300 Weeks

Leicmin

2026-04-04T05:00:00Z

I haven't posted in three months. That isn't to nothing has been happening, only that I was so focused on the “now” that I didn't really have a chance for any retrospection (which is effectively what a lot of my posts are) or idle thoughts (which cover most of the rest). Part of that is how my thoughts work, I withdraw from everything when I'm struggling with problems.

There is always the usual family crises (we lost a family member last week and there is a good chance we're going to lose a close one “soon”), work pressure, and the difficulties of being a parent.

Age Verification

On top of that, the various news about age verification laws, the casual tossing around of felonies and crippling monetary fines, and the rise of privacy-busting legislation were hitting my communities. Too many legislation were salivating at the openings that the Texas got with the Supreme Court ruling, the idea of forcing all cases to be dragged into the state with the most restrictions, and generally finding Machiavellian ways to force creators from closing up shop without explicitly saying that porn was illegal (because it isn't).

I know Fedran is “mostly” excluded from most of those age verification laws. There are a million words on the site and less than 10% of them are what I would consider “adult” or graphic. I could easily say it isn't pornographic, but then Tennessee's Protect Tennessee Minors Act got put into effect and it appears to apply to my fiction.

It was that law that triggered a “fight or flight” response. I seriously considered just closing down the shop and giving up writing. I was already in the middle of the burnout from my 300 consecutive week challenge and my struggles after Covid. It felt like an easy escape, just cut off that part of my life.

But then I didn't. I'm terrible at giving up, I mean that was pretty much the major thread throughout Sand and Blood, Sand and Ash, and Sand and Bone. That part is part of me. I might take a while to get there, but I don't give up easily. I also saw other creators who were also struggling with the same problems, but they were clearly in the arenas the laws were targeting. Creators who were writing things that were more erotic (it's never about violence, which I universally consider more disgusting than sexuality).

So the flight (giving up) turned into fight (doing something). I already knew that I wasn't going to be great about anything I wrote, but it was something I could do. I have to be honest, I didn't come out of Covid unscathed and I'm painfully aware of how much I struggle with things that I found pleasurable less than ten years ago.

Also, quite a few years before all this, I had an idea of creating a self-hosted site that could coordinate various subscription/patron services. Basically, taking the supporter badges from forums, the ability to have Patreon or Ko-Fi supporters (or for a while, cryptocurrency), and be able to control access to sites. Ideally, in a manner that would not require exposing personal information (because no one needs to know those details). And no gamification or social interactions, just something between a creator and someone who likes their work.

That also would give me the ability to integrate age verification systems or even geo-blocking or VPN-blocking (there were a few bills that required periodic verification of age or the need to ban all VPN usage) in a central place.

Would it be helpful? Maybe. But if anything, I could implement something to protect my ass and maybe it would help others.

Leicmin

And that ended up being Leicmin (more detail on the development site and the forge).

Well, multiple iterations of Leicmin. I started with trying to implement a C# version since I thought I was really good at the language and it would be “easy” to bang up something.

I didn't do it because it was easy. I did it because I thought it was easy.

After a few months, I realized that I had too many things rattling in my head, and the ideas that I toyed with for years thinking they would make a great system (event sourcing, automated auditing, API-first) ended up crumbling once I started to do significant things. I spent more time fighting libraries and tools than I was moving forward.

Somewhere in December, I realized it wasn't going to work out so I decided to burn it down and start from scratch. This time, I jettisoned most of the fancy ideas and went with something simple: a website that required no Javascript, had no API, and was about as plain and simple as I could make it. I also decided to go with Rust, but avoided the fancier front ends and went with straight, old-school templating.

There were some things that I wasn't going to get rid of: there are type-safe identifiers everywhere, almost everything is CLI first, it is based on Postgres, and there are almost no general solutions anywhere.

And I got progress. I could see things moving forward and I didn't feel like I was writing myself into a corner. True, the C# attempt taught me a lot, but it was really nice seeing slow but steady progress to something that works. I felt bad that it wasn't “fancy” or more capable but I was happy that I was creating something I thought could benefits others.

My goal was the end of February, but it ended up being the end of March, that I got something with a very simple functionality.

