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heauxplesslydevoted · 3 years

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Three’s Company

Summary: Naomi goes to lunch with the newest member of the diagnostic’s team.

A/N: Listen, I will not rest until Tobias and Ethan are friends again.

~v~

“It’s not going to be as bad as you’re making it out to be, Ethan. Above all else, Tobias Carrick is a doctor and a professional.”

Ethan resists the urge to roll his eyes at his girlfriend. This situation isn’t her fault, and it’s not like Naomi can help the fact that she’s optimistic. He still huffs under his breath though. “Being a doctor isn’t synonymous with being a professional. Trust me, Tobias is nothing of the sort.”

The news of Tobias Carrick not only coming to Edenbrook but also joining the diagnostics team hasn’t been well received. On top of a pretty tense exchange between Bloom and Ethan, Harper also made it known that she wasn’t a fan, thankfully not as outwardly as Ethan had.

Naomi however, has remained neutral. She doesn’t have history with Tobias like Harper and Ethan do, only knowing him through their biased second hand accounts. Ethan grumbled that he’s arrogant–though the same can be said about him as well–and selfish, but Naomi isn’t one to judge someone without knowing them. And besides, he pitched in to help save her last year, so for the time being, Tobias Carrick has a few brownie points with her.

“You’re being dramatic. He’s been a doctor as long as you have, he went to the same prestigious medical school that you did–”

“He graduated at number two,” Ethan interjects.

At that dig, Naomi huffs. “You’re being ridiculous. And petty, for no reason.”

“Bloom went over our heads and hired him, so I’m automatically suspicious. I apologize for not believing this wasn’t done specifically to annoy me.”

Naomi can concede to it being a bit suspicious, but she isn’t going to admit to this conspiracy of all roads leading back to Ethan. She’s not going to needlessly feed into his ego and rile him up.

The two of them continue their trek throughout the halls of Edenbrook in silence, their fingers loosely interlocked the entire way there. Naomi revels in it, because she knows it’s the calm before the storm.

Before they cross the threshold to the office, Naomi stops Ethan in his tracks. She cranes her head back so they can look each other in the eye. “Listen, like it or not, Tobias is here, and until he does something that warrants your hostility, at least be cordial. Our patients don’t deserve us at anything less than our best.”

Ethan pinches the bridge of his nose, and silently counts to three, attempting to steel himself.

“Fine.”

“Thank you.” Raising their joined hands, Naomi brushes a fleeting kiss across his knuckles. “Now stop pouting, Ramsey, we have work to do.”

Ethan untangles their hands only to open the door for Naomi. Once she steps inside she’s greeted with the sight of Tobias fiddling with Ethan’s coffee maker. He looks and flashes them a sly smile. “Mornin’, lovebirds! Ready to get to diagnosing?”

Ethan flashes Naomi a quick look. This is going to be a long day indeed.

~v~

So Tobias’s first day with the team wasn’t smooth sailing like Naomi wanted. Ethan and Harper made it clear that his former friend and roommate wasn’t wanted anywhere near the team, whether it be through passive aggressive eye rolls, thinly-veiled exasperated sighs, or outright aggression via Ethan that spiraled into a tense argument. Naomi remained neutral, corralling all of the attention back to the task at hand: helping their patient.

Naomi isn’t interested in spending another day babysitting these grown adults, so hopefully day 2 is a lot more smooth.

And so far, she seems to be getting her wish. Morning tasks were distributed without a fight, and after their morning huddle, Harper went downstairs to prep for a surgery she has coming up later. The remaining 3 members of the team are all in their own little corners of the office, Ethan typing away on his laptop, Tobias lounging on the couch, and Naomi sitting at their large desk, a pile of books and printed copies of online articles all spread out in front of her.

The words are all starting to blur together, her focus slipping away with each second that ticks on. Being in the office isn’t doing anything for her creativity or brainstorming power. She needs a break.

Naomi closes her textbook and pushes out of her seat, tired of studying. She makes her way over to Ethan’s desk, observing his hunched shoulders and the deep line between his brows. She rounds his desk until she’s standing directly in his line of vision. “You know what? I think it’s time to take a break. How about you and I get out of here and get something to eat?”

Ethan tears his eyes away from his computer screen long enough to look at Naomi. He frowns softly. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to take a raincheck. On top of the actual work I have to do for this team, Leland is demanding that I put together a presentation for the board meeting at the end of the week.”

“About what?”

“About the team. Cost versus benefit, outcomes, methodology, etc. Basically, he wants me to sell the diagnostics team to him all over again.”

“Sucks to be the boss at times?”

“De facto boss,” Ethan corrects. “Remember, this team is supposed to be a democracy now. Anyway, I want to get this presentation done as quickly as I can so I can stop thinking about it.”

“I could go for some lunch,” the third person in the room speaks up. Naomi and Ethan both turn around and see Tobias staring back at them. “Oh sorry, am I interrupting the private conversation the two of you are trying to have in our communal workspace?”

“What do you want, Carrick?”

Tobias’s eyes bounce back and forth between the couple. “Naomi wants to escape these four walls and get food. You aren’t available, and I am.” He shrugs. “What are you in the mood for, Valentine? I could go for some Italian, and there’s a good place a few blocks from here.”

“She’s not going to lunch with you,” Ethan grits out possessively.

Naomi’s head whips around faster than she can stop herself. Since when did he get to make decisions on her behalf, especially when it’s not work related?

A small smirk settles on Tobias’s face. Naomi’s physical response to Ethan’s declaration does not go unnoticed by him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know your name was also Naomi Valentine. Whatever the case, I wasn’t speaking to you.”

“Naomi doesn’t–”

“Naomi doesn’t need an advocate to speak on her behalf because she’s an adult,” Naomi interjects sharply.

Whether she wants to accept or decline Tobias’s invitation to lunch, it’s her decision to make, not Ethan’s. His tumultuous relationship with Tobias is not her burden to bear, and he’s not going to force it upon her.

And just to prove it to him, Naomi turns around, her full attention back on Tobias, eyes alight with defiance. “You know what? Italian sounds delicious.”

~v~

20 minutes later, the unlikely duo is nestled into a corner booth of the Italian restaurant Tobias suggested. It’s a nice family owned joint that is currently experiencing a lunch rush. Every inch of the place is bustling with activity, the aromatic smell of sautéed garlic fills the air, soft music playing in the background. And while Naomi has yet to try the food, the restaurant is warm and inviting, and she likes it.

“You know, I’m really shocked you decided to take me up on my offer,” Tobias says, cutting into Naomi’s silent appraisal of their surroundings.

“I wasn’t going to turn down a free meal,” Naomi responds smoothly.

“A free meal?”

“Of course. You invited yourself, so you’re paying, Dr. Carrick. I’m thinking of ordering dessert, too.”

An easygoing smile tugs at the corners of her mouth as she speaks, and Tobias laughs. “I meant it because loverboy wasn’t too happy with it.”

“As much as I respect Ethan’s opinions on things, they don’t dictate my life. His issues with you have nothing to do with me, and if you think you can use me as a pawn to piss him off further, I’d advise you to think again.”

This young woman is brazen and full of sass. Tobias likes it. “It wasn’t my intention, I swear. It’s no secret that I’m not a welcomed member of the team, and you happen to be the only one who doesn’t roll your eyes or sneer whenever I speak. You are the closest thing I have to an...acquaintance, I guess.”

Naomi’s defenses deflate slightly at his shocking display of earnestness. She was expecting some display of bravado from the attending, so this has thrown her for a loop.

Tobias is nervous. She picks up on that energy almost instantly.

“Well like I said, their issues with you have nothing to do with me. I try to give everyone a fair shake.”

“I can respect that.”

“But in the interest of said fair shake, you have to answer a question for me. What are you doing here?”

“Here, in this restaurant?”

“At Edenbrook,” Naomi clarifies. “Kenmore is a level one trauma center, it was saved from getting snuffed out when it merged with Solomon, you guys stole my research candidate which brought in a lot of grant money. You had a decent gig there, so why did you come to Edenbrook? Why did you accept a position on Ethan’s team?”

Tobias shrugs. “I hit my threshold at Kenmore. I was at the top of the food chain, I had seen everything there was to see, done everything there was to do. I was...bored and restless. Edenbrook got injected with new blood, everything is new and exciting. Bloom said he wanted to take the team to new heights, and he offered me more money than I know what to do with to be a part of the vision.”

“Okay so who’s to say you’ll be satisfied just being a member of the team? How do I know you won’t attempt to stage a coup and take Ethan’s position?”

“Relax, sweetheart, I’m not gunning for your boyfriend’s spot.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart. There’s no need to be condescending.”

“I apologize. But Ethan’s spot on the team is safe. I don’t need Leland breathing down my neck and micromanaging me the way he does Ethan.”

Naomi’s eyes roam his face. He doesn’t have any tells, no eye shifting or twitching, no sudden movements with his hands or mouth, he doesn’t fidget in his seat. She has no reason to believe he’s lying, so she takes him at his word. “Okay.”

“Any other burning questions?”

“Why aren’t you and Ethan friends?”

Tobias doesn’t immediately answer, opting to take his sweet time to think on it. He pulls his lip in-between his teeth, before shrugging. “We’re too similar. Too driven, too ambitious, too stubborn. Two people can only go on the same path for so long before a collision happens.”

“It got ugly because you two wanted the same girl?”

Tobias scoffs. The faceless woman that he was adamant that he was in love with is at the bottom of his list of concerns. “She was just the tip of the iceberg.”

That manages to catch her interest. Naomi sits up in her seat and leans forward slightly. “So what happened?”

Naomi can see the exact moment that Tobias withdraws from the conversation. His posture gets stiff again and he averts his gaze.

“Okay, riddle me this, Carrick,” Naomi continues. “Ethan told me he reached out to you after you had your falling out, but you rebuffed him. Is that part true?”

“He called and asked if we could talk, I said no. I didn’t hear from him again until everything happened with Leland last year.”

“You didn’t want to make amends?”

Making amends and having his old friend back did sound nice once upon a time, but being friends with Ethan again means being in his shadow again. And that’s what led them to this whole thing in the first place. Tobias sighs and scrubs his hand across his jaw. He came here to eat a plate of ravioli and maybe annoy Ethan, not pour his heart out. What is it about Naomi Valentine and those big brown eyes of hers that makes him want to twist himself inside out and spill his guts? Is she some sort of siren?

“Making amends means I’d have to own up to my wrongdoings. I’d have to swallow the fact that I torpedoed our friendship,” Tobias confesses before he even realizes the words are out of his mouth. “Admitting fault and being vulnerable isn’t my strong suit.”

She doesn’t mean to, but Naomi giggles. And that giggle turns into a laugh. A loud one that attracts the attention of a few patrons, a hard feat to accomplish in the middle of a bustling restaurant, but she does it with ease.

“I’m sorry,” Naomi says once she finally calms down. She takes a deep breath before continuing. “God, no wonder you two were best friends. You are just as emotionally constipated as Ethan.”

“Emotionally constipated?” Tobias’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline at the blunt statement. And once the shock wears off, he laughs along with. “Touché, Valentine. Touché.”

~v~

Across the way, at the bar on the other side of the dining room, Ethan watches as his girlfriend and his former friend carry on like two bosom buddies.

Ethan decided to follow them approximately 10 minutes after they left, sheer curiosity getting the better of him. Before he could stop himself, he was in his car and at the restaurant, seated far enough away from them so he’s out of their line of vision, but close enough to see.

Naomi is in the zone, talking excitedly and Tobias sits there, soaking it all up like what she says and does is gospel. Their friendly interaction stirs irritation in the pit of his stomach, but it’s when Naomi lets out a boisterous laugh does he reach his limit. Ethan’s grip on the small tumbler in his hand tightens, and it’s a miracle he doesn’t end up with a million tiny shards of glass in his palm.

What on earth has Tobias said to make Naomi laugh like that? And why is he laughing with her?

Ethan doesn’t like it one bit, for a multitude of reasons. He doesn’t like other men being around Naomi–it’s ridiculous and sexist of him to feel this way, but Ethan is a possessive caveman, and he makes no bones about it. Seeing her actually laughing with Carrick of all people and enjoying his company makes him want to throw the drink ware he’s currently holding.

Deciding enough is enough, Ethan slams the glass down onto the bar and stands up. After dropping a $20 bill on the counter he makes his way over to Naomi and Tobias, unadulterated jealousy and alcohol fueling every step.

Tobias notices him first, and he jerks his head in Ethan’s general direction in order to get Naomi’s attention. She turns around and her eyes go wide at the sight of Ethan.

“Ethan? What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

Now her eyes are narrowed. “You finished that big presentation you had to work on?”

Ethan sniffs haughtily. Leave it to her to throw that back in his face. “I decided that a break was okay.”

“And you coincidentally ended up at this restaurant?”

“Yup.”

Naomi stands up, muttering a quick “excuse me,” in Tobias’s direction and grabs Ethan’s hand, pulling him away. They nestle into a quiet corner of the restaurant, far away from the table, closer to the kitchen. The door constantly swings open and closed, as the waitstaff goes in and out.

Once they get a moment of quiet, Naomi glares at Ethan, the expression on her face nothing short of annoyed. “Are you spying on me? Because spying on me implies that you don’t trust me.”

“What? Of course I trust you!”

“So what are you doing here, Ethan?”

Ethan bites the inside of his cheek and rocks on the balls of his feet. “Okay, so I was spying.” Naomi opens her mouth to say something, but Ethan beats her to the punch. “It’s not because I don’t trust you! It’s him that I don’t trust.”

“Tobias has been nothing short of a gentleman,” Naomi says and Ethan snorts. “He’s acting a lot of a lot more mature than you are, I can say that much.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, what’s not fair is you treating him like he’s a criminal when he’s given you no reason to do so.”

“He’s given me plenty of reason, Naomi!”

“The last time we saw Tobias, I was near death and he helped save my life,” Naomi says, and that’s more than enough to get Ethan to shut up.

Ethan’s heart slams against his rib cage with enough force to make him think the organ is trying to leave his body. Months have passed since the assassination attempt, but the mention of it is enough to cause Ethan to go into a panic.

“And the time before that, we stole a patient right out from under him, and before that we got into a fight at a freaking hospital softball game,” Naomi continues. “You haven’t been all good, and he hasn’t been all bad, so stop pretending to have the moral high ground.”

“This past year, you made a lot of strides in your personal life. You battled a lot with your mom, but you came out of it, a more well rounded individual, so do not let Tobias’s presence cause you to backslide. I’m not saying he has to be your best friend, but I refuse to tolerate this type of nonsense past today.”

He takes a moment to digest what she’s saying, begrudgingly of course because he doesn’t really want to admit that he hasn’t been behaving like the mature, adult professional that he usually is.

Ethan nods and places a kiss on Naomi’s forehead, his lips lingering there.

“Are you listening to me?”

Ethan kisses the apples of her cheeks, inwardly smirking as he feels Naomi smile. “I promise you that I’ll keep myself in check from now on.”

“And if you don’t, I will.”

The threat causes Ethan to lose focus. She clearly doesn’t mean it in a seductive way, but he can’t help that his brain instantly goes to the gutter when she’s involved. Now he wants nothing more than to be alone with her, with any flat surface readily available.

“Yes ma’am,” Ethan murmurs before capturing her lips with his own.

Naomi doesn’t allow herself to get swept up in the kiss, because she knows Ethan is using it to distract her. She untangles herself from his grip and pulls away before he’s able to get any more leverage.

“Can we go back to the office now?” Ethan asks.

“Absolutely not. I came here to have lunch, so we’re having lunch.”

Ethan frowns. “You still want to go through with this?”

“I didn’t come here to teach you a lesson, and I’m actually enjoying Tobias’s company, so I’m staying. And you’re staying here too.”

“No.”

“You followed me here, you don’t have a choice.”

Ethan reluctantly follows Naomi back to the table, where Tobias is studying the menu. He doesn’t even look up when he hears footsteps approaching. “I’m debating on if I want the ravioli or the chicken parm, which one–” his voice falters as he sees Ethan.

“Look who’s decided to join us for lunch!” Naomi says brightly, steamrolling over the building tension. She pushes Ethan into an empty chair, not giving him a second to turn away.

Tobias opens his mouth to object, “But–”

“I’m going to head to the restroom,” Naomi says. “And one of you guys is ordering me a limoncello, because Tobias is treating.”

She flounces off, not giving either man a chance to respond or argue with her.

Tobias laughs. “Is she always like this? So bossy?”

“Naomi is unapologetically assertive,” Ethan corrects. “She makes no bones about it.”

“The scary part about it is I’m 100 percent going to order her a limoncello, because she’s not the type of person you say no to.”

This time it’s Ethan’s turn to laugh. It’s nice to know he’s not the only unsuspecting sap that cannot say no when Naomi turns on her charm.

Once the laughter tapers off, the former friends are plunged into silence. Ethan checks the time on his watch, watching the seconds stretch on. He needs Naomi to come back. Seriously, how long does it take to use the restroom? He spares a quick glance at Tobias, who’s pointedly not making eye contact with him either.

Eventually Tobias speaks up, “Look, I didn’t come to Edenbrook to cause any trouble. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity that came with more money than I could count.”

“Naveen started this team with the most honorable of intentions,” Ethan says. “This was his life’s work, and he entrusted me with it. You cannot possibly understand the loyalty I have to him, so forgive me if I’m extremely protective over it and skeptical of your motives, which haven’t always been pure.”

“I’m just here to save lives, and work on the most fascinating medical cases of our generation. I know how important this team is, and I’d never intentionally disrespect Naveen like that.”

Ethan nods. That’s all he can really ask of Tobias. “Then I guess we’re good.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

Another beat of silence passes and Tobias awkwardly drums his fingers along the stem of his water glass. “So...you and Valentine?”

The question is out of left field and Ethan’s brows furrow in confusion. “Uh, yeah, me and Valentine.”

“I like her,” Tobias says definitively. When Ethan glares at him, Tobias rolls his eyes. “Not like that. Relax, I get it loud and clear that she’s off limits. Besides, I know you’re head over heels in love with her.”

A scarlet flush creeps up Ethan’s neck at Tobias’s matter of fact declaration. “Love? I’m...we don’t...I don’t–”

Tobias smirks. “Oh man. You’ve got it bad.”

That much, Ethan is willing to share. “Yeah, I do.”

“Naomi did say we’re both emotionally constipated, and that blubbering you just did proves her point,” Tobias teases. “But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

The L-word has floated around in the back of Ethan’s mind for months, but he’s always been able to squash it down, locking it away in the deepest recesses of his brain. But hearing someone else say it is something entirely different. Ethan can’t run away from the thought.

Tobias has known since last year. He suspected something when Ethan came to defense during the softball game, but it was confirmed as soon as he saw them together after the incident with the senator. He had never seen Ethan so out of sorts, not even when they competed for the affections of the same woman back in school. Naomi is different. She has the power to bring Ethan to his knees.

“I hope you know that you’re punching way above your weight with that one,” Tobias adds teasingly.

It’s something Ethan thinks about constantly. Naomi could do so much better than him, but every day she chooses him. “Absolutely.”

“And for what it’s worth, she’s just as much into you. The woman gives you heart eyes whenever you’re around. It’s disgusting, to be quite frank.”

The sentence warms Ethan from the inside out. He’ll never get over knowing Naomi wants him just as much as he wants her.

Thankfully Naomi chooses that moment to come back to the table, giving the men something else to focus their attention on. She settles into a seat next to Ethan, and he immediately wraps an arm around her, his fingertips stroking her arm. Tobias observes the fleeting moment of intimacy with a private smile.

