.

We were both miserable, to different degrees, and I knew it was time.

I did not want to let her go, but the price of being a pet owner is doing what is best for them, not what you wish were true. The brief tail-wags and cuddles were not enough to excuse her being in constant pain and unhappy and uncomfortable.

I’ll leave you to decide whether she’s in a better place now. I know I’m not; there can be no “better place” without her.

Thanks for having been a reader of Keely’s Way!

If you would like to give a bit of something in memory of the goodest of girls, please allow me to suggest making a donation to Big Dog Rescue, who made it all possible!

Support Tallahassee BDR!

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The Most Baby of Babygirls

Look at that face! Isn’t she precious?

She’s lounging in her own motorcade, an admittedly cheap dog stroller I got for her a few weeks ago. This is, actually, directly related to why you have not seen many updates here on the Scriptorium:

Keely is not doing well.

She is 17 years old, so I guess that’s to be expected. In fact, by some measures, she’s doing great for such an elderly elder dog. No cancer, no kidney failure, no bladder stones, no Cushing’s. Her eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell are failing but still continue to work well enough that she can pretend not to hear me when I say “NO.” (I know she’s pretending because of the side-eye!)

But the arthritis is kicking in hard (yes, she’s on meds for that) and body regulation is not doing great, which is a big deal here in Florida during the summer.

That’s the other reason I got the stroller, aside from the arthritis: she’s prone to overheating if outdoors for too long (same, bestie, same). I don’t want her walks to be curtailed to five-minute speed-pee runs, she needs some enrichment, so we go out on our regular route. When she starts flagging, she hops into the stroller to be pampered like the princess she is.

The real problem is incontinence.

It’s a non-stop faucet of pee, and I am going through 3-5 doggy diapers a day, and as many pee pads. As I said, there are no other issues that might cause this level of lack of bladder control, and the medicines we’re trying (mostly various forms of estrogen) don’t do much. Don’t do anything, to be honest.

I have to ration her water before bedtime, and even then I have my alarm set for 2:00 a.m. to change her diaper and pee pads. The other night she was soaked through even with the diaper, so it was an hour of mopping floors then giving her a full bath and blow drying her. As you can guess, I overslept my usual “wake up” alarm at six.

I have a whole system now for giving her back end a half-bath on the porch before we go for a walk, including two buckets, a watering can, and a spray bottle of dog shampoo.

She hates it. So do I.

We’re managing for now.

I’ll keep doing this for as long as reasonable, but that window is narrowing. A month? Two? I don’t know, and it’s hard to plan when nothing is technically “terminal” aside from just being old and mortal.

I’ve learned the hard way that she’s very good at hiding pain and discomfort. The 2019 Crisis was precipitated by…nothing. I thought maybe she had a slight UTI and then the next day she was crashing out at the vet and going into an ICU at a veterinary specialist, where she stayed for five days. She almost died, and I had no idea anything was wrong until she could not hide it anymore.

Such is the way with a lot of rescues, I’m told. Mother’s dog Tiffany was the same; she was an absolute delight of a dog until she laid down and did not want to get up, which turned out to be because she was riddled with cancer.

So I just don’t know much of how she’s feeling, even if I can tell she’s often not comfortable and hates dealing with the pee as much as I do (she’s very scrupulous about laying down on the pee pads instead of her beds when it gets bad).

The door is closing and I hate that.

I’m going to have to “make the call” sooner rather than later. I don’t have anything firmly scheduled yet, but it’s my duty to take care of her even in this. She deserves not to be living in pain and discomfort, and she depends on me to do what is right.

She’s the other half of my heart. She always will be, even after I say goodbye.

I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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New book WHAAAT?

My book Out from Fanfic: Transforming Creative Freedom is OUT! Released into the wilds!

…mostly.

Still waiting for the paperback version to work its way through the verification process and go up for sale, and it took Kobo several days to review and approve the ebook, but for the most part if you want a copy you can get it!

This was a big labor of love for me, as a fangirl. I was helped over the bar to become a published author by fellow fanfic writers who took the plunge before me, and so I’m happy to pass on what I’ve learned over the years.

The Goings On

Alt-Graduation: May was rough for me, mostly due to my job with the Novo Collegian Alliance sucking up a lot of time and energy. We put on our annual alternative graduation event, [NEW] Commencement 2025, which is our cornerstone event for the year. At least, it will be for as long as current New College of Florida graduates want it! Given the fascist takeover of the school by DeSantis and his flunky Corcoran, that’s not a given. If you want to keep abreast of what’s going on with the school and what alumni like me think about that, please 1) subscribe to my sister publication, The Four Winds blog; and 2) donate to the Novo Collegian Alliance so we can keep putting on alt-graduations and alt-reunions!

New Pen Name Shenanigans: If I’ve seemed quiet around here lately, it’s because I’m in the process of launching a new pen name. No, I’m not sharing it here, for various reasons (let the rumors begin!). While I’ve longed to just focus entirely on my passion projects like Transmigrated Teri, bills still need to be paid. I finally accepted the fact that getting a part-time job is, at best, a stopgap measure, and what I really need to do is leverage what I already know how to do and write a successful book series that will make me money. Mentally fencing that off under a separate pen name is helping me face off with my perfectionism and imposter syndrom. I’ll write more about that process here soon, but all I can ask of you for now is to wish me luck and $$$$$$$$$$!

Weekly Roundup

• Guide for Hobbyist Author is FINISHED!: I really enjoyed writing this series, which is geared toward amateur writers who want to publish their work but aren’t interested in making it their job. It’s full of straightforward advice on publishing and not a single word about “author platforms,” “organic marketing,” or “SEO tactics.” Please share with any hobbyist authors you know!

• Out From Fanfiction: Transforming Creative Freedom: As mentioned above, this has FINALLY been published! Print version coming soon!

