See title of post. *falls flat on face*

• Where Do I Start Reading? – One of my favorite authors, MCA Hogarth, has a super-helpful page for those who want to dive into her works. \o/
• How I Learned A Language In 22 Hours – This was my introduction to…
• Memrise – Making memorization fun and gamelike!
• San Francisco Becomes First City To Offer Free Trans Surgery – *jawdrop* SanFran, you kick ass.
• 3 Jaguars Web Comic Kickstarter – Awesome for the art, the stories, and the author-artist. Also, jaguars!
• Combat Kitchenware – This is quite possibly the awesomest thing ever.
• Magicians – A Language-Learning RPG – Korean mythology and language, in convenient bite-sized RPG form. I could ask for nothing more!

Current Earworm: Melissa Ferrick: Headphones On – HOW HAVE I GONE THIS LONG WITHOUT KNOWING ABOUT THIS WOMAN HOLY CRIKEY

The Friday Quote:

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. ~Epictetus

Instagrams of the Week:

My redonkulously adorable dogs. BB on the left, Orion on the right.

I have survived my first (wonderful and utterly exhausting) week at the new job! HUZZAH! I can’t wait until I’ve gotten settled enough to have enough energy in the evenings to do more.

Recently!

Writing

Work continues apace on my NaNoWriMo project, and I am quite pleased with how it’s coming along! I’ve hit 34.5k as of the writing of this post, and I must say, this is the first time ever that I’ve been ahead of the daily quota every day so far! It feels great.

In other exciting news, my partner has begun work on a short story (he’s doing a sort of micro-NaNo– NaShoStoWriMo?)! This is unbelievably cool, ’cause he’s talked for years about writing and now he’s putting words on the page instead of just wishing for it. I’m so proud of him! (Also, he’s a kickass writer, novice or not. He just has that rich eloquence, and he’s a voracious reader, so he’s got that going for him, too.)

Arting

Earlier last week, my mom, who lives in West Virginia, told me that two of her big dogs went missing in the snowfall that Sandy delivered to their doorstep, and I made her a prayer-painting in hopes they’d either find their ways back home or be found by a compassionate human. The very next morning, Mom let me know that they’d both come home (one on his own, and one with human assistance)! So very grateful that they’re both safe and well.

I also, of course, had my first new-job doodles during a four-hour new hire training session:

Worldbuilding

I am absolutely going crazy, being unable to write intelligent non-humans in my current project, and of course, my muse dumps dozens of ideas for other species on me while I am constrained. One of the new ideas – just a seed, really – does, however, have to do with humans… in the future, rather than a fantastical past like The Last Devil.

The idea is two-part: Firstly, that technology is so advanced that warfare is no longer carried out by throwing masses of human bodies at each other, but instead, by small, elite teams of mecha that are remote-controlled via VR systems by highly-trained, valuable soldiers. This cuts down on human casualty and the need to equip, train, feed, and transport large volumes of people, instead placing emphasis on individual skills and overall strategy.

Secondly, this same technology would be utilized in private corporations to allow professionals of all sorts – from surgeons to programmers – to work remotely from home. Those who would normally need to be in-person, such as doctors, would be able to login to a robotic interface, through which they could accomplish their tasks. (Like heart surgery. Robotic heart surgery.) This means that well-to-do professionals would have a “home office” that revolved around the VR interface, and they could login to different geographic regions (/hospitals) to make their expertise more widely available.

The social and cultural (and military) implications of these ideas are staggering. I’d love to explore them in fiction at some point!

Languages

Did you know about Memrise? I didn’t. It’s a super-cool way of making memorization, especially for new language vocabulary, fun and game-like, and also amazingly effective and optimal. So, naturally, I had to get into it.

And then I made an Uhjayi vocabulary Memrise course. Because, y’know, I’m a proactive geek.

I also practiced my Uhjayi script for the first time in a while:

Musicking

I am an occasional filker… an auto-filker, even, since I write fan-music of my own fiction! For The Last Devil, I wrote two snippets of songs, one a sea-shanty and one a mourning song. They have melodies with them, and drumbeats, but nothing more, even though in the book they have whistle accompaniment. I may well be recording these, as short as they are, to count towards my Hometaping efforts…

Upcoming

• More NaNoWriMo! If I keep up this pace, I might not have to scramble to hit 50k on November 30th!
• Probably more language geekery. I’d really like to get Uhjayi’s script memorized! And that means lots of sit-down-and-write practicing.
• Maybe more music? I have hopes of being able to participate in Hometaping, after all!