Naomi’s eyes flicker back and forth between the men. “Everything okay over here?”

Tobias and Ethan both look at each other, a silent moment of understanding passing between them. Ethan nods. “Everything is fine.”

Naomi smiles. Maybe there’s hope for them yet. “Good. Now let’s flag down a waiter and get some food.”

~v~

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#playchoices #choices: stories you play #open heart #ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #tobias carrick

175 notes · View notes

script-a-world · 3 years

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hi, any advice on timeline and era etc stuff? I have dyscalculia so numbers and measurements are meaningless to me and it’s really difficult to figure out how much time should lapse (on a large scale; time periods, millennia, eras, etc, not stuff like in one persons lifespan) between eras and events, especially in regards to political n social n technological etc changes

Feral: That depends. There isn’t one answer. You’re asking for longer time periods than a generation or a lifetime, but for scale, take what’s happening now. How many calamities, major political events, social trends, and changes in technology (and how we interact with it) have happened in the year 2020? Since the year 2016? Since 2008? Since 2001? How are they grouped together or spaced apart? And these are all working on each other. In the USA where I live, the 9/11 attacks absolutely have a direct causal effect with the politics that led to the 2016 election (actually before that a Supreme Court decision in the 2000 election also had an impact on that result), and the results of the 2016 election impacted how COVID has been handled this year. That’s 20 years, so when we’re looking at longer timeframes, we scale up. We see gaps and groupings and there just isn’t a specific “oh every decade/score/century, these types of events happen.”

To quote a particularly relevant introduction on Wikipedia:

This results in descriptive abstractions that provide convenient terms for periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. However, determining the precise beginning and ending to any ‘period’ is often arbitrary, since it has changed over time over the course of history.

To the extent that history is continuous and not generalized, all systems of periodization are more or less arbitrary. Yet without named periods, however clumsy or imprecise, past time would be nothing more than scattered events without a framework to help us understand them.

Eras, of the non-geological or -cosmological sort, or time periods are culturally determined, completely variable in length, and often overlap. For example, the beginning of the Victorian Era, 64 years, (defined by Victoria’s rule of England) of the Anglo-influenced world overlapped with the Antebellum Era, 78 years, (defined by political and social tensions in the lead up to the American Civil War) of the United States, which is also part of the Anglo-influenced world, and then following the end of the Antebellum Era, was the American Civil War, 4 years, and then the Reconstruction Era, 14 years (the first 2 of which are within the Civil War), which are both fully contained within the Victorian Era. Typically, when you are trying to think about eras, think about political rulership, wars, and large scale trends like artistic styles. It may also be helpful to familiarize yourself with the Three-Age System, which can be applied individually on cultures, rather describing trends for the whole world.

What it really comes down to when we think of eras and time periods is almost like a type of pareidolia. People see groupings of like things happening and put this grouping into a bubble of time, which kinda doesn’t actually exist in objective reality and is more or less a group hallucination on a massive scale. It calls to mind what Zeno’s arrow might have actually been trying to describe - not to say that this paradox is infallible, but it’s an interesting thought exercise, especially once you get into the quantum Zeno effect.

Now that I have fully diverged from the question at hand, we’ll get back to it. Let’s look at one technology type and how much time elapses between developments as well as some tie-in technological, social, and political forces that may be acting on the developments or that the developments might be acting on. I’ll also note how this technology traverses the eras of history as I find that looking at one discrete set over time is easier than just trying to look at the big picture. Let’s look at the history of printing.

(With hopes that it will be easier for you to conceptualize, I will use simplified (aka rounded up/down) timeframes written numerically rather than spelled out or via terms like decade or century so at the very least you can compare length of numbers. I’m also going to link as many Wikipedia articles as I can - I like Wikipedia for this because of its incredible cross-indexing and how it strings relevant articles together into a series, often chronologically. If the numbers are still challenging for you, I will summarize without at the end.)

5,520 years ago, the very first form of printing we know about is done with cylinders rolled over wet clay in Sumer in 3500 BCE, the beginning of the Early Bronze Age.

3,700 years later, woodblock printing is developed in China somewhere around 200 CE/AD, just after the end of the Pax Romana in Europe.

700 years later, the next development of printing is movable type, which is developed in China in 1040. 26 years later, on the other side of the world, in 1066 is the Battle of Hastings and the establishment of the Norman Era of rulership in England, in another 20 years, in 1086, the Domesday Book is hand written in 2 volumes: 1 is 764 8”x15” pages, the other 900 8”x11” pages.

400 years later gives us the Gutenburg printing press that is developed in Germany (at the time in the Holy Roman Empire) in 1440. This is during the Renaissance Era; it’s also the Era of Humanism, and often called the Early Modern Period. Martin Luther will write the 95 Theses less than 80 years later and start the Protestant Reformation, largely thanks to the ability for the theses to be easily copied by the printing press and spread quickly.

75 years later we have etching in 1515. 90 years later, the first weekly “true” newspaper, the Relation, begins printing in 1604.

130 years later we have mezzotint in 1642, which is the start of the First English Civil War, which will last for 4 years. Depending on your preference, the Age of Enlightenment either began 5 years before or 40 years later (unless you’re French).

130 years later we have aquatint in 1772. That is right at the beginning of the American Revolution: 2 years after the Boston Massacre; 1 year before the Boston Tea Party; 2 years before the Intolerable Acts and the First Continental Congress; 3 years before Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” Speech (which is printed and shared across the colonies), Paul Revere’s Ride, and the Battle of Lexington & Concord; and finally 4 years before Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is published, the signing of the Declaration of Independence (which is printed and shared across the colonies), Nathan Hale’s execution for treason against the Crown, and Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware.

25 years later lithography is developed in 1796; the year prior Napoleon overthrows le Directoire.

40 years later we have chromolithography in 1837, the year Victoria ascends and the first electric/battery powered locomotive is invented.

5 years later is the rotary press in 1843. The First Industrial Revolution is over.

15 years later is the hectograph in 1860. 1 year later, the American Civil War begins.

15 years later is offset printing in 1875. 1 year before, the first commercial typewriter becomes available. 1 year later is Bell and Watson’s first phone call in 1876.

10 years later is hotmetal typing in 1884.

1 year later is the mimeograph in 1885. 2 years later is Black Monday. 5-10 years later the radio is invented.

20 years later is the photostat and rectigraph in 1907.

4 years later is screen printing in 1911. 3 years later WWI begins in 1914.

10 years later is the spirit duplicator in 1923. The Roaring Twenties.

2 years later is dot matrix printing in 1925. 4 years later is the Great Crash.

10 years later is xerography in 1938, the same year as the first digital computer. 1 year later WWII begins in 1939.

2 years later is spark printing in 1940. 1 year later is the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

9 years later is phototypesetting in 1949. The USSR detonates their first atomic bomb.

1 year later is inkjet printing in 1950. Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb. Apartheid becomes law in South Africa.

7 years later is dye-sublimation in 1957. 6 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his “I Have a Dream” Speech.

12 years later is laser printing in 1969, the summer of which is known for very Very.

3 years later is thermal printing in 1972. The break-in at the Watergate Office Building is this same year and 2 years later Nixon resigns.

14 years later is 3D printing in 1986, the year Pixar Animation is founded and the year after the beginning of the Iran-Contra Affair.

1 year later is solid ink printing in 1987. 2 years later is the invention of the World Wide Web, and the internet as we know it.

4 years later is digital printing in 1991, the same year the USSR dissolved. 2 years before, the Berlin Wall fell.

There have been no significant developments in the history of printing since 1991.

So, let’s look at some averages to help us consume this data. Printing has a history of 5,520 years. It took 3,700 years for another development to occur, and then another 700 years after that - in other words, in the first 4,400 years of printing, there were 3 developments, equalling to an average of 1 every 1,470 years. In the 400 years between 1440 and 1843, there were 7 developments (average of 1 every 57 years). In the next 100 years between 1860 and 1957, there were 14 developments (average of 1 every 7 years but with 1 year having 2 developments simultaneously). In the next 22 years between 1969 and 1991, there were 5 developments (average of 1 every 4 years).

While the general trend is that the more a technology develops, the faster it develops, a trend is not the whole picture. Consider: in the 90 years of 1796-1885, there were 6 developments, making the average 1 every 15 years. In the 85 years of 1907-1991, there were 15 developments, making the average 1 every 6 years. There has not been a development in the past 30 years! There hasn’t been this large of a gap since 1837, 180 years ago.

In general, without numbers, what I think we can see here is that sometimes a certain development, like the printing press, can usher in a new era, and sometimes reactions to what else is happening in the world can pressure someone into developing something new, but often times, most times, when you look at just one thing under microscope over time, why that thing is produced in this era but not that era has nothing to do with the eras in question. When we create time periods, we’re generally doing it after the fact. No one living under the rule of the Roman Empire in 100 CE was thinking to themselves, “ah yes, the Pax Romana, when we have peace for 200 years!”

So applying all of this to worldbuilding, I see two methods that you can use together, to create a timeline that makes sense and is useful to your storytelling.

Method the first, arbitrarily create time bubbles of various lengths - I recommend the use of index cards for this. Index card A is 7 years; card B is 150 years; card C is 47 years and so on. Then take big ideas and put those onto your cards; use inspiration from real history. “I want the War of the Roses but condensed into 7 years.” “A Mongolian Empire type expansion happens over 150 years.” “There’s a 47 year Renaissance of fascination with Ancient History.” Then take those cards, lay them out into roughly the order in which you want them to occur, maybe overlap them a little, especially if they are happening in different parts of your world. Remember that time is not actually linear and things do not happen in a linear, narrative manner in the real world, so there can be wild leaps; there can be regressions; and you don’t have to follow real world history here - though you may want to the first time as a helpful exercise. It’s also very unlikely that you will ever have to know exactly how many years are between the eras or what the interstitial eras are.

Method the second, list all the major historical events, inventions, etc that you want/need to have happened. Start with what directly impacts your main characters and plot. “MC’s great-grandfather is humiliatingly defeated in battle, casting a pall of embarrassment across the generations following and ultimately putting the MC in the position that she starts in.” “The first great wizard codifies the 10 Laws of the Important Magical Order that the MC is trying to earn her place in.” Put these in an order that makes sense to you, keeping in mind that it’s not going to be a perfect progression. Again, you don’t need to know how many years there are between each event, but if great-grandpa was the last in a very long line of family members allowed to be in the Important Magical Order, then that IMO had to be founded first, and there would probably be some events between these two.

Then, when you have your two timelines, one of era/time periods and one of events, graft them together. You may have to shift some things to make it work, but consider the “feeling” or theme of the eras and what events make sense in relation to those feelings. Additionally would this event be more suited to happening when the era is new and is finding itself or when the era is solidly on course or is it an event that would completely shatter the illusion of the era and usher in a new one? Does it make sense for your great wizard to be codifying her laws in the expansion of an empire, or during a period of relative peace and prosperity in an established empire, or before empires were a thing in this world and few traveled far from home?

Tex: I’ve found that historically important events are caused for roughly two reasons - one, an invention that others capitalize on for an exponential growth into other inventions/social uses, and two, someone got sick of someone else’s crap and did something about it. Natural disasters will happen with enough frequency to be noted (see: the Little Ice Age, the Black Death, and the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa), although there’s little prediction for them because of the lack of observable build up in activity.

To pull from Feral’s timeline of examples, writing is popularly attributed to being invented in Sumer, 5,520 years ago - it’s our oldest found example, at any rate, though I’ve learned to never say never on archaeological discoveries.

What prompted this invention? Things rarely occur out of the blue, and rarely without interaction from other domains - where could writing have come from? Maybe art? What about from the creation of a tool, a reuse of certain skill sets? Something else we haven’t thought of yet?

So that’s one half of the question. But what about the other half - what did people around the inventor (multiple inventors?) think of this new thing? Deliberately associating a particular sound with a particular object - even a 2D object like pressing shapes into a piece of clay - and then standardizing it, is no mean feat. How did this agreement even happen? Were there arguments about how to do these graphemes, how best to shape them? What about which phoneme to each?

I doubt Sumerian cuneiform was created in a day, and likewise I doubt that language popped into existence on a whim. To keep pulling from this example, language composition has a strong effect on how we interact with our environment (University of Missouri-St Louis Libraries), but it conversely is also deeply affected by the environment its users create (Nature).

Because of this, I think it’s easier to work from a different angle - figure out what your major events are, and what eras you’re covering. If these major events also define an era, that’s even better! Working out how long everything each thing takes is ultimately a bunch of minor details, so it’s up to you how much your plot actively needs them, rather than decoration to your story meant to amuse you more than your audience.

#pylons #time #eras #timelines #Anonymous

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epochxp · 3 years

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Epoch Xperience Interviews Nordic Weasel Founder, Ivan Sorensen

Mr. Sorensen needs no real introduction to many miniature wargamers. His company, Nordic Weasel Games, has taken the historical miniatures gaming world by storm, and he’s become the force on Wargames Vault. His formula of “substance over flash” has produced good games for a very reasonable price, and he has taken full advantage of PDF technology to produce a quality product one can buy and have in your (virtual hands) the next day.

Without further ado, I give you Ivan Sorensen:

Biography

My name is Ivan Sorensen, and I am a game designer and self-publishing writer of miniatures games, as well as the odd role-playing game. Under the moniker of Nordic Weasel Games, I have worked as a game writer for close to 7 years.

I am an avid player of board games, miniatures games, role-playing games, video games, and anything else I can get my hands on. I have spent half my life on this planet in Denmark, where I was born, and half in the United States, where I currently reside. I am married, have one kid and two cats named Scruffy and Lancelot.

Unlike a lot of historical games writers, many of my formative miniatures gaming experiences actually came from science fiction games, so I suppose that has given me a little bit of a different perspective.

So, how did you get started in writing rules? Was there an “aha” moment, or did you fall into it?

At the risk of sounding cheesy, I have basically always created little dice and board games for myself, using Lego pieces or other things that we had available, usually based on video games I had read about in magazines or other ideas like that.

When I was 12 or so, I remember getting a copy of White Dwarf magazine from a local gaming club I had joined, and it blew my mind. We had some limited exposure to the idea of space marines and all these things from the Milton Bradley Hero Quest and Space Crusade board games, but the idea of battle games played without a board, using miniatures and dice was too much to resist. I knew I had to get into this, and as I had no money for it, I sat down to write a game I could play with my Space Crusade figures, which would look as much like what I imagined Warhammer 40.000 would be like.

Since then, I had pretty much always been the “rules guy” in the gaming groups I was part of, whether we were playing miniatures games or RPG’s, so it just came naturally over time, I suppose. As I got access to the internet and later got access to ordering things from the UK or US, I devoured every game I could get my hands on and was even remotely interested in.

The start to writing games that were any good was my own attempt at creating a World War 1 game system (titled Trench Storm). I had shared it online, and to my great surprise, it began catching people’s attention and got a (very) small following, with people even purchasing miniatures to play it. Eventually, I was contacted by the US distributor for IT Miniatures, who offered to print it to promote their 20mm figure range. The rest is, as they say, history. Once in a great while, a copy of that game still pops up on eBay, it seems!

How did Nordic Weasel Games come to be?

So that story took place right around the time I moved to the United States. After moving, I had a lengthy period where I did not have my work permit yet, so game writing seemed like an obvious distraction, resulting in Fast and Dirty, a sci-fi rules set that you still see mentioned online here and there.

As the years went on, I kept tinkering and building things but mostly for my own enjoyment. Sometime during the fall of 2013, I started seriously working on a new game system for WW2 skirmish actions that I felt had some real potential to go places. At the time, I worked at a relatively dead-end middle management job at an incredibly toxic information technology company. You know the sort of job, where you have been there for too long, and you hate every minute of it.

Come the spring, I decided to take a gamble that I could make enough money from game sales to make it worth pursuing and quit. I figured if I could find a way to do it without putting money on the line, then if it all bombed, I could just walk away and find something else to do in life.

Consequently, Five Men in Normandy was released on June 15, 2014, and as of today, we are still here!

What is in the future for Nordic Weasel?

Hopefully, many big things! The biggest priority for 2021 specifically is to get into print books, though there are a lot of stumbling blocks in terms of layout requirements and so on.

I always keep a list of projects I would like to do, though I try not to talk about them too much in case they fall through. I am the sort of guy who always starts with 20 ideas, so by the time the unworkable ones have been weeded out, there are 2 or 3 left.

What I can say is that I am actively looking at fantasy miniatures battles, and I would love to do more WW1 and Black Powder era gaming material.

The real big question is that I am also very much at a point where there are just too many things to do it all alone. I cannot write 4 or 5 new games, support an entire back catalogue, and update old titles all by my lonesome, so I look forward to trying to solve that in the future. I suppose this is a good problem to have, but it is certainly also an intimidating one!

Is there a period of history you want to write rules for but have not?

We have worked extensively with the two world wars and the black powder era in general, as well as 20th century-to-modern era battles, and with Knyghte, Pyke and Sworde we even delved into medieval warfare.

The one that stands out as something that would be fun to do is World War 1 air combat, complete with goggles and scarf flapping in the wind. A little romanticized sure, but great fun, and there is a lot of fantastic models available.

For a historical era I have not touched on at all, I would say that while I have done games that cover it among other 19th century conflicts, a dedicated American Civil War set is something I would be very keen to do.

There are a lot of fantastic rules out there for the period, of course, but I feel like the “Weasel” approach of being solo-friendly and campaign-oriented could carve out a nice space of that market. Plus, I find the era quite fascinating. Growing up in Denmark, I was never really raised with a particular view of the conflict, but having married into a proud Vermont family, it is, of course, unavoidable.

Can you tell our readers what goes into rules writing?

I think this is something that is intensely personal, and the rationale for writing something can be varied: It may be due to sensing an opening in the hobby space that does not seem to be catered to currently. It may be that I have a personal passion for a given setting or era, or it may simply be that I have a clever game mechanic and want to build a game around it.

The process for me usually starts with sketching out a page or two of keywords, mechanics, and things I’d like to hit on a notepad. Then I work on building it out with simple sketches for the main areas of the mechanics: Activations, movement, shooting, morale, and so forth. Basically, carving out the cornerstones of the game system. At this stage, it is entirely possible it feels like it’s not going anywhere, and it goes in the bin.

If the core idea seems to have merit in this skeleton form, it’s time to test it out with some generic troops and see if it actually feels fun on the table. From there, you just build out from it: Get other people to read and play it, read it out loud to yourself, etc. Figure out what parts need ironing out and improving and which are good.

It is really all an iterative process. Once I know the game has legs to stand on, I start writing out the table of contents in advance, so I can “fill in the blanks” as I go. If I know I am going to have a section later for off-map support, I can keep that in mind when I am developing each piece of the mechanics and so forth.

Eventually, any project hits “The Suck (TM).” This is whatever part you hate doing the most, whether it is layout or proofreading or points systems or whatever. For me, it is terrain rules, funny enough. I never read that section of a rulebook, and I never enjoy writing it, but you must. “The Suck” is where your game will probably die because if you let it overcome you, you will put the book down, and every time you click on the word processor, you will immediately be faced with it. The best way to defeat “The Suck” in my experience is caffeine and not letting up: When it starts rearing its ugly head, it is time to keep going and don’t stop until you are through with it.

Has desktop publishing and PDF only supplements changed the face of the hobby? Has it affected the quality of the product we see today?

Absolutely yeah. It’s not that long ago that a game being available in PDF was a novelty, whereas today, if a game is NOT available in PDF, you are going to lose sales.

