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horizon


Not a changeling.

More Blog Posts309

Nov
18th
2017

Interesting times · 1:17am Nov 18th, 2017

Life has been a little overwhelming lately, in both good and bad ways. On the awesome side, I'm now officially a published author! On the scary side, someone tried to kill my next-door neighbor last night!

Arcana is a 22-story anthology of furry fiction themed around the 22 cards of a Tarot deck's Major Arcana. I wrote a story based on card VIII, "Strength", titled Chasing the Dragon — an unusual look at addiction through the eyes of a dragon in a war-shaken country. (You can browse through this thread to get teasers for the other 21 stories; I've gotten my payment for the story but not yet my author's copy of the book, so I don't yet know enough about them to recommend any others.)

The anthology is available through Storenvy or through Amazon. (I'm trying to preferentially plug the Storenvy link because the Amazon link works out much more poorly for the publisher. You can buy via amazon here, though.)

As for the neighbor ... I wish I had more of a story beyond the fact that it happened. I was playing some video games when the building suddenly shook a few times and I heard a scream through the wall of "I'm going to kill you, motherfscker!" There was silence for a little, then another huge crash, followed a minute or two later by voices outside. I worked up the nerve to head out, only to find that the front door of the store downstairs had been kicked open and its glass shattered in-frame.

Apparently some random dude — the policeman who responded to the scene gave us the name of the suspect arrested a block away after he ran off, and nobody in the building recognized him — went up the stairs to my neighbor's apartment and started banging, screaming to be let in. When my neighbor refused (because who lets in a homicidal psycho kicking at your door?) and he was unable to get through the reinforced metal screen, he went downstairs and kicked open the shop to see if he could get in from inside the building. (There are no internal stairs. But it was really lucky that something scared him off right after he got inside, because one of the downstairs neighbors was in the building at the time, in the shop's back room.)

He was pretty clearly on a rampage, and nobody here's sure why. Before trying to kill my neighbor, he broke a slat off of the fence of the car lot at the next address over, and used it to smash the windows and side mirrors of several of their cars. There may have been some mistaken identity, over a drug deal or domestic dispute with a prior occupant; my current neighbor's a pretty chill and quiet dude that's only been there for about a month. Other than that, it's just a big and scary question mark.

And I don't really know what else to say, so I'm going to steal a page from Cynewulf: Tell me in comments something going on in your life that's emotionally affected you lately, regardless of how good or bad or big or small it is. (If it's politics or about people in the news, let's try to keep The Specific Thing unnamed here; I'd like this to be a snapshot of people's moods, not an argument-starter.)

Comments ( 33 )
RBDash47
Site Blogger

So... drugs?

Re: emotion, I made a new friend and that makes me happy. Also made it through what I hope -- knock on wood -- will be the most stressful time in what remains of the year, and it should be fairly smooth sailing from here on out.

Also congratulations on the publication!

My great-aunt, who is going blind, and is basically deaf as a post, has gotten to the point where she is kind of uncertain about living by herself in the dead of night. And then she went and fell again, and they sent her off to hospital. She's supposed to be shipped out to a recovery home tomorrow morning, and I'm planning to drive down to look in on her, to make sure she's settling in. She's just far enough away that I don't see her more than three-four times a year, but she's getting up there, and has refused to go into a home despite being at least 93. She's almost as prickly as I am, but is running out of physical resources quick.

I don't know what any of us are going to do about it. She can't really live alone anymore. But I'm certainly not moving down to live with her in another city on the other side of the state.

I'm still battling my brain chemistry which is determined to kill me. :/ My doctor routinely being an hour late for appointments is not helping things.

Happy news, I'm knitting myself a super cute shirt.

4728246
Congratulations yourself!

4728249
Good thoughts. I've been arguably lucky as far as older family members (the only one I was close to died while I was a child), but I've been through that more recently with parents of friends (including one with severe Alzheimer's), and I've seen how much of a toll it can take.

4728258
2017 has been the year of "take your victories where you can find them" and that sounds like a lovely one. I want shirt pics once it's done :twilightsmile:

I'm still kinda sad I dropped the ball on writing an entry for that anthology. But oh well. Going to be self-published soon, for a given value of soon!

