well, damn
Got a few updates 
Rant
hidden here because it's longer than I thought it would be
As an amateur cover artist whose main hobby is writing, it grinds my gears to see writers who are horrible at graphic design act like they’re otherwise. That cover some other writer bragged about that you think looks good is actually an eyesore. That poor Photoshop job you whipped up has unreadable text and garbage graphics.
Don’t y’all read? Don’t y’all look at the covers of the books you’re reading?
I don’t know what it is with writers specifically, but a good chunk of them appear to be very easy to impress with mediocre—or even subpar—book covers. I’ve seen people pour praise for what even I think is mid at best 
For the record, I am not saying all writers are poor judges of or horrible at graphic design. I’m just saying that from my personal observation that includes a good amount of people I’ve met in real life, bad graphics seem to be more prevalent among writing circles than groups centered around other creative hobbies like music. The worst are writers who ignore good advice and behave like they’re above typical design rules—maybe they think “rules are made to be broken” applies to their covers, but man, you can’t even select a font color that doesn’t disappear into the background.
(Flashback to this one writer who wanted to use plain stock photos as covers without any text or elements added whatsoever because they wanted it as part of their “brand” or “image”? Hello? What kind of brand is that, Wikimedia Commons?)
You might be thinking that I’m one to talk because I’m not a professional designer—and honestly I’m nowhere near that level—but at least I know I’m not that good. Hell, I’ve had other people design covers for my stories because I know my cover-making skills for myself SUCK compared to making stuff for other people (weird, but true) so I look for people better than me to do what I can’t do.
Also, for the love of all things sacred, please add an author name somewhere. And stop 
pushing text to the very edges
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This weekend, I went on a little museum-hopping trip with two of my real-life writer friends! Our blond friend was also supposed to join the excursion, but things happened and he didn’t show up. None of us had heard from him in a while either 
Our first stop was the American Writers Museum downtown. Thanks to my public library card, I was able to claim a museum pass that granted free admission for all of us. It was a pretty neat museum! Here are a few pictures I took
We visited a couple other places afterward before eating lunch at a pizza place. We ended our visit at the Harold Washington Library since it wasn’t far. The other two also hadn’t gotten library cards at the time, so they were able to apply for them during our visit! We explored some parts of it before heading back home.
I’m happy to say that we all had fun, and hopefully we’ll have more trips like this ahead!
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I said in a separate thread that Frost, the aesthetic writing website, is unfortunately no more and as many would do when they lose something they like, I tried to find a replacement. At first, I was drawn to Ommwriter… until I found out that it was paid 
then I checked out a couple others, but they were mostly geared to outlining rather than actual writing.
Then I came across a great and free alternative—behold, Calmly: a minimalist writing site with different themes, various settings, and the ability to easily input en and em dashes! (I don’t care the em dash’s reputation was ruined by AI; a person with a brain should be able to see that I use em dashes differently from a clanker.)
Copying and pasting text from Wattpad’s editor to Calmly and vice versa is also just really smooth. A couple nitpicks I had with Frost were that the formatting would be completely off if I pasted things directly to Wattpad, and the fact that I couldn’t bold or italicize text in Frost. Thanks to Calmly’s formatting settings, writing’s been a real breeze.
If they add a feature that’ll allow you to add a custom theme (like a starry wallpaper), it’ll be perfect.
Progress
And, thanks to my discovery of Calmly, I was able to write. A lot. Like, more than 1000 words.
I even managed to finish a chapter! That’s right, Chapter LXII of Blood Will Tell is now up! 
It took me at least a month and a half to finally finish an update 
but better late than never. Now onto Chapter LXIII!
(Act II is going to take so long to finish, even when I’m literally just a few chapters away from its end 
)
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I got like fifty words of a scene written this morning after basically nothing all weekend 
it’s a fight/struggle scene and I’m having some trouble with the choreography lol I’m very close to laying on the floor and miming it out
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I did no writing today, just napped and stared into space.
I’m tired and a bit stressed out. Plus I am nervous for some strange reason.
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Rewriting my first chapter because I deleted the original one I typed up. I’ve been hyping it up to my friends so they can beta read it.
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Progress: I’ve managed to write another 2000-ish words, enough to upload another chapter! That’s right, LXIII is up! LXIV is also roughly halfway done, so I might publish another chapter this week
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Gasp…wheeze…
Nearly done with my Elgana wiki main page.