I think the barrier of entry has also dropped dramatically. Even a basic word processing package can churn out a PDF document that you can distribute online or sell. Of course, with proper page layout software, you can achieve much greater results (as some of my friends are rarely missing a chance to tell me), but you need to examine what your skill limit is. Any tool has a skill cap, to borrow a video game term. If you are not currently good enough at what you do to push up against the limitations of your software, burning 200 dollars on new apps will not make your books any better.

It is funny, though, because the wargaming field is so diverse in the type of things we see. You can pick up relatively big-name games that are incredibly plain-looking: Black and white, no art, rudimentary layout. Then right next to it, you see a PDF that is full-color, original artwork, and gorgeous. And the two can be viewed as equal value to the audience.

Of course, eye candy DOES sell, but I think once you are beyond the Warhammer circles, gamers become a lot more content-focused.

What are your favorite historical periods and why?

The 19th Century, the two world wars and the Russian Civil War.

Really, the whole era from circa 1910 to 1925 or so is fascinating to me: It is, of course, the transition of the old, romanticized world to the world of modern warfare, as well as being incredibly diverse in the sort of things you can see. The Russian Civil War sees tanks and armored cars, partisan bands, nationalist militias, Red and White guards, Cossack cavalry armies, Anarchists, and anything else you can shake a stick at. It is really a wargamers heaven for finding odd units to model up on the gaming table.

Honestly, my love of history, in general, comes from one source: “All Quiet on the Western Front.” I think anyone with a passion for history has that moment where they realize that history is not about abstract concepts and kings and dates but is about real people who lived and breathed and had dreams and hopes. “All Quiet” was that for me, and it left a life-long impression on me when I read it as a teenager a few years from the age of the characters in the book.

What do you see for the future of historical miniature wargaming?

Oof, that is a dangerous question. I think I managed to predict the rise of “Warband” level games (games where you play a small force in skirmish actions and with some level of character progression between games). Right now, that idea has set the fantasy and sci-fi miniatures scenes on fire, with everyone churning out their own version of the concept.

In historical gaming, there are elements of it, but it has not been embraced to the same extent, possibly due to the grognard bias against skirmish games. I think if I had to put money on something, I would say watch out for historical skirmish games with campaign aspects or character progression in the next year or three.

I also think solo gaming is going to continue to gain in popularity and respectability, with more games developed primarily or even specifically for solo play. I am super excited to see this field because there is a lot of things that can be done here with how enemies arrive on the table, fog of war, and so forth, which is not possible in a conventional opposed game.

Playtesting, how important is it?

Very, but it’s also very misunderstood. I see people post all the time on forums about how they have been testing their game rules for 5 years. That sounds very impressive, but if you are only getting together 3 or 4 times a year in that time frame, you are basically starting over each time. Additionally, just playing the game with your own group is fine to iron out the basic problems of a game, but it will lose its value very quickly.

To get actual feedback, give the game to people who cannot ask you questions and let them figure it out. Now your text must stand on its own feet and must work without you being there to explain the intentions. That is the real test. I would say three games played by strangers is worth more than ten games with your usual Saturday group.

Of course, tracking down people who can understand the rules, will play the game, [and] report back to you, AND aren’t crazy is a challenge. If you post online, 50 people will say they would love to, and of those, two will read the book. Once you find reliable people who can give you good feedback, cling to them for dear life.

What are the benefits and pitfalls of self-publishing your own wargaming rules?

The biggest advantage is, of course, that you are in charge. What you want in the book goes, if you want a supplement, it will happen, and so forth. Additionally, your game will reflect what you wanted it to be. I think in [self-publishing], you get a lot clearer creative visions and indie gamers tend to gravitate towards that: A game that has something to say on the topic is extremely attractive, even if you disagree with a particular conclusion.

I try to do as much myself as I can, though, of course, I do rely on outside sources for things like artwork, feedback, etc. Part of that is that this way, I know I can support the product down the road: If I want to fix a rule where we came up with a better way of doing it, or I want to add a new section, I can do that.

The downside, of course, is that you are on your own: Your art is as good as your own wallet can make it, your book looks as good as you can make it (unless you pay for it), and so forth. You also must promote it yourself. If you are writing for something like Osprey, they have marketing power and money to put behind the project.

Anything else you would like to say to our readers?

Before you write a game, ban yourself from reading any game on the same topic for a few months. If you are writing a WW2 tank game, put all your WW2 games in a box and do not open it. You should be spending that time immersing yourself in the topic in the form of books, music, documentaries, or anything else. Never ever another game.

Also, it cannot hurt to blast some metal albums, at least in my experience.

At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.

(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)

#Wargame Miscellaneous #interview #wargaming #history #gaming

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amer-ainu · 5 years

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By Junko Hirabayashi Published on Thursday, May 30, 2019

Maya Sekine is a 20-year-old Ainu woman, cultural ambassador and YouTuber. She is passionately proud of her Ainu ancestry and culture, teaching the long dormant language to a new wave of people curious about the Ainu.

She tells SBS Japanese that Ainu culture beginning to flourish once again, thanks in part to people such as herself, but also thanks to the likes of anime series Golden Kamuy.

But before we go on, it’s worth taking a look at the Ainu people’s history and culture.

Ainu who?

“The Ainu people don’t exist only in our history textbooks,” says Maya. “We blend into the mainstream society more than you think. We are so assimilated that you can’t tell who is Ainu or not.”

Originally inhabiting the Northern area of Japan, Ainu people once populated the northern Tohoku region, Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and to Kuril Island between the 17th century and 19th century, according to the Ainu Association of Hokkaido. Now most openly Ainu people live mostly in Hokkaido.

The decline of Ainu people and culture came as a result of a strict policy of assimilation introduced by the Japanese government in the late 19th century. Practicing Ainu customs and language were banned until only recently. Ainu people still suffer income and education gaps between themselves and the mainstream Japanese population.

In the 19th century, Ainu were banned from speaking their language and practising their customs.

The Japanese government only this year took steps to officially recognise Ainu people as an indigenous population and grant them special rights to practice their culture, though many have criticised those steps as inadequate.

“The assimilation policy introduced by the Japanese government was so powerful and effective,” says Maya. “Many of us forgot our own culture and language. In terms of native speakers of the Ainu language, we have only a few people left.”

According to 2013 data from the Hokkaido government, the population of the Ainu people in the prefecture is about 16,800. However, the prefecture government admitted that the number was based on the data each local city or council could track and the actual number of the Ainu people in Hokkaido is still unknown.

Japan's population is 126.2 million as of this month. The country has a national census every five years but no data is collected on the Ainu ethnic identity to this day.

After centuries of cultural assimilation, it is believed that most Ainu people left their traditional lands and the population is now scattered throughout Japan.

‘It’s time to let people know how cool the Ainu are’

Maya now attends the prestigious Keio University in Tokyo, but she is originally from a small village called Nibutani in Hokkaido. The population of Nibutani is around 400, with approximately 80 percent of people being of Ainu descent.

Maya hasn’t experienced any explicit discrimination herself, and has come to think more deeply about her Ainu identity since leaving her small town for the big smoke of Tokyo.

“I started thinking about my identity after I left my village. Some people hide it because of the negative images from the past,” says Maya, who visited Australia this month to speak at the Japan Foundation Sydney.

“Instead of dwelling on my identity, hide it or not, I thought it was a good time to let people know how cool the Ainu are.”

Maya is fluent in the Ainu language and has twice won first place at the Ainu speech contest. Her path as a promoter of Ainu culture ranges from recording in-bus announcements in the Ainu language to teaching the language on Japanese radio and online.

“Times have changed,” she says. “Less and less people have negative images of the Ainu. When I tell people about my identity their reactions are usually positive. Some people even say they think it is cool.”

Ainu anime a game changer

Ainu people and culture have gained more popularity outside Japan thanks to the popular animation series Golden Kamuy, which is set in Hokkaido and Sakhalin during the end of Meiji Period, the 19th century. The series depicts the Ainu language and culture in details in the story.

The printed comic book series stretches to 17 volumes so far and sold more than nine million copies as of March this year. They are translated and available in English, Chinese, French, Italian and Spanish. Its TV animation series was broadcast in Japan last year.

Indeed, the TV series is so popular and influential that Hokkaido businesses are cooperating with the animation studio that produces the show to promote local products such as beer and chocolate drinks. The Hokkaido Tourism Organisation also launched a promotion collaborating with Golden Kamuy in April, which will run for a year.

“Golden Kamuy stimulated young people’s interest in the Ainu tremendously”, Maya says. “The Ainu culture can reach a lot of people through fashion too. Like anime and YouTube, I think Japan’s sub-cultures will play a big role in terms of reviving the Ainu culture and language.”

#Ainu #Maya Sekine #Golden Kamuy

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christinaengela · 4 years

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Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 45th newsletter – September 2020!

On A Personal Note

August was a blurry month – it really doesn’t feel like September, it feels more like March the 342nd! Know what I mean? Anyway, between work and everything else I have going on the side, the last six months or so have literally disappeared! For most people, this year has been a complete loss, for me I’ve at least published 7 new titles. Not to brag, but this brings my tally up to 30 books!

On the home front, my workshop is where I indulge my creative side in wood and metal work. Some years ago however, I got sick and tired of sharing my workspace with the rest of the garage! When it rained, it meant I couldn’t run my vintage bug outside, and the small space available meant I wouldn’t be able to work in there that day! About two years ago, I built a greenhouse against the side of the house across the alleyway between the house wall and the boundary wall, bordering on the back garden, which in the end my love convinced me to use as a workshop space instead! For the past two years, this has been where I worked on various projects, regardless of the weather. The only problem with that was again, space. While I had more permanently accessible space to keep my tools and to work, quite a lot of my tools were actually kept in shelving under the work benches. I needed more space – or to be more specific, a broader room to work in.

So, finally, last week I finally gave up on the bar area. It was where we entertained friends and it consisted of an actual bar room with an adjoining dining area with casual benches and a table for when we had barbeques etc. It’s been a considerable amount of time since we’ve entertained anyone who drinks, and neither of us actually drinks much more than a brandy now and then – scarcely enough to warrant wasting the useful premium real-estate on a bar! It would be far better to just dedicate a cupboard inside the house to housing the drinks, glasses and accoutrements – and all my collectibles, antique cameras and telephones etc. on the walls could be redistributed around the rest of the house.

That said, Wendy could have her greenhouse back – and so last week I relocated my workshop to the larger space where I have more room to work on projects and store and organize my tools and materials! For the first time, I feel I actually have the right space to indulge my creativity! The adjoining stoop will still be reserved for chats, game nights and barbeques – should they ever arise again.

Aside from that little personal ramble ,I also have some very good writing-related news to share with you this time – another two of my books have come out as audiobooks, and I’ve also published a new novelette called “Lifetime”! Moon Books also released an anthology I was the Editor for, so it’s really been a productive year for me so far!

Art

I also indulge in painting from time to time – and no, I don’t mean walls! The following paintings are in my portfolio:

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“Human Nature” 2017 A4 acrylic canvas

“Balancier” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“Rescuer” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“The Awakening” 2020 A2 acrylic canvas

“The Earth Wept” 2020 40x40cm acrylic on canvas

You can read more about my art projects on the Art page.

What do you think of them? Feel free to let me know!

Music

Yes – I also make music from time to time!

A selection of music tracks I made using eJay and other similar apps between 1999 – 2008 are available on my YouTube channel.

You can read more on the Music page on my website!

Activism

For those of you interested in my activism-related posts and activities, you can follow them at “Sour Grapes: The Fruit Of Ignorance“.

Current Writing Projects

On a suggestion of Brandon Mullins from Moon Books, I agreed to a combined edition of “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room”, to replace the two novellas published in February this year. The new book is novel length at over 46000 words, and I also wrote a short foreword and an introductory portion to precede the first part of the story.

As I mentioned several times previously, I have still a lot of work to do! I have a number of part-way completed stories awaiting my loving attention! Unfortunately, life and work have a nasty habit of getting in the way!

Also, thanks to Lulu.com’s spite in throwing their entire publishing platform into a mincer and expecting users to just shut up and like it, I have left the platform entirely – but aside from the immense amount of work that precipitated on my side with having to relocate all my books from there to other platforms, it also means I’ll have to rebuild one of my books entirely from the ground up! “The Pitfalls of South African Self-Publishing” is now out of print thanks to Lulu. Why? Because the second half of the book details the ease of self-publishing using Lulu’s old platform – the one they entirely scrapped and replaced with a vague, useless monstrosity – and gives a step-by-step example with screenshots, and is practically a love-letter to Lulu! I will now have to redraft that entire portion of the book, thanks to them!

In the past week or so I’ve been working on an editing project for Moon Books, and you can read more about that in the next section.

Editing

I completed editing an anthology for Moon Books in mid-August entitled “Moon Books Horror Anthology V”. This book contains 7 short stories filled with pure dread – and it was released on 20 August. It’s already available in eBook and paperback.

Currently I’m close to finishing the edit of a sci-fi tale for Moon Books. “Avenging Aranis” is by UK writer Steve McElhenny, and it’s the first part of a trilogy!

Marketing – The Dreaded “M” Word!

Portfolio 2020!

I thought it would be nice if I could produce a neat, organized catalog of all my books that interested parties could download and browse – a free, distributable and shareable catalog, and so I created “Portfolio 2020!” – a listing of all my currently available titles!

Portfolio is more than that though, because it also contains a biography as well as synopses for most of my titles – and I have a plan to update it regularly, perhaps on an annual basis! Portfolio 2020 is available as a free download from my website.

Videos

In August, Nigel Peever made this amazing audiobook trailer video for the newly released “Demonspawn” – have a look, isn’t it beautiful?

https://christinaengela.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/demonspawn-video-by-nigel-peever.mp4

Sales

Let’s start with the good news! Audiobook sales over July were truly amazing – with a massive (by my previous standards) 42 copies of “Blachart” sold from Audible during that month! This frenetic surge in sales didn’t last very long, just to the end of July, with just 3 sales of that book in August. I realize a slowdown is inevitable as a new title stops being new. In fact, August proved to be rather dull in comparison, with just 3 sales of “Blachart“, and 3 sales of a new audiobook title, “When Darkness Calls“. This of course led me to formulate a new personal theory regarding sales, popularity and choice of narrator when publishing an audiobook – one I will probably explore later in the second edition of “The Pitfalls of South African Self-publishing”, which I am working on as time allows.

But I digress! Ebooks sales on Ebooks2go have picked up a bit over August since I transferred my titles there at the start of the month, culminating in three whole sales (sarcasm definitely intended). To give you an idea how writers get ripped off by some distribution channels, just check out the screenshot below:

The three top-most entries show three eBook sales via Hoopla – and each of those titles sold for $2.99. What do I get out of it? 14 US cents out of $2.99 per sale! It’s positively downright bloody criminal! For comparison, the one beneath that – a sale via B&N at least gave me $1.64 out of $2.99 – but only one of those from July. No wonder so many writers give up!

Over-all though, I’ve got the idea that sales have been dwindling globally and not just for me, so I’m by no means feeling picked on. I realize that with economies teetering on the brink of disaster – and so many of my contacts on Facebook posting the sad news that they will be homeless and sleeping in their cars or on the streets within days – how very, very lucky I am. I may not be raking it in as an author – but at least I have a secure job, for which I’m very thankful indeed!

Publishing

These are the books I’ve released so far this year!

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Between January and September 2020 I released eight new titles! Of these, two – “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” have been replaced by one combined title, “Mirror, Mirror” which includes both of them. Of course, this reduces my count back to 30 again – but when you already have 30 or so books to your name, what’s one here or there?

New Releases:

“Lifetime”

On August 07 Moon Books Publishing released a novella of mine called “Lifetime“, bringing my title-count up to 30! Here’s a look at the back cover blurb for the book:

“An entrepreneurial couple, happily married, run their deep-space prospecting company together. They are unexpectedly separated when the ship one of them is aboard is lost during a prospecting voyage. The other spares no effort in an attempt to find her, and immediately sets out on another ship to find her. Meanwhile on a remote planet, surrounded by wreckage and the bodies of her crewmates, she has survived and treated her injuries, and fights to stay alive while she awaits rescue…”

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook (coming soon)

“Lifetime” is available in ebook and paperback and will be coming out in audiobook format soon, narrated by Miciah Dodge.

“Mirror, Mirror”

This was shortly thereafter followed by another new title “Mirror, Mirror”, on August 11, which repackages “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” into one single novel-length book. “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” are also now out of print – being henceforth exclusively available in “Mirror, Mirror”.

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook (coming soon)

Here’s a look at the description:

“Things aren’t always as they seem. Neither was Charlie Branson – or Andy Niksn.

Outwardly, Charlie appeared to be the successful, respected, somewhat over-paid Captain of a commercial space liner.

In truth, it was 2025 – space liners did not yet exist, and the space liner Freedom was really just a very expensive set – a fancy simulator for wealthy clients the company took on simulated cruises into deep space to forget the real world for a while, to get away from it all – and they loved them for it!

In an atmosphere where people were locked away from reality for weeks at a time, and cos-playing and roleplaying redefined ‘normal’, telling fact and fantasy apart became more complicated than expected. For those who preferred the pleasant escape from the harsh realities of life outside, like Charlie, wishing it could all just be real became something almost like a prayer.

Andy Niksn, by contrast, was the very successful respected and somewhat over-paid Captain of an actual commercial space liner in the year 2773. Trouble was, Andy felt trapped! He was in a relationship – a dead-end partnership that had no future and promised both even less happiness. On top of that, his friend Jim had died recently, leaving Andy in the darkest place he’d ever been – and he didn’t mean space!

Andy wished he could just wake up to a different reality where everything could make sense again! For Andy, this too became something almost like a prayer!

As it turned out, someone heard them.

The answer wasn’t quite what they expected.”

Audiobooks

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“All That Remains” JEA (2019)

“See Them Aliens” MBP (2019)

“Blachart” MBP (2020)

“When Darkness Calls” (2020)

“Demonspawn” MBP (2020)

On August 7th I received the completed audiobook of book 2 in the Galaxii series, “Demonspawn“, narrated (and dramatized) by Nigel Peever! The audiobook was finally released on August 31, and it was worth every minute I waited for it!

Nigel has also committed to narrating book 3 in Galaxii, after the five or so other books he has waiting in the queue, so he should only get round to that one somewhere around January ’21. In the meantime, that gives me time to work on Galaxii book 4! 😉

On August 20, “When Darkness Calls“, narrated by Miciah Dodge, was released via Audible! You can read more about it here.

Coming Soon

In the meantime, here’s a look at the covers for hot new audiobooks currently in the pipeline:

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“Malice!” (2020) COMING SOON!

“Lifetime” (2020) COMING SOON!

Stay tuned for updates!

Reviews

You can see all my previous reviews here.

Currently Available Titles

I now have 30 unique titles available in 4 series (not including books I’ve been the editor for, and my 16 free promotional items)! My books are available in three different formats: EBooks, Paperbacks and Audiobooks. Click the links or images below to view titles available in these formats.

Communication

Below are links to a few of my most recent posts and articles since my last newsletter:

New Release: Demonspawn Audiobook

New Release: When Darkness Calls Audiobook

New Release: Horror Anthology V

Sinotec SJ86C LED Projector Review

New Release: Lifetime by Christina Engela

New Release: Mirror, Mirror by Christina Engela

“Demonspawn” Audiobook Now In For Review!