I feel like I’ve done absolutely nothing but absorb giant amounts of new information this week: new faces, new names, new tasks, and a new office floorplan that is labyrinthine. Whew! So glad it’s the weekend.

• Illiterate Ethiopian children, given new tablets with zero instructions, hack them in five months. – We are some crazy-smart monkeys, guys.
• More People Should Write – This, so hard, this.
• Google’s Self-Learning Neural Network Knows What A Cat Is… Without Human Interference – Skynet, now with lolcats!
• What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank (by Krista D. Ball) – I admit, I love the sound of this, and want it. :D
• A message to everyone doing NaNoWriMo this year!
• Elephant Speaks Korean Outloud – Whaaaat. Awesome.
• Scientists further prove their geekery by naming new T-Rex-sized dinosaur after Sauron.
• Dad hacks Zelda to change Link’s sex so his 3 y/o daughter can play a female hero.
• Four teenaged African girls have created a urine-powered generator. – Amazing and useful.

Current Earworm: Miracle of Sound: Little Sister – This isn’t a new-to-me song, but I love the musicality, and it’s fun to sing with, so it gets to be this week’s earworm.

The Friday Quote:

Say good things to everyone. Treat everyone with total respect, and it will all come back. ~Bob Proctor

Instagrams of the Week:

Shots from my new workplace! On the left, faux-sunlight strips (picture taken at night! I LOVE THESE THINGS) and on the right, one of my cubicle companions with the spoils of (Nerf) war. :D

I start my BRAND NEW job today! I AM EXCITED. Also terrified. But in good ways!

As a result of the job switch, I had the last four days (Thurs-Sun) off. Which means I got to do creative things!

Recently!

Writing

NaNoWriMo has begun! I spent the last four days writing like mad, and I put down just over 22,000 brand new words on The Last Devil, my NaNovel for the year. It is incredibly odd to write a humans-only story! (The only other NaNo that lacked non-human sapient characters was my very first, so this is a nod to the cycle of NaNoing, this being my tenth year participating.)

I know the new job is going to eat up all my time, so my idea was to get as far ahead as I could before starting, then write like hell on the weekends to make my 50k before midnight on the 30th. So far, this is a pretty strong start!

Arting

As planned, I painted tiny sigils for each of my close coworkers, including my bosses, as parting gifts! Each of them has a unique meaning, and each used my coworkers’ favorite colors (and avoided their least favorites) – this was a surprising challenge, since I normally tie the colors to the meanings of the phrase, and I had no control over the colors for this, and had to choose a phrase (or single word) that was meaningful to the person and didn’t clash with the colors!

Here’s the whole set:

Worldbuilding

The Last Devil is a pretty… mundane… fantasy setting for me. I’m used to amazing creatures (aliens, monsters, etc) and complex magical systems and quantum-level tech, so to lack all of that… oh, what a challenge! I gave myself the boon of two non-sentient critters that aren’t strictly par for the course, but everything else is just… Renaissance-level Earth, with magicless, steampunkless humans.

However, in an effort to flip the bird to trends in this kind of fantasy, I switched the gender stereotypes all around. Women are the strong ones, the competent ones, and the ones in charge; men are the beautiful ones, the marginalized ones, and the ones who get massively outnumbered as named characters.

The consequences of this choice are very, very entertaining to write.

Musicking

November is the month of Hometaping! While I cannot promise I’ll be able to record twenty minutes of new music, in addition to participating in NaNoWriMo and putting roots down at my new job, I may as well try… :D

Upcoming

• I will keep working on my NaNoWriMo project!
• …yep, that’s probably it. I have other things what need doing, but a new novel and a new job will keep me quite busy for a bit!

National Novel-Writing Month has begun! And with it, all my free time has lunged out the window – or, more accurately, into the keyboard.

• “Ask Me About My T-Rex” t-shirt – I desperately need this.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Historical Artists – PRICELESS.
• Sunset at 30,000 Feet – not my instagram! but oh so lovely.
• Dice Rings Kickstarter – If nothing else, watch the video; it’s hilarious!
• Broad Spectrum Universe Sampler – Free fiction featuring fearless females? Yes please!
• This is the best version of the “whatever doesn’t kill me” quote yet.
• “In The Garden, I Did Not Sin” – Free lesbian short story! And, of course, beautifully written.