Alas, my emotional state is not great just now. I keep thinking about my upcoming Familial Visit. It's not until after Christmas, and I'm about 95% certain that nothing especially difficult or bad will happen, it's going to be relaxing and fun for the most part, and yet I can't stop my brain from replaying certain conversations and arguments over and over and over and over... It's contributing majorly to my depression, because it's a constant reminder that my parents will never understand or accept who I am, that the only reason we're able to peacefully coexist is because they pretend that I never came out to them. And since I don't want our relationship to be nothing but constant fighting and constant attempts to hold interventions to save my soul, I let them pretend. But I wish they could just be happy for who I actually am, and not "love the sinner but hate the sin" about it.

themed around the 22 cards of a Tarot deck's Major Arcana.

Which deck do you prefer if you don't mind me asking?

And to your question, I got a PresentPerfect review without getting completely trashed and random follows afterwards, so I spent an afternoon in that special mode of giddyness that likens to a bunch of Corgi puppies blowing raspberries in your tummy.
buzzsharer.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/corgi-puppies-cute-many.jpg

Hey, congrats! Is there by any chance an epub version? All of my reading these days is on a tablet.

While I have my usual daily high level of stress, I have no actual traumatic stuff in my life to report at the moment (though the usual clan get-together at Thanksgiving is looming, so future high probabilities exist).

Congrats to the publication!

I don't even know what to say about the murderous guy...

in response to published book:
HOly crap, you are so lucky!!! i wish i was that fortunate. i have 23 different story ideas and i have no idea on how to contact any publishing company. though i doubt i'm that good to begin with.

in response to rampage:
holy fuck, that sounded scary for everyone. good thing that psycho was arrested and thank god nobody was killed. finally, a rampagewhere no one was dead, though i suspect some wallets will be emptied.

Publicawesome! Congratulations! :twilightsmile:

Emotionally affected by, uh. Well. Long story short, TFW one's ridiculous spiritual life gets its sleeve caught in an otherwise unrelated enemy-of-a-friend's targeted and dedicated psychological torture campaign for a few days.

… yeah. :raritycry:

Our friendship won. Expensively. :facehoof: :ajsleepy:

4728261 It really bloody has and I shall! It's a pretty soft green tee and has a leaf pattern running up the left side.

Dammit! Did you give me the wrong address?

Given your friendly neighborhood psycho's path of destruction, my money is on mental illness and/or PCP setting him at a random target.

As to me, currently the thing most affecting my mood is the hot apple cider I made and spiked with apple brandy. :ajsmug:

This is a good thing because I've been a big ball of anxiety lately. I keep feeling like I'm not doing enough in every aspect of my life and flailing around trying to up my game somewhere.

But tonight I've got hard apple cider, so I'm good.

(Also, did I say congrats on the last post you made about the book? Because I meant to. So congrats!)

I exist.

That's all I got. I work what feels like 24/7 and despair has begun to set back in.

I also have a confirmed 12 hour work shift on Thursday the 23rd. Weird enough: I asked for it and am looking forward to it.

~Skeeter The Lurker

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Wow. c.c Okay then! Thank you for giving me an opening to talk about this.

My neighbor died last month. I am entirely unsure about how to feel about this, still.

The thing you have to understand is, over the past, oh, ten years or so, I came to view him as not human, a monster, a complete waste of space. We regularly saw him kicking his dog -- which he left tied up outside through cold Ohio winters, with only a wooden doghouse for protection -- whenever he was feeling powerless. We tried to tell the cops about it, but it was always our word against his, and we could never get anything done about it. Then he would rant and rave and holler and swear for half an hour at the top of his lungs. It was terrifying, for all that I eventually figured out there was no bite to his bark.

He buried a dog while we were living here. He blamed us for its death. He would throw anything he could get his hands on -- sticks, black walnuts, bottle caps, trash -- over the fence we erected fifteen years ago so we wouldn't have to see his face anymore. He regularly mocked my mother while she was out tending to the yard. And when he had friends (I guess?) over, he was all smiles and cheer, playing with his dog, oh look at what a good person I am; a complete phony, to quote a literary classic.