New Release: Lifetime by Christina Engela

Some Great Resources For Writers

Another Round At The Crow Bar #44 August 2020

If you want to see more articles, just click on the category links below:

Elements of Horror

FAQ Answered

Fun Facts

LGBT Heroes

The Tech Side

Secret Weapons of the Resistance

Writing Advice

Guest Writers

Newsletters

Interactions

Fan Mail, Reader Reviews & Honorable Mentions

I found the following awesome items to show you this month!

Great Book July 20, 2020 review on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook):

Excellent story! “This is a very well written Sci-Fi tale that is told by an awesome narrator. I can’t wait to hear book 2!” – D. Sturgeon, Aug 13, 2020 on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook).

Epic!!! “Another great tale told by narrator Nigel Peever. I look forward to the continuing Adventures of Blachart and Michael.” – Justin Bradley, Aug 16, 2020 on Audible for “Blachart” (audiobook).

Great Narrator “The story is pretty creepy, it takes place in South Africa. I’ve never heard haunting stories from this area. It’s a fun little story if you’re doing a drive on a dark night. The narration sounded excellent, and the protagonist in the story wasn’t taking no crap from the evil dead!” – Jeff Spencer, Aug 21, 2020 on Audible for “When Darkness Calls” (audiobook).

I display my Fan Mail, Reviews & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You’re always welcome to have a look.

Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review my collection here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking, or you might choke while laughing!

Interviews

All my interviews are linked to from this page. If you would like to do an interview with me about my work, please do get in touch!

In Closing

Well, that’s all for this time, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction!

Feel free to email or message me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn if you have any comments or questions!

Until next time, keep reading!

Cheers! 🙂

Catch me on social media!

If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.

If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to [email protected] or use the Contact form.

Show your appreciation for Christina’s work!

Another Round At The Crow Bar #45 September 2020 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 45th newsletter - September 2020!

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blankdblank · 5 years

Text

Anaticula Pt 26

Pt 1 - Pt 2 - Pt 3 - Pt 4 - Pt 5 - Pt 6 - Pt 7 - Pt 8 - Pt 9 - Pt 10 - Pt 11 - Pt 12 - Pt 13 - Pt 14 - Pt 15 - Pt 16 - Pt 17 - Pt 18 - Pt 19 - Pt 20 - Pt 21 - Pt 22 - Pt 23 - Pt 24 -

Through Myrtle’s bathroom you passed making sure to close the door behind you, under his collar Percy brought out his time turner and looped the chain around your necks. Half a turn back again you heard the muffled whir of the world backtracking to the end of the Quidditch match. Wetting your lips you glanced out the window seeing the storm still blowing past as Percy removed the chain he tucked back under his collar.

Turning together you made for the door and entered the empty halls you hurried through down to the exit overlooking the field between you and Hagrid’s Hut. In the first sight of students approaching Percy gave a sudden shiver and clenched his eyes shut in morphing into a bright orange fox. Not hesitating you shifted right after he did into a silver fox and darted after him pretending to play you way across the field in the falling snow until the crowds were out of sight and you took off for the forest.

Ignoring the cold you shook the snow off your fur and hurried through the tall roots and winding paths towards Hagrid’s Hut. Above you curious crows eyed your path flying after you wondering what you were up to, all filling the branches above you as you crouched down seeing the Hippogriffs moving to the school in the first explosion. Crouching down you settled by one another to keep warm, simply waiting for the perfect moment.

Calmly the duo were shown back to their shed habitat and you watched Hagrid seal their enclosure and head back inside his hut. It didn’t take long for you to see the duo of Aurors arrive along with an executioner making you stand and start to creep out. At the arriving group the duo exited their shed eyeing each of the trio in their arguing with Hagrid. The argument turned the Aurors from friendly witnesses to forceful guards in aiding the executioner in shoving Hagrid into his hut they planned to seal him inside. Hurrying across the snow you caught the attention of the creatures, who saw your enchanted doorway appear in the center of their clearing. A catch of your color shifting eyes lured the pair curiously behind you through the doorway into your snow covered gardens at home. Quietly the door shut and vanished halting the argument as Hagrid eyed the empty clearing and began shouting for the pair of assumed fleeing killer creatures.

In the vast intricate gardens you led them off to a shed which easily was shifted to a replica of theirs you settled them in and fed the pair once you had shifted back again. Softly between your strokes on the pair you assured them they would be safe in their new homes before you used the doorway to head back to the kitchens for a snack you took to the Puff dorm. Sitting quietly, choosing to wait for the other students to be led back to the dorms in the dungeons that were sealed behind you while the Professors righted the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tower was inspected for any damage. Grins spread across the faces of the students who caught onto your hints that the pair had escaped their death sentence, a rumor stirring up a glimmer of hope in Hagrid’s chest when it made its way to him as he helped to guide the Gryffindors out to their tower again through Flitwick guiding the Ravenclaws.

8pm the next day, finally your Magical Creatures course started and at his hopeful stare following you to his side to accept the packets he had made his eyes dropped to the snapshot you had taken of the pair that morning in their feedings revealing they were safe at your home. A soft sniffle later and he nodded in what he hoped to be a thanks to you he found himself unable to verbalize just yet pocketing the image. Among the other students you entered the heated bubble containing stone bleachers for Hagrid’s preferred classroom to which a gold baby Unicorn had wandered to as its mother scoured for a fresh patch of food. All the class you all stroked the curious little filly keeping your pamphlets from its reach to avoid its nibbling them to shreds until the mother returned and guided him off to their dinner.

Up to the school you and the twins walked and your fingers kept sliding over the edge of the odd sky blue letter that had arrived for you on the wings of a snow coated owl among the other late deliveries through dinner due to the earlier storm delaying the breakfast post. In shimmering silver ink you read the stamp marking it from Paris in the top right corner addressed simply,

“Miss J. Black,

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

All through the meal you had stared at it oddly wondering who could have sent it. Sure you had gotten more than a few letters from Lycans whose lives you had affected and Bernadette you knew well enough that she was in Italy for the next few months helping in their Ministry there with something. Without any Choir tonight you waited until you could head back to your dorm to read it.

Atop the steps of your bunk you were seated, turning the envelope over you broke the seal with an olive branch in gold wax and brought out the folded letter inside.

“Miss Black,

Under the request of my employers, Vivienne and Olivier Pearisiyiae, I have been asked to draft this inquiry to you.

As you may not be aware in 1935 their daughter Suzsieanne Pearisiyiae had been reported missing after a trip to Great Brittain. Under the spreading of the news on your acts in defense of your school and creatures within, a picture of yourself and your mother were uncovered and it brought up a painful question for my employers.

For all our investigations your mother Jewelia was adopted by a Muggle family from an orphanage long since dismantled, leaving the discovery of her birth parents believed impossible. The inquiry I was posed to make was towards the question of your maternal grandparents’ identities. If you could manage to grant us any knowledge you might have upon this mystery that would be wonderful. To answer the wonder as to why the question was posed enclosed are copies of portraits of my employers and their daughter.

Best wishes to you in this upcoming holiday season,

The Pearisiyiae Family”

Cedric grinned at you saying, “Fan mail?”

You shook your head saying, “It’s a letter, some couple has a missing daughter, they’re asking if I could send them what I know about my Mum’s parents.” Separating the pages your eyes fell to the portraits folded between the pages.

One with a couple in black and white, the man staring off to the side while the woman rested her head on his shoulder sadly.

The second one a woman wearing a wide brimmed hat tilted out of her face in a fur collared dress coat over her layered skirt with hands tucked into a fur muff. The resemblance of the women to your mother and yourself was uncanny, though through your father you inherited your tight curly hair and your shifting eyes from your mother vastly unlike the chestnut hair and icy blue eyes of the women. Passing both over to the twins you caught their brows rising.

Fred, “Wicked.”

George, “I can see where you got it all from.”

Cedric, “Suz-,” he huffed, “Where have I read that before?”

Turning around you grabbed your schedule from the desk reading out your full name, Jaqiearae Suzsieanne Anistasiea Pluto Black, “It’s my middle name.”

Fred, “Well, one of them.”

George wet his lips, “Wait, if your mum was just born when she was sent to the orphanage, how did she know the name?”

You shrugged, “Dad did mention she had dreams occasionally. Maybe she had one about the name.”

Cedric passed you back the letters and schedule, “What are you going to tell them?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think it over I guess.” They nodded and you accepted the pictures again you carried to your desk you sat at through the yawns of the guys in their move to their beds mumbling about the Astronomy class at midnight they wanted to nap prior to.

In their drifting off you sat at your desk, drawing out a sheet of your yellow stationary with bundles of fireflies in the corners. Anxiously you wet your lips and raised your feather tipped pen you uncapped and lowered to the page.

“Mr and Mrs Pearisiyiae,

There really isn’t much I can share that will bring you peace for the location of your daughter. Yes I agree the resemblance is uncanny. I will not waste your time so here are all the facts I know.

My Mother in her years at school uncovered that her father was Morfin Gaunt, her mother was unnamed on the birth certificate. For my own research I went to their former home and found a grave for Morfin, his father Marvolo and his sister Merope. Alongside their shared headstone is a smaller one marked simply ‘Wife of Morfin Gaunt’, I traced their family tree and records available and no marriage license or documents held the name of his wife.

The pair were killed in what was named by muggles as simply ‘Accident’ on their death records, though in my own research I was able to discover that Merope’s son, Tom Riddle Jr. In his late teens upon learning the identity of his father from a notable muggle line proceeded to murder their entire family and then turned his aggression at their refusing to acknowledge him as kin and for the abandonment of his mother no doubt did the same to Morfin and his wife in 1943. Years later upon discovering my mother’s identity he proceeded to do the same to her as well.

There is no pleasant way to word this knowledge so it is best stated plainly without any fluff or flourish. If your daughter was this unnamed wife I do offer you my sincerest condolences and if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.

Sincerely,

Jaqi Black”

Folding the letter up you brought out one of your envelopes you slid it inside before sealing it with a duck print seal in yellow wax, adding the owl code they had included on the second page. Before you could turn your head you remembered your owl was already off with a letter to Petunia, the thick stack of letters contained all drafted letters you had finally finished and decided to send off at once explaining how big a testing year this was. Closing your eyes you inhaled and levitated the envelope above your palm then swirled your fingers now coated in flames in a draconic spell to transfer items across great distances. Blankly you stared at the portraits, both stagnant in their copied state then set them aside to try and sleep through yet another bout of no doubt painful dreams due to the mass of Dementors on the grounds for their nightly patrols.

To your surprise lightness was found along with a great sense of ease, the great weight on the school dissipated in the removal of the Dementors. A copy of Neville and Ron’s memories were given to the Ministry of Magic, pertaining their attack and one from Ginny on yours. The latter was dismissed as even in your defense Fudge insisted any creature to attack an Auror be destroyed heightening his demand for a search for the creature in question until it was found.

Due to the Aurors who had captured Andrew word had rippled through the Ministry and once Alice and Frank Longbottom had heard of Neville’s attack they headed the call to punish Andrew no matter what task he had been given. Insisting that safety of the children of the school should have been put first.

By the day of the Hogsmeade trip you had received word that Ser had been sentenced to five years in prison for child endangerment, a lesser charge Fudge had been forced into by the weight of all the Aurors and citizens demanding punishment.

Doing all he could Fudge scrambled for anything to distract the people from what was being said about him, though none had expected to discover that this year Great Britain would be hosting the Quidditch World cup this year. A full six pages of the Prophet were packed with detailed pictures and notes on the gigantic stadium being built for the occasion. All that burying the fury to the final pages in a small section behind the wanted adds. Passing the paper to Cedric your eyes rose to a random black owl releasing an awkward screech with a familiar sky blue envelope in its talons, a raising of your left hand turned its swoop to release the letter then circle back again up to the rafters to nap before its long flight back.

Through the jealous narrowed glare from your owl to the new bird you opened the letter from the same couple’s employee who wrote,

“Miss Black,

We thank you for your assistance in this matter. It is truly troubling information though there is hope that finally we will have discovered their lost child. My employers for New Years are flying out to England for a wedding of a distant relation and are wondering if you might be willing to meet up for tea and possibly share the location of the graveyard you had spotted the headstone in. Should their suspicion be true though they have missed a great deal of your life they do wish to have a place in it through the future should you so allow.

Fondest Wishes,

The Pearisiyiae Family”

The note was passed around and watching you eagerly your owl spotted your pulling out a piece of parchment to hastily copy down the request to your father you folded up and managed to raise just in time for your overeager owl to take off with it. Even Harry got a turn with it and promptly turned to ask, “You’re really going to meet with them?”

Your head tilted and you answered, “Well, if it is their daughter they could have closure.”

Harry, “But they want to be in your life in the future.”

“They might be nice. And we do go to Paris nearly each summer. I doubt they would demand anything.”

Ron, “Who is gonna take you?”

You shrugged, “Not sure. Dad can’t, Remus will be working on his lessons maybe,”

Draco who had taken the seat by you across from Cedric said, “Mum could take you.” Your brow inched up, “Said something about visiting Dad’s Mum. Mum and Gran hate each other, she could take you.”

Your lips pursed for a moment then you replied, “That could work.”

Loading up from your shopping trip a series of gifts were gathered up and wrapped before you turned back to the last of this term’s assignments you finished and added to your pile to turn in before looking over the layout of practice exams for the OWLS and NEWTS. Mainly all written exams filling up your final two weeks of school before the train ride home.

Charms – Mon

After breakfast all the fifth and seventh year Charms students would remain behind in the Great Hall. Anxiously you all watched along the walls while the long tables were traded for single desks with your names alphabetically assigned to each of them. With fifth years on one side and the seventh years on the other, all in the same sinking feeling when you lowered into the desks. Atop the platform on a tall chair Professor Flitwick sat and sent out the test packets out to each desk saying, “You have two hours for the exam,” an easy grin slid onto his face, “Remember, this is your only class for the day, once this is through you are free to return to your dorms or even head out to the grounds for some fresh air.”

The last packet hit the desk in front of George and Percy in the back and he said, “You may begin.” In the silent room echoes of the shifting pages and creasing of the front fold signaled Flitwick to settle back in his seat allowing the room to simply relax into the hefty practice exams containing information from all their years so far.

Question by question you answered, recognizing so many from the years before that you had quizzed the elder Weasleys and Tonks on. Nearly to the last minute you were finalizing the end of the last question, an essay question ‘Name the various benefits of learning to charm inanimate objects to dance.’ A few snorts could be heard through the room at the hopefully mood lightening question that varied responses were given to.

Groggily with the last of the exams turned in you filed out of the hall and split up, your group heading to your dorm room to return to cramming in all you could for the exam the following day.

Transfiguration – Tue

Professor McGonagall came next. Atop the platform she looked over you all with a proud gaze hoping as always that you all would do well in her exams. More hefty packets were passed out and seemingly alone up in the front row you bit your lip opening to the first page at her saying, “You may begin.”

Two thirds were short answer with a large chunk after true or false questions leading up to the final question, ‘Which form would you choose for yourself as your Animagus and why.’

For you especially this question was difficult as you had gone from loving your time shifting to a moose, cat, Phoenix and fox. All differently with various reasons but glancing at the time you simply gave the most honest answer you could give, naming your love for each and stating that at this time you would not be able to decide on a single form. In the path out of the Hall you caught her eyes scanning over you wondering at your uncertain expression on the final question, hoping you wouldn’t get points taken off for being honestly indecisive.

Herbology – Wed

Professor Sprout was downright bubbly as she had a line of plant scrapings she would tend to through your test taking for planting and potions needed for the next term. If you thought the others were thick this one downright dwarfed them as it asked for short answers that each question would build onto until moving onto the next subject with a few short essay sections between. All leading to the final question of your chosen most important plant you had learned of with a required explanation after.

DADA – Thur

Remus next stood looking over you all, feeling just as unsteady as you all did remembering just how nerve wracking this experience was. So far the smallest packet, but also the most challenging at the simple short answer style. Each of your classes had to be remembered with various obscure details thrown in narrowing the similar terms, spells or hexes you would have to name properly. The final page filled with situational questions that fed into a final essay question on one portion of the topics you had learned that could be improved upon for future generations. The end of it using the recent advances of Lycan studies as an example.

Wetting your lips you brushed the feathered end of your pen along your forehead as many other students did before answering that you thought it would help to have yearly defense clubs that each student could request hands on lessons on certain spells, creature based topics, hexes or charms.

Ancient Runes – Fri

Professor Babbling, in one of the arguably smallest of groups looked over you all as you started on the monstrously thick packet. Begrudgingly you made it through the mostly short answer portion leading up to the final question in an essay you were asked to choose the most influential rune language you had been taught and to write a day in the life of a person living in the civilization the runes were from.

Most of the students from here on were enjoying their free days off and relief that they only had a couple more exams while news of exactly how many you, Fred and George were taking. You three along with Percy were among the small group of those willing to risk trying for all the exams offered stunning especially the first years to the point of them betting on what your grades would be.

Potions – Mon

Snape peered out at you all and sat back in the chair offered watching you all through the thick packet complete with a final page of riddles stirring a great number from the middle section to literally hit their heads on their desks.

Care of Magical Creatures – Tue

Hagrid stood atop the platform watching as you all went through the first half of multiple choices until the final section of mixed short answer and essays on practical care for the more dangerous creatures some might avoid.

Arithmacy – Wed

Surprisingly after taking your seats you spied Professor Vector looking over your staggeringly small class you eyed the disturbingly small packet just cram packed with as much as she could possibly muster into her decided amount of pages fully knowing that her students would be sitting for possibly three exams today.

Divination – Wed

Lazily after your two hour exam you all simply chose to stay in your desks to rest your heads for an awkward group nap that lasted for the hour long gap until Professor Trelawney entered and your desks shuffled adding more for the those entering the hall.

Overall the medium sized packet eased through the list of styles of Divinations you had been taught finalized by a simple question of what you were feeling from her and how the holidays would go.

Astronomy – Wed (Midnight)

Choir was put off till the next night freeing you to get a longer nap after dinner until the late night exam. Again in the Great Hall you sat up through the surprisingly thick packet coming close to naming each inch of the galaxy and their meanings up to the final question asking which has the most effect over you in your life. Your answer being fairly easy as knowing full well thanks to your father that you were born under Pluto.

Pluto is the great revealer, but often there's a dark night before the rebirth. Pluto brings to mind purging, exorcising, and releasing buried power or core truths. It's the planet of creative destruction, and transits can feel like extended ordeals.

In your mind clearly explaining, in your opinion, a fair bit about why you are the way you are.

History of Magic – Thur

What all would assume to be the largest packet wasn’t and Professor Binns floated around the Hall as you all waded through the thick packets up to the final essay question asking for you to find an ancient war that could occur again and how you would bring them all to a better end.

Muggle Studies - Fri

Barty was last and in his own elated mood he was lost in his own wonder as to how you all would fair in his exam. The wide variety of topics covered in his course made it difficult to gauge how successful you all would be. Still in all this he was elated at the four of his students that would be terrified in waiting for the results to all offered courses worsening their worries over a vast majority of their peers.

…

Lunch came after your flurried packing sessions you rushed into when the final exam was through. In a long line you all filed out of the school in exhausted groups through the buzzing younger students around you for the trip to the Hogsmeade station. Heavily you plopped onto the benches in your decided car carrying a message from Remus to your father he would come the following day to give him time to read through and grade his exams.

A stolen nap bridged the time between school and the station again where you were met by your disguised father who led you all out instead of Arthur, who got called to a raid stirring up the decided plan for him to fetch you all. Safely in your home you went to put up your trunk in your room then it seemed you blinked and you were in front of the log book in your library. Anxiously you recited the names of the couple in your mind a few times until you could finally say them aloud bringing forth a stack of magazines and papers filling up a table alongside a stack of books commenting on famous films.