Folks could log in and change passwords
They could connect Patreon and Subscribe Star (a feature requested online)
They could set up a password that could be used basic authentication
The creator could export a .htpasswd file, hook it up to a static site, and be able to authenticate

Through that, I could get a “basic” age verification since Patreon and Subscribe Star both do age verification on their sides. That means I could mark my patreon as “mature” (I haven't done that yet), wire up my site in MfGames.Nitride to use it, and have what I need to quell that “fight” response in the back of my head.

And someone (the person who asked for Subscribe Star) is already using it. And reporting bugs and defects as they onboard their subscribers onto it. Which is exciting, because I rarely see someone actually using my tools (Nitride and MfGames Writing mostly).

Going Slow

Some of the painful parts is that progress was slow. I've been getting a lot of pressure from work to embrace large language models but I didn't want to do that with Leicmin. I want to lay down the code, to come up with the ideas, and work through them because I cherish those little insights when I find some pattern I never thought about before.

Protecting Minors

I'm not against the idea of limiting minors from accessing content. What I don't like is how law makers was going about it, since little of what they are producing is about protecting children, but very clearly attacking something they consider immoral.

(I also think it should be something parents should decide on, not law makers making decisions for everyone.)

Even listening to them talk about it, it was just another attack on people they don't like, they just use minors as their shield to defend their own biases.

That also means as I have the bandwidth, I'll find alternatives to handing over personal information to for-profit companies. Or find a way not to need a subscription service. I read about and bookmarked a couple promising alternatives, but they aren't quite there yet.

Going Forward

There are a ton of things that still need to be done before I consider it “done” in terms of user experience and usability.

Light theme was the first thing I was asked about
Documentation
Better authentication options
Emails
More age verification options
More geo blocking options
Auditing compliance (okay, that one is me)
Many more

On my personal side:

Set up an instance of my own
Go through my Fedran stories and mark the “adult” ones
Set up the instance to put a password on the adult stories

And, keep slowly moving forward. It was almost immediately after I was able to lean back and say “I got the MVP” that I was able to relax. Even not setting it up myself (which I will do), the knowledge that I had a clear path forward to handle that fight or flight was a major relief.

Just keep swimming.

—Dory, Finding Nemo

Allegro

Speaking of writing, I'm slowly submitting Allegro through the writing group. Of the alpha readers, about half of them came back with some good feedback and half of them never finished. It probably means that it will end up as well as Flight of the Scions, but I'm still going to try publishing the best book I can.

ICON 49 Retrospective

2024-10-24T05:00:00Z

My “home” convention is ICON, which is celebrating its 49th year. Interestingly, I was born the same year it started so it has been one of those things that has been lock-step in my life since I first went to it in 1995.

Panels

Last week, I posted my schedule but I ended up doing two more panels than I expected.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This panel focused on writing science fiction and being wrong. Things like John Carter's Mars series and how we do not have four-armed beings nor Flash Gordan or antigravity metal. For some, specially hard sci-fi writers, that can be stressful but for others, they embrace it.

We also touched on the new editions of Star Wars and Diane Duane's Millennium edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard. (Diane is one of those major influences to my own writing.)

We talked about retroactively changing the settings, or just embracing the wrong details, or slowly adapting. I noticed in my own writing, I adapt to technologies but try to keep the details.

One of the discussions was “sci-fi as window dressing” and “sci-fi as integral to the story”. I like character-driven stories and sometimes sci-fi is just a setting for me (you could probably change the setting to fantasy and get the same story) while others it is integral to the story (like my per-second charges of housing in Casting Call). Both have their place, but I definitely came more off as sci-fi is a setting while speaking.

It was also late on a Friday, so there weren't a lot of other people.

Speculative Fiction and the Stages of Life

I really liked this panel. We got to talk about middle and old characters, and readers. There are much different stories than the coming-of-age stories.

As I get older, I'm not fond of coming-of-age and power discovery stories. I want to know what competent people do against competition antagonist. I like the muddled good verses evil that age seems to bring.

It was a very spirited panel.