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational continues! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng hits Chapter 59 and over 115,000 words, wtf. (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Aiyaaaaa, my girl is gettin’ old. She can barely see, and I think her sniffer is dulled. The most reliable way to get her attention these days is via sound—calling her name, dropping treats loudly on the floor, shaking the kibble in her food bowl. The incontinence remains an issue, but the meds she’s on help a bit (I know this because after the night I forgot her meds, we went through a lot of diapers the next day).

She’s also moving slower than ever, especially given that we’re already into the throes of summer with temps in the mid-to-high nineties(F)/low thirties(C). Last night I walked her at 8:30 PM and it was still 90°F/30°C out. I’ve cut her walks down to half of what she used to be able to do a year ago, but even so, they exhaust her. 😞

Anyway, here is my beloved looking damp and raggedy on a hot, humid day:

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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KimBoo wherefore art thou

BUSY! That’s where I am! So BUSY!

But it’s not “busy work,” fortunately. My book Holistic Productivity: Essays on a New Vision for a Balanced Life is now available at all major distributors! And my book Out from Fanfic: Transforming Creative Freedom is in final edits and formatting, to be released in early May!

I’ve also started laying down the groundwork for a secret pen name, as mama needs income. I won’t be sharing that too much here, as I want to keep it separate from House of York for now, but just know on the backend I’m doing a lot of work on that.

I also work part-time for the Novo Collegian Alliance, an unaffiliated organization by and for New College of Florida alumni and supporters, and I’m helping organize this year’s alternative graduation, [NEW] Commencement 2025! The students are doing the hard work, but I’m in a support role and we’re in the final weeks, so there is a lot to do. Hey, if you want to support our grads, please donate a few dollars!

And time for the…

BIG NEWS

My proposal for AuthorNation 2025 was ACCEPTED! I will be presenting in Las Vegas in November on “Unstoppable Storytelling: Crafting Epic Long-Running Serials”!

I mean, I wrote the book on the topic after all! This is a huge bucket list item for me, so expect to hear more about it as time flies.

Meanwhile, I’ve started on a new exercise regimen to get in shape for walking around Vegas! Pray for me, Argentina!

Weekly Roundup

• Guide for Hobbyist Authors, pt. 4: Pre-Press: This one is a chonker of a post, but I cover a lot of ground on topics such as editions, formatting, and covers. It’s not exhaustive, but if you or anyone you know is a hobbyist author, it will help you get up and running!

• Out From Fanfiction: Transforming Creative Freedom: As mentioned above, this book is in the final stages of editing and is being formatted. Still a lot of steps to go before it’s live, but I hope to have it ready to unveil in early May. It’s a guide for helping fanfiction writers transition to writing original fiction, so it’s pretty niche, but honestly it’s already a book I’m incredibly proud of.

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational continues! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 54! We’re edging up to the start of the Sunshot Campaign, so prepare for big changes to hit the Yiling Wei sect! (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

THROWBACK!

One of my most popular posts is an older one that is still very relevant, and I think given how many people are getting into the newsletter/subscriptions/serialization scene these days is worth a repost.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

She’s still survivin’! Her eyesight is getting worse and she’s definitely feeling her old bones as she slowly plods along on our (now-shortened) walks every day. But she wags her tail, eats her food, and does her business just fine. Reminder that she’s approximately 17 years old at this point. I’m so glad for every day I get with her!

Not shown: the empty food bowl just out of frame that she was staring at longingly right before I took this shot. 😂

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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It’s Been a Month/Day/Year/Eon

I keep saying “I don’t have much to update with lately so I won’t post this week” but then I remember I’ve started a few new projects, I published a whole damn book, and I’ve finally reached the last mile of The Great Repacking. So, yeah: stuff being done!

Actually, that last one is why my schedule got a bit wonky. Not long after I wrote the previous Keely’s Way post at the end of February, I broke down my “big rig” desktop computer and peripherals in preparations to reorganize the whole studio. I was down to the last few boxes I needed to repack, and was ready to set up my treadmill desk and rearrange all the furniture!

Which was necessary because this is a chonker of a desk:

As you can see by the mess around the edges, there was yet some straightening up to do. The monitors were still on the other desk and the actual treadmill was still in its box, but that has all since been remedied.

Finally, though….FINALLY! This damn room is coming together!

(If you want a “before” of this corner, scroll down to the Keely update!)

Weekly Monthly Roundup

So yeah, I’ve been kinda busy:

• Did I just drop a book out of nowhere???? I did! Holistic Productivity: Essays on a New Vision for a Balanced Life is now available at all major distributors…including Kobo, which blocked it for a few days for some reason (????). But it’s here! It is, as described, a collection of essays I’ve written over the past five years about holistic productivity, which I edited and revised for this book.

• Guide for Hobbyist Authors, pt. 3: Editing: The post is up! Yes! FINALLY! Here I get into the nitty-gritty of what editing is (and is not) and how a hobbyist author can go about getting their work polished enough to shine!

• Don’t Give Up the Violin: A short post on creative persistence vs. creative regret, asking the vital question: where would I be today if I had not given up on my dreams?

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational continues! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 53! A recounting of the fall of Gusu Lan! Bring your hankies. (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

THROWBACK!

Time to dig down into some real “history of text technology” with the extremely curious question: Have you ever thought about why books are rectangular?

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely has been muy discombobulated by The Great Repacking (Charlie Brown!) project. I’ve had to move her bed around the room as different corners got cleared out or piled up like a three-dimensional tangram puzzle.

This is a lousy photograph, but it shows 1) Keely in the midst of the chaos; 2) the same corner of the room as the above photograph when it was “in progress.” I can hardly believe it myself!

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

Please subscribe to have this dumped in your inbox every week, and also check out my website where you can find all my books, my ongoing serial stories, and information about the 1 Million Words Club membership community for writers!