Vivien Trèfle, a Veela from a great line of performing French Wizards, one of the oldest there, who was often sporting wigs for her roles to cover her signature strawberry blonde hair making her pale blue eyes shine the brighter.

Olivier Pearisiyiae, a Morpher from a similarly notable line of performers and architects where their daughter got her chestnut hair from, known mainly for his voice in his operatic and musical roles until falling into the big film that placed the pair together.

The loving couple so concerned about their daughter first met onscreen, both acting in magical films, plays and musicals with their biggest role together, a famed opera you had seen a recording of when you were younger. The more you dug you saw their relationship growing in front of the articles and tabloids up to the announcement of their young daughter. Who had been in a few small roles of her own expecting to be off to an acting course she had, according to a supposed snippet from an interview from her parents. And that she had met a man on the tour of the town she got lost in and fell for him instantly with a hint that she might be bringing him home to meet them when her trip was over.

Already you had agreed to meet them and your nerves seemed to spike as to how that would go, but at least you wouldn’t be alone, and even if you hadn’t spent much time with her over the years you were assured Narcissa would be there for you. The similarities between your mother and the lost possible great grandparents you stood up and summoned your enchanted door.

Pt 27

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alitheamateur · 5 years

Text

The Grind- Chapter 22

(gif by @vanessacarlysle)

All my perpetual fretting over Tia’s reaction to the news of my reconciliation with Colton was all for…well…. It was all 100% necessary. She yelled phrases such as “if you wanna let the asshole back in your bed, you can clean up the mess he’s gonna make,” and “what did the dickhead do to convince you?” Both valid, however brutally honest they may have seemed. I made up my mind not to push it on her just yet, but to tip-toe through the tulips, if you will, until she warmed up to him. The two of them were quite similar in more ways than one, so they were bound to fall into at least a civil relationship sooner or later. Or, there unpredictable, combusting similarities would eventually just explode like the boom of a nuke.

As for progression on the Ritter/Elliott home front, things were moving along nicely. We were back to our morning coffee routine at The Grind, and our running schedule had been carefully decided for Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. One of those particular Sunday workouts had navigated us to the new home Colton had purchased as of late, so he could give me the tour. He’d met me at my apartment that morning, carless, but I hadn’t considered where he’d began his run from.

He’d moved in a little over 5 months ago, and judging at first glances the deposit was heavy for a place like this. The brick front, two story structure must have been newly built on the street because the miniscule grassy path he did have in his side yard, was just ever so slightly sprouting from the clumpy, muddy surface. He led me up a black painted front porch through the front door, seemingly eager to show off his purchase from a successful years earnings.

“Home sweet home. Here we are!” He remarked before breaking the plain into his den. “Whatddya think?”

I thought it wasn’t the place I pictured him in, for starters. Not in pessimistic manner or anything, the space was merely more modern, and suburban for what I imagined his quarters to be like. The cabinets of a kitchen just to the right of the main entrance, were bright white, and stealthy black appliances accentuated more bleach white on the walls. Upon trailing deeper into the area, we entered a hardwood floor living room, where the navy of his leather couch shined under the natural light blazing in from a large window.

“It’s super nice, Colt! You keep it so… clean.” Seriously, there wasn’t a stich of the rug out of place. No molding take-out boxes on his countertops, or discarded shoes strung wildly about.

“Give it time,” he pointed at me with a wide smile. “I ain’t been here long enough to destroy it yet.”

“Don’t expect me to come over and clean the place, mister. This girl is no maid,” I said overlapping my arms in a forewarning.

“You could be. Hey, we could get you one of those little outfits and everything,” Colton said wagging his eyebrows in suggestion. “I’m gonna go shower real quick, then we’ll take the bike back to your apartment. Just hang out here, and give me 20. Unless of course, you’d like the tour of my shower too..”

Okay, yes please! I need to get a good luck at the tub. Inspect the plumbing, and the drains or whatever..

“I don’t have a change of clean clothes, silly. But, you get all squeaky clean, then I’ll take you on the tour of my new place. The bedroom is to die for...” He dropped his head back in a cantankerous huff as if I was torturing him for my own pleasure.

While he left me unsupervised, fidgeting on the couch, I decided some friendly, not at all psychotic girlfriend snooping would be harmless. Wandering aimlessly in my sock feet about the sitting area and kitchenette, something in particular sparked my interest plastered on the double doors of his refrigerator. In carefully executed newspaper snippets, were all of my published works from the last three years held up on display by small, coinlike magnets. One piece I’d written on an injured All-American local boy who had withdrawn his commitment to Pitt due to apparent substance issues. Various tidbits from the usual Steelers coverage, and my article from his fight with Mendez.

Thin, chalky newspaper nearly covered the entire spread of the left side freezer door. He appeared to have saved nearly every published work that had my name attached to it. What made the gesture even more monumentally romantic, was that The Pilot wasn’t available for subscription, nor a newsprint you could grab at any local convenient store on your morning milk run. It was only available for purchase at two outdoor newsstands in the city, one being a small cart on the sidewalk at the front entrance of our main office. The other was easily a 20-minute commute from any of the local businesses he frequented. Neither spot being one he’d cross by coincidence on his morning jog through downtown, or even the closest grocery store, or Mac’s. Meaning the man had made a specific trip, every Thursday morning to spend $3.75 on a paper that he could’ve searched the internet for. I sketched a feathery finger over the printed words, hearing a single dolloped tear drip below at my feet to the crisp tile of his kitchen floor. He really had never sincerely left me, just like he said only a handful of days ago.

“There’s more in an old cardboard box on the rack under the coffee table.” His stealthy, barefoot approach behind me was completely undetected, or I had just been so preoccupied with my discovery that any background noise was hushed.

I faced him, startled, carelessly forgetting to wipe the still running stream of tears, and hiccupped to repress audibly weeping.

“Oh, woah. Woah, baby. Hey, what’s wrong?” Colt stepped once to reach me, and cloaked me into the embrace of his grey tee, blotched with undried remnants of his shower. He placed both hands to my cheeks, leaving my face trapped between his scuffed, worked palms. Eyes searching over my face, like he was looking for the reason of my tears written somewhere across my forehead.

“I’m fine, seriously. It’s nothing.” I nearly snorted to sniff the running of my nose. Yeah, that was convincing. He’ll be right off your back now.

“Talk to me, Livvy. What’s goin’ on, huh? I know tears when I see ‘em. Especially yours.”

“You did this? You kept them? All, of them?”

A hesitant, “U” shape danced over his lips at my question. “Of course I did, babe. Well, I almost missed one week, but I told the guy at the stand I’d give him 20 bucks if he could get me a copy.”

It drew a laugh from both of us, mine still mixed with some joyful tears.

“It’s got your name on it, Liv. Hell, I woulda paid all the money in my wallet if you had written the alphabet down and had it published. I told you once I was proud a’ ya’, and I meant it.”

“I just didn’t… I never thought… I didn’t know you cared this much. I’m surprised you went through that trouble, especially since we weren’t even together for over half of these.” I looked back for the tenth time over the collection marked with my signature.

“I think that’s when I started to care so much. When we weren’t together, I mean. Because y’know, that’s the weird, twisted fucker I am,” he said rolling his eyes.

His hands departed from my face, and one was now pinching the bridge of his masculine nose in frustrated contemplation. I didn’t see the normal abundance of equanimity in his eyes now that normally dwelled there, and I was well aware that he was struggling for the words he sought. “I’m a head case, Liv. I find the love of my life, and talk to her like dog shit, because that’s obviously what a sensible man would do? God… What fuckin’ sense does that make?”

“Honest? It makes perfect sense, actually.” I comforted him, trying to distinguish the fires of aggravation, and self-loathing I could see kindling behind his eyes. “It’s the typical reaction of a man who’s never been in love before, and doesn’t have a damn clue how to handle all the things his feeling all of a sudden.”

“I know exactly how t’ handle it now though.” Colton said snatching me like a flimsy sack of potatoes into his grips, and reaching for a sly kiss.

When his arms outreached though, one of the tattoo additions I had been suspicious of when we bumped into each other at the Temple that fateful day, revealed itself like a shiny penny catching the beams of the sun. Carefully placed on the tender, hairless skin of the underside of his bicep amongst his dedication to the Andy Warhol bridge, and a Latin phrase “Fortis Passioni deditus” translating to “strong willed”, was a small 21 needled in varsity print.

I immediately locked a grip around the evidence in question, raising it further into the light to investigate whether my eyes had been viciously deceiving me. He didn’t dispute, either from downright perplexity, or for the simple fact that he knew exactly what had won my attention and wanted me to snoop it out a little more closely.

Once I had wiped sternly over the numbers with a thumb, seeing they were indeed permanently etched onto his smooth skin, I looked intently upward to his waiting face. I wanted to smile in cheesy satisfaction, I wanted to cry in earnest adoration, and I wanted to claw the very ink out of his skin as backlash for his silly, erratic decision. But no, not really. The sensible, rational Liv rallied admirably to find a way to veto what he had done and hammer him with venomous disapproval. Thankfully, my fanatical love for the man eclipsed the once “safe” nature I carried, and all I wanted to do was fall at his feet.

“Took ya’ long enough, 2-1.” He smiled barely showing a top row of teeth.

“Wh..when?” I tripped over my tongue.

“Few months after the Mendez fight, I think. Was gonna put it on my chest, next to ma’s date of remission. But my guy down at the parlor said here looked better.” The man explained so coolly as if a shrine to my basketball number, and his pet name for me drawn onto his flesh was just something people did so commonly. Seriously, it sounded as if he was just reading off the lottery numbers in the Sunday paper.

“A few months? So, you did this after you dumped me? We weren’t even together and you got this tattoo?”

“Are you mad? Like…seriously upset with me, Liv? I mean, yeah, it was a little reckless, but that shoudn’t surprise you, baby,” he snickered. “But I knew I’d get you back, Livvy. Or I was gonna damn die tryin’. The way I saw it, it would either end up being something meaningful to our story that we could tell our babies in 10 years. Or, if I didn’t win you back, I’d have to look at it every fuckin’ day and think of the colossal mistake I made.”

10 years? Babies? DON’T FAINT. DO NOT.

“Lucky for you then, huh? Your plan played out for the better, I suppose.” I stretched on my small toes to pat my nose to his.

“So, you like it then?”

I didn’t bother to reward him with praise, instead just sucked a hearty kiss from the thin part in his opened mouth, humming sensually.

“Colton?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Take me to bed. Now.”

TAGS: @torialeysha @eap1935 @littleluna98 @mollybegger-blog

#Tom Hardy #tomhardy #tomhardyfanfic #tom hardy fanfiction #tomhardyfanfiction #tommy conlon #elizabeth olsen #thegrind

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renejamesart · 5 years

Photo

I Wanna See Your Shine Spark!!

Today marks the JP release of VA-11 HALL-A on Switch and PS4! I’m so excited to celebrate, and plan to over the course of today, tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday with some special illustrations.

To kick things off, I’ve decided to go with my favorite girls –and Glitch City’s best idol singer Lilim- *Kira*Miki!

Miki instantly because one of my favorite characters during my first play-through of VA-11 HALL-A. I really loved her design and liked her character arc. I won’t give away any spoilers other than saying that I hope a lot of people who are new to the games come to love her too: she’s a very deep character and quite interesting!

That being said, I’d actually like to go into detail about this picture, largely because this was a multi-day sketch and color illustration as opposed to my typical in-a-day process. I really had to dig deep and think about how I wanted to pose her, how I wanted to depict her, and ultimately, the vibe I wanted to come from the picture.

I have to admit that this is my most ambitious piece to date, and what a wonderful undertaking it was! This is a bit of a page stretch, so apologies in advance, but I really just want to gush.

So here goes!

In General

So overall, I went with a much more saturated palette than I usually do, playing largely off of Miki’s pink-red eyes and her blue hair and character elements.

There’s a lot of work with gradients in this picture: no specifically as the sole element of the background, but the accent and highlight Miki in different ways. Speaking of highlights, I used a simple white highlight set to Overlay: I felt that it was best not to have too many colors on her because of the very active background and the element of her holding a drink.

(Fun Fact: The bisexual flag colors in the background are a complete accident, but like… what a happy accident for me, a bi/pan person!)

*Kira*Miki

I really wanted Miki to have a fun pose, and I haven’t done much with sitting recently, so I decided that her sitting a bit elegantly would be fun. I also wanted her to hold a drink, primarily since VA-11 HALL-A is a game centered around bartending and drinking, whether alcoholic or non-alcoholic. The Blue Fairy –as you can see by the name– is an alcohol-optional drink, but more on that later. Right now, I wanna focus on Miki herself.

At first, her hair was closer to her body to have more volume rather than flow. This was because I imagined her shoulders being high until I tried to mimic that pose and found it immensely uncomfortable, and decided to drop her shoulders and have her drink clutched in the arm that would be slung across her stomach. To better flow with her new position, I decided that having her hair flowing behind her balanced the picture and centered her a bit better: as a bonus, it ate up more empty space, and didn’t make the right side feel too bare. Unfortunately, I had to counteract that with the left-side being awfully empty until I struck on the idea to add text behind her.

Most interesting are her legs: I have no clue what Miki’s legs look like, and in game, we only see a bust and half-sprite. So, I went with something simple and decided that purple-pink ballet flats would be fine.

(I’m still not good at drawing shoes, which is why so many of my pieces are either girls with socks or from the knees up. Or maxi skirts/dresses.)

Her hair is one of my favorite parts: not only did I do shadow, I did midtones and highlights when I typically only do highlights and some shadow work. I really wanted her to have this very stylish, playful look to her hair. I really like how much more depth it added, and think that in future pictures, I’ll have a lot more tones involved in how I color hair and even skin.

Additionally, Miki has interior coloring on her lines. I left to outside black so there would be some contrast between her and the background, but I used a lot of purples and blues to soften elements. I’ve actually been doing this bit by bit in my art, and this was the first piece where I let that extend to some of the exterior lines too.

Background Work

Making Miki was actually the easy thing to do: making the background was much, much harder. Usually, I do one of two things for backgrounds: a flat color or a gradient. Sometimes, I mix it up, specifically if it’s fanart. Most times… I don’t. A lot of that is because I haven’t really focused much on background work, though I plan to this year.

For this piece, I really wanted to do something a bit more stylized and because Miki is essentially an android, I decided a glitch background would be cool. Problem was I wasn’t sure how to do something with that as the idea.

So I improvised.

What I ended up doing was overlaying a bunch of white squares on top of each other with some smaller squares to give the effect of pixels. I then put that through a mosaic filter, then flipped everything to Overlay. I did end up using a gradient, but I think that’s okay because laying the pixelated squares let different colors bleed through.

Over everything is a blend of a Static (TV Static, more specifically) Brush and a Gradient done in reverse so it added a bit of color to the highlights and everything in general.

A Blue Fairy for a Blue Fairy

This is actually a really good time to talk about the Blue Fairy drink I drew, which works really well with the pinky-purple of the background. I wanted it to be really saturated and pop, and it certainly does!

I drew the lineart for the drink separately because of how I wanted to blend everything. I wanted the drink to have a somewhat sci-fi feel, and to me, that meant it needed to glow and have a bit of sparkle inside it. So I overlayed some of the same blue color with an airbrush, and shaped it so it had a nice, sharp glow.

I also added more liquid than would have been able to fit because I wanted it to look really dynamic. A lot of this image wasn’t about having realistic boundaries: it was about creating something really fun.

I chose a Blue Fairy specifically because it’s a drink that can change Miki’s actions at a point in VA-11 HALL-A: as an alcohol-optional drink, it can be served virgin or... laden with as much Karmotrine as you wanna put in. Spoilers: this can quickly make Miki drunk, and can lead to some rather candid statements about her personality and her role as an idol. It’s a really deep moment, and has stuck with me since my first play-through.

(I also chose a Blue Fairy because it fit the blue-purple-pink motif I was going for. It let me play off of Miki’s hair and give her a bit more color up top to make her further pop against the pink.)

The Blue Fairies –completely inspired by Zelda, naturally- were just a cute little addition I decided on last minute. I thought they were cute, and though they have nothing to do with the actual game or Miki, they fit and kind of ate up some space that I didn’t want to be empty.

All in All

This was a really long project for me: I think I spent about 20 hours on everything, coloring and recoloring and adjusting until I had something I really, really love. Honestly, I’ll probably be turning this into a print for myself because I’d love to have it on my wall. I know my art will look different next year –heck, next month even– but this… I’ll always be proud of this piece.

This is only the first of two or three more images over the course of the end of the work week and the weekend. I’m glad I showed this one off first: the others are gonna be pretty great, but this… just had a really special place in my heart.

Thanks for your support, and hey: if you haven’t played VA-11 HALL-A yet, it’s available on multiple platforms, ranging from Steam to PS Vita to Switch. I highly suggest picking up a copy and sinking yourself into the world of Glitch City and a really powerful branching story that can easily find a place in everyone’s lives.

Originally created 5.25 and completed 5.29.2019 in celebration of Sukeban Game’s Japanese physical release of VA-11 HALL-A on Switch and PS4; made in Mediband Paint for iOS

#*Kira*Miki #kira miki #va-11 ha11-a #vallhalla #sukeban games #fanart #digital art #digital illustration #ipad pro art #medibang #medibang paint

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bondsacrosstime-blog · 5 years

Text

Remaining Orders Announcement

Hi! My name is Cari, or @Storyofthedoor online, and I will try to explain what is taking so long with the shipping! :D Sorry this announcement is really long, it is quite detailed, I tried to thoroughly explain what has happened with the remaining 60ish orders.

TL;DR version: 60 orders to go! Struggling with getting money transferred from one mod to the other. Still trying though!

Long version:

First I want to apologize that it is taking so long to finish the last orders. When I joined this project, I really wanted to make sure the shipping was fast! I’ve been a part of, and purchased, a lot of zines that take months and months and months …. To the point that I’ve wondered if the zine is actually coming or….? So I didn’t want that to happen to Bonds Across Time. I’m sorry that for some orders, they have had to wait a long long time.

So I’m gonna start at the beginning, and then try to explain the difficulty.

In the beginning there were two mods! They were Nayuun and (x). They worked on Bonds Across Time together throughout the making of the zine. Nayuun organized artists, and (x) organized writers, and the zine came together to the point of being a book ready for preorders. At this time, I was just an artist. My total involvement was to make an art, and occasionally talk to Nayuun. I didn’t attend to anything other than that.

And then the paypal problems started.

Some of you who have been wanting a book since the beginning of January remember the paypal account being frozen with funds in it just a little bit into preorders. There was never a way to get the funds out of paypal. Nayuun tried to talk to paypal several times, and if you’ve ever had a problem with paypal, you can imagine how that went. Their customer service does not particularly deserve applause. At all. There was no resolution, all the preorders were returned to the buyers. Around this time, (x) needed to leave the project. Their work is still in the zine, but they had no other involvement after the initial paypal problems.

This left Nayuun by herself, and this is her first zine. It is most definitely difficult to run a zine, especially as a single mod, and especially if you’ve never done it before.

So I, Story, joined the mod team! C: My duties are getting stuff printed, and shipping out US and further abroad orders. Nayuun will handle Canadian shipping.

I’ve run a few projects, including kickstarters and a tarot deck zine, so I feel comfortable working with printers and doing shipping.

With this new layout of mod tasks, Nayuun and I opened preorders again! This time with payments being directed to Stripe, through the Storenvy shop.