Author Meet and Greet

This wasn't on my schedule, but I'm glad I saw my name on it. This year, they tried something new. Previously they had authors stand at small tables and wait for someone to stroll up. This year, they had larger tables and invited others to chat. When that didn't work, Doug Brenner started playing match-maker and inviting others to have lunch and then finding an author to do a personal reading for them.

One table wanted to hear from Sand and Blood and they seemed to be really into it. Which is cool, mostly to hear laughter and smiles at certain points of the story.

That definitely made my day.

Fantastical Low Stakes

This is a panel I was asked to join in by Doug. I have written a lot of short stories as part of my 300 consecutive week challenge.

It was nice talking about stories where no one dies, the world doesn't end, and why we want stories were the only thing at the end is getting that ice cream. Someone called these “cozy fantasy” stories and I like.

Dungeon Masters Workshop

Not much else to say, it was fun talking about players, my kids, and how to handle things. Most of the focus was on railroad campaigns, sandbox, and “guided” (sort of sandbox but events will pop up no matter where the players go).

I'm pretty much a sandbox GM. I also focus a lot on documentation of my games (and fiction worlds) after the fact. In my games, I reward players who are willing to write down session logs, expand areas of the world, and generally get involved in the world-building side of creating a story.

Monster Lovers Society

This was a panel that Doug asked me to join since it was a topic I was comfortable with speaking about in public. I've done many erotic readings at ICON previously..

It was a blast. We got to talk about monsters, shifters, what is fun about them, why pictures have to cover men's nipples in Ohio, and basically got to cover a lot of the naughtier side of things.

This was also one of the few times I talked about my commissioned writings, which has a fair amount of monster loving, so that was nice to be able to talk about the writing I can't give details. Usually I gloss over them as my “monthly obligations”.

Benefactors Brunch

While I've been a benefactor of ICON for quite a few years, I don't usually make the brunch (the only benefit I actually use). This time, I got to talk to the artist guests of honor and had a great time.

The Formulas of Fantasy: A Study of Tropes

This was somewhat ad-hoc of a discussion but we talked about tropes in our writing and what we like writing. It was a fun, but I was definitely flagging at that point. Still, it had a lot of fun highlights.

Writing Fundamentals - How to Plan a Novel

Much like the GM panel, I talked about documenting, how to be a pantser, and why outlines are pointless beyond 2-3 chapters. I really should document my writing processes again, but I got to talk about the struggles of focusing on characters.

Dealer Hall

Even though I didn't have a table, I did my usual “author groupie” and bought at least one book from almost every author who showed up. This resulted in my first duplicate book in ten years, which I'm ashamed of not remembering that I had bought (but not read) from the previous year.

Don't regret doing it, I just try really hard to remember what books I already had because my mother used to constantly buy duplicates and my job as in my pre- and teen years was to go through her basket and remove them.

Interest

I didn't have a table this year but I got more interest in my writing than ever before. It was either not being in pain, being cheerful, or something else but I ran out of business cards with my site and people seemed genuinely interested in what I was saying. I even had people stop me in the halls and dealer room to talk about it.

Being asked to join some panels because they wanted someone else was also a nice egoboo.

That was nice.

Really nice.

I did give away a copy of Flight of the Scions to an author friend. No review required, just wanted to give some thanks and also have someone else read it after the sting from the last review.

Aftermath

Usually, when I come home from a convention, I feel guilty for not writing enough, not being smart enough, or opening my mouth too much. This time, I was excited about writing again. I haven't in a long time and it was… really nice to feel like I was capable.

August in a Nutshell

2022-08-27T05:00:00Z

The last few weeks of August have been very busy, both in terms of obligations, deadlines, and events of note. Some of them are negative while others are positive, so give me a chance to tell how my month has been going.

The Trip

The month started with a trip to the family cabin. It was about ten days, mainly because Partner had things going on and was unable to attend (various reasons of their own, I don't force them to come to my family events). It ended up being ten days and fourteen hours of driving (I do not like driving long distance, period).

My younger brother did a lot to spruce up the cabin and he brought the results of his multi-year project: a boat he had been restoring that my father had helped build. It was cool and nice to see a slice of my childhood in the water again.