He died after being in a car accident; poetic, since cars were the one thing in this world he truly cared about. It wasn't the accident though, but, from what the mailman told us, a blood clot stemming from a botched medical procedure or somesuch. I don't know if he was in any pain.

But he's dead now. And literally all of me is glad he's gone. He was the one person in this world whose death I truly wished for, because politicians you don't agree with always have worse politicians waiting in the wings for them to kick the bucket. It's been a month, and I no longer flinch when going outside or doing something in front of a window in view of his apartment. We were honestly living in an abusive relationship with him, and his toxicity lingers beyond the grave, like stink on the piece of shit he was.

Yet intuitively I know, he was just a broken person who took out his frustrations on the dumb animals who knew no better than to offer him unconditional love in return. He had family -- something else I knew intuitively -- judging by the people who've been around to clean out his apartment. (It might finally be empty. His cars linger in the back yard.) I don't want to have anything to do with them, especially not the one who I assume is a brother, who sounds exactly like him and made me jump anytime he spoke up in earshot.

What I'm saying is, it's possible his passing has decreased the joy in someone's life. Maybe not a lot of people; maybe not a lot of joy; but still a net loss. But me, I'm glad he's gone, dead or otherwise. My life is somewhat improved. I'm getting over the fear.

And I just don't know how to feel about that.

I'm still alive.

Random dude attacks local building and nearby self-propelled autos.

My son is, lets say challenging. And has been more so of late. Today was just the icing on the cake.

Card by card, shuffling into place.
I don't give my own emotions much credit, the best of them can't stand against the tide and so they fall to ruin like any other half remembered thing, swept away again and again.

I feel like a shell of scaffolding in the mean time, looking in at a familiar reconstruction process and wondering if the new design is going to be meaningfully different. Wondering if the next collapse will take more with it.

I remain thankful for your augury, Horizon. It was helpful to have your aid examining both sides of the coin as it spun.

I hope Discord isn't still the most recent revelation.

Grats on the book!

I spent about 5 hours the other day fighting with the pieces of my new desk that didn't quite fit together as smoothly as they should. About a half jar of elbow grease later and I've got a pretty snazzy setup. I'll send a pic when I get home to take one.

Edit: oh, and I saw the pony movie. I went in with high hopes and it still exceed my expectations.

Finals coming up. Etcetera.

I watched Fight Club for the first time this week, and I quite liked it.

Jeeeez, damn dude. Glad you're okay! :raritydespair: God, be careful out there man. Maybe get a few dozen shotguns and thirty extra locks for your door? Just in case?

Congrats on getting published, of course! Today an anthology, tomorrow the NY Times Best Seller list. :)

4728249
This is very close to what happened to my grandfather, minus the blindness. Coming into his mid-eighties, he simply couldn't live on his own anymore. He was going days without eating, and serious falls were becoming more frequent. I can't tell you or your family how to handle the situation, but in our case...he came to live with us. He didn't want to at first, and we only originally planned it for a few weeks, but it turned into three years, and it would still be going if he hadn't passed away back in August. It wasn't easy. It changed our lives. But...it's one decision I'm going to spend the rest of my life very, very happy that we made it.

Hit me up if you ever need or want someone to talk to about it, Mitch. There's no guidebook for this shit.

4728258
Once, just once, wouldn't you like to charge the doc for being late? I'm telling you.

4728360
...Wow, dude. I have not been in your shoes, but don't harangue yourself. Is it wrong for freedom to make you happy? That poor guy is out of his misery, and (most) everyone else's too. It isn't your job to carry another person's sorrow (his family or friends'). It's a f***** up story, in a f***** world with f***** people. That his death makes you happy is part of that, yeah of course, it isn't as if you wanted it all this way. And yet, what shame is there in relief? I mean, peace comes after wartime, and is none the worse for it, but instead all the more valued.

Sorry you had to deal with this shit, PP. You're a good guy.

I'm getting closer to the end of college (at least undergrad).

My mind is increasingly occupied by an ever-growing, creeping dread of, "what's next?", because I have absolutely no clue. And honestly, I'm more scared of that not knowing than I think I might have ever been of anything else.

