Leaping into a New Adventure!

So here is is the end of February beginning of April, I’ve been tossing around the idea in my head about what I am going to do my blog entry about and came up blank. Then PalWorld happened and everything that I’ve planned to do in the last month two months got waylaid for like 247 hours (so far). However, there are still things happening one of those things is that I started my Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/myriai ) with the first stream on Leap Day (February 29th) and I do stream one to two times weekly with an occasional third “bonus” stream thrown in.

I stream primarily writing stuff with a handful of Dungeons & Dragons (because why wouldn’t Dungeons & Dragons be involved?), and dipping into an occasional game stream where I play video games badly (trust me, I’m bad at video games >.> , but they’re fun and I like it that way)–so far I’ve played a little bit of Baldur’s Gate III and PalWorld on stream and I love running the Placid Plastic Duck Simulator and just chatting when I’m supposed to be writing.

The primary streams I do are as follows:

Coffee, PJs, & Productivity which is a stream were I primarily concentrate on writing and running some pomodoro timers. Those usually run on Saturday mornings from 10 AM until 2 PM my time (AZ Mountain Standard).

Sip ‘n’ Write is usually my Thursday night stream if I am streaming on a Thursday night. It’s a laidback writing stream where I drink Dr. Pepper and do a lot of chatting instead of writing and we watch plastic ducks fall from the sky (above mentioned “Placid Plastic Duck Simulator”).

Just Writing is my typical writing stream where I pick up one of my projects and do some writing and share a bit of my writing process ranging from how I “outline” books (usually bulleted lists) to some of the research I do to try and make my setting a little more real. I also tend to wax a bit poetic on how much I love different aspects of writing and enjoy answering and asking questions of other fellow creatives and how their process works.

Dungeons and Dragons This can cover anything from world building a D&D Campaign (something I’ll be doing a bit more of in the future) to building a character for a future Dungeons & Dragons campaign I may be participating in. Other times I just go into the game and some of my thoughts on it and I will answer questions presented about it for those who are curious and want to get into it a bit.

My streaming schedule fluctuates a bit due to the fact I work in retail pharmacy and my hours aren’t always the same. If you’re interested, check out my channel’s About Tab and the first one is going to have my schedule for the coming week. Also if you follow my Facebook Author page (https://www.facebook.com/Myriai) I’ll post up the schedule there as well.

I’ll do an actual entry of some form next month–I think…

Until then…take care! Maybe I’ll see you during one of my streams ^_^

♥ ~ Myriai

Follow Through

Of course a “Year of Eight” is not really a thing that exists in this world, but the writer girl part of me was tickled by the coincidence. It’s actually a direct reference boldly taken from my WIP The Girl who would be King, a fantasy novel based in a vague pre-Islamic, fantastical version of the Near and Middle East around the Late Bronze Age(ish), that I’ll be shamelessly talking about if not in this entry, an entry in the near future ^_^ However, GK (my acronym for it) is something to be discussed a bit later while I go into a bit of personal stuff for the rest of this entry.

With it being a new year, that usually comes with what people like to commonly call “New Year’s Resolutions” and, honestly, a good 90% of those resolutions are generally broken before midnight on January 31st. However, one of my besties mentioned something the she learned from one of her other friends called “One Little Word” and I’ve chosen to embrace that this year instead of writing down another list of resolutions I may or may not keep. For me, my ‘one little word’ is actually two words “Follow Through”, but it encapsulates one thing “Progress”. Why didn’t I choose “Progress” as my one word, seeing as it is actually one word? Well, in my head “Progress” feels like it’s a lot heavier weight than just “Follow Through”. Following through can mean something as simple as following through on a promise “Yes, I’ll watch that episode with you” or it can be something big like following through on a project you’ve been planning for literal years–or a manuscript that’s seen thirteen different iterations since your originally thought of it back in 2013 (I’m talking about a friend…not me…really–okay, yeah, it’s me…) that you’re finally planning to push to the point where you can actually write [THE END].

So this year I plan to Follow Through on several things I’ve had cooking on my figurative stove for a long time–in the case of some of them over a decade. I’m not sure I’m going to push all the way through to the end on them, but I’d like to at least try. I have a rough plan for the year and we’ll see how it goes. So here’s the plan.