Now begins the second round of financial problems. Remember: Nayuun has not run a zine before, so couldn’t see this coming. I *have* run zines before, but I and my fellow mods have been completely US based while running them. Nayuun and (x) are both Canadian.

Preorders go great through Storenvy with Stripe receiving payment! Honestly thank you for that. C: We are both really grateful that the preorders went well.

Storenvy is set up to receive payment in USD and dish it out to Stripe in CAD. (Because both prior organizers are Canadian this set up makes sense. This right here is where the problem happened. If hindsight was helpful at all, I would use hindsight to make Stripe receive funds in USD.)

No problems so far.

Because I, Story, am handling the printing and most of the shipping, we determine it’d be easiest if I received the payout from Stripe.

Stripe is holding the money as CAD.

My bank accounts are all in USD.

This isn’t really that big of a problem ….? Americans and Canadians transfer money to each other and conduct trade all the time…..?

We deposit the money into Nayuun’s bank, Stripe won’t let anything else happen.

There are plenty of ways to transfer money internationally. Paypal comes to mind, but we’ve just had huge problems with paypal freezing funds. Also they take a percentage instead of a flat fee. So two other methods are more common with large amounts of money. Wire transfers, and money orders. I’ve done both wire transfers and money orders, but only to US and China receivers. I’ve never tried to receive a wire transfer or money order from Canada.

I think a wire transfer is faster than a money order. It only takes a few days. So I tell Nayuun to try it. I provide bank info for me.

For this first wire transfer attempt, I use my local credit union. I go in person and speak to them, they say a wire transfer from Canada is fine? It just needs to land as USD. Sounds fine.

A few days later, Nayuun’s bank receives the money back and claims they can’t send money to my credit union. To be fair, that credit union I use is small, who knows if they even know what they’re doing.

So I use a larger online bank for a second attempt at a wire transfer.

I guess which banks we’re using is not terribly important private information. This is a wire transfer from TD Bank in Canada, to Discover Bank in the US. These are two giant, common banks. They both know how to do wire transfers. I mean they probably both do wire transfers, to each other, dozens of times a day, independent of Nayuun and myself. Is there something I’m missing or not understanding?

We wait for the transfer to work. Nothing. TD Bank says it will take 4 - 5 business days.

I call Discover Bank. They say it will take 14 business days. They also say they cannot look up the wire transfer without a firm USD amount. When we initiated the wire transfer, it was for this large sum of CAD, and I assume a fixed USD amount was not given because it would be based on the exchange rate the day the transfer occurs……………? Discover Bank will not look up the transfer with the firm CAD amount. Who knows why. No amount of asking or calling will change their refusal. If I were to try a wire transfer a third time, I think we should initiate it as a firm USD amount, and whatever CAD is required is what goes. Not exactly convenient there but possibly more traceable by Discover.

TD Bank now claims the wire transfer may take up to 20 business days.

We wait ….

We waited a week for the first wire transfer to fail.

Now we wait four weeks.

The second wire transfer fails.

No explanation is given. None. At. All.

I know it’s hard for you, the preorderers, to count out the time here and understand why things are taking so long.

We closed preorders mid Feb or something like that?

And then had to wait about two weeks for Stripe to release all the funds to Nayuun’s bank.

And then we work on the zine and put it all together and get the printing going. Maybe a week or two for print prep and initiate the printing. I think I paid for printing beginning of March on all the merch and books.

A week to try a wire transfer.

Four weeks to try ANOTHER wire transfer ….

And we arrive now at mid April.

This …. Might? Maybe? Lead you to ask how any merch has been printed at all? Or how any zines have been shipped at present? If the funds have been tied up in multiple failed wire transfer attempts?

I, Story, have been paying for the printing and the shipping so far, just on my credit card. I don’t mind getting it all going. I do really care about the project. C: I love zines, and I love self publishing. I really want people to feel happy preordering an artist produced book, too! The helpfulness of a credit card is it does allow me to get a project going! While I wait for Stripe to make funds available … while I wait for a wire transfer … and a second wire transfer … but of course a credit card payment does come due. I paid for all these things at the beginning of March. That billing cycle closes end of March. That bill becomes due end of April, and I must pay the card bill or pay an additional interest penalty. That is how the credit cards do the do.

So! Here in a week or two I am indeed paying this card bill, for a few thousand dollars of printing and shipping. ^^; I have a bit of money saved, it will be ok.

But I’ve got about 40 orders left to ship, and about 20 orders that are Canadian and need to go to Nayuun for her to ship. And I have no more money to get stuff going until one of these methods of fund transfers works out.

It is pretty tiresome and frustrating that the funds exist, they just can’t be moved from Canada to the United States? None of our banks will tell us why.

Now we are trying a money order. When I last shipped a proof copy of the book to Nayuun, it took about 9 days? She lives in Alberta, I live in Maryland. Maybe in 9 days I’ll have a money order in my mailbox? *But can I just point out here that we have experienced first hand that MAIL DOES INDEED MOVE BETWEEN US …. Ok money order, you have no excuses.*

I’m sure you can imagine, I feel pretty dumb now. I’ve spent a lot of money, and am struggling to be reimbursed, and it is no one’s fault. Not Nayuun’s, not mine, just cosmic bad luck maybe. All we can do is keep trying to find a way to deal with a funds transfer? If not a money order through the post office … then…. Western Union? Or we try paypal again (my hopes are not high.)

I’m sorry again that I’ve got all this stuff printed and I’m unable to get the remaining orders going until we can manage this funds transfer. ;_; I really hope a money order would finally work. That would be really great if this kind of old fashioned method could just go through and be fine. ^^;

Thank you to those who have received your orders so far and loved them! You’ve made all the effort worth while, and I really appreciate it. C: I hope that when the remaining orders go out, they will be worth the wait.

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rafaelafranzen · 5 years

Text

In which I answer many questions about books

I came across this survey from @drawlight and I thought it’d be fun to fill! Fun fact: I’ve been an unabashed devotee of literature and stories all my life and am a stalwart champion of connecting people with stories – I’ve spent most of the last decade attending and volunteering at literature festivals and crossed fingers, am trying to get a job there. I don’t do the tagging thing, but if you’d like to fill this tag me back so I can discover your literary world!

I, like everyone else, am drowning in Good Omens right now, including the script book and original publication, so I’ll omit them from my responses for a bit of variety.

1. What book are you reading now?

Kraken – China Miéville. Yet another book about an impending apocalypse set in London, because I’m a sucker for undercurrents of fantasy in places I’ve walked in. This one’s a dark comedy about a squid-worshiping cult, where the initiating event for The End of the World is a forty-foot giant squid specimen being stolen from the Natural History Museum.

2. What are your favourite books?

I’m a bit of an odd duck in that my favourites change all the time at different points in my life. I hate to do the thing where you divide things up by genre because I think stories are valid in so many shapes and forms but it’s an easy shorthand – a few top favourites:

Literary Fiction: Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither – Sara Baume (a book about a misfit man who brings a misfit dog into his life. I’ll never get tired of recommending this. The poetic turn of prose in this book is astonishing, and I’m reminded of it every time I read something by Drawlight, actually).

SF/F: Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman (again pushes all my right buttons with undercurrents of another world in places I’ve been) and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu – the titular story in this anthology made me cry on the train, in public – you can find it in full here. It’s a quick and heartbreaking read about the tenuous relationship one so often has with their parents.

Short Story: The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble – Julian Gough (A economic satire and the first fiction piece ever published by the Financial Times, which was subsequently adapted to a Radio Play by the BBC which is also available in the link if you prefer listening. Will make you clutch your sides with laughter, teach you about securitizations, futures and hedge funds and global market forces without the need for you to get a degree in economics first, and ensure you never look at goats the same way again.)

3. How did you learn to read?

Other than the obvious – school, my mother used to take me to the library each weekend when I was a kid and let me borrow 4 books using my library card, and another 4 books with hers. I’d devour all 8 and rinse and repeat the next weekend.

4. What foreign languages do you read?

I studied Chinese as my second language for 12 years and subsequently lost pretty much all of it due to lack of usage after. I can still muddle my way through a menu but that’s about it.

5. What’s the funniest book you ever read?

The Teenage Textbook – Adrian Tan (I’m sure I’ve read plenty since that are better, but this is always the first one I think of. A bit of local nostalgia.)

6. What books have changed the way you look at the world or the way you live your life?

Without a doubt, This Is What Inequality Looks Like by Teo You Yenn. It is a non-fiction book told through the lens of people in poverty, and just as equally, from vantage point of the privileged, us folk who are more or less living in the median of society and the different frames of ‘common sense’ that need to be considered from these perspectives. It is a book about how acknowledging poverty and inequality leads to uncomfortable revelations about our society and ourselves. And it is about how once we see, we cannot, must not, unsee. It is a book that might sober you up for the rest of your life.

It was one of the books heavily drawn on to produce a play titled “Underclass” which I once described to a friend as “the wokest shit sandwich you’ll ever eat”, and I mean this in the best kind of way – it’s the most difficult pill I was ever made to swallow. It left me questioning every assumption I had about poverty, inequality and human dignity, left me squirming and uncomfortable in the way we gloss over the marginalized, and forced me to ask hard questions about the systems of society and who provides for those who fall through the cracks. I saw it a year ago and I still can’t stop thinking about it.

7. What books have affirmed what you believe about life or the way you look at things?

Not entirely sure how to answer this one, I take away bits from every book and media property I encounter. I suppose if I would recommend anything, especially from the perspective of a writer, that rejection is par for the course so long as you keep forging on, and keep at it, then Stephen King’s On Writing. And on the love for the parts of your life that are odd, glorious and to be cherished, Sue Perkins Spectacles. Her letter to her dog Pickles in the book, available here, is one of the greatest confessions of adoration I’ve ever read, and will speak to every love you’ve held close in your life)

8. What are some of the scariest books you ever read?

To be frank I don’t read much horror, though I used to as a kid. I don’t have enough memory of any specifics to give titles.

9. About how many books do you think you have read in your life?

I’ve not the slightest idea. Probably hundreds.

10. About how many books do you own?

Currently, probably between 50-100, only limited by my bookshelf and now much it can hold. Most of my major book-purchases come around during the Singapore Writers Festival, so annually I drop between $100-200 on new books signed by authors I’ve met in person. Every 2-3 years I cycle out books from my bookshelf I no longer care to go back to and donate it to the book exchange shelf in my local library to make room for new titles.

12. How much would you say you’ve paid in library fines in your life?

Probably less than $5. I’m pretty neurotic about returning things on time.

11. How many books per month do you usually borrow from the library?

Probably less than one to be honest, but when the Writers Festival swings around, loads, to get an advance look at the authors that are coming I may enjoy the work of. Nowadays I usually buy my books.

13. Do you read in bed?

A resounding yes. It’s how I screwed up my eyesight as a kid!

14. Do you ever read while walking or driving?

Sometimes when walking but often I’m just scrolling reddit or catching up on current affairs and UK politics (I don’t live there but I can’t help following it). I don’t drive but I do read books when I commute on public transport.

15. OK, let’s get real. Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever read a book?

What, pray, be a strange place to read a book?

16. Do you listen to audiobooks?

Not particularly, as I find I can absorb information much faster reading words on a page. I also find it hard to multitask when something’s being read out because I want to pay attention to the story. I do, however, listen to radio plays adapted from books!

17. Has anyone ever read aloud to you or you to them?

Plenty, being on the receiving end of readings from many authors from attending the Writers Festival and events at independent bookstores. For me reading: loads of times workshopping my own work while I was pursuing my creative writing minor in university.

18. What was the most difficult book to read?

I attempted Lolita by Nabokov when I was about 14 or 15 and don’t think I got past the first 50 pages.

19. What books do you intend to read but keep putting off?

Craptons. Including the aforementioned Good Omens which I’ve owned for 7 years but never finished. Others that have been sitting on my shelf for the longest time now include The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman (Lyra, my chosen name that I now use professionally, came from the protagonist of Pullman’s His Dark Materials). As you can see my stable of books mainly tend towards SF/F.

20. Do you buy new or used books, paperbacks or hardcovers, leather or collector’s?

Absolutely! I buy mostly new – see Writers Festival book acquisitions from the earlier question. Mostly paperbacks but occasionally hardcovers if the price difference isn’t too dear. Secondhand bookstores are a dying trade here so I don’t get much opportunity to shop for used. I’m also constantly wary about how much room I have on my shelves and pick my purchases carefully. I usually don’t buy collectors editions because I don’t like having to be precious with my books - they’re there to enjoy, to crack the spines in and get their corners banged up from being hastily stuffed into bags. With special editions I feel an odd obligation to keep them pristine.

21. How do you feel about writing in books?

Depends. If it’s a book I specifically want for reference, especially non-fiction I don’t mind marking them up. Otherwise I typically don’t.

22. Do you lend books?

I do! There have been books I’ve lent out for years and not sought back though. I do prefer to get them back eventually because books I do keep on my shelves usually hold the memory of the time I had with them, and are usually paperback editions whose covers I enjoyed and are no longer in print. It never feels quite the same to just get a new copy.

23. What were your favourite books as a child?

I read with such volume and variety when I was a child I actually hardly remember specific titles. I’m sure there was Dahl in there somewhere. An awful lot of Blyton and Nancy Drew/Famous Five which are now horrendously outdated but from which I still hold onto fond imagined memories of British summer days and mysterious nights, which are experiences I still sort of seek out when I go to the UK on rambles or hikes.

24. What children’s books do you enjoy as an adult or young adult?

If we’re talking specifically Children’s books and not YA, almost anything written by Kes Gray (Oi Frog!/The Trouble with Daisy series) and Julian Gough (Rabbit and Bear series, whose first book is a great introduction to the concept of gravity, hibernation, and the nutrition of rabbit poo). I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Terry Pratchett’s Discword series, which includes several YA titles but even the main books in the series are fantastic reading for kids I think.

25. Do you ever read the ending first?

Oh gosh, why would anyone do that to themselves?

26. grab the book nearest to you (I picked something non-GO related), go to page 29 and type line 17 (if there isnt a line 17 type line 3)

“You always tell me that when someone is special, then the system has to make an exception." Connect (Julian Gough) – a cheeky one-of a kind signed edition I got from Julian’s apartment in Berlin when I visited him a couple months ago, combining the UK book jacket with US deckled-edge hardback. He started out as a writer I admired, then a mentor, and is now a fond friend.

#personal #wew long post is long #it was fun to look back and think about the books that were notable to me though!

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diegoalvesisgod · 6 years

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Welcome to the X-Mas Football Swap 2018!

We all like Christmas presents, right? So why not send each other a present this Christmas? Sign up for the exchange, get paired with someone else, and make each other’s Christmas more fun!

You can send whatever you think your partner(s) would like - jerseys, tees, keychains, mugs, phone cases, scarves, cards, stationery, magazines, books etc. Not all of the items have to be something you buy at a store, too - you can send handmade things as well. Although this is a football themed swap, not all items have to be football-related. If you want to include some treats, for example, just go ahead. Also, it would be nice if in addition to your partner’s favorites, you included a little something of YOUR club, especially your hometown club. For more info, please check the FAQ under the cut.

FAQ

Who can participate?

Anyone. Well, almost. You must be able to ship a package to your partner (which means you have to have the budget to buy the things, and be able to pay shipping), and if you’re not 18 years old, you must have your parents’/legal guardians’ permission to give out your address. That’s all.

What do I have to do to participate?

You have to sign up in time. During the matching period, you will receive your partner’s information (Tumblr name, their address and a list of preferences, likes and dislikes etc.) that will help you pick the items for them and also enable you to communicate with them.

How will partners be matched?

I will try to match people to the best of our ability. In general, I will try to ensure that people get someone they have something in common with, we will try to make sure we don’t match direct rivals (aka match someone who loves Chelsea and would love to receive Chelsea-themed things with someone who hates Chelsea). The decisive factors are mainly areas where people live and whether they are able to get their packages to their partners, and then the interests.

What are the deadlines?

Deadline to sign up: November 17th

Partners will be matched between November 17th and November 24th. When you receive your partner’s info, you have to contact them within a week.

Deadline to default: December 1st

Package must be sent not later than December 8th. Generally, the post is busy before Christmas and we all want our packages in time for Christmas, don’t we?

What if I send my package and don’t receive mine?

If this happens, contact your partner first. In case you don’t get an answer and can’t figure things out, contact me. Such things, sadly, do happen, and I don’t want anyone to be sad and disgusted by this exchange. I will try to get you an angel - a person willing to jump in and send an extra package in this situation. The angels do not expect anything in return (as you’ve already sent your package), however, it would be nice if you could at least send them a little message and thank them. You are not required to send them anything physical.

Can I be an angel without participating?

Of course! If you don’t want to participate in the exchange, but you’d like to save the day and send a package only in case someone doesn’t receive anything, message me and I’ll add you to the list.

Do I have to keep in touch with my partner regularly?

It is not required, however, the exchange is meant to be a way for people to make a new friend, or get to know someone better. The rules say you have to contact your partner within a week of receiving their information, and then let them know your package has been shipped so that they can keep an eye on their post. Please, also be available until they confirm they’ve received your package, so that you can solve any possible problems. But, I encourage you to keep in touch during the process, as you could get to know each other better, figure out what you like and dislike, etc.

What is the budget?

The budget for the package is 20$, meaning the cost of the items in the package should be around that price - not above, and not significantly below. However, it is negotiable between your partner and you - if you, for example, get matched with someone you know and you two would like to send more stuff to each other, you can agree on a different budget.

Shipping is not included in the budget!

What are some of the things I can send?

As this is a football themed exchange, most of the package should be football themed. This includes:

clothing (jerseys, tees, sweatshirts, caps, scarves, socks, gloves…)

other club merchandise (keychains, mugs, posters, stationery - pens, notebooks, cards…, phone cases, plushies, bracelets…)

books, magazines

edible items that are football themed (such as football-shaped candy, chocolate, snacks…)

anything that has to do with football (balls, toys, stickers…)

Also, as this is a Christmas exchange, bonus points for a Christmas-themed item (that one doesn’t necessarily have to do with football, but if it does, perfect).

Do I have to buy all the items?

Absolutely not! I understand that not everyone has a big budget, or that it’s not easy to buy some football-related items in some places. To include more things in your package without having to rob a bank, it’s perfectly fine (and even encouraged) to include handmade items. They add a nice personal touch to your package, and every thing will be an original. These can be anything you can think of. Here are just some ideas:

If you’re an artist, you can draw/paint a picture of your partner’s favorite player(s) or the crest of their favorite club, whatever. If you’re into calligraphy, perhaps write a football quote. Make a collage. If you have it in a digital form, you can print it out. Maybe frame it (you can get really cheap frames that look nice). In any case, please make sure it is safe in your package and doesn’t get damaged/crumpled/wet. Post offices don’t usually treat things nicely.

You could also make a bookmark or a coaster or a Christmas decoration, anything you’d be able to create.

If you’re a writer, you can write a fanfic or poem for your partner about their favorites, and maybe print it out for them with a personal dedication (hey, who wouldn’t want to own a signed copy of a fanfic?). Add a CD with the soundtrack, maybe.

You can embroider or knit or sew something, if you have the skills, too.

Are there any things I cannot send?

As far as we’re concerned, and as far as your partner hasn’t stated otherwise, you can send anything you like. However, we recommend checking the post rules of your partner’s country, as some items cannot be sent to some countries. If you are sending fragile items (mugs, glasses, anything breakable), please make sure they are safe in the package. Also, please do not send anything you would not like to receive yourself - offensive, broken or dirty stuff is definitely not okay. If you have any doubt, try to ask your partner first (if you want to send treats, for example, ask about allergies).

