Essays

Like many of you, I’ve heard a lot about the new text and art-generating AIs. I was recently listening to The Creative Penn podcast by Joanna Penn. She’s been excited and talking about AIs for quite some time now. I’ve listened to her and others talk about how they use ChatGPT. None of it made […]

I started 2023 with the best of intentions. I had so many things that I was going to start, or restart. I was going to walk more, get back into keto, lose weight, keep up a consistent word count goal, etc. Then I fell and gave myself a concussion in January, on Friday the 13th.

I figured it was about that time, to do another round of pictures of plants! Yay! I’ll start with the flowers, etc. that are growing inside TH2. I specifically get plants that will flower at this time of the year, so that I’ll have flowers when it’s generally cold, wet, and rainy in the PNW.

I fell down and gave myself a minor concussion. I wrote about it in the essay over on Patreon. However, I’m not posting it here because it feels too personal. If you’re really curious, I will email it to individuals. But I’m not posting it in public.

I have continued to read a lot of books this past year. I’ve enjoyed it. Though I will also admit it’s kind of become a habit, now. Last year, I was really excited to have read so many books, as I’d kind of stopped reading a lot. This year, it’s just something I do, all

I debated just making this a regular blog post, and not an essay. However, figuring out what I wanted for a word count goal for 2023 involved some serious soul-searching, a lot of calculations, and a lot of emotions. So an essay seemed more appropriate. Last year, my word count goal for 2022 was 500K.

Essay – Low Stakes Ever since the start of the pandemic, I haven’t been interested in reading a lot of heart-stopping, high-tension, high-stakes books. I also haven’t been writing those sorts of books either, at least, not at first. I needed lighter stories with lower stakes. I remember the first time I realized the need

Ten days ago, I came down with COVID. I might have been showing symptoms the day before I got really sick, as I had something of a sore throat. That also might have been psychosomatic. We knew that my husband had it, and so I kept imagining symptoms. My husband was exposed on a Wednesday.

When I first started writing seriously, over twenty years ago, I used to say that I had a two-book writing engine. At that time, I was writing historic fantasy. That meant a lot (A LOT) of research. This is before the internet, so I was always haunting used bookstores for history books about the time