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The York Hoard

That sounds like the lead up to a story in Smithsonian magazine about a treasure hoard found accidentally in the back yard of some house in rural England.

Instead, it’s this:

That is my grandmother’s silver plate, or some of it anyway. It’s what my mother got after Memaw died, which was back in the mid-1970s. I barely knew Memaw, and don’t remember her much, but I’ve still got her silver plate. There is some kind of metaphor there…

A major project I’ve been chipping away at for months is re-packing boxes that are so old they are falling apart, after so many years and so many moves, and putting them into sturdy, labeled totes. I keep telling myself that someday, someday, I’ll own a house and have shelves to display this excellent hoard.

Someday.

Weekly Roundup

Last week was so busy, it felt like I was traveling at mach 10:

• Transmigrated Teri just dropped Chapter 2! Subtitled: “Teri’s first day of pandemic lockdown gets worse…” Teri is a middle-aged office drone who gets transmigrated into the fantasy series she loves to hate, and nothing is going to go the way she’s thinks it should.

• Guide for Hobbyist Authors, pt. 2: Writing is up! I delve into the mysteries of actually getting some damn writing done, looking at both productivity strategies and writing apps to help you get those words out.

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational continues! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 47! The boys to the rescue! Kinda sorta! (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

THROWBACK!

I love exploring the ideas we take for granted, and “genre” is one of those things. We tend to treat genres as if they are naturally occurring in nature, but it is a relatively modern concept. If a deep dive into the “why” of genres sounds interesting, you have lucked out, friend! I am here for you!!!

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely continues to muddle along! Her new favorite treats are the Begging Strips, which I break up into small pieces to feed to her, works well with the few teeth she has. She came this way, unfortunately. The vet said the wear on them suggested she had been in a cage for a long time and gnawed at the wires. :(

But now she is a spoiled princess, as you can tell on a cold day recently when I had a small room heater going and Keely decided it was hers:

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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Keepin’ on keepin’ on

Focusing more on writing has been a challenge, and I don’t talk about it much because there is nothing anyone can do about it. I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder so when things get stressful I tend to start having anxiety attacks and shutting down emotionally. And, well… *waves hands around at everything*

Despair is not healthy, either, though, so I get up and try to focus on the next step…and then the next step after that. I might be “turtling” a little but I’m keeping my eyes on the prize.

Offside: Astute time keepers might note that Keely’s Way is appearing on Wednesday this week. I was front-loading Monday with a lot of stuff which meant half the stuff wasn’t getting done! So now KW comes out on Wednesdays, so there! :P

Weekly Roundup

Doing things! Don’t worry, the next part of The Hobbyist Author series will be posted soon, I just did not have time for it this week…

• Transmigrated Teri has LAUNCHED! Chapter 1 is up and will remain free to read forever! This story about a middle-aged office drone getting transmigrated into the fantasy series she loves to hate is one I’ve been excited about sharing with you for years! It’s here at last!

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 2 is up to Chapter 3: Going the Wrong Way! Astra’s journey continues up the river Hoshikwazu with a dragon, two stubborn men, and two humongous, mysterious dogs! As new chapters get posted from here on out, they will be free to read for two weeks before slipping behind a paywall. (A girl’s gotta eat!)

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational continues! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 46! Oh no it’s the Cave of the Xuanwu of Slaughter OH NOOOOOOOOO! (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

THROWBACK!

In some ways, I’ve been studying the writing and publishing industry since I was a child. My mother bought the Writer’s Market brick of a book every year for us to pour over for literary magazines she would never actually submit to. As I grew up I became fascinated with books, book history, publishing, and of course writing. So the question often comes up: why did it take so long for me to become a professional author? Well, here’s your chance to find out!

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Just in time for another cold snap, Keely has new meds to help with the incontinence. They don’t seem to be working, alas, but as I tell people: she’s 17 years old. I think at her age a little bit of leakage is the least of my worries. Her health is otherwise pretty good, and she still smiles at me (especially when I have a treat in my hands)!

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It’s been a year and it’s only February

It is so surreal to be living in the middle of a total government coup being run by a foreign billionaire on a platform that proudly platforms Nazis and trying to market my stories on broken social media networks owned by other craven billionaires while AI both revolutionizes everything and threatens everything.

Project 2025 is in high gear and most of politicians are just like, “gosh doing things is so hard!” My good friend in New Zealand is spamming my inbox with advice on how to apply for a job there. Oh shoot that reminds me I need to renew my passport…if I still can…

As I told a friend, please find me the person who was cursed to live in interesting times so we can take them out for doing this to the rest of us. 🤣

I am not okay. No one I know is. Even the deplorables who voted for that shit-stain of a human being are not okay, now that the turns have tabled.

Yet.

The grind must continue, I have to keep working and writing and making money, now more than ever. I feel up to the challenge, but dang, I would like to live in boring times for a while please!

Weekly Roundup

Doing things!

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 2 has LAUNCHED! The first couple of chapters are up, and the story will update every other week for now. Astra’s journey continues up the river Hoshikwazu with a dragon, two stubborn men, and two humongous, mysterious dogs!

• Finished the series on Routines vs. Patterns! These posts focused on the differences between setting your schedule up by patterns you follow or routines you set. What’s the difference, you ask? You can find out here!

• Then turned around and started a new series: Guide for Hobbyist Authors. Not everyone wants to have a full-blown “author career” and doesn’t need a lot of the advice out there that is meant for professionals. This guide of about four posts will be about how to write, edit, and publish a book for the fun of it!

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational continues! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 45! It’s up over 85k words!!!! Yanli faces off with the man who she once called “father!” (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

THROWBACK!

This is a bit more philosophical than I usually get when talking about the history of text technology, but I think I bring it full circle around to the question of what do we call ourselves, and how does that define what we do?