Current Earworm: Florence + The Machine: Seven Devils – This is the sole inspiration for my NaNoWriMo novel.

The Friday Quote:

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. ~Auguste Rodin

Instagrams of the Week:

In honor of NaNo, my writing buddies:

It’s a sparse selection we’ve got today, but we shall soldier on nonetheless!

• The most adorable fruit bats in the world!
• Fabulous author-artist MCA Hogarth has just launched a how-to Kickstarter book with tons of data.
• The best-dressed Victorian centaur ever.
• A space weather forecast!
• Some fabulous free PDFs/books on ancient Egypt: from the Brooklyn Museum, from the Met Museum, and from the American University in Cairo Press. :D!

Current Earworm: Muse: Follow Me – I am so in love with this song right now.

The Friday Quote:

As a curse, “fuck you” is just so passé nowadays. I propose “may you never be fucked again” for greater offense. ~The Angsty Magician

Instagrams of the Week:

In honor of the season: the pumpkin my partner acquired, and our backyard trees.

The past week has been FULL of changes in the less-creative portions of my life: my love has a new job, and I’m changing jobs myself at the end of the month! Lots of paperwork and logistics-discussion and fingers-crossed-for-best-possible-outcomes!

Recently!

Writing

I’ve chosen my NaNoWriMo project! For those unfamiliar, National Novel-Writing Month occurs every November with the goal of writing 50,000 words on a new piece of fiction; this will be my 10th time participating, and hopefully my 9th time crossing the 50k finish line! Normally I choose my project at the last possible moment, lest I change my mind on November 1, so we’ll see if I switch it up at the start!

I maaay have bribed my partner to finish Spots the Space Marine faster by promising him that he could request a short story from me when he was done; his choice was a follow-up to the xin story I’d written a while back. So I wrote that! And I am now re-intrigued by the characters and setting, and made plans to dig deeper into the worldbuilding necessary to make it Actually Good…

Arting

Haven’t aaactually done anything, but we have new beads, which my love made into a breathtaking jade-leafed bracelet for his mama’s birthday…

Worldbuilding

So, about those xin? Yeah. I poured several hours into hashing out with my partner what the world looks like in 2054, 19 years into a peaceable alien occupation, and how the war went, and how the main character’s life would’ve been shaped by living through the war as a child and then the first and roughest stages of “peaceful” cohabitation in the subsequent years. I’ve also gone into detail about the xin’s homeworld, their evolution, and their current physiology, and my partner has fought me every step of the way about the xin’s lack of ears until he lighted upon a possible adaptive reason: brain mites. Xin can close their eyes, mouths, and nostrils, but not their ears, so those with external ears would have been selected against until none of them had any. (The inner ear structure is still intact, albeit vestigial now, and allows them basic hearing through their bodies – they are especially good at picking up bass.)

Languages

Related to the above, I’ve been reading up on American Sign Language, since that’s what the xin have pidginized with their own sign/body language in order to communicate with humans. I am learning some wonderful linguistically-fascinating things about ASL, and also discovering that I remember a whole lot of the basic signs from classes I took in middle school. Huzzah! I am probably going to brush up on that and get moderately conversant in it again, and since my partner wants to learn, we can practice on each other. :D

Musicking

Nothing new to report, other than the nigh-constant study and analysis of the music I listen to every waking hour to glean more insight into how it’s built…

Upcoming

• I will probably go back through the few short stories of the xin, rewrite them to be consistent with the worldbuilding thus far, and contemplate maybe even serializing them!
• I will finish the remaining 22k of edits for my Secret Project!
• I will paint wee mini-sigils for my coworkers before I switch jobs, as parting gifts!
• I will probably practice and record the ocean orisa song I wrote while in Ocean City!

I am back from vacation! I am catching up at the dayjob! I don’t have any links! Sorry!

But I like exclamation points!

*ahem*

As an apology for the lack of links, how about I give you two of everything else this wonderful Friday?

Current Earworm #1: A song described by my sister as “like Nirvana met with Chinese trad instruments and made sweet sweet music baby love.”

