• Where I Stand

    The first real post of the new year. So hi. Been a long couple of months.

    To bring up to speed, five chapters of Ghost Factor are out in the wild since last Sunday. If you haven’t yet, go a read them here. And if you did read them, please leave a comment on Royal Road. Any chance to know what worked and what doesn’t helps a lot. Really, this story has been in my head for over a decade, and knowing where I stand craft-wise is terribly needed.

    This schedule is making me a little nostalgic. Early in this writing hobby, I’ve done the same thing for the Tyler Ingert stories out on DeviantART, except they were not novel-length stories but novella-length ones. Sometimes I was consistent with my release schedule—same-day really—and some days I wasn’t ready to post them for honest reasons.

    The best pic of the second night

    I did take one break from the book posting with my recent weekend trip to Seattle. This was needed. It’s frightening that nearly two years ago, I did the exact same trip, only it was a 24-hour travel stunt than the three-day, two-night escape just last month. I stayed at the same hostel across from Pike Place Market and just attached myself there, eating clam chowder and smoked salmon chowders in bread bowls, tried out crumpets for the first time, picked up a travel book, visited an aquarium, and joined a group from the hostel to do my first pub crawl (my god I was buzzed).

    But Back to Ghost Factor for a minute.

    As of right now, my chapter buffer is getting low. This is the cue where chapters are written and either edited or ready for edits.

    So far I’m still struggling with a writing routine and my day job workload is getting a few projects down the line. And I haven’t updated my website to add the Royal Road links. The recent WordPress version announced is getting me curious so I’m waiting for mine to get updated and see how broken it could get.

    Also, haven’t done it in years, I have to re-build my note collection. Fifteen years of Mana Pool notes. It’s like a…hoarder’s back closet in the guest bedroom long ignored while everything else is a minefield of half-finished ideas and food scraps. Nasty.

    Kinda like this mess.

    This is similar.
    Photo by Min An on Pexels.com

    It’s hard to say this, but I’ll have to take a break from posting again. Like I said before, Ghost Factor is still a work in progress, and making sure I have a solid writing and editing schedule is important. Having the day job swallow most of my time and brainpower ain’t helping much. Got to do some early spring cleaning first.

    So, on 2/20/2022, Ghost Factor’s Chapter 6 will be released. This is the chapter I’ve been going back and forth on for a long time, and I want to get it right.

    Talk to you all later.

  • On Hiatus (for the weekend)

    Hello, all.

    I hope the first two chapters on Ghost Factor are to your liking. Man, hearing the comments is what I needed after a decade of writer’s block.

    This weekend there won’t be a new chapter for Ghost Factor. I’m on hiatus for a weekend vacation to Seattle. No laptop, ebooks to read, and some darn good clam chowder. With that, Chapter 3 will be out on January 16.

    So this was not a big update post I wanted to write. Like, reflect on the last year, what I’ve been doing, and all that. I’ll save that post once I get back from vacation.

    Later.

  • Here we go

    Photo by Todd Trapani on Pexels.com

    Morning, afternoon, or whatever and whenever. Got a couple of announcements to make.

    First of all, I found a new home for my writing. I’ve known about this site for some time and I had to be sure this choice could work. Copywrite and content is my concern. I don’t think Mana Pool has content that violates the site’s rules so… fingers crossed.

    As of now, all current and future Mana Pool stories, including Ghost Factor, will be available on Royal Road.

    What I hear from others is they need accessibility, so making this switch seems feeble. There’s no paywall to read them, anybody can access the site on any device, the text is readable, there’s PayPal and Patreon links for donations and support (thank you), and email alerts.

    Right now I have book one’s Chapter 1 available but I’ll need some time to upload the rest and complete my profile. The Snippets stories will get the same treatment, but I’m working on creating new cover art. No new logo yet. I have to find an artist for that.

    I thought about posting the Tyler stories on Royal Road, but I feel they belong on DeviantART. They were inspired by the site so it seems fitting. If the support is there, I’ll consider it.

    And lastly (breathes), the announcement you’ve all been waiting for.

    It’s taken me over a decade to finally get over my life’s hurdles. Losing family members, my work life, my mental state: all of it kept Ghost Factor in production hell. I learned that writing is a process for me. I still feel like an amateur on this journey and nowhere close to calling myself a professional. To this day I still have high hopes to make writing a full-time career, whether with my projects, someone else’s, or once I make my freelance editing business a true reality. Most of the time I feel my writing skills have degraded over the years from all the writer’s block I suffered. At this point, I’m just sick of feeling panicked over the little things, the irrational, and what worst-case scenarios my mind binges on when I’m alone, and not get anything done.