It’s a Keely-Boo World

The snow (wtf) FINALLY melted and Keely has been enjoying the mild weather all day by snuggling up to the front screen door. I put her bed there first thing in the morning and that’s pretty much where she stays…until it is time for a treat, of course!

Yes, she’s still in diapers, and probably will be long term. There is nothing wrong with her that they can find, such as infection or cancer or bladder stones, so at this point it is diapers and frequent pee breaks for the long-term. Oh, my old girl…she’s about 17 years old, give or take, so I can’t complain too much!

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Oh oops was I supposed to update?

Hmmm, seems I skipped a week. Well, that’s okay, time carries on, etc. etc. OH NO TIME CARRIES ON WTF HELP HELLLLLPPPP

Weekly Roundup

I have actually been busy! I’m focusing more energy on my fiction writing, which is scary but also necessary. If 2025 is my year to bring my fiction into the limelight, well, there needs to be fiction to bring into the limelight.

Anyway:

• Launched Dragon’s Grail Arc 2 with The Lost City!!!! Picking up where Escape from Ice Mountain left off, Astra finds herself in strange country with strange companions and danger all around! Posting in 18 chapters every other Monday!

• Pattern Living: Pros and Cons is Part 2 of my “Patterns & Routines” productivity series, focusing on how “productivity patterns” work and why they are so powerful for helping shape new habits.

• Transmigrated Teri is launching on February 10th! This is my long-awaited (by me) isekai/portal fantasy story about a middled-aged GenX office lady who gets dumped into her most beloved and most hated fantasy book series as the evil stepmother!

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational continues! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng hits Chapter 43! A bit of a quiet chapter focusing on the developing romance between Yanli and A’Yao. Enjoy, because things really kick off in the next chapter! (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

THROWBACK!

This is a very philosophical, introspective look at what memory is at the level of society—clay tablets, hand-written books, floppy disks—and what it means to carry the weight of memory you know will be lost.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

SNOW DOG!!!!

If you have not heard the news, the South got hit by a legendary winter storm. Here in Tallahassee we were warned to expect sleet and the off chance of two inches of snow, maybe. We got, like, six inches of snow and lots of ice, shutting the whole city down for three days. Wild times!

Keely was rescued down south, I think in the Miami-Dade area, and so I’m pretty certain this is the first snow she’s ever experienced. She was uncertain at first but then really started to enjoy it—that German Schnauzer in her coming out to play!

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Begin as You Mean to Continue

I’ve set up my five guideposts for the year (part of a process I outline in my book, Rise to the Task) and the projects that fall under them. It gives me a flexible structure to work with, like a bamboo frame, and helps me keep my goals in mind across multiple spheres such as my health, my mental health, my financial well-being, and my aspirations.

This year, 2025, is all about doubling down on what I know equals “success” for me across all those metrics: writing fiction.

I love it, and it loves me. Yet, I have repeatedly shoved it to the bottom because of the old insecurities and fears of my youth, which no amount of schedules on the calendar can fix. But this year, 2025, is all about “beginning as I mean to continue” which is WRITING.

Fear? Check. Insecurity? Check. Determination? Check! Ambition? CHECK! COURAGE? CHECK!!!!!

Here. WE. GOOOOOOOOOOO!

Weekly Roundup

Back in the saddle! Whoop!

• Updated the Bibliotheca with my plans for more stories in 2025! What’s new, what’s on deck, and something old(er) to get you by.

• “Routines, Patterns, or Habits?” Back on my productivity bullshit with the first of a three-part series on how to successfully incorporate new habits into your life! Fitting for January, yes?

• An Ode to the Perseverance of the New College Community over on the 4Winds blog, all about my feels regarding the second anniversary of the conservative takeover of my alma mater by right-wing jackasses.

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational has officially launched! Daily bites of motivation, inspiration, and reflections suitable for everyone, no matter your spiritual or philosophical approach to life.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 39! Wow. Thirty-nine chapters? It’s up over 70k words, and so it’s officially not a one-shot anymore I guess ah ha ha ha. (This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī fandom, free to read over on AO3!)

THROWBACK!

Something even further back in time, when LLMs had just broken the geek-containment field and people were all agog…which they still are, to be honest. As with most of my discussions about A.I., this is not specifically pro or con; instead, I talk about something that happened in my (misspent!) youth that gives me insight in how these newer (but not unexpected) technologies will impact people like you and me.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

The news is not great, but also not terrible, in the world of Keely-Boo. She’s had a good month, but a few days ago blood showed up in her urine again. *sigh* Well, good news is that I already have a vet appointment on the books this week, as the vet wanted to bring her in for x-rays if the incontinence continued. Given that it never stopped, yeah, time for more tests.

Her health otherwise is good, with no indications of cancer or parasites or any of that kind of ugliness. Might be bladder stones, might be a bad diet.

Until we know for sure, here is a photo taken this past weekend of Keely out in the driveway sans diaper, wondering what I’m up to! (You’d never know that I brush her out almost every day! Damn shaggy fur! LOL!)

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Is it over yet?

I have been asking “is it over yet?” since at least 2016, but definitely since 2020, and yet…AND YET! I keep asking because hope springs eternal, and so on. Ending on the note of Jimmy Carter dying is just perfectly in tune with the whole year, innit? Bring on 2025, I’m rarin’ to go!

Post-Retreat Roundup

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I took a week off. To answer questions I always get about this:

• No, I did not go anywhere. This was a “staycation style” retreat.

• Yes, I uninstalled and signed out of ALL my social media apps/networks. Yes, all of them!

• Yes, I put my phone on “do not disturb” for seven whole days straight.

• Yes, I checked email and messages once a day, just in case of emergencies.

• No, I did not answer phone calls, but honestly I never do anyway. 😁

• Yes, I cooked all my own food and did not go out to eat or order delivery.

• What do I do, anyway? Read, nap, meditate, go on long walks, clean/organize the house, journal, write, pet the dog, cook a lot of food.