Congrats on the publication!

Finals are over, so there's that. Like Winston, slowly edging closer to the end of undergrad. Switched both halves of my double this year, but didn't lose too much, and I'm feeling a lot better for it; I think I've finally found something I enjoy doing, rather than something I can just do.

But at the same time, I'm watching all these people around me who've been doing it for so much longer, and I'm left with a severe case of imposter syndrome - they're all so much better at this than me oh my god I'll never be that good why am I even bothering. And 99% of the time, I know those thoughts are irrational, but that doesn't seem to stop my brain screaming at me.

So yeah, swings and roundabouts.

My dog is very slowly dying. He hasn't eaten in a week, hasn't drunk anything for a few days, and smells like something is going terribly wrong with some organ. But he's had over thirteen years and has been a very good dog.

Counterbalancing that is nine days off of work thanks to a careful combination of vacation time, weekends, and Thanksgiving; anticipation for said holiday, where I get several days to spend with my cool older sister; and the previews for Unstable, the upcoming extra-silly Magic set.

I can't dwell on something I have no control over. It doesn't help either of us. All I can do is make the poor pup as comfortable and loved as he can be.

So yeah, congrats on the publication!

4728502 If I charged her what she charges me for missing appointments I could downpay for an apartment.

4728265
My sympathy. I've been blessed with good parents who have respected me through pretty much every personal revelation I've shared, including being a dragon in spirit (though it took them a while and some pain to come around on polyamory, of all things), but I know all too many people who are in your dilemma. All I can offer is that being you is important, and necessary, and most of all good.

4728268
Oh gods, you had to ask. :pinkiecrazy:

The short answer is that I am in love with Chocolatepony's My Little Pony Tarot, because it's one where I fundamentally understand the correspondences in a way I can easily articulate. (Which is important when you're reading drunk, as I do at cons!) It's based more off of Crowley's Thoth Tarot than RWS, though, and I've spent so long in the RWSverse that I tend to default to that, so my interpretations are a weird melange of intended meanings and personal overrides. (Which is probably the default for every Tarot reader, but hey.)

If MLP Tarot is my life partner, though, I've got some long-term flings, most of whom I love for their experiments and their departures from the form. Egypt Urnash's "Tarot of the Silicon Dawn" is both lovely and good-bizarre in multiple ways and if I understood it better I'd love it so much more (plus its creator is behind the story of my first MLP deck reading, which is hysterical and I'll have to share it if I ever do a reading for you because I can't tell it without the deck in my hands). Like, it has several additional cards (like the Void, and the 99 of each suit), and comes with optional cards that you decide whether to use or not, which is just so aggressively demanding of a serious relationship with a whimsical core, which is a fantastic Tarot aesthetic. Marie White's Mary-El Tarot is my current arthouse fling (oh gods it's gorgeous, and it has some crazy sideways interpretations that just blew my mind repeatedly as I was flipping through the cards, like "Oh, wait, that's what it's doing? Oh gods, it went there? That's so awesome"). And it may be too cynical a deck for me, but the Shadowrun Sixth World Tarot is my current one-night stand, on production values alone if nothing else, and for (again) the sideways take it takes on many of the cards; e.g. it has The Eclipse instead of The Sun and The Shadows instead of The Star. So very perfect for the game itself, and since we're increasingly living in Shadowrun-without-the-dragons, has a disturbing amount to say about our lives.

4728285
I've poked the editor to ask, since I don't see one on any of the store pages. The contract I signed specifically included epub rights (I had a specific conversation on that with the publisher at the time), but was vague about whether there would be one or not. I'll follow up with what I hear.


4728290
Well, luck was only part of it; there's always luck involved in getting published (stumbling across the right people and submitting the right story at the right time), but there's a lot you can do to stack the odds in your favor, and no amount of luck will get your words in print without some hard work to go along with it. In this case, I stumbled across a call for submissions that was right up my alley, and then I had to bear down and write and edit a story for it; I ran a first draft through the Writeoffs and took advantage of the critique to improve it; and then my story beat out the others submitted for the slot, which is partially on the luck of matching the editor's tastes/judgment and a great deal about having a lot of experience behind me to write at the top of my game.

