May Newsletter
Hi, everyone! It’s that time again! Monthly news and accountability!
Before I talk about anything else: The Shimmering Prayer of Sûkiurâq releases tomorrow! Not only that, but it’ll be on sale for $1.99 as a Pride Month special and for slightly less if you buy it via itch.io where I have a month-long special sale on all my queer fiction. You can get all my queer stories for a grand total of $23.00 and normally the set would cost you $35.59, so that’s 35% off. :O
I’ve been terrible at actually announcing it, but there we are.
Life And Other Such Important Matters
Well, wish me luck on life things that will remain unnamed for now! They’re ongoing. Beyond that the month went… surprisingly well. I think. Honestly, it continues the trend of “I know something happened this month, but wow can I not remember what”. Well, that and there were some things I can’t talk about that will hopefully be really good.
Hugo nominee reading goes… more or less apace, I think. I’ll need to step up my game on the novel front, but that’s not too surprising, really. I’ve been trying to get through the novellas and novelettes for the most part. Beyond that I’ve… Well, I’ve mostly been feeling like I’ve been treading water. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, but that’s how it feels. It took me practically all month to get up some promo posts for next month and, well, you can see how well announcing the sale went.
Overall it’s just this weird mix where I recognise that I’ve been okay and feeling like I’ve not been okay at all. It’s just really weird.
Featured Post
8 Decades of SFF with Low, Intimate Stakes
Books that celebrate smaller, more intimate stakes (and shout-out to Eric Smith for introducing me to the phrasing!) and eschew focusing on the larger stakes, though, can feel like they’re far and few between or like they never existed in the first place, which is a shame because people have always written these types of stories too, even won acclaim with them.
Completed Projects
No big completed projects!
June Goals
- 0/15,000 words of fiction written
- 0/1 proper paper introduction
- 0/1 polish Sing to Me essay
- 0/12 books read
- 0% playtest YPHD (mostly I just want to check the meta-narrative is the best it can be and tweak as necessary then work on the final things to tidy it up and it’ll be ready to be released! :O It’ll be my first Twine interactive fiction piece!)
- 0/4 discussions of papers in Asexualities
- 0/4 print format checks
As you can see I’m sticking to the 15,000 words because I’m still reworking DemiPrincess2 chapters. It should be a piece of cake to get all of it done. I also want to continue working on the paper and finish polishing up the essay on Sing to Me, so it’s ready for everyone to read. It looks very likely that it’ll be available to everyone, so I’m incredibly excited! I hope it’ll be well-received because it tackles several aspects of asexuality and aromanticism that I haven’t really touched on yet.
The print formats are, I hasten to point out with a dejected heart, not because I’m at a point where making print editions is financially sensible for me again. No, I’m making/considering them because a friend pointed out that audiobook software can’t read ebooks but can read pdfs. I’ve resisted making pdfs of books available because I thought they would be and pdfs just do not read comfortably on ereaders in my experience, but if audiobook readers require pdfs to read them this goes well beyond my personal dislike and becomes an accessibility issue. That is something I can address, to some extent, so it’s something I want to address. This month I’m hoping to start by checking over and tidying up the PDFs that I’ve already got.
And yes that means that Patrons can likely expect me to record videos about book design again in the relatively near future!
May Goals
- 21,627/15,000 words of fiction written
- 1/1 proper essay outline
- 1/1 completed draft of the essay on Sing to Me
- 18/12 books read
- 5/5 discussions of papers in Asexualities
Somehow, I made them all. What even.
Writing Updates
This Month’s Fiction Wordcount: 21,627
This Month’s Non-Fiction Wordcount: 16,171
DemiPrincess2: [flails helplessly] I DO NOT KNOW. I should’ve had this in the bag, but apparently I’ve been flailing around trying to get everything done and… things got done, but goodness only knows what because I do not remember. I feel like I could have done so much more and somehow… didn’t. T_T
Stand-out Positive Moment
I’ve managed to listen to at least one episode of all of the fancast nominees for the Hugo Awards! VICTORY!
This Month on Patreon
Free
- April Newsletter
- Lynn Elsewhere: 3 Tropes I Love In Fantasy Fiction at Dear Geek Place
- 8 Decades of SFF with Low, Intimate Stakes
- Week 19 Update
- You Can’t See Numbers: Dyscalculia Representation in A Promise Broken
- Upcoming Release: The Shimmering Prayer of Sûkiurâq
- Week 20 Update
- Queer Frameworks of Language: or, why vocabulary is so important to marginalised groups seen through a distinctly asexual and aromantic lens
- Week 21 Update
- No Clever Titles
$1+
- Lynn rambles about Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3
- Audio: The Bravest Little Engine and the Siren’s Song
- Let’s Read! Chapter 6 of Asexualities
- Lynn rambles about Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 4
- Let’s Read! Chapter 7 of Asexualities
- Lynn rambles about Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 5
- Lynn rambles about… Sword Art Online Season 1
- Lynn rambles about… The Hugo Awards Voting (Part 1)
- Let’s Read! Chapter 8 of Asexualities
- Lynn rambles about… Game of Thrones S8 E6 (Finale)
- Lynn rambles about… Hugo Awards Voting, Part 2
- Asexuality in Fiction #3: The Bone People by Keri Hulme
- Let’s Read! Chapter 9 of Asexualities
- Poetry: Giraffe
$5+
- WIP: DemiPrincess 2 Chapter 4, Part 5
- WIP: When the Beds Were New
- WIP: StM essay (unfinished)
- WIP: DemiPrincess 2, Chapter 5, Part 1
- WIP: Sing to Me Essay full draft
- WIP: DemiPrincess2, Chapter 5, Part 2
- WIP: DemiPrincess2, Chapter 6, Part 1
How about you? What have you been up to lately? Has anything awesome happened?