I took a kind of sabbatical from author spaces and spent a lot of time drawing over the last couple months, while also dealing with my health.
In the meantime, I wrote a lot of the next chapter in Lira and Willow’s story, which then got cut up and edited into about 30k words as of now. This book has been fighting me harder than any book I can remember in recent memory, but I hope it’s all worth it in the end.
I’ve been wanting to do more with my art lately. It’s something I’ve wanted for a while, to be able to integrate it with my writing, to be able to see my characters and worlds come to life. I haven’t felt “ready” or “good enough” for a long time, and in many ways I still don’t!
My breakfast/lunch today!
But I’ve also been having some thoughts about “professionalism” and what it means, and how in some ways, I think it’s what’s led us to where we are, re: gen AI art and the way some people feel like they need to use it, or that it’s more desirable than their own imperfect efforts. And I do believe that human art is good and vital and necessary, despite and maybe because of its imperfections. So I think I will at least try to begin cultivating the visual world of my novels, in whatever way I can.
Maybe it will be a growing experience for both of us!
I usually have at least a week of false starts after I finish writing any long project. I finished the second Fox and the Rose book and then… flailed. for like 2 weeks straight. I always have way too many WIPs in the pipleline, and whenever I finish a book, I am usually excited to get back to one of them.
Usually, the next thing I write doesn’t end up being the thing I thought I was going to write.
I was really excited to revisit Mouse and Charis in a tentative story I’m working on, set between Fairytale and First Aid.
Ah, another false start. I’m back to working on Koreatown, and maybe this will be the one I finish.
I’ve also been making a lot of art. I probably owe a longer post to this, but I’ve been increasingly… idk, disturbed by gen AI and what it’s doing to the cultural and fictional landscapes. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed that I have some AI covers on my books. I don’t love it. I go back and forth on it.
Often, I think it’s what I need to do in order to make sales, in order to produce books that are pretty enough to gain an audience. I am small and fleshy and made of meat and unfortunately I need to pay rent and pay for medication and buy food. And yet I do on some level think that every piece of AI art makes the world worse.
For years now I’ve gone back and forth on the idea of illustrating my own covers. Something in the idea must appeal to me, because why do I keep ending up here, time after time, year after year? But the process is so big and daunting. I don’t know how to have time to be a “professional” artist in that way and also to be a writer. The indie output schedule is brutal. I am never really keeping up.
Anyway, I don’t say any of that to make you feel sorry for me, or to excuse myself from anything, if there is something to be excused for. Just… this is where I’ve been at. I’ve been drawing a lot lately, making a lot of frankly very bad drawings of my characters, and also a few good ones when I get lucky. I’ve been thumbnailing covers and trying my best and just… trying.
Artist: jonasgoonface on Tumblr
I spend a lot of time thinking about this comic by jonasgoonface on Tumblr. I think about this whenever I make another bad drawing. I can be worse!! Maybe in a world full of AI, every bad drawing means more, if nothing else as an act of very human mark-making.
I’ve been working hard, and I’m quite tired. Feeling kind of wrung out but also like there is so much more work to do.
Mostly, I want to lose the AI covers because I feel like they cut me off from a community that I love and care about, a community that supported me when I was in fandom and that (understandably, laudably) loves their artists deeply and wants to defend them.
I don’t know that I can change all of my existing covers—certainly not overnight, not right away, and maybe not for a long time. But I can think hard about what I’m going to do moving forward, and i can try to do some things differently.
I spare you guys the worst of it, but I swear I should add a “had an existential meltdown about their writing and/or publishing career” ticker counter to my website just so you can see how ridiculous it gets
Most insane and honest synopsis I can come up with: It’s self-indulgent and includes boys who smell like milk swathed in lace. the ML is mean as shit and also coddled by his sisters <3 the MC is a tsundere brat pining over his dad/brother/boyfriend (these are all the same person; no, they are not related). One of them is an incubus but I’m not telling you who.
I am extremely tired today, like the fully wrung-out, lay flat tired. I had jury duty today, and the process was A Lot. The whole month has been a lot.
I have a new book coming out tomorrow, but book releases have always been quiet affairs for me. I am most excited about my stories while I’m actually writing them, living in them, when everything feels white-hot and vital.
Presenting a book to an audience feels more like showing off a piece of beach glass. Beautiful and worthy, but evidence of where the lightning struck rather than the lightning itself. I hope that doesn’t sound full of myself.
Which is to say that I’ve been living inside other books these days, and those feel vital to me. Lively.
I’ve been cross stitching and crocheting, drawing and looking for inspiration everywhere. I think I am trying to find peace.
I hope you check out the book, and that you like it if you read it. Here is a strange sticker I saw the other day as tribute.