An Ilvagi is a shapeshifting creature whose default form is a black cloud or a smoke cloud with two pupilless red eyes. Ilvagis are the only ones that can inhabit torus planet 6 which is the outermost torus planet that is a part of Elgana and live under a monarchy. Ilvagis are born from the shadows of lava. How? No one knows yet. Ilvagis use shadow magick which is quite powerful magick making them age so slowly they’re nearly immortal. They view themselves as a collective and use “we” or “us” as pronouns. Ilvagis have a very different culture compared to all other races. The most interesting is how they treat individuality and what it means to follow orders.
Just sharing.
It’s a short intro to the Ilvagi race that I’m working on. I still need to figure out what they’re all about which means, some time in the future, I have write a story where an Ilvagi is the main character.
Anyway, that’s the kind of writing I’ve been doing recently. I also have to fix the “read more“ pages so they’re consistent with the current lore of Elgana.
I hadn’t realized how much stuff did need to change. I said some weird things 5, 6, 7 years ago.
Just realized…I need to explain the structure of Elgana… Well, now I’m not almost done but sort of almost done.
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Haven’t been writing lately due to a terrible earache that is leaving me bitter and annoyed.
So, I want to get back into writing again, while I do my best to heal.
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I’ve been editing the Elgana wiki on my website and I finished it…for now.
There’s still things that can be altered… but it’s a start.
I also, I put “About the Site“ and “About the Author“ in the same page, so the menu bar up there looks a little slicker right now.
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I’ve got a permanent job! For now at least. Ai and greedy corporations have really messed up the job market so I’m already planning how to save up for when shit inevitably hits the fan again. 
I’ve been writing a bit of my AU for fun. Wrote a few paragraphs for my next poetry chapbook which will focus on grief-related poetry.
As for my published chapbook, not really getting any traction there even with Kindle Unlimited. I did advertise on social media for a few weeks and got tired of it. Like, ain’t nobody got time to fill their timeline with all the things. At least not me anyway. If I’m on my computer, I’d rather be writing than spending hours planning tweets. Ugh. 
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Yay! Awesome! 
Yeah, I stopped marketing Between Roses for now. Got tired of yelling at people to go buy my awesome book already XD But I keep the main bookstagram pics of it pinned on IG, so curious people can do their thing. If they’re curious enough, my hope is they’ll go and look it up themselves. Because I’ve done that
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The only reason why I’m not writing Dual POVs despite that being par for the course in recent dark romance books is that an accurate representation of Autism and ADHD is going to make the target audience extremely annoyed.
Sharing a bit from one of my lore articles
How to name a language that everyone uses? If you’re from Japan, you speak Japanese. If you’re from Australia with aboriginal roots, you might speak Australian English and some surviving aboriginal languages.
But I already have native Elganians speaking Elganian languages (for example, the Kaunlutha species spoke “Kaunluthan tongue”, they called it). There’s no “Elganian” because that would mean the natives would have had to have a common language of the world. They had a common communication system put in place, but a lot of it was charades.
Humans brought the language from Earth, but it’s not Esperanto. It’s a common, universal language…
Oh heck with it! I’ll just say humans were silly and called the language “Universal”, but then it stuck.
From here:
Finally wrote a more proper article on the “universal“ language in Elgana. Still could use some work, but this part isn’t too shabby.
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No writing just light brainstorming and staring into space.
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According to a biblical story, the “world” once spoke the same language, but then they tried to build the tower of Babel to get closer to Heaven. God got angry and basically cast his “magic” on them so that they’d all speak in different tongues. They couldn’t understand each other anymore, therefore the tower could not be built. 
Something like that. I’m paraphrasing.
It makes sense if the world came from one language because the first humans/beings start from one place and spread/migrate over time. But then languages change because of that migration too. Also makes sense if there’s a universal language because the world is ruled by one universal force, whether that’s government or otherwise.
English wasn’t a language once. And there’s a reason why it feels so predominant, which I won’t go into haha. I have a country in my story too where they have their own language. I admit that I’ve been avoiding creating actual words in that language. Linguistics is not as easy as it seems. I don’t want to just make something up. Props to George R.R. Martin for creating an entire pretend language because how?! 
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I know the story about the tower of Babel very well
My mom’s Christian and has a bible for children book that I would read sometimes. Only the old testament because they were more interesting to me Parting seas, an ark with animals, the tower of babel, the plagues… fun to read when bored
Realistically speaking, probably they started from multiple places…I would think 
It’s interesting to think how different languages developed though. Like you said, migration is one way.
World as in a country, or world as in a planet? I’m talking about an entire planet sharing one single language You know, like Esperanto. Does anyone even speak it?