How can I send the things? How do I pack them?

You can use whatever option will be the most convenient for you. Regular post or shipping company, depending on where you are shipping. Check with your post office for more info. Please note that especially if you’re shipping overseas, the regular (cheapest) shipping can take a very long time and might not reach your partner in time for Christmas - you might want to consider another option (par avion), or at least inform your partner about that.

As for packing the items, use your common sense. Pack the breakable things well (bubble wrap, foam, paper etc.), make sure nothing gets crumpled or torn (put papers in tubes or at least cardboard envelopes). Do not send any perishable items if you aren’t sure they’ll arrive in time. Pay special attention to things that could spill or stain other things (shower gel, for example, can make your life very miserable). Nothing is 100% safe in the post, but you want to make sure you did all you could (especially if you want the post to take responsibility for any damage).

As this is a Christmas exchange, you can (but you don’t have to) make it festive, for example pack individual items in Christmas paper, use stickers, tags, bows, make it a game (number the items for your partner to make sure they unwrap them in the right order), include a Christmas card, just have fun with it. Keep the prettiness mainly for the inside of the box, though, as the outside will likely get damaged and torn, and could cause problems in the post (some post offices don’t accept colorful paper on boxes, for example).

What happens after I receive my package?

When you receive it and let your partner know about it, the exchange was a success for you! It could end here, but it doesn’t have to. You are more than welcome to continue chatting with your partner. Also, you can post a picture or a description of what you’ve received to your Tumblr with the hashtag #xmasfootballswap2018. We’ll be tracking the hashtag and retweeting them posts to the official Tumblr of the swap.

#xmasfootballswap2018 #christmas swap #i made this a thing #spread the word

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adventuresofamodernscholar · 5 years

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**Disclosure** I wrote this entire post in order to avoid making my presentation for a conference…and forgot to finish it until about 18 months later. So everything that refers to “this week” or “in a few days” happened over a year ago. I am the world’s worst procrastinator.

Phew! I am exhausted!

A few weeks ago I decided to quit my day job, so I have been nothing more than a full time graduate student for the past month or so. While I am looking for another (less stressful) job, my days have been pretty unstructured and open; somehow I cannot remember having had a minute of free time this month, though, so maybe I haven’t been as free as I seem to think…. hmm.

Anyway, a big chunk of my time this month has been dedicated to working on building my CV in preparation for applying to PhD programs next summer. I have been studying for my GRE exams, submitting papers and abstracts for publication and conferences, and, of course, I have been working hard on my schoolwork and preparing presentations for conferences for which I have already been accepted.

A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to present virtually at a conference in India, but this past weekend I had my first in-person presentation at an academic conference; it was simultaneously the most exciting and most terrifying moment in my academic career so far. I was so nervous, especially since I had no idea what to expect, what to wear, or how I would be able to afford to go! I spent an unreasonable amount of time delving through obscure sites trying to find some solid information about these conferences, so I wanted to create a helpful post for other young academics with the same questions that I had. I hope this is helpful!

What to Wear

For some reason, this was one of the most stressful parts of my preparations; I had no idea what to wear to an academic conference! I tried searching a variety of websites geared towards academics, but there is almost nothing out there on the subject. Even my trusty friend, Pinterest, had an overwhelmingly diverse array of results for “academic conference outfits” (although there are some cute ideas, hence the link). I did find one very useful piece of advice, though, in the bowels of an internet Q&A page: “don’t be the jerk who shows up in a full suit”.

Considering the fact that I was thinking about splurging on a new suit for this conference, I was beyond grateful for this piece of advice.

Eventually, I settled on a crisp new cardigan, black slacks, and a nice blouse, and I would certainly say that I fit in with what everyone else was wearing. I was actually surprised to see that I was among the better-dressed attendees.

While at this point I can only speak for my experience at one conference, I can recommend something similar for other first-time conference presenters. You want to look nice and professional, but there is no need to go out and buy a full suit. However, despite the fact that I did see several people wearing more casual outfits, I would not recommend going the t-shirt and jeans route either. As a young academic, you have a lot to prove, and looking professional (but not like you are trying too hard) will really help you to look and feel confident and competent.

*update* as a now-veteran conference attendee (I have attended about a dozen conferences in the past 18 months) I can attest that something business casual, like what I wore to my first conference is perfect. I have seen people wear jeans and a nice shirt to conferences, but I think that this is best left for days when you are simply an audience member, rather than a presenter.

How to Pay

A few weeks ago, when I made the decision to quit my job, I did a quick audit of how much I could expect to spend on the conferences to which I have been accepted (I have a total of 7 within a 9 month period), and I was shocked to see that between travel, hotels, and conference fees, I was looking at several thousands of dollars in expenses. The average academic conference costs about $300 to attend and, apart from the conference that I am attending this weekend in DC, I will need to travel for each conference, staying out of town and/or abroad for several days for each.

I reached out to one of my professors/mentors for advice, and boy am I glad that I did! While his first suggestion (asking the department for funding) was unsuccessful, his second suggestion (taking my request to the Dean of my school) resulted in a huge financial relief. While I will not be able to fully fund my conferences through my school, I will be able to receive significant financial assistance.

Before you begin attending conferences, find out if your program or school is willing and able to financially assist students who are planning to attend conferences. If not (or if you need more assistance than your school provides), you can also apply to a number of scholarships for graduate students, which you can put towards your conference expenses. One of my favorite resources is ScholarshipOwl, but there are plenty of free lists out there with some potentially really helpful scholarships.

What to Bring

Business Cards – If you do not have any yet, have some made ASAP! I did not remember to bring any with me to UF, and I instantly regretted this lapse when I began connecting with other speakers. You will meet so many interesting and important people in your field at these conferences, and you want to make sure that they can contact you (and you them) afterwards. *NOTE* make sure that you collect cards from the people you meet and EMAIL THEM ASAP. You may make some valuable connections and you want to reinforce them before you become just another card in their wallet.

Extra Copies of Your Presentation – I have been using Prezi lately for my presentations and, even though it is a beautiful presentation program, I tend to get very stressed out when it is time to present because, with my free account, I cannot put my presentations on a flashdrive. I am thinking that, as I begin attending more conferences, I may need to shell out and pay for the upgrade that will allow me to save a copy of my presentations separately from the website. All that is to say, if you are smarter than me, you should have multiple copies on hand of your presentation, just in case there is an issue. I recommend, at the very least, emailing yourself a copy and having a copy available on a flashdrive, in case either copy does not work. I also recommend printing several copies of your script (if you are using one), in case one gets lost, damaged, etc. Murphy’s Law.

A Buddy – If possible, it is great to have a buddy there with you when you present, especially if that person is in your field. Not only will their presence help with emotional support as you put yourself out there, but it is also helpful to have someone in the audience who you can rely on to ask a question during the Q&A session. Of course this is not always possible, and only really applies to your first experience to help you through your jitters. I had my boyfriend with me for my first conference and, though I luckily did not need him to fill an awkward silence after my presentation, it was such a comfort to have him there silently cheering me on. When you are putting yourself and your work out there to be judged, it helps to know that someone in the audience believes in you.

What to Expect

I honestly had no idea what to expect before my first conference. My imagination pictured any and every possible scenario, from a huge lecture hall filled with peers, to a tiny classroom with two other people in it. In reality, I found myself in a seminar room with about 20 audience members of various academic backgrounds; about half were PhD students, about a quarter were faculty, and the remainder were a mix of undergraduates and family/friends of presenters.

What really surprised me was the relaxed nature of the conference. There was a set schedule, but everything seemed to be very casual and nonchalant; no one was concerned when the projector issues interrupted the schedule, or when one presenter was late so the schedule had to be moved around. It definitely took the pressure off to realize that the people presenting and listening were just people who were there to learn and teach, without making a show of professional superiority.

How to Prepare

Whatever you do, do not be like me. As I am writing this post, I am supposed to be writing my presentation for my next conference (which is happening less than two days from now), and I am procrastinating like you would not believe. The funny thing is, just a few days ago I was crying and yelling in a hotel room, where I swore that I would never procrastinate again, especially for another presentation. I swear to you, I woke up the morning of my presentation without a finished script, without a finished visual presentation, and without having rehearsed at all. I woke at the crack of dawn to get to work, and finally printed my finalized script about 30 minutes before I needed to leave for the conference. DO NOT DO THIS! I thought that I would learn from my first experience, but I have made this mistake over and over again. While my presentations usually go over well, the stress and anxiety are simply not worth it.

Try to have your presentation 90% prepared a week before the conference. This gives you time to practice, edit, and ask for revisions from your professor(s). Have a prepared script that goes over your research in depth and allow your slideshow to guide your talk. In my experience most presenters read straight from their papers, so while presentation skills are important, it is okay to refer to your paper as needed.

What to Do While You are There

Conferences should be as much (if not more) about learning from others as it is about presenting your own research. I have learned more from attending panels, lectures, and exhibits at conferences than in my 22+ years of schooling. Make sure to go through the conference schedule and circle anything of interest and GO! You will have paid an arm and a leg to attend this conference, so get every learning opportunity that you can out of it.

As I mentioned before, you should also be using this opportunity to network like crazy. I missed many opportunities for this during my first few conferences, but eventually one of my professors instilled in me the importance of forming professional connections outside of my own university. I have met and learned from dozens of grad students, faculty, and researchers, and I have managed to create small opportunities for myself along the way (such as chairing MLA panels and award committees). I have even gotten to squeeze my research into a special edition of a competitive journal coming out in 2020 because I had an opportunity to chat with one of the publishers about my research. Network people!

Finally, take this opportunity to visit the hosting city beyond the conference center walls. I have seen more of the USA in the past 18 months than I had in my past 26 years, and it has been a blast! I took my dad with my to Colorado for the RMMLA conference and we had a week of adventures, I visited Vegas (somewhere I never thought I would go but ended up enjoying), and I got to road trip with my (now) fiance to Florida and visit a great-aunt who I had not seen in 20 years. The world is your oyster and there is more to learn at a conference than what panelists have to say.

*Note* at this point I have attended about a dozen conferences both in person and virtually.At this point I would say that everything in this post continues to hold true, but I welcome any suggestions for further advice!

How to Survive Your First Academic Conference **Disclosure** I wrote this entire post in order to avoid making my presentation for a conference...and forgot to finish it until about 18 months later.

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emsysquared · 6 years

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Top 10 Things I Learned From Artist Alleys

Hi guys! I thought I’d write a post on some things I’ve learned from selling my own art at artist alleys over the years & talking to fellow artists, as it’s something I’ve wanted to discuss and thought people would be interested. This isn’t really an Artist Alley 101 guide, as I wrote this in mind for both for beginners and veterans, because even if you’ve been tabling for years, there are things about the artist alley scene that can keep changing, or things you never knew about. Hope this helps!

LONG POST IS LONG WARNING

10. Bigger doesn’t always mean better – people keep thinking this, but it’s not always true.

Smaller conventions are easier to talk to attendees/artists because there’s often slow periods, and are good if if they’re local and you need a place to start. You can also get away with having only a few things to sell and if it doesn’t go well it won’t be a huge loss. Smaller cons tend to also have a lower table cost, and because the artist alley is smaller, it’s easier to “stand out”. Probably because of this, I’ve heard some cases where some people have made the same amount of profits from certain small cons vs. big cons, meaning, they actually got more sales per person at the smaller con.

Bigger conventions CAN command big bucks and keep you busier with sales because there’s more attendees and potentially more money to go around. However, they are also more competitive: if all you have is ONE print when everyone else around you has huge displays, you risk people passing by you because they may think you don’t have anything of interest to offer. As an example, maybe at the small con, your Overwatch solo D.Va print was the only one there and it did well, but at a big con, 20 other artists could also have similar D.Va prints and are now competing with each other, which is something you should consider.

Every con is different so when researching, you want to take into consideration the ratio of artist/vendor tables available in conjunction to attendee count, events/guests, and the con environment.

With both cons, if you frequent the same ones, try to keep things fresh and make new stuff or else you risk oversaturating your market and having people come up to your table thinking “I’ve seen that same poster 3 years already, and I already have it. What’s new?”

9. Just because something is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll sell right away – there’s a fine line between “it’s popular so fans will buy it” and “it’s popular but it’s oversaturated because everyone and their mom drew it and it won’t sell unless you differentiate your work from everyone else”. I’d argue if you’re passionate about a series and it just happens to be popular, go for it! You should draw what you like, because it’ll show in how you interact with other fans and the effort you put into it.

If you’re only drawing for the popularity, well, there’s a bit of debate about this. And let’s be honest, some of us need to pay bills. I’ll argue if you ONLY draw whatever is popular to sell out, it can reflect in the quality of your work and make you unmemorable (and you can still risk it not selling), but hey, you do you. But drawing only niche things may also be tricky, since the fans are probably very passionate, but few in number. Sometimes finding a balance between both can work, but at the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide what path you want to take. Most artists start out doing fanart as it’s easier for someone to walk up to your table if they recognize their favorite character than a table full of random OCs standing in a backgroundless void. But that’s not to say originals can’t sell because....

8. Originals sell! Don’t be afraid to make original content – this might shock some of you but original merchandise DOES sell, according to many successful anecdotal stories from artists and art friends who’ve done it, and a lot of people have said it is very rewarding, especially when you consider how prevalent fanart is. However, originals can be harder to sell – it will highly depend on the subject matter you’re drawing and attendees at certain cons may be more or less receptive to them than others, so you may have to try different cons to find your market. What has worked for others may not work for you. You might even need time to develop a consistency with your work so people know what to expect from you.

There are also a few conventions out there, such as Otakon, which do require you to have a certain % of originals when you apply for their artist alley, so there’s that.

7. Have stuff with different price points at your table – my personal opinion is “Do not do print-only tables” but I know there are artists out there who DO command good profits only selling prints and posters of their artwork.

But why I say this is because (especially at anime cons) there are usually younger kids who don’t have much disposable income or don’t have a lot of wall space and thus, can’t always afford big $20 posters, which is where having smaller items like charms and buttons can help as impulse purchases. It may take you 10 purchases of $2 buttons to reach that equivalent amount, but if you do get enough sales they’ll add up. Plus, it’s easier for some people to make use of charms and buttons.

Prints are still good because the profit margin is better and they're a way for your audience to see your "portfolio" and art style from afar. At larger cons where there’s a sea of artists, having many prints can help others see what you have or help find your table from a distance. Try and stick to common print sizes such as 11x17 inches, 8.5x11, 4x6 or 5x7, mostly on the basis that they’re easier to frame.

One thing - unless you plan on traveling to many conventions in your life, you do NOT need to print 50+ copies of each print if all you do is table at your small local con once a year. You will regret it and be stuck with them until you die (I’m not kidding). Unless a piece has proven to you it’s a best seller, I recommend printing 5-10 copies a print, 2-4 if you aren’t confident. You can always reprint more if they sell well, or replace them with newer prints.

Comic cons I hear are a little different, as their audience is usually older, but I can’t say much about them since I never actually vended at one before.

6. You gotta spend money to make money – You wanna make cool stuff like charms, lanyards, enamel pins? A button maker to make your own buttons? A dealer’s room spot instead of a regular artist alley table? Travel to cons outside your city? Heck, just buying table display stuff and getting new prints? That all costs money, bruh. This might require you save up, and some people I know even use their day job to help fund them to afford nice things. But artist alley IS also a business, and if you want your business to grow, you’ll need to take risks and invest in it. However, know that this should happen gradually over time and NOT overnight. If you literally have no previous experience selling your art and knowing what worked for you, do NOT carelessly throw down money to make every fancy merchandise imaginable.

5. Talk to people and engage with attendees! I say this because I’ve seen quite a few artists who are great at their craft, but aren’t good at business at all. Even if you aren’t confident about your work, still strive to be as professional as possible. And be your own cheerleader/salesman to your art! If the con is slow, don’t ignore customer’s questions by playing mobile games on your phone. People get energy off of you, and if you happen to seem like you hate people, attendees pick up on that. A lot of people who go to anime cons can be introverted/shy as well, so just saying hi and ask how they’re enjoying the con is a good start to engage with them! If you notice they’re cosplaying a character, tell them you like their cosplay or happen to have that character as a button! You’d be surprised some people may not know you offer a product because they overlooked it.

I usually let customers browse the table without bothering them, as people get uncomfortable if you’re being too desperate with sales.

4. Displays and Table Placement matter- Your table placement at a convention can dictate a HUGE majority of your sales, and how you display yourself also counts as well. You could have amazing art, but maybe your table is in some back corner where it’s not getting enough foot traffic compared to the people in the front. Additionally, if you have merchandise hidden behind other merch, other people can’t see it as they walk by. Presentation is important, there are so many possibilities you can do to make your table look nice.

The most common way people display their prints are usually either by using grid cubes, photography stands or PVC pipes with clamps. All of these have their pros and cons, and some artists even use a combination of the 3.

3. Cons are extremely volatile. Artist alley is NOT a place to “get rich quick” – To be blunt (and unfortunately, speaking from personal experience), you can’t predict when you’ll get dicked over by a badly-run con. No two cons are the same, and the same convention can even vary from year to year, depending on things like how it was run by staff, its location, when it was held, etc. At one con, you may sell out of prints. At another, only your commissions do well. Even something as simple as a venue change and increasing the amount of artist/vendor tables can affect sales. You can only prepare as much as you can and hope you survive the rainy days.

I used to think as you got older and sold at more artist alleys, your profits could only go up and boy was I wrong with that notion. The realest piece of advice I’ve learned is seeing seasoned veterans (who are used to making 4-digit profits or artists who have done this for over 7 years) having times where they hit a bad con and don’t even break even. If you’ve never had a terrible con before, you are either very lucky or you have not vended at enough different cons to experience this.

A lot of different factors can come into play, and while some you can’t control, think of the ones that you can – was your setup bad? What do you see other attendees buying? Or maybe was this your first con in a completely different area and it caught you off guard? If you feel your art was lacking, don’t lose confidence. Look at it as an opportunity to find yourself again, and work hard on your craft so you can show everyone at your next event “hey, this is the new and improved me! Look at how far I’ve come!”

2. Artist alleys can be stressful and are getting more competitive, but it’s important to develop a thick skin to keep moving on – I should clarify this, AA should NOT be a sea of cutthroat competition because every con has its mix of those starting out, the veterans who have been doing this for 10 years, and everyone else in between. And everyone has something different to bring to the table. However, the fact is… artist alleys are getting competitive each year just to GET IN. At some popular cons, there’s always more applicants than tables available, and you can’t take it personally when 1,000+ people are in a lottery for 90 tables.

As artists, we are always our worst critics as well, just because art can be highly personable to us. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong in the moment. Maybe you got more commissions than you can handle. Your new merchandise didn’t arrive on time. Or you worry your art isn’t “sellable”. All of these can be pretty frustrating and question your self-worth as an artist. But just know you are not alone, all of us have had those moments at least once, maybe even multiple times in our lives. Sometimes you just have to keep marching on, despite things. And if you need time to step away to take a breather, go ahead and take care of yourself first.

1. … But you keep wanting to do them because they are also one of the best experiences you can have as a creative – despite the above, artist alleys have been an integral part of my growth as an artist. Seeing what everyone has to offer has challenged me to keep improving my art and helped me meet fellow artist friends thru our comradery of shared experiences, interests, and stresses. It’s very easy to feel dejected, but if you can keep pushing thru, you’ll probably benefit the most than those who give up at the slightest hint of being butthurt. The artist alley life isn’t exactly easily, but it’s heartwarming when you have moments where “doing what you love” and “drawing what you like” feel like it paid off.