It is meant as restorative but honestly this year it was not as mindful as I would have liked. By the third day in I was having generalized anxiety attacks, not too severe, but I think it was due to my brain decoupling from the stress, ironically. If I am not stressing out, then what am I supposed to do????? By the sixth day I was feeling better but honestly I could have used another week of just being present in the moment.

Something to look forward to next year.

Stuff That is Going On

Going on retreat did not mean nothing happened, although most of these things were in the hopper before I signed out:

• A Claus Encounter: A short fiction piece I wrote as a holiday gift for as part of the Substack Fiction Gift Exchange 2025! It was a lot of fun and I hope this is the start of an annual tradition.

• Escape from Ice Mountain is a wrap! The Epilogue to the first arc of Dragon’s Grail posted on Dec. 20th! Wow, that’s…wild to me. It’s a story that originally was meant to be a New Adult novella series back in 2017, but my heart was never in it. Aging up the characters and making it more about adventure and drama revived my own love of the story. Arc 2, “The Lost City,” is coming in mid-January!

• The Skeptic’s Inspirational is launching tomorrow! It is a daily motivational guide I’ve had in my back pocket for over 10 years, and it is finally coming to fruition.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 39 and over 70k words!!!!!. I’ve drafted it up to chapter 61 and likely this will top out at 200k words down the line. Whoa. This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom.

• By Order of Prince Jing Himself is another gift!fic, this time for the Nirvana in Fire Exchange 2024! This is an annual event I have participated in since…2019, I think? It’s a lot of fun, and this year I wrote a humorous short story about Consort Jing for Umbralpilot.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely continues to thrive, despite everything! We finished out the antibiotics over two weeks ago, but while there is no blood in her urine, she’s still incontinent. We’re going through a lot of doggy diapers, alas.

So, she’s going back to the vet in a couple of weeks for x-rays, to check and see if this is just “old girl dog incontinence” or “dreaded bladder stones incontinence.” But in the meantime, she’s barking for snacks and giving me the evil eye when I don’t provide:

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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Wait wait wait…December already?

If you’ve noticed things have been quiet around the Scriptorium, it’s not just you. I’ve had a lot on my plate and been feeling consistantly overwhelmed…which kinda just feels like the holiday season overall, yeah?

Friendsgiving was at my friend ’s home and as usual she and her husband Mark put out a helluva spread of delicious food! But then it was time to traipse over to our mutual friend Melanie’s house for a full table of desserts. They all took off for a walk after that but I sat down to scroll through my bsky feed and…fell asleep. I count that as a win!

Anyway, the GOOD NEWS is that Keely finally got to the vet, which I’ve been putting off for months due financial constraints. Read more about that in the Keely-Boo section!

Weekly Roundup

As I said, things have been a bit slow. Nonetheless, a few things keep on rolling, and I’ve done some housekeeping:

• I’ve added “Start Here” pages for both the Scriptorium and the Bibliotheca. I’ve never been happy with just relying on my respective “about” pages to get new readers onboard with all that is going on here, so finally I broke down and created guides for people to, you know, “start here”!

• 4Winds News Update 12/02/2024: More news related to New College, although not much given the holiday week here in the U.S.

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 1 is almost complete over on The Bibliotheca! This arc is free for all readers and will remain so forever, although I will make it a book you can buy down the road if you want!

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 35!!! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. I’m slowing down posting as life gets busier going into the holidays, but it’s still going strong!

THROWBACK!

This is from wayyyyyy back in August, 2023, not long after I first started paying serious attention to the breakthrough in A.I. represented by LLMs such as ChatGPT and Claude, but before the backlash against it started in earnest. In this test case scenario, I used ChatGPT 4 to clean up some messy dictation I pulled from Otter.ai. It still blows me away just how powerful these machine learning tools are, and this is from well over a year ago.

I know a lot of anti-A.I. folk just want it all to go away already but this demonstrates why that’s not going to happen—it’s just too damn useful.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

The good news was that I finally could afford a vet visit, but the BETTER NEWS is that she is in excellent health for a 17 year old dog! Even the vet was impressed. She’s heartworm and parasite free, her heart is strong, and all her bloodwork came back with good numbers! 🎉

They did confirm the bladder infection, but it was nowhere near as bad as I feared, and she’s already doing better on day two of antibiotics. She still needs diapers, but heck, she’s an old girl!

Here she is in the exam room looking exceptionally betrayed. She did not talk to me until dinner time.

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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Going into the end of 2024…

And I’m totally not ready. I was not ready for 2024 on January 1st and I’m not ready for it in the middle of November, much less ready for 2025. What the heck.

The biggest drama of my week was that my bank card got compromised. Fortunately, my bank was on the ball and texted me about mysterious charges showing up. A phone call later and those charges were reversed! Yay! Then my card was deactivated and I was told the new one would be mailed to me. BOOOOOO!

It took over a week to get here, during which time a few online bills bounced and I could not buy anything. I know it might be hard to believe, but I do not have a credit card, no, not even one, no, not AmEx either. I’m fairly certain my credit sucks anyway, but I have not had a credit card in my name since 2002. In the meantime it meant short of walking down to the bank and pulling out cash I was stuck. Fortunately I had plenty of food and plenty of helpful friends, but sheesh.

Weekly Roundup

A few things to update you on:

• What about the word count? “Once again, I am here to explain that something you just took for granted about the publishing industry and writing in general is due to the history of text technology. Try to contain your excitement!”

• The Four Winds: I am an alumna of New College of Florida, which is/was a quirky, super small liberal arts college in Florida. If you are not familiar with the drama, it was taken over by right wing henchmen of DeSantis back in 2023. This new publication is meant to both promote a soon-to-be-released book filled with oral history of New College, and serve as a platform for New College voices.