    No more.

    Ghost Factor will not be a complete webnovel once released. Chapters will be published in time; can’t guarantee if I have a regular release schedule or a sporadic one. This will be a long journey for me and I hope you’ll stick around to see Ghost Factor have that “COMPLETED” tag on Royal Road. Will I make it a full-fledged ebook and paperback? I don’t know. At this point, I just want to share my stories, learn from my critiques, and grow.

    Mana Pool – The Ghost Factor, Chapter 1, will be out on December 26, 2021.

    Talk to you all soon.

    Please subscribe for future updates via email. If you want to support me, please visit my Patreon or donate via PayPal.

  • Life Update and Patreon

    Pandemic WFH me, literally
    Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

    Hello all. Been a while since I spoke. Still the usual sparse moments when I do blog about anything. So let’s get right to it.

    Life Itself

    Summer is still my least favorite season. Productivity drops, no interest to hike at the park (not early in the morning at least). The floor fan blows on my face, day and night. The only time I can exercise is Friday night at the yoga studio.

    The weather is changing finally. Hiking at the park will happen soon, and I’m making enough cash for a monthly yoga studio subscription.

    But the whole summer, I’ve been experimenting with intermittent fasting. I’ve dot it down to making 18:6 a daily lifestyle… most of the time. Eating between 10 AM and 4 PM is my sweet spot since it works with my work schedule. Since last May, I’ve lost 12lbs (5.44kg), but have been plateaued at 256lbs(116.12kg), my life-long weight since I was a child. Pretty much the stall was the result of the stress of moving to a new apartment.

    My brother and his fiancé needed their own place to live, meaning stay at his condo, along with his dog and her two cats. I had no objection to it. So it turned into living with the fiancé’s sister a few blocks south of the condo. Within two days I had to pack everything, haul three loads in my Prius to the apartment, have movers deal with the rest, sweat my nards off in 90-degree heat, then have time to shower and have a beer at the bar. The bookshelf stacking was finished a week later.

    And in a month or so, my brother gets married. Now the realization is hitting me.

    Now for the real news.

    Patreon

    So yeah, I reopened my Patreon page.

    I had one a long time ago, but I didn’t do much with it. Amongst my work life and personal life inhibiting my writing life so much, I felt lost of what to do with it. Sometimes, feeling guilty. I closed it after a year without producing anything.

    And now, after some consideration, it’s back.

    My major roadblock with the Patreon page was money and audience. So many times, I ruminated on pointless questions. Do I immediately set all exclusive content upper tier only for a week (even though the stories or chapters had multiple edit runs or a physical book isn’t being made) and possibly scare off potential patrons (or, irrationally, offend them for any reason), or leave just a tip jar and release all content for free and never see any grown reader wise? Is there a barrier of entry that would impede my audience’s reach? Can I get a margin of success with my limited marketing skills? What other marketing jargon do I research to justify my procrastination? Or god forbid, any worst-case scenario I ruminated become true? Or what if…

    (I stepped away to breathe)

    It took me months to slowly limit that thinking and just do it. For now, the page is up, the $1 tip jar is available. There’s nothing ready yet to publish but it’s coming soon… maybe late November. If you like to support me, I won’t hold you back. No pressure (gulp).

    I do want to address a problem: DeviantART. Since Eclipse was released—forced really—my literature reading experience dropped. I liked the old theme’s search functions and the clean text posts with settings to add indents and font size changes. Now it feels clunky, static, like the infant stages of an expensive WordPress theme. I can’t search by category anymore. It’s more for art and the stories to me.

    It’s tough to say this, but DeviantART has outgrown me. It doesn’t feel right to publish anything there. I’m not deleting my account yet, but I will make a journal post and slowly migrate my viable work.

    Methods change, and this is one of them.

    Freelance Editing

    The last piece of news is I’m closing all my editing slots for the remainder of the year. I just finished an editing project so I’ll need the break. Now I have time to do some copyediting studies and work on Ghost Factor. So for those looking for dev edit work, it has to wait until January, or February, for slots to open back up.

    Until then, become a patron and follow this blog and Twitter for updates.

    Ghost Factor is finally coming out of production hell.

    Please subscribe for future updates via email. If you want to support me, please visit my Patreon or donate via PayPal.