So I'd say:
1) Start writing, whether you think you can submit the product or not! Every story you write will refine the next one by helping you solidify your style and/or giving you feedback on ways to improve. Ideas are great, but ideas themselves aren't ever gonna get you anywhere. If you need an excuse to write, consider something like the Writeoffs, which give you a competition-for-Internet-points and a deadline; both of those things can really help in the motivation department.

2) If you don't attend conventions, strongly consider finding a local one and going! Even if you don't have a nearby MLP con, any con relevant to your interests will get you meeting other people in your genre (the value of networking can't be overstated), and probably about 1/3 of the cons that I've gone to have had a panel about publishing or self-publishing, which is a good way to pick up the basics of how to get started with submissions and/or sales.

3) Did I mention networking? Not only does that find you editors and prereaders and feedback to help polish your stories, but making friends is a great way to find out about opportunities. I first heard about the anthology I'm published in from a friend of mine I got close to through pony. I occasionally see people signal-boost that sort of thing on their blogs here. Follow people who publish (three off the top of my head: 4728305, iisaw, Viking ZX) and you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about the process!

I mean, you probably know most of this already given that you're closing in on a four-digit follower count here and are well past me in terms of number of words written. :twilightsheepish: Just, I wanted to make the point that there's a lot of elbow grease that goes along with the luck, and hopefully give you a data point for what you're already doing right and what you might be able to focus on if you want to take the next step. Good luck!

4728880 Thanks, horizon. I'll be happy to check it out regardless, but I'll wait for your word.

On the subject of tarot: I've had an interest in it lately because of a particular scene in a story I am working on, and have been researching so I can make the (single, yet important) scene plausible and engaging.

The act of actual reading/divination is a bit fascinating, and seems to vary quite a bit. Plus the different decks are cool to look at! The Deviant Moon Tarot deck is an interesting combination of classical and somewhat Giger-ish art.

So I have a question for you. In your experience, how much is observation of the read person (assuming your reading for someone else) taken into account? Does it matter much, or is it critical, or somewhere in between? Would it matter as long as the method I use in the story is internally consistent?

Dang, I'm late to the party again. Regardless, you have my heartiest congratulations!

As for me, my muse vanished weeks ago and I haven't seen her since. My only comfort is that this happens to every creative type sometimes. It's a bummer, but there's nothing for it but to be patient. :ajsleepy:

4728850
Exactly, it's infuriating.

Congratulations on getting published!!

And uh… wow. Sounds to me like that guy was on something, if not several somethings… but anyway, stuff going in my life. Hmm…

I'm staring down a month of events, from funerals to birthday parties to family get-togethers, and I feel tremendously unprepared :unsuresweetie:

4729103
Re the ebook: Publisher says that it should be coming out within the week. Will be sold via Amazon (perhaps exclusively for the kindle, not sure?). That's all I've got for now, but the good news is it's on the way!

In your experience, how much is observation of the read person (assuming your reading for someone else) taken into account? Does it matter much, or is it critical, or somewhere in between? Would it matter as long as the method I use in the story is internally consistent?

Generally, Tarot readings around a specific question that the person getting the reading asks. (If there's no question it kind of defaults to "what's happening in the near future", but that still has to be put into the context of the person the reading's for.) There are a couple of ways to do this — readers who want to look mystical will engage more in cold reading, while others (including myself) will try to make the person getting the reading an active participant, by asking them to fill in information and spinning the story of the cards around that core.

So as far as observation specifically, that depends on how the reader's getting context for the cards they're drawing, and how much the person being read is volunteering. It's a major part of cold reading techniques, for sure. If the person getting the reading is cooperating and volunteering relevant information, though, observation might not matter at all.

I guess if you're trying to do a realistic reading (as opposed to a high-fantasy fortuneteller delivering laser-guided prophecies), the important thing isn't observation necessarily, it's: show your work. The card reader will have to have some method of assembling a narrative relative to the question.

4731461 Thank you very much for the detailed answer - I really appreciate that. You gave me exactly the answer I need. :twilightsmile:

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