Current Earworm #2: Tanglefoot’s two voyageur songs, Paddle Like Hell and La V’La M’Amie. Celtic fiddlin’ meets Appalachian styles with French vocals? Sign me up!

The Friday Quote #1:

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Friday Quote #2:

I prefer to call religion “applied neuroscience.” ~Drew Jacob, The Rogue Priest

Instagram of the Week #1:

My partner, myself, and our dog BB, hiking in my homeland of West Virginia.

Instagram of the Week #2:

The place where my heart lives, inside these lapping waves.

I have been roadtripping from Texas to West Virginia to Pennsylvania to Ocean City and then back again, so we have only a smattering to report! But report indeed I shall.

Recently!

Writing

I still have a Secret Project what needs editing! I’m about 18k words in to the 40k it amounts to, and when I’m done with it, I may actually have something to announce about it, instead of being all vague and cryptic and possibly obnoxious. Ahem. If I hadn’t forgotten the bloody document on the desktop before we left, it would probably be done by now! *facepalm*

However, I did write a random short story while at my mom’s house, which was mostly for fun. :D Being able to sit back and just meander-write is always a joy.

Somewhat related: I read three freaking books on vacation! THREE! I haven’t read that many in months, let alone two weeks! Holy crap!

If you’re curious, they were the second and third books of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, and The Leaves of October by Don Sakers. HIGHLY RECOMMEND ALL.

Arting

I helped my mom by painting eyes on the horses she painted:

She also gave me a handful of jewelry that I can cannibalize for parts, and a couple pieces she wants me to remake/fix for her. Shiny objects ahoy!

Worldbuilding

One of my oldest and favoritest alien species are Korats, a hardy Lavanian predator with distinct color-phenotyped breeds. They, like many predators on Lavana, have a yawning reflex that they treat as a subconscious danger sense; if one is taken off-guard with a yawn, one will then carefully observe one’s surroundings and situations to see what prompted the display of all those thick, sharp teeth. I had never deliberately planned this; it was one of those worldbuilding tidbits that comes in a flash, and I never bothered to look into it.

Well, I’ve looked into it. Apparently, in wild animals, yawning can be both a low-level response to a threat (“you’re unimpressive, I’m not worried, yaaawn”) or, as Korats and some Earth critters (like baboons) use it, a display of very fearsome teeth to a potential aggressor. (There are also floating theories that it helps cool the brain a bit, which would also play into Koratian use for a nervous/excited/afraid body overheating a smidge.) It is, for Korats, still an instinctual/involuntary thing, but they’ve correlated that urge with a level of unease that they can’t always consciously detect, and they take it as a sign from their body to take a closer look at potential threats around them.

My intuitive worldbuilding is founded in science that I didn’t know at the time! Win.

Languages

I created a new cypher! This one will be offline-only and used to encrypt things I’d like to have a little extra security on; for that reason, I can’t give you any details about it, but I will say that, ten minutes after mapping the letter-changes out, I had half the thing memorized and could write simple sentences without looking at the translation key.

My brain is apparently getting good at this language stuff. In a somewhat unnerving way. ^^;

Musicking

I performed Sister of Shadows (an original Kemetic song about Nebt-het/Nephthys) for my sister and her beau around a campfire. If my fingertips hadn’t frozen off halfway through, I would have been happier! But at least she got to hear it – I’ve been having a rough time getting this one to record, for some reason.

I also wrote a soft, simple chant-song for the ocean orisa Yemonja/Olukun while at Ocean City and utterly enthralled by the sea. Likely will record and share that soon!

Upcoming

Madcap week at work to catch up post-vacation! I’m not going to try to plan any creative work; it’ll be crazy enough just to get through to next Monday!

I have been working so much this week that I haven’t been able to scour the internet for a lot of links to share here – sorry! Consider this a small sampler instead of a hearty meal.

• Super Frieza Bros – I laughed way too hard at this.
• Praying Mantises, Mantis Style – A jaw-dropping photo.

Current Earworm: Khajiit Like To Sneak by Miracle of Sound! I can’t resist linking to Nord Mead and The Sovngarde Song, as well.

The Friday Quote:

When in doubt, paint. Or when angry, or when frustrated, or worn out, or sorrowful, or confused, or lost, or… Fuck it, just paint. ~Abigail M. Markov

Instagram of the Week: A sampling of my office notepad, complete with doodles, Kalash (script), and Kommu (cypher).