I didn't get on it. Not that I didn't want to, it just didn't work out. The younger cousins (my kids and his kids) were having fun with rafting and water skiing. That meant I was well suited for jumping into the water around the dock and occupying them as they took turns, helping guide the boat into position, and assisting in my kids (who don't know how to swim as well as his).

I still had a ball. I like visiting family, seeing my brother, and just remaining in contact since I'm really terrible at initiating conversation outside of those events.

Broadband

One of the projects I started in August of last year was trying to get broadband into the cabin. The city had a large-scale installation and we got free installation of fiber (about twice as fast as I have at home). It was pretty much installed a year to the week, which worked out because my company stopped providing an access point and my phone doesn't work that far north†.

Having that there means that there is a better chance I can have a “writing weekend” where I got up for a couple of days of writing and work since everything I do is remote. I just have to get a better monitor/keyboard set up there.

Still, when it comes to reducing the chaos in my life, this was something that was hanging over me as one more item in the entanglement.

† T-Mobile started saying “99% coverage of the population” which is a lot more accurate because 99% of 329.5 million is still missing out on 3.3 million people. As such, that is Verizon territory and my phone pretty much craps out the second I hit the interstate. (I won't buy non-GSM phones and Verizon screwed me over more than once because I hold onto phones for about a decade before buying a new one.)

Flood Five

Now, I wouldn't be mentioning the entanglement if there wasn't something that went wrong. When I came home and went into my basement office, I could smell moisture. That is rarely a good sign and something that is quickly triggering PTSD.

Apparently, there was a major rain while I was gone and the sump pump had died so the entire basement flooded. Every scrap of carpet, soaked drywall, and ruined boxes were laid out for me to manage. Today, I got all of the carpet and padding out and into the garage; I'm planning on getting a dumpster in late October to get rid of it along with the rotted wood from the shelves and furniture and everything else that needs to get tossed.

One thing I find fascinating is that of all the six floods I've had in the basement (first one didn't really count since that was the week I moved in), they have all had entire different sources:

Flood Zero: Water main cracked
Flood One: Derecho in 2020
Flood Two: Cracked pipe inside the slab
Flood Three: Refrigerator water line snapped
Flood Four: Mother's Day toilet explosion
Flood Five: Sump pump

Floods two through five have all happened in the last twelve months. The end result is that I used to have a finished basement. At this point, I think the entire thing has been gutted enough to consider it no longer finished.

With best estimates, I figured I'll get it back to speed in five to ten years. I'm still working in the basement, I just have everything on naked concrete.

Surgery

In 2020, I caught Covid. I suspect twice, once in February since I had all the symptoms and then in November where I had all the symptoms but even worse. During the first one, I coughed so hard I hurt myself but it was a minor hernia so the doctor's dismissed it (probably because I'm fat) until it became obvious that it was steadily getting worse.

Fast foward to July: that is when we can change our benefits at work. I switched from high-deductible to PPO and then got the doctor to look at it with something more than “well, that looks painful, so how is everything else?”

Next week, I get surgery to fix that and I have so much hopes that it will handle the nigh continuous pain I've been in for the last four months. Given that I'm hypersensitive to input, that has been a distraction for almost everything I do and prevented me from sleeping well.

Of course, I have to get through the pre-op exam, the pre-pre-op tests, the pre-op phone call, and the pre-op billing statement first.

This also put a knife edge on the deadline for the carpet removal from the flooding since I won't be able to pick up anything heavy for a while. Wet carpet is not… light. Nor is moving water-logged furniture.

Allegro

A while ago, I contributed to a fund-raiser to send some writers to Clarion. Call it a wish fulfillment since I won't be able to go myself. One of the rewards was having another author read a book (or a chance to play with an AI novel writing tool). I decided to go with the reading and that meant I needed to finish “something” before September.

Since I was stalled on Allegro, I committed to finishing that novel for September. Earlier this week, I got the first draft done and I'm so excited. For what is a glorified fan-fiction of Lindsey Sterling's Roundtable Rival set in Fedran, I'm pretty happy with a 105k word novel coming from a four minute music video.