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 1 is almost complete over on The Bibliotheca! This arc is free for all readers and will remain so forever, although I will make it a book you can buy down the road if you want!

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 33!!! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. I’m slowing down posting as life gets busier going into the holidays, but it’s still going strong!

THROWBACK!

One of my earliest posts on here is about how advances in technology for readers is leading directly to more opportunities for authors to explore our wildest, most niche of ideas and inspirations. It’s a great time to be a writer!

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely has good days and bad days. She’s just old and not in the best of health, so I do what I can to keep her feeling loved. It took a couple of years, but she eventually became comfortable enough to get on the bed in the morning to wake me up. Over time, that has advanced to morning cuddles, and recently she’s come to enjoy this, which is rolling onto her back to get belly rubs while a blanket or towel is thrown over her face. She’s under there, blissed out. What a weirdo! 😃

Thing is, she would never have trusted me this much when I got her in 2016, or even for several years afterwards. I’m so privileged to have been on the journey with her.

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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What a week, huh?

At least my replacement air fryer arrived! I now have roasted potatoes on demand, which might be all I eat for the next year given the upcoming turn in the economy. Meanwhile, the landlord’s handyman hauled off the fallen kitchen cabinets and who knows when I’ll ever see anything resembling shelves ever again.

As I tell people a lot: I have the best slumlord, but he’s still a slumlord.

Goodbye, you obnoxious twit

I am officially off twitter!!! I am not deactivating as I am possessive of my user IDs, but I unfollowed everyone, downloaded all my tweet archives, and locked the accounts for good. I’m mostly on bluesky, tumblr, and sometimes facebook these days. You can find all my links here at my links roundup on my website.

Weekly Roundup

Ya’ get what ya’ get, honestly:

• Kindle Vella is gone but serialization survives! This essay looks at the shutdown of ‘zon’s attempt to grab serialization subscription dollars, and what this represents for the industry, for authors, and for readers.

• I made a category (tag) directory for the Scriptorium! It’s a list of all the primary topics I yak on about here, for your convenience. Also included is my grumbling about whyyyyyyyy did the devs call them tags when they are categories????

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 1 is almost complete over on The Bibliotheca! This arc is free for all readers and will remain so forever, although I will make it a book you can buy down the road if you want!

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 32!!! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. I’m going to start posting links to updates on The Bibliotheca, as well, so if you want to know more click this link!

THROWBACK!

For absolutely no reason at all I was thinking about the loss of history, both the interpretation of it and the material artifacts that construct our understanding of it. This essay was inspired by fanfic purges, which have happened like witch hunts on a regular basis over the years. But I take it from the backwaters of fandom to talk about how at risk all of our writing is. Save what you love, save what matters, because it might just disappear one day.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

I thought I’d share a non-Keely photo this week, a shot of little Lake Ella before dawn. It is normally all stirred up due to the ducks and the Canada Geese but I guess we were there before the waterfowl woke up, so the water was mirror-finish calm. Enjoy.

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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The kitchen cabinet fell off the wall

I could be talking about that Big Thing that is happening tomorrow (Tuesday the 5th) but really what shot my nerves all to hell was a large section of my kitchen cabinets falling off the wall and crashing onto a bunch of stuff on the counter earlier today.

Yeah.

Mind you, it had been falling off the wall for several months and I had just been delaying calling the landlord. It was hanging by a couple of nails and hope, but I finally asked the landlord to send out his handyman, who proceeded to tap it and jostle it and then left. He told me he would be back tomorrow to bolt it back into the wall, but less than an hour later, it came crashing down.

RIP beloved air fryer. 😔

Weekly Roundup

A short list this week, mostly due I think to the ambient stress going on everywhere these days. I throw myself upon the mercy of the court. 😭

• The story of how I failed as a productivity coach touches on what it really takes to get better and succeed at a creative goal is, unfortunately, to actually just do the thing. Sorry-not-sorry.

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 1 is almost complete over on The Bibliotheca! This arc is free for all readers and will remain so forever, although I will make it a book you can buy down the road if you want!

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 30!!! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. I’m going to start posting links to updates on The Bibliotheca, as well, so if you want to know more click this link!

THROWBACK!

This is one of my fave posts I’ve written here, but it came out over a year ago when I did not have much of a following. It uses the lens of the history of text technology to look at what we consider valuable and what we think is work remembering.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

People always boggle at the fact that I get up so early every day, I guess because I come across as a native night owl. And I am! But also, I live in Florida and have a dog with black(ish) fur. To avoid giving her heatstroke, we’re usually out of the house for her long morning walk around 6am, or 7am in the winter.

But of late she’s been waking me up around 3am to go outside to relieve herself, due to aging bladder and illness recovery. Since I don’t have a yard, that means I have to get up, put on clothes, and walk her for a bit. Fortunately she’s usually as tired as I am and heads for the door once she’s done, but it means that when normal wake up time comes calling, I don’t answer!

Long intro to say: here’s a picture of Keely during daylight hours! This was from an 8am walk around Lake Ella last week. She looks as mystified about the daystar as I am!

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In the Groove

If you’re wondering how I’m doing: I had to open this tab in a new browser window because seeing all the other tabs lined up behind this one was making me anxious. 😅

Overall I’m doing pretty well, but like everyone I know, the ambient anxiety around me is clawing at my brain all day. It’s not just the election (ONE week? That’s it? We’re that close? Ughhhhh) but a pile up of all the little dramas and traumas around us that make everything feel like it’s been dialed up to 11 lately.

So, I try to keep my head down and get work done, get writing done, get Keely walked. In that sense, it’s been a good week!

Weekly Roundup

• Promoting Strangers: This is a post about marking my fiction, but it’s also a post about fanfiction, fandom, and how it feels to “write what you love” when no one else loves it. :/

• Hate is not the Opposite of Love: this short post about how to write a complex villain over on my tumblr is doing numbers (at least by my modest metrics!) and I don’t think you need to be familiar with the character I’m talking about to get the gist of it. You want enthralling, hate-filled villains? You gotta base them in their love.

