<–The State of the Writer: 1/24/21         The State of the Writer: 2/21/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

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Finished Projects: 1

• Book Reviews: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – 1/30/21

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Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Status: Preparation
Progress: Setting up notes in Scrivener

I managed to figure out one of the things I had under General Issues and Questions on OneNote from years ago for the male MC.  Sometimes I just have to start writing about the problem and brainstorming solutions, and it’ll come together.  I still have a few more things to do, but I’m starting to think about what I need to finish up in order to start writing the first chapter.  My hubs is the MVP for just listening to me talk about this shit and let me figure it out lol.

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Project: Story Audio Recording
Title: Northern Lights
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction
Length: Novel
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Status: Editing
Progress: Adding pictures for slideshow

There are some NSFW versions of the above picture, but I’ve had this one for years, and since planning this project I’ve known I wanted to use it.  I spent the last few sessions gathering and doing some color filtering on images before adding about ten to the project.  I’m now integrating them into the audio with dark spaces in between.  So many dark spaces…they’re literally a lifesaver for this project lol.  It amuses me that some of the seemingly simpler images are harder to find like “belt,” but I can find painfully specific ones for others.

ETA is maybe by end of March?  Maybe sooner?  That’s just wrapping up the image retrieval and integration prior to any editing and then artist permission requests.

Project: Story Audio Recording
Title: The Broken Rose
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction
Length: Novel
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Status: Recording
Progress: Finished first recordings of Chapter 1

I had meant to talk about this last week in my little italicized summary at the bottom, but I forgot.  Then I made a recording of it and didn’t post that either.  Let’s see if I can do that now…

There are no closed captions for it since I didn’t do any editing, but essentially it’s just me talking about doing yet another audio recording project.  It’s not going to be the same as Northern Lights above, because doing another thing like that just isn’t feasible right now.  That project is a lot.  That has almost equal focus on the audio and visual whereas this one will focus on the audio exclusively.  I’m thinking of doing sort of an ambient video in the background for the majority with some specific images thrown in (the above would be the final one since Bethany perfectly captured exactly what I envisioned).  My DA friend DarkStar016 aka Mercury The Scribe on YouTube does something similar with her projects, and I like that aesthetic.  I shot them a message, but I’m not sure how often she’s checking DA.  Since I’m just in the beginning stages of this I have time.

I recorded all of Chapter 1 in one fell swoop even though I split it into two “sessions.”  Chapter 1 is only five pages long, but I figured two and a half pages would be a good test to see how much I could read before my voice gave out.  Now I know I can do at least five pages, and I noticed I was a bit hoarse afterwards, so five might be my limit?  I listened to it, and I definitely need to do some more recordings.  I’m totally fine with the voices I’m using for Sephiroth and Aeris, but I had to look up some “accent” videos in prep to do the slaver haha.  I’m laughing because I’m a little embarrassed, and I also hope I won’t offend anyone with how I’m doing it.  I consider it to be my favorite accent and mimicry is one of the sincerest forms of flattery especially for me.  Because my voice tends to sound a certain way when I record and want to sound nice, that’s the accent I go for, though I think I might do some tests with others.  I’m being intentionally vague o.O

Anyway, there’s a good chance this will be available either prior to the Northern Lights recording or at the same time.  Yes, I am a glutton for punishment.  I just can’t resist the call of another project.  It starts as me organizing it and figuring out what the steps are, and once I have that it’s just a matter of doing the preliminaries (editing and organizing the text) and well, I had an opportunity to do the recording on Friday so I thought “Why not?”  I’ll need to do another one on Tuesday to fix the issues I came across, so I’ll want to prep for that, but yeah.  It’s just the way my brain works.  I can be tired AF but the drive is always there.

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In Progress

• The Books of 2020 – Making good progress on this.  I’ll hopefully be done before the next status update.
• Game Reviews: Final Fantasy VI – I finished up Shadow’s part and have to figure out what I’m going to do next.  I’ll probably move onto Relm, Strago, and Thamasa since they’re all connected to him.
• Book Reviews: Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent – I haven’t even posted about finishing this in my SOTR update because I finished it before this week’s update and decided to do its review next because it’s a library book.  I want to have the book on hand for the review in case I need to go back through the text for specific references.  This novel is such a brilliant example of how the dichotomy of martyrs and monsters breaks down, and it exemplifies the sad adage of “A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”  Granted, there’s another mental image that pops into my head at that, but it’s not symbolically accurate and I’m only focusing on the “burning down the village” part, but ya know…

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I don’t really have too much to say.  My hubs lost his job, which would seem like it should be a bigger deal, but I’m kind of just like meh?  He kind of knew it was going to happen; he was getting tired of how they were treating him, and it was a temp position anyway.  Granted, it was nice money because he was working crazy overtime, but it’s weird because I’m still like planning on buying a house asap.  Maybe it’s delusional of me to just expect him to find something else as quickly as I’m thinking he will, but I kind of am ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m just not pressed about it.  He can now take my car in to get the battery replaced (he was able to jump it today), and Cid can get to the vet.  Hopefully, he’ll be able to get unemployment, but we should be getting that stimulus check soon?  I remember it was pretty quick last time; it just showed up in our account one day lol.  

Hopefully you enjoyed my nonsense babblings, and yes, that’s more or less what I sound like for those who were curious.  Sometimes I have more of a “valley girl” accent 🙂

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<–The State of the Writer: 1/24/21         The State of the Writer: 2/21/21–>