Okay, just a random question because I see a lot of people having trouble with the last intimacy check or the amount of gold (or whatever free currency) needed for the last avatar challenge when they just started with any of Cybird's games. I mean when it's their first route and everything.

Is there someone else who NEVER had any trouble with that? I always feel so alone and weird that I never got stuck on intimacy or gold. And I play a total of 7 Cybird games, soon 8 once Villains drops in EN, so I can't have so much luck, right?

NaNoWriMo remains the greatest ever way to make a total mess of my brain. One week in and I'm not only behind but remembering why I am NOT ALLOWED to just write shit with no real idea where I'm going. Not only has my Ghosted sequel developed a sequel of its own, but said sequel is trying to do about five different things at once and I'm just like "Oh my God, I just wanted to write something that heavily referenced A Christmas Carol, but set in a former meth lab in Idaho."

I don't know what I'm doing. I've got Ange’s mom popping her head back into the picture, urban legends about fentanyl, and I've accidentally written a bunch of gunplay that I really can't be bothered to follow through on because I just don't care that much about Glocks. Or know that much about them, to be honest. Also the ghost of Anton Chekhov will give me the spectral sideeye if I don't follow through with the gun thing, so it will probably have to be cut, going back to the root of why I suck at NaNoWriMo in the first place.

On the other hand I really, really want to bring Melissa back as a character, because I like her and I hate the idea of her spending eternity rattling around that beach house with her choad of a husband. I also love the idea of inverting that racist old spiritualist trope of the 'spirit guide', where white mediums populated their imaginations with Native Americans and Mayan priests. I just really love the idea of a Black medium having a spirit guide who is a pumpkin-spiced white lady named Melissa. And also because the scenes I wrote with Ange and Melissa together in Ghosted were some of my favourites. I was way too delighted with the idea of them trying to determine whether she was dead or not via the pulse reading on her Apple watch.

Yeah, I think I might have sold myself on that. Just have to figure out how to make it work now.

(And if you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, it's available to buy here.)

iPad vs. iPad Mini vs. Kindle Fire

Okay, my aged (ayyyyjeeeeed) iPad is about to die. You know it is time to replace when your mobile banking app tries to update, but is no longer supported. {{sideeyes}} Also, it is taking five minutes to write a paragraph due to the stuttering, delayed typing. Argh. But I shouldn’t complain. It has served me well.

Few questions to help me replace:

1) iPad Mini Owners:

If you own an iPad Mini, do you write on it any significant amount? I don’t want to haul around a Bluetooth keyboard, so that’s not an option. I’m an adult with adult-sized hands. Do you ever get used to it?

2) Kindle Fire Owners:

Mr. Who recently replaced his iPad 3 (grrrr, I have an iPad 2. It was MYYYYYYY turn) with a Kindle Fire. It is nifty swifty. And the price? Amazing compared to the price of an iPad. He loves it, but he doens’t write on it. He uses it strictly for reading, surfing, and emails/texts. (I really miss being able to seamlessly text from apple product to apple product, though. it is NOT simple to make it work.)

Is there a writing app that works similarly to Ulysses or Scrivener? I’ve looked in the Kindle app store, and nothing has jumped out at me. I don’t want to use a standard text editor ala Word or Pages. I love my story-writing software. And if there is such software, does it talk with a PC or Mac?

Thanks for your help. Consider your answers as food for my muse.