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 1 continues on The Bibliotheca! This arc is free for all readers and will remain so forever, although I will make it a book you can buy down the road if you want!

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 28!!! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. I’m going to start posting links to updates on The Bibliotheca, as well, so if you want to know more click this link!

THROWBACK!

A.I. continues to be a contentious topic, but you know, so was Aldus Pagemaker back in the day. Yeah, I am aware that there are substantial differences, but in this essay from last July I looked at the confluence of technological change and “good enough.”

Writing

Actually worked on Transmigrated Teri this week, and spent a lot of time doing re-writes/heavy edits on Out from Fanfic (my goal for that one is to get it out before the end of the year).

I should probably spend less time writing The Bastards of Yunmeng but I have not had this much fun writing a fanfic in a long time. So yeah, it’s already at 100k words. That happened. 😃

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely has good days and bad days, but I figure that’s fair for a 17 year old pupper. It’s a real pain to be woken up at 4 am to take her for a walk so she can pee, but I’m glad she’s still around to bother me, and it’s better than her having an “accident.” (Those diapers can only hold so much, I discovered the unfortunate way.) I love my old girl!

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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Reflecting on “A Year”

I feel like we have all been collectively cursed with the year-long equivalent of “I hope you have a day.” We have certainly had a year.

Or, you know, about five years. Eight? I’m loosing track.

Here in the the states, we’re bracing for Election Day on November 5th. Early voting has already started, but for me it is a time-honored tradition to go to the polls to vote. (For a long time I couldn’t, as my polling station was just awkwardly enough placed that I could not walk to it or even bus to it easily, so I often did early voting at a polling station near where I worked. Fortunately, it changed a few years ago and is now just a five minute walk from home.)

As things stand, everyone I know is on edge. We won’t know until we know on Nov. 6th and even then we’re expecting violence. Too many people have fallen down the Faux News cult hole and don’t respect other human beings, much less rule of law. I don’t think we’ll see big riots this time around, but small ones? Maybe.

What a year.

Weekly Roundup

I’m finally back on the writing wagon after the Month of Everything So Much!

• Back on an Even Keel(y) is my round-up post from last week, but if you are wondering what I mean by “the Month of Everything So Much!” this will clue you in.

• The Perfect Author Platform (for readers!) is a post about something I am super proud of, which is my project brief for the WikiArchivePlatform of my authorial dreams. It’s a big ask of an app, and I really wish I could build it.

• AtWT episode 50: Writing with, around, and through Trauma. The longer we record Around the Writer’s Table episodes, the more interesting the conversations become. This one really touched home for me, as we talked about trauma, and how we deal with writing about it, especially when it is tied to our own personal experiences. Heavy topic but I think we approached it sensitively. (Listen on our website, or your favorite podcast app!)

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 1 continues on The Bibliotheca! I missed a few updates during the Month of Everything So Much, but we’re back on track now! This arc is free for all readers and will remain so forever, although I will make it a book you can buy down the road.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 26!!! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. I’m going to start posting links to updates on The Bibliotheca, as well, so if you want to know more click this link!

THROWBACK!

Another look back to a year ago, when I was talking about the history text technology, ball point pens, cursive, and A.I.

Writing

Writing is being done! And not just on the fanfic Bastards of Yunmeng! I have not touched much of my fiction since I started my new job in early September, but I’m finally feeling my creative brain come back online after all the stress-stress-stress of, honestly, the past six months.

So, hopefully, the next update will have some real updates about writing!

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely joined me at Lucky Goat Coffee in Midtown this morning, and wondered where her blueberry muffin was???!? (She got a chew stick treat, don’t worry!)

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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Still here!

It’s been a wild six weeks. Not all of it is bad, and in fact some of it is great, but altogether it has been exhausting. In chronological order starting from the first week of September:

1. Start new job!!!! YAY! Bills are getting paid! Part time, but still required a bit of adjusting to the new schedule. What is a time card, again?

2. Got vaxxed! Acquired COVID booster ($$$) and flu ($) shots, which knocked me down with brain fog and exhaustion for about 3-5 days.

3. At which point, Hurricane Helene was forming and looking to make a direct hit on my house in Tallahassee, FL. Cue a week+ of hurricane PTSD. I did not cope well, friends.

4. Helene kept me up all night but left Tallahassee unmolested even as she ravaged Georgia and North Carolina. Meanwhile, I caught a bad head cold and missed Rosh Hashana services.

5. Hurricane Milton formed while I was still wallowing in phlegmy misery, and while Tally was never in the cross hairs, a monster storm like that affects everybody. The whole city was out of gas due to evacuations, and I have many good friends and fellow New College alumni who live in Sarasota/Tampa-St. Pete. It was a worrisome time.

6. Meanwhile, the presidential election creeps ever closer and the right-wingnuts have gone full-unhinged and everyone I know is maxxed out on anxiety.

7. And, sadly, I have not put up any Halloween decorations yet. TRAGEDY!!!!

Looking at that list, all I can say is, “That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.”

THROWBACK!

Over a year ago, I started talking about “serials” as a unique form of storytelling — an ancient one, but one that the internet is primed to support and nurture. This realization was a key component of my decision to revitalize my languishing career as a fiction author, and led to the start of serializing my own, original stories online (to be honest, I had been serializing stories online for years, but only in the fanfiction realm!). Here is one of my original posts delving into the question of what, exactly, a serial is!

Tip jar!

It’s a Keely-Boo World

The cooler weather is here (AT DAMN LAST OMG!!!!) and so Keely is now enjoying lounging by the open door in her comfy bed, watching the world go by.