Don’t feel bad if your first shows don’t go logistically or financially great! I never realized how lucky I was that my first AA, I broke even AND made profit, because many apparently don’t. Go into it as an opportunity to market your work, meet other artists and customers, and figure out what people like about your art. Artist alley is not for everyone, but if you find that you’re growing to love it despite the hiccups, keep going! My AA experience isn’t as extensive as others, but I hope with this, this is my way of giving back to the artist alley community that helped me grow as an artist.

If you’re still worried if you’re “good enough” to do artist alley, here’s my final advice: just do it, bruh.

#artist alley #artist alley tips #first time artist alley #how to be a con artist #if you read this far THANK U AND I HOPE THIS HELPED. and feel free to send me an ask or message if you have any questions!1

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barmcakemag · 3 years

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Halifax Festival of Words talk

This is the talk I gave at the Halifax Festival of Words. It took place in the front room of the Grayston Unity bar (pictured below) last month, just before publication of Barmcake 9. Some of the posters from the talk are also pictured below. Thanks to the festival and bar for having me.

I love this front room.

It sort of reminds me of being a kid, at my grandparents, on Boxing Day.

Some of the family used to get up and do a turn – a song, a sketch, a tune.

Among the aunties and uncles was my Great Aunty Mary, who was great in all respects. She was very funny, wrote poetry – and was the spitting image of Hylda Baker, (poster below), who I’ll be coming to later.

I didn’t have an uncle like Lou Reed – fortunately.

That would have made Christmas a bit tense.

‘Uncle Lou, you’ve spilt heroin on your roast potatoes again.’

Anyway, I’ll be coming on to the Velvet Underground later as well.

So, I’m Dave Griffiths and I make Barmcake.

The magazine started in April 2014 and the new edition – issue 9 – is out next week.

There are usually two editions a year. I only brought one out last year because I was busy with my other work – I’m a freelance writer, editor, proofreader and journalism tutor.

Barmcake is available free in about 45 venues in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Sheffield, and North Derbyshire. You can also obtain copies by post, if you send a donation.

I write all – or all but one or two – of the articles in each edition. I also design the magazine, edit it, find the advertising, sort the fundraising, promote it, and deliver it.

This afternoon I’m going to be telling you why I make a print magazine in the digital age.

And why I make this particular magazine, which I believe is different from anything else out there.

(I know it’s definitely the only one that offers northern entertainment for the middle-aged.)

I’ll also tell you how I make an issue from scratch.

There are high points about making Barmcake – interviewing people like John Cooper Clarke, Viv Albertine, and Ken Dodd.

But there are perils about making a magazine on your own – for example when my computer packed in a week or so before deadline for issue 8 and I had redo the pages from scratch

I’ll also tell you about the money side of things.

I’m happy to take any questions at the end. Although don’t ask me anything about maths. The square of the hypotenuse is worth two in the bush, or whatever.

I’ve been a journalist since 1989.

I’ve worked for all the ridiculously-named weekly newspapers – the Congleton Chronicle, the Biddulph Chronicle, the Ormskirk Advertiser, the Wigan Observer.

I’ve never been a Woodward and Bernstein-type journalist. I used to love doing golden wedding anniversary interviews – finding out about people’s lives. (The secret for most couples is: ‘Never go to bed on an argument’).

I moved to London in the mid-90s and became a sub-editor. Then I came back up north to Leeds to work for PA New Media’s Ananova website as a sub and writer. It was a really exciting time to be part of a new national media organisation.

At that point the digital world seem to offer limitless possibilities – a chance to hear fresh voices and cover things that didn’t get much attention on a national platform

But as it went on – on Ananova and elsewhere – the choice of topics became narrower and the coverage shallower.

It felt like a missed opportunity and after a few years, I left to become a sub on the Manchester Evening News print edition.

That disillusionment with the digital world fed into the creation of Barmcake. I even stopped doing my own blog, which is a sort of forerunner of the magazine.

I feel websites lack the personal touch of magazines and newspapers. Each edition of Barmcake is yours to hold, to savour, to read how you want. It’s not borrowed on a screen in a clutter of links and dowdy, keyword-heavy headlines.

Print is more personal.

I was reminded of that a few years ago when I was flicking through a paper, turned the page and there was a two-page picture spread of the inside of a doll’s house – with fantastic detail of each room

Now, if that had been a website link – say ‘See the amazing doll’s house, click here’ – I probably wouldn’t have looked at it.

But the photo, text and design on the printed edition stopped me in my tracks.

And it was me who chose to stop and look at it, not a website trying to guide me

Of course, I can’t do Barmcake without digital media.

I can get instant access to performers and venues via their websites and email addresses.

And Twitter is a great promotional tool.

Even the front page of each Barmcake is partially designed that way so it looks good on Twitter.

Crucially, it’s how you use all that information available on the internet.

And I think many websites, magazines and newspapers aren’t making the most of it. They are picking from the same narrow pool of stories.

Meanwhile arts coverage in regional newspapers – with a few notable exceptions – is not as good as it used to be.

Some newspaper bosses are so pleased they can offer the same size newspapers as 10 years ago with half the staff, they forget about the quality of the editorial content.

When I look at some of the free lifestyle magazines in shops and pubs, the editorial content seems to be a shoddy afterthought.

And some website and magazine interviews are written by people who don’t appear to know anything about their interviewees, beyond what the PR company has told them

So that’s another reason why I started Barmcake – I want the articles to be the top priority.

I don’t stint on research and writing and rewriting.

For a two-page article in issue 8, for example, I read four books and endlessly wrote and rewrote the article.

They were four books about The Fall so it wasn’t the worst thing ever.

Hashtag firstworldindieproblems

Pete Wylie was another reason I started Barmcake.

I read he was crowdfunding to make a new LP which to me was huge news.

But I couldn’t find much about it in magazines, newspapers and websites.

Now I’ve got Northern entertainment for the middle-aged in my strapline.

But I hate some middle-aged people’s attitudes to new bands, the sort of people who say: ‘Well, of course, they sound a bit like the Velvet Underground but they are not as good as them – and I speak as someone who has a 23-minute out-take of John Cale whittling a spoon.’

But having said that, there are artistes aged 40 and upwards – like Pete Wylie – whose work is either being ignored or under-appreciated, while some fairly dull, conservative, twentysomething bands are lauded to the hilt, merely because of their age.

I also felt audiences aged 40 and over were being ignored by many websites and magazines – the sort of people, for example, who might live in West Yorkshire but travel to gigs or comedy shows in Sheffield and Manchester (hence my circulation area).

People who like a nice real ale pub, a good book and trips to theatres and galleries.

Those were the subjects I wanted to write about.

Plus I wanted to provide a decent listings service.

I used to love looking at City Life and Time Out and picking out gigs I wanted to see.

Can you do that on the internet? Not really, unless you want to wade through lists of venues or dates of gigs.

Barmcake is also a reaction against magazine shops like Magma and websites like Stack and Magculture.

They only consider design-led, rather than text-led, magazines (spoof trendy mag, above).

Their view, unfortunately, seems to dominate the indie-mag culture.

The Magma magazines are beautiful, for sure, but slightly formulaic – lots of photos, lots of white space.

Some of the articles can be slightly sterile and desperately in need of an edit.

I was brought up on 80s NME and Sounds with writers like Steven ‘Seething’ Wells and his hectic, hectoring, hilarious prose, which is completely at odds with something you’d read in, say, Monocle.

Word magazine and Forty-20, a rugby league magazine, are other influences as they put – or did put in the case of Word – witty text first, before the design.

So a year before I left the MEN, I was thinking about going freelance and starting a magazine.

I went on a Guardian course about how to make one.

I wanted to know if I could make a magazine on my laptop and how much it would cost.

But the course wasn’t particularly helpful about either the basics of making a magazine or the money side of it.

And I realised I had a lot to learn when I went to a printer in Manchester after I went freelance.

I wanted someone to guide me about the basics of the printing process.

At the MEN, you simply had to press a button to send it to the printers. The page sizes, colours, etc were all set up for you.

So I came bounding into the shop, all enthusiastic, to be met by this spectacularly miserable bloke.

I said: ‘I’m going to make my own magazine and I was just wondering what I need to do.’

He said: ‘How many pages?’

‘Er..I don’t know, about 35.’

Shakes head: ‘You can’t have that number. What type of paper do you want?’

‘Er…I don’t know, just standard magazine paper.’

‘What sort of paper do you want for the front?’

‘Er…I don’t know.’

‘Do you want colour or black or white?

‘A mix of colour and black and white.’

‘Which pages are colour?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

I left the shop with my tail between my legs; my hopes not exactly crushed but dented.

Fortunately, I discovered the Footprint Workers Co-operative in Leeds who were very helpful and answered all my daft questions with patience.

I can definitely recommend them if you are starting your own magazine or fanzine.

So I had an idea of what I was going to cover (music, comedy, pubs, theatre, books. film, art).

I had an idea of how I was going to write it (make the writing as good as it can be, keep the articles short)

I wanted to target an over 40s audience living in and around Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester, (although I don’t mind who reads it -– I’m not going to tell a youth with a fashionable beard to ‘put the Barmcake down sunshine’)

I wanted to keep the design simple and retro (the headlines are meant to look like 70s sitcom credits).

And I wanted to make it as cheaply as possible – so I would do all or most of the writing, as I couldn’t pay anyone else, and I would deliver it.

I found a free design program (called Scribus) and I only use publicity photos or photos that I take myself.

I don’t charge for Barmcake because I want to get the magazines in the sorts of pubs, cafes and independent shops where people like to read books, newspapers and magazines.

In these sorts of places, most of the other magazines and newspapers are free.

Keeping it free also means less hassle for the owners of the pubs and cafes – no separate pots of money to keep etc.

I wanted a funny northern word for the title and Barmcake fits the bill.

There’s also the ‘You starting a print magazine in the internet age? You Barmcake!’

‘Northern entertainment for the middle-aged’ gives some idea of what the magazine’s about, but it is not entirely serious.

I don’t want to go down the professional northerner route:

(Hovis voice):‘Eeeeeeeh, we’re all right friendly in t’ north.

‘London? They never speak to anyone.’

I’m always up for challenging northernness, because let’s face it – some of the world’s most miserable people are in Yorkshire!

I also didn’t want to get stuck in a straight, white, indie, male, middle-aged rut where The Smiths, The Fall or Half Man Half Biscuit can never be criticised.

And where it would be blasphemous to suggest that Temptation by Heaven 17 is better than Temptation by New Order.

Barmcake is A5 because I wanted something that people can fit in their pocket or bag when they are out and about and it only costs a first class stamp to post a copy.

Apart from postage, my other costs are printing and petrol.

So I need to find about £850 for each issue.

Initially I used some of my voluntary redundancy money from the MEN and money from my other work to pay for the magazine.

I started seeking advertising from issue 2 onwards.

My advertising revenue has gone up from £60 in issue 2 to £630 in issue 8.

It will be more than that in the new edition.

I feel that if you give people something to read, then they don’t just flick through the magazine and so they are more likely to see the adverts.

I am pleased that plan appears to be paying off.

But, it’s tricky balancing the amount of time you spend on editorial and advertising.

On some issues, I’ve left the advertising a little too late because I wanted to get the editorial right.

But, if I spend too much time on the advertising, I may get more ads in the short term, but I won’t keep the advertisers in the long term as the quality of the magazine will drop.

I set up a Paypal account for donations, which you can access via my website, and that brings in between £150 and £200 per issue, so I was more or less able to cover my costs for the first time for issue 8.

I also sent some copies to Australia for the first last time.

However I’d like to bring in more money through donations.

So I’ll go through how the magazine has developed over the years.

Here are some bits from Issue 1 (above).

That issue had interviews with Cud, the Wedding Present, the director of a Frank Sidebottom doc, and the Revolutions Brewing Company owners, among others.

Features included Maxine Peake, a pub crawl on the Tour de France Yorkshire route, and Alan Bennett.

I did ask for interviews with Maxine and Alan.

With Alan, Faber and Faber gave a curious response – not no, but: (Alan Bennett voice): ‘Mr Bennett is aware of your interest.’

(I like to think everyone at Faber speaks with an Alan Bennett accent).

I was hoping perhaps that they were giving him potential material for his diary.

That would be the dream for me: (Alan Bennett voice): ‘I used to be contacted by the Guardian, but now it’s only bread-related magazines.’

In general I find about 75% of people I contact agree to interviews.

I was excited to get the first issue out.

There were 1,000 copies for that, it’s been 1,500 copies from issue 2 onwards

There was a good response to Barmcake 1 – the title, strapline and the front cover probably made the biggest impact.

But in hindsight I felt the interviews were too short and there were too many, fairly ordinary, one-page previews.

I addressed those issues for Barmcake 2 by making most of the interviews two or three pages long and sticking about 6-7 previews on two pages at the back – and that’s been the format ever since.

So issue 2 (above) had interviews with Viv Albertine, Pete Wylie, Age of Chance, Steve Huison, among others.

My friend Richard wrote about why Otley is better than Prague for beer.

He has also done Bluetones and Skids interviews in other issues.

My friend Roshi has written about David Bowie and Count Arthur Strong.

And Prue, my wife, has interviewed Bryony Lavery and done a piece on the theatre company she co-founded – Root and Branch Productions (more northern entertainment for the middle-aged).

I’ve only used one feature from a writer I didn’t know as I want to be in a position to pay people for their work.

Viv Albertine was one of my most important interviews I’ve done for Barmcake.

It’s one of the most popular pieces with readers and it encouraged other artistes to get in touch.

I thought her book was one of the best memoirs/autobiographies I’d read, yet many of the reviews concentrated on the Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious anecdotes and didn’t focus enough on her fascinating life.

She answered my questions within a day (some people take nearly 2 months) and I was really chuffed she’d taken the trouble to give such interesting answers.

For example I asked her: Was punk the only time she’d come across so many strong and interesting characters?

She said: “God no. Those people weren’t that strong and interesting. Vivienne Westwood was.

“We were all very flawed. But at least we didn’t hide our flaws, we flaunted them.

“I would say it was the only time in my life when you were allowed to be yourself, not smiling and saying thank you all the time.

“Not greasing the wheels and aspiring and careerist.”

The Ken Dodd interview, from issue 5, in 2016 was also a highlight.

Here’s an extract:

He was fizzing with jokes and anecdotes.

When I mentioned I was from Huddersfield, he immediately recited a limerick about the town involving udders.

He told me an interviewer once asked if Dodd was his real name and he told him it was an anagram.

While I took that in, he’s onto the next joke.

I was also fascinated with how works an audience.

He said: “You play an audience like a musician plays his instrument.

“You know where the hotspots are, you know where you’ve got to work hard on them when they’re a bit stubborn, you know where to flirt with them, where to encourage them, and where to take it easy.

“You put little ad libs in, little asides, go faster, slower, louder, quieter, take it easy.”

So it was great to interview Ken and it was great to interview John Cooper Clarke for the same issue.

The interview was difficult to set up but turned out well.

I was meant to be interviewing him at a gig in Buxton but my car broke down and I couldn’t get to the gig in time on the train.

The angle I went on was his accent – whether it was the most important thing about his work and whether living in Essex for 25 odd years had affected it.

Here’s an extract:

“Accent? I don’t think it’s at all important. It’s what the work contains.

“I don’t think the accent’s got anything to do with it.

“I think vocal quality might have something to do with it, as in musicality.

“Listening to my old stuff it sounds like I’ve got a problem with my adenoids, and it can’t be that because I had my adenoids removed when I was about eight-years-old.

“To be honest, I think my voice is better than it’s ever been.

“But that’s not because of the accent, it’s because of the sonorous baritone quality.”

And of course, I can’t think of anyone else who says ‘sonorous baritone quality’ quite like John Cooper Clarke – stretching the vowels and punctuating the words so they got a real rhythm., He makes run-of the mill words sound magnificent.

Issue 3, (above), had interviews with, among others, John Shuttleworth, John Bramwell, O’Hooley and Tidow, the organiser of the Glossop Record Club, and Professor Paul Salveson, who talked about railways and northern regionalism.

The latter is an example how I’ve occasionally moved away from my core subjects as I think it would interest readers.

In issue 7 I interviewed the marvellous Beers Manchester blogger who wrote about dealing with grief after his son died.

And in issue 8 I talked to Rosie Wilby who has written a really interesting book about monogamy.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about Barmcake is finding out about wonderful artistes I didn’t know much about, like O’Hooley and Tidow, and looking into topics I’ve not really thought about much, such as non-monogamous relationships – and record clubs.

Glossop Record Club was the first of the groups or people I featured from Twitter.

I noticed the people who started following me were doing some interesting and unusual stuff.

In other issues I’ve done features on 8bitnorthxstitch, (pictured below) who makes fabulous cross-stitch creations of bands such as The Fall and TV shows such as Coronation Street

There’s Beer Mat Movies, who writes film reviews on beer mats

And Jennifer Reid, or as she calls herself, the pre-eminent broadside balladress of the Manchester region.

In Issue 4, I decided to make a few tweaks to the structure with a picture-led centrespread and a bigger listings section.

I don’t want the magazine to date so my listings look up to four months ahead.

The listings are usually the first and last thing I do in the magazine.

I look at every gig venue, theatre, and gallery website in my circulation area, looking for potential star interviews, cover stars and centrespreads.

I listen to bands I’ve not heard of before who are playing at these venues.

Artistes are also contacting me now and I use three or four stories an issue from them

Once I get two or three big interviews, the rest of the magazine falls into place.

I feel it’s a bit like organising a festival – you need headliners plus strong supporting acts.

And once I get the headliners, I start looking for advertisers.

I have a mix of regular and new advertisers.

I then ask all my stockists, I ask local brewers and some businesses who follow me on Twitter.

Most of my interviews are by email, the rest are phone interviews although I did one face-to-face chat with Martin Parr.

There is always a mad panic at the end of each issue , either because of a missing interview or ad, but all you can do is politely grovel with people to please, please, please in send the material.

As it’s just me making the magazine, there are no back-up features, no IT team to deal with technical problems, such as converting pdfs to jpgs.

Fortunately I’ve always managed to fill an issue in the end.

Once I’ve written and rewritten my pieces, I go back and check everything – the original source material, fact checks, spell checks.

The issue is then proofread by Prue and then by one of our friends.

I don’t want a daft literal or incorrect name to undermine the magazine, especially as Barmcake takes about two months to do, on and off, between my other work.

My printer then gives me a final proof before it goes to press and I get it back within a week.

The new Barmcake is due out midweek next week.

I like to do a big reveal on the day of publication but I can tell you it is the biggest Barmcake ever, with 9 exclusive interviews, more than any before, and 5 features – including Hylda Baker.

It takes me four days to deliver the copies.

I cover an area bordered by Wigan, Ilkley and Sheffield.

The list of venues is on the website, although it will change slightly over the next few days. Venues ask to be stockists and readers also recommend places.

I keep about 300 copies back for people who want a copy in the post, and for friends and media people.

Then I do a Twitter promo campaign for about 2-3 weeks.

I only put one article per issue online and I only do that months after the issue comes out.

In February, I start on a new issue.

It will be the fifth anniversary issue and a chance to take stock.

Ideally I’d like to be making more money for it, getting regular sponsorship from a suitable partner, and in the long term looking to pay others to write.

But anyway, that’s the story of Barmcake.

I hope you have enjoyed it

#magazines journalism

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