I hope it’s not truly an annual thing. I’m really hoping I can just maintain it this coming year and end off 2019 with something to fall back on and a sense of victory. We’ll give it another shot.

I’ve been very close to working deadline-to-deadline in this last chunk of the year. Christmas took that down even further and lit the fire under my butt, so I spent this last week drawing a full ten weeks’ worth of new material. I’m looking forward to getting these all done and having that wiggle room back in my routine. I’m still rather proud of myself for coasting on the last batch all the way to the end of 2018 despite the troubles, though. I’m on to something here!

Now for my next big project, while I work on inking and painting these: I’ve got to get a big commission done that I’ve been posting timelapse videos of for patrons so I can have my drafting table back. 😉 I’m aiming for getting all the inks and paints on that one finished by the end of January and then comes the adventure of scanning it for safety, shipping it, and doing a little “please survive transit” dance. Then I can post the finished work publicly.

Now that Christmas chaos is complete and New Year’s is almost here, I’m also looking forward to getting back to routine in the new year with a focus on doing art and writing regularly. The rhythm I had going in late November and early December was working really well to keep me mindful of all those times when I could squeeze creativity into my day and the results were great. I want to keep that up and bring even more to you guys. <3

On that note, I have more things to do and an art piece to start so that I can finish it in 2019. Look for more from me soon!

– Comment on Patreon –

So welcome to December! Apologies for not posting my NaNoWriMo content this time around. I actually opted to start working hardcore on planning out Chapter Four of Prophecy of the Circle and while I didn’t finish the whole thing, I succeeded in building a framework. I still feel kind of iffy about positing straight up spoilers, especially with Chapter Three not done yet. That work I just did will definitely benefit the comic in the future, though. I absolutely want to level this thing up for the next chapter.

For writing, Alpha Base is my next project that I want to get back in to. I need to reassess it because last time I started to lose the track and meander off into the darkness, but I’ve got a plan to get that one wrapped up early next year. One of my best friends started self-publishing recently and she keeps needling me about getting into it. Step one: complete a thing!

So let’s get back to it. Heck yes.

ETA: I also started a new rough draft of a Prophecy of the Circle short story: Depths, about a certain talented individual being sent into the bowels of the Temple to look for treasure about the Seradin tech in storage.

– Comment on Patreon –

I have a weird tradition of giving my computers names, and they always start with M. Meet Merrick, my new shiny MacBook Pro! You never really notice how much you need a new computer until you get one and it becomes painfully obvious how slow and hiccupy the previous machine had become. After the maintenance I’ve been doing this year, I think my desktop will last a while longer, and maybe even a few more years if I’m lucky, but it’s definitely a solid relief to have something fast to work on where I don’t have to worry about running into errors.

As for this one, it’s got all my files copied to it and all of my apps, and it’s basically set up the way I want it to be finally. I can play games that would never run before, like Obduction (finally!), and it’s so fast and smooth for all of my art and writing work. Worth it. 😀

My last laptop got pretty scratched up when I didn’t get a case for it right away, so I aimed to remedy that this time. Between the hard shell case and the keyboard cover, it’s a lot more protected against scratches, scuffs, and crumbs. The small sticker on the case is by Coey and Shy and the large sticker is by Kellie Lamphere. I have kind of a thing for foxes. Always have and I’ve been embracing it lately (with the help of my friends who just keep getting me fox-themed stuff).

I picked the current desktop randomly off the internet just to get the standard Mac OS X mountains off of there, but I’ll admit, I’m annoyed that I can’t find the original artist. Help there would be welcome. I grabbed it off of here and tried a reverse image search, but no luck. If anyone’s got a clue, I’d love to be following their other work, gotta say. This one’s lovely.

First, things have gotten a bit better since the last post, I think? This weekend was the first weekend in months that I actually managed to get everything I needed to done on time and still had time to chill. Honestly, my brain didn’t know what to do when I ran into a time where I didn’t have to work, so it kind of just went into shut-down mode and the next thing I knew, I’d woken up from a rather abrupt nap – whoops! 
On that note, everything is still largely chaos, I must be honest. Nothing much has improved or changed (actually it all got abruptly worse after that last blog post but now it’s kind of plateaued). I think I’ve just done that human thing we do where we adapt to the change and suddenly well… To visually-quote a far too timely meme, this is me right now:
… and that’s okay! The fire’ll get put out. I’m sure it will. Eventually. Someday. And I’m doing better at getting back on the wagon of productivity in the meanwhile.
And speaking of which, I’ve finally solved a problem from back in November that’s been causing me more grief than I like to admit.  Remember when my laptop suddenly decided it was going into the long sleep?  It really turns out that I’m a serious laptop-writer kind of gal. I kind of cobbled together an awkward setup of my 2012 iPad and a keyboard and limped along with that when I needed to, but just the hassle of it – prop up the iPad, put batteries in the keyboard, fight with them until they sync, prop the iPad up several more times when it topples over and messes with my qi… That’s a serious uphill battle when I’m already swamped. Ugh.
Last Tuesday was my birthday. Whoo! I turned thirty-three and, with three being my favourite number and what this being the most number of threes I’ll ever see in my age unless I discover longevity/immortality somewhere along the road, I decided that it was a special day and I finally bought the new laptop I’d wanted. I’m an Apple user, so I splurged on a MacBook Pro that should do everything I’ll ever throw at it and not even hiccup. I got it on a bit of a payment plan of sorts, so it’ll be a little while before I fully pay it off and you bet that any commissions I do in the future will be geared towards bringing that tally down to zero all the faster.
Last I checked, it was on its way to me from Shanghai, and should arrive on Friday. I’ve got a lot I want to do with that machine, but for right now I’ll be happy to just be able to slip into my writing habit with some ease again.
To make sure that happens, I’ve actually set up a Dropbox that links both to my boyfriend and my mom and they’ve been instructed to give me the stink eye if I don’t update that folder regularly. I’m being policed! That should help.
But it should be fine, honestly. When I did have a laptop I never had trouble writing at least once a week. We’ll get back on that horse.
So for those of you watching the $10 tier over at Patreon, you should be getting actual content once again. Thanks again for your faith in me during these rough times. Slowly but surely it’s getting better!
Now, I also want to start getting some more stuff into the $5 tier again. It’s about time that I started planning out Chapter Four of Prophecy of the Circle. It’s got rough structure, but I really want to hammer the kinks out of this one. It’s one of the more important chapters in the story, involving events I wrote about ages ago in the unfinished novel that started this whole adventure. I’m keen to get that chapter right.
I’ll keep you guys posted, as always.