It ended up being a much different story that Lindsey's video. It ties into Songbird in a Kitchen and the general build up of stories to Fedran's world war (it's a Phase One story). Regardless, I'm really happy with the results and I hope I can polish it up to make it my sixth published novel (Second-Hand Dresses will be my fifth and Nor Curse Be Found will probably be my seventh).

Flight of the Scions

Before the trip, I got the “release candidate” for Flight of the Scions done and sent to Ingram for a print version. It came while I was at the cabin. It looks beautiful and I'm really happy how the new covers turned out.

I also botched the layout (missed one page of padding so everything has the wrong margins), so I need to order a new one. That also means I have another chance to look for typos. My dad sent me a bunch, I found a few, I'm just going to work on them in September because of Allegro.

I think I'm on-track for the November 8th release of Flight of the Scions and I'm so excited. I will have early copies at ICON this year since I'll have a table in the merchant area along with Shannon Ryan's Merger of Evil.

For a novel I've been working off and on for almost two decades, having this out will be both a relief and a source of constant anxiety because it doesn't have my full evolution of writing (I couldn't rewrite it one more time, I just couldn't). It also means I need to get off my rear and start writing Pack Daughter, the second of four in the series.

Fedran Website

Of course, I want to show off since my books are available to read even before they are for sale. Unfortunately, the site generator that https://fedran.com/ uses, Gatsby JS, proved to be too fragile for how I use it. Plus it doesn't play well with my goal of getting my site on Gemini.

That means I need to get it migrated over to Nitride as soon as reasonable. Until then, the site is pretty much static until I can do that. It also means I can't start posting weekly chapters for Allergo until that comes out (even though everyone will be able to read the entire thing).

I just like having that weekly post. It makes me feel good to see that steady signal. I have no clue if I'm going to try again for three hundred consecutive weeks like before. In most regards, I just effectively took a year off from writing.

September

September is going to be a busy month for me. I have Allegro to get out, Flight to polish, and fix the little things that are needed to get the book out the door.

The End After Three Hundred Weeks

2021-03-17T05:00:00Z

Just under two years ago, I posted about how I had been posting weekly chapters for two hundred consecutive weeks. Since then, I've managed to do it for another hundred weeks which puts me up to six years of posting (mostly) consistently. There were two instances where I missed a week but I caught up and returned quickly. Overall, I can say three hundred weeks of posting with a straight face and still feel like I wasn't lying.

I had a lot of hopes in 2019. Things were looking positive and I was writing strong. I found a new community and they were throwing thumbs up at me. Then 2020 hit and things started to get a little less rosy. I don't need to say what happened, but my household has been in relative isolation since March and then we got hit by the derecho in August. They still haven't finished fixing the roof or repairing the hole in the side of my house before the snow came.

(Unlike my normal rule of limiting negative posts, this one talks about depression.)

Skill and Perceptions

Somewhere in September, I started to get a feeling that everything I was writing was “wrong”. I can't tell how it was wrong, only that I wasn't capable of fixing it because I couldn't tell what I was missing. It didn't take long to realized was in a slump probably related to the skill/perception curve (source).

I'm just left of frowning face, a point where I know something is wrong but my skills and abilities aren't enough to identify the problem. I've had this feeling before, where I know there is something wrong, but I've never had a situation where I had no clue how to improve my writing.

This discomfort with my writing continued to grow, sapping my creativity.

Flight of the Scions

In October 2020, I also had Flight of the Scions edited. When I didn't get the enthusiasm I was hoping for the piece, that pretty much sent me down a spiral and the growing sense that I was missing something turned into a full-blown loathing. I haven't integrated the edits for that novel because of it… because I feel like I can never do the piece justice.

Plague

In November, I got sick.

End of the Year

In mid-December, I still wasn't able to identify what was wrong with my writing. I was writing. I was still passionate about Allegro but every word that got down on the page felt alien, twisted and foul.

That was also the point I realized that I can't just push myself past it. There weren't enough words because I just spent months not liking my words but unable to find the epiphany that would help me through the roadblock.

NaNoWriMo

Something has to change if I want to keep getting better at my writing. I've written a lot, I've grown as a writer and as a person. More importantly, I want to graduate from an “okay” writer to a “good” writer. This requires me to figure out what I'm missing.