You could do single words. For the Kattaluna race I have swear words, names for creatures, and words of endearment. I don’t have full sentences. I once did try to make a language with grammar many years ago, but I gave up XD
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I survived an exietnetial crisis at 4 am by doomscrolling for 5 hours and then felt guilty that I wasn’t writing anything the next day… oops
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4am existential crises hit a little extra hard, you need some time to recover from them
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I got really motivated to write more today and I didn’t doomscroll! But I did lay down for ten minutes and fall asleep for two hours. and now I have responsible adult stuff to do. so. no extra writing today.
tomorrow!
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Rant: Buckle up, this is gonna be another long one, except I will not hide this under spoilers or anything because man
For context, the thirty-year-old friend and I haven’t been hanging out as much as we used to outside of weekly writers’ meetups. Recently, he expressed that he missed those field trips we used to do. I explained to him that money was tight and I couldn’t afford to go out often, even if the only thing I’d have to pay for would be public transit. He said he didn’t mind treating me every once in a while and to let him know if I wanted to go to a baseball game or anything—he was just really itching to go out and do something with someone.
Fast forward to this weekend. The White Sox were offering half-price tickets after a walk-off win on Friday. I was originally gonna invite only my Vietnamese grad student friend to the game on Sunday (since he lives down south), but then I remembered my other friend and invited him too. The three of us got tickets and met outside the stadium. While queueing to get through security, my thirty-year-old friend told us that he was thinking of writing a story about Chopin, my all-time favorite classical composer, and he wanted to ask me and my Viet friend some questions since we were both into piano. I was like, sure! He then asked me what Chopin’s personality was like, especially during a specific timeframe, since he wanted to make the story as historically accurate as possible.
It was all going well, with my Viet friend and I talking about different aspects of Chopin’s personality, until he disclosed what the premise of his story was. My thirty-year-old friend learned about the existence of Haitian-Polish people during Chopin’s time, and so he had this idea of romantically pairing a Haitian-Polish woman with Chopin in his short story… at the same point in time that Chopin was pining for another woman by the name of Konstancja Gładkowska, one of those he left behind in Poland.
I told him the premise probably wasn’t going to work. Before I could elaborate, he went, “What, you’re going to tell me that Chopin wasn’t into women?”
I said that Chopin was into women, but at that specific point in time, he was into one woman in particular: Konstancja Gładkowska. Then he said to that, “Do you really think men can’t be horny for two women at a time?”
I tried to explain that his premise in its current state wasn’t going to be historically accurate. Then he insinuated, “Are you just saying this because the female character is Haitian?”
“It’s got nothing to do with blackness!” I said. “It’s just that if you want to be historically accurate, a romance would not work! It would if you make it platonic!”
“But if it were platonic, it would be boring,” he insisted, “It has to have romance.”
I had the biggest inward eye roll
So I tried to think of other ways to make his premise more historically accurate. Since he intended for the story to be set in Paris, shortly after Chopin had left Poland, I suggested that he center the story around Chopin and the Haitian-Polish woman platonically bonding over homesickness for Poland. He wasn’t receptive. He later admitted that Chopin himself was going to be less of a character and more of a framing device, so to speak, and that the story was really about the Haitian-Polish woman. To that, I proposed, “If it’s not about Chopin but all about the woman, why can’t you make it a romance between her and some other Polish man?”
“But if it’s not Chopin and just with some random Polish man, it won’t be as interesting,” he said.
I was just about to give it up. He looked at my Vietnamese friend and asked him, “Do you have the same hatred for my story as she does?”
“I don’t hate your story, I’m just saying it’s not going to be historically accurate!”
But anyway, my Viet friend backed me up and agreed that the premise itself will conflict with what we know of Chopin. He also suggested that the thirty-year-old friend read Chopin’s translated letters as well as some biographies to get a better gist of who Chopin was.
But yes, I am still frustrated about this. He came to us asking about how to make his story more historically accurate, but when I tell him how to, he just rejects it
Now if we were talking about Franz Liszt, that premise would work much better. Liszt was a famed womanizer. He definitely had it in him to be “horny for two women at the same time.”
Chopin, though? The quiet, introverted, and at-times anti-social composer who’s had a confirmed long-term monogamous relationship with a fellow artist who later complained about his sickliness and lack of physical intimacy?
Like, it was either that premise or historical accuracy. What he had in mind would simply be out of character for the Chopin we know and love.
I’m glad my Viet friend was there to support me, because otherwise I would be questioning my sanity and… tolerance? Inclusivity? Whatever.
Anyway, the ballgame was great. The White Sox won 3-0 and swept the Blue Jays in their opening series.
@rachelsfloetry tagging you because it concerns the same dude, and @alcoholandcaffeine tagging you because I know you’re writing historical fiction 
Progress: I’ve managed to write about a few hundred words. I also have a better idea of how a specific scene is going to play out, so I’m excited
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