To be honest, it’s hard not to focus on all the gray hair…my baby is gettin’ old!!!! 😭

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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Milton’s Paradise Lost…

Part of me doesn’t even know what to say about this. It is already one for the history books, which only four or five days ago was estimated to be a completely unnoteworthy tropical storm at worst.

Goes to show that weather doesn’t listen to what we say.

I’m in Tallahassee, up in the north side of the cone, in the dark blue “tropical storm” area. Yet, the ground is still saturated from Helene so I expect we’ll get more downed trees and localized flooding. Will power stay on, at least? We’ll see.

But here’s the thing: I’m a graduate of the New College of Florida, and I came of age in the Central Florida region. I know a lot of people who live in the path of that storm, and I’m very worried for them. Many of them are too poor or just not not-poor enough to evacuate. Evacuation costs $1,200 to $5,000 depending on family size, food, pets, and hotel costs. Caretakers with elderly parents or family in poor health can’t hire medical transport to get them to safety. A lot of people I know are sheltering in place simply because they don’t have any other option.

Most of the help that would normally already be ramping up at the border—linemen, trucks filled with supplies, medical personnel—are already dispersed across Appalachia trying to get Georgia and North Carolina back up and running. They are still collecting bodies up there. FEMA, underfunded and sabotaged for years by Republicans who don’t “believe” in government assistance, is stretched as thin as a thread of silk.

Milton, even if it weakens to a Cat3 by landfall, is still going to be a monster slamming face first into my state.

September Recap

Honestly, I feel like September was a wash but it really wasn’t. I started my new job, I lost five days to COVID booster vax brain fog, another five days to stressing about Hurricane Helene, and then another five days to a common cold. So that brings us to Hurricane Milton (see above).

Ya get what ya get.

THROWBACK!

I published a whole novel for FREE here on the Scriptorium! It was more of an experiment than anything, as I had the book ready to go and was considering publishing it. I thought, why not serialize it here? So I posted it over the course of 2023-2024! If you enjoy love-triads (MMF), romantic fantasy, dragon shifters, and exciting battles, this is for you!

It’s a Keely-Boo World

She’s doing fine, and getting all the treats she demands! Here she is, on her back and waiting for belly rubs! YOu can barely see her eyes through her fuzz-face!

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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Here We Go Again…

I have lived in Florida since my parents dragged me over the state line in 1982. I was not happy about it — we had left the home I loved in Albuquerque, NM, to move to a home I had started to really love in Bangor, ME, over the period of two years. I was deeply against this third, sudden, and ill-advised move.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in that case I saw the writing on the wall very clearly: Florida was not going to be good to us. It wasn’t.

Which is part of a longer story, but the gist of it is: I’ve been through this rodeo before. I’ve been here for every hurricane that’s hit this state, whether I was in the “cone of uncertainty” or not.

Here I am again.

You see the “M” along the pink line of the Florida coast? That’s right about where Tallahassee is, and that’s where I happen to live:

Part of me ain’t worried. These things twist and turn, and one thing I’ve learned the hard way is to never trust predictions 100%. One of the reasons Charley hit us so hard in 2004 was that it was fully expected to run inland far north of us so we were totally unprepared. It zigged when it should have zagged and destroyed the home we lived in and everything inside of it. That was one of the most terrifying nights of my life, right up there with the Haunting of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park (another story for another time!).

Wish us luck. I expect I’ll be fine, since I’m in a good location overall, but it might mean we’re without power for a while. Le sigh.

Weekly Roundup

Not much of a roundup, unfortunately. Last week was owned by me trying to adjust to the new job, which I’m not complaining about, but it certainly cramped my writing style!

Also, while I usually post “Keely’s Way” on Mondays, I got both my flu and COVID shots on Saturday and whew those knocked me out! Mostly exhaustion and brain fog—don’t really remember much of Saturday or Sunday, tbh! So it’s taken a while to turn the gears in the brain pan.

In lieu of new fascinating posts, how about some updates on things I don’t talk about too much because I’m bad at marketing?

• My fantasy-romance love-triad novel The Queen’s Aerie is a FREE read over at the Scriptorium! You can buy the book if you want, but I serialized the whole thing starting last year when I was just dipping my toe back into serialized fiction. (I don’t plan on moving it over to the Bibliotheca, so it’s just archived for everyone there on the Scriptorium for now!)

• Escape from Ice Mountain, episode 6 is up! “Not What They Expected” sees Astra and Zochur planning an adventure! It’s all Traz’s fault, because of course it is.

• Grieving Futures: Surviving the Deaths of My Parents is FREE at Patience & Fortitude! This book has been posted for free as a series of posts on my blog about mourning and grief as an adult orphan. A fun read? NO! An important one? I hope so.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 20! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. The Bastards of Yunmeng is all about the three kids of the Yunmeng Jiang martial arts sect after they get thrown out into the streets as children. Its tropes include: found family, friends-to-lovers, canon-divergence, and sentient Burial Mounds!

THROWBACK!

Everyone is talking about serialized fiction around here lately, and it’s SO gratifying to see so many authors taking the plunge into serialization, no matter the format of their writing. Last year, I dove into talking about serials as a unique format while I was writing my book, Become an Unstoppable Storyteller. Read more:

Writing

Nope.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely doesn’t mind storms too much, but when Michael came through in 2018 and then Idalia in 2023, she got very clingy. So, I know they do affect her on some level.

We’ll be fine, we’re on very elevated land and are right near the Tallahassee Police Headquarters, which means we get utilities back up more quickly than most anywhere else in town. The corner Circle K is pretty legendary for being the first and sometimes only source of hot coffee post-hurricane.

Here is an older photo of Keely, taken in 2020. I love the golden glow of the sunrise, and how it shows off her brown eyes:

Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

Please subscribe to have this dumped in your inbox every week, and also check out my website where you can find all my books, my ongoing serial stories, and information about the 1 Million Words Club membership community for writers!

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