While I thought about it, I looked at what writing weekly was giving me. At the beginning, much like NaNoWriMo, it was about “can I do it”. Six years of writing says I can. I also will admit, my writing has significantly improved in the six years of steady writing and I'm a much stronger creator than ever.

But I don't think I've improved much in the last year. I think I have reached the top of this mesa with my skill by just forcing out more words. I need something more deliberate, which also means less grinding out words and more of trying things to shuffle things up and expand in a new direction.

I said the same thing about NaNoWriMo. I was able to do it, but the month of writing wasn't really the challenge. For me, it was more about getting the word count, but I already know I can write fifty thousand words in four days. I've done it, more than once. I even published the results of one of those experiences.

NaNoWriMo came down to word count, which is a metric that I love to use but it also a useless one for me. It slides under the Goodhart's Law:

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Word counts, including minimum words a day or reaching a certain number, isn't helping me because I just work toward the target. With NaNoWriMo, I find that I can't easily write past 50k words even if the story needs it. A word count in a day becomes a chore.

Same with writing time.

Using likes and reviews is also difficult because I'm an okay writer, not a good one. The volume of what I write means folks stop reading it, or they realize I'm not a good writer. I'm not sure without feedback, so I'm going to say they don't work because I can't measure anything.

Burnout

To be honest, much of this feels like burnout also. I've gone through two major burnouts in my life and I think the weekly chapters are beginning to strip those screws bare again. That just gives more credence to the idea of stopping my weekly chapters.

Burnout also leads to depression and a feeling of worthlessness that never goes away. That's been hanging around me since I was seventeen but it got really bad since August. Every time I stumbled into the “never write out of your lane,” I realized I had created a world that would require me to venture out and I shouldn't have. Every time I got a rejection, I knew I wasn't that good of a writer. Every time I tried to convince someone to read my work and they just… gave up, it just reinforced that.

So the logical response, to avoid upsetting everyone, was to consider giving up. Not because of a “if I can't write that, then I should stop writing” but more of a realization that I'm not really that important and there are far better people out there that need the space more than me.

I've been struggling with this for months. I think one of the reasons I have have only made a single submission in the last four years is because of that. (I was rejected, of course.) There are “own voices” that need to be said more than what I do. I can't do much beyond boosting others, but not trying to draw attention to myself is one of those. This is something I've been considering for months.

Because of that, I'm having trouble wanting to draw attention to myself. My weekly chapters were a single post around six in the morning once a week and I consider that excessive. When I finished my last book, it was a second posting in a week and nothing more. I don't know if I can, or want, to go beyond that. I haven't asked for a table at ICON for the same reason. I haven't paid for advertisement either.

Mr. Tanner

I'm not going to stop writing. I don't think I can stop writing. It brings me so much joy and I love creating stories. I just don't know who I'm writing for anymore. In many ways, the final lyrics of Harry Chaplin's “Mr. Tanner” have been speaking to me.

Music was his life, it was not his livelihood
And it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole

Much like James White's Fast Trip, “Mr. Tanner” has become a sign of the last year or so.

What's Next

I don't know.

Right now, I'm focusing on finishing projects and not writing anything new. That includes a side piece, Flight of the Scions (hopefully for August), and Second-Hand Dresses for November.

If I do write something new, I want to finish Allegro because I'm almost near the end. I also had a vague idea of sending it to the inspiration of the novel, but then I made Linsan a demisexual with lesbian tendencies and I probably overstepped my bounds. I will release the chapters for public reading as I go because I started that way and I feel that is a social contract I'm not willing to

I honestly don't know about new stories or novels. I like the occasional up-vote on various channels. To be honest, very few folks are actually reading it. When they do, it's in a surge and then they wander off. I have two fans on Patron but only one speaks up; I can't thank either of them enough for the encouragement.

If this is burnout, then I need time to recover. I need adventures and to work on other things.

There is always a fear that I just started the process of giving up on writing, but I can't honestly tell at this moment. It's possible, but that is life. It changes, it evolves. I've been writing fiction, in some form, for at least forty years. I can't imagine just stopping cold, but then again, I wasn't planning on getting married, having children, and having a hole punched in the side of my house.