1. January 2024: See The Girl who would be King through until [THE END]
   
   I met a fellow writer on a friend’s Discord and we’ve agreed to exchange novels on January 20th. This means I need to get ALL of GK finished before then and, to that end, I’m going to be taking a vacation from work and spending as many of the days as I can getting the rest of this story on paper. I’ve rewritten Part 1 at least thirteen times and the pieces of Part 2 that I have done at least 7 times, but I’ve yet to actually write the story for Part 3 (but I have a really nice bulleted list of what’s supposed to happen in it written down). If I can accomplish this strike that—WHEN I accomplish this, I will be able to write [THE END] on a novel-length story for the first time since I was about 18 (the story I wrote then will never see the light of day most likely).
   .
2. February-March: Myriai’s Myriad, get the YouTube Channel out of the dusty idea box it’s been sitting in and get it in order to make a debut. 
   
   I’ll probably be a bit sporadic about updates on it at first as I’m going to be feeling my way through it mostly solo, but it’s something I’ve planned since about 2021 and I want to see it through.
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3. April (~May) 2024: Finish Shade Tree Rest (Or Seventh Concord–the title’s kinda up in the air at the moment) for Camp Nanowrimo. I also have had this (or a variation thereof) plotted out since around 2016 or so and I’d like to finish that as it’s going to be a building block towards my YouTube Channel and its content. Plus, after the sweeping epic that’s going to be GK–I think it’ll be nice to kinda sit back, relax, roll some dice, and write some expansive descriptions. STR is part of Shadows of Kurelinn, which I suppose is an epic fantasy of its own as it’s a trilogy (the next titles are Forges of Lelna Dorei followed by Shadow of the Green Dragon), but since it’s roughly based around D & D I feel like it’s not going to be as big of a world building endeavor.
   .
4. June 2024: Launch a Twitch Channel (also Myriai’s Myriad) if things seem to be progressing nicely between now and then–this could get delayed until later, but that will be A-OK.
   .
5. November (~December) 2024: Ashigo’s Shadow is going to come out of the archives and my next goal will be to finish that one. The story was completely written, but like GK, this one has a lot of places where I kind of glossed over things and I intend to write them all out this time and maybe even write [THE END] on it too–it would be neat to go from zero things completed to 3 things completed (at least through the first draft version) then we’ll see where 2025 takes things from there ^_^

There are a few other things that I am looking to follow through on as well that were kind of left on the shelf over the course of the last three years or so (maybe four years, I’m not sure) among these include: get a passport, open an editing side hustle, and get more than two or three books read over the course of the year. I also want to at least check into some medical issues I may have, but those get a little too personal for things like this. This blog is also included on my list, I’d like to actually consistently post at least once a month over the course of 2024, and I also need to take more initiative in my social media posting over on my Facebook Page, on X and BlueSky, and probably on Instagram as well.

Also within that intervening time (as I know there’s a large gap in between a couple of the goals), I intend to write/finish a couple Star Wars fan fic pieces and get them up, likely on AO3. My nephew managed to drag me back into the Star Wars corner of the galaxy with Ahsoka–and, to be honest, if I can avoid parts of Ep IX and don’t get involved in any fandoms too deeply, I do still very much enjoy Star Wars ^_^

It’ll be interesting to see where this year takes me and look back on how this intention to “Follow Through” served me over the course of the next twelve months.

For now, I need to go get some sleep as my day job during this time of year is rough and tends to eat up large chunks of my creative spoons without me realizing it until I get home and find myself staring at a blinking cursor on a draft and see the word “The…” as the only thing typed in the past three hours.

♥ Myriai

Merry Christmas Eve Eve

It’s the holiday season and after a somewhat promising almost two months in a row of blog entries (the entry posted on Oct 7 was actually mostly written in September so it counts)–I kinda faded out again. I’d say sorry, but, honestly, I got distracted (it’s something that happens fairly easily) and I’m not sure how quickly I’m going to remedy that (I am trying if that counts). I hope this season finds you and yours doing well.  If you’re feeling the loss of a dear one (be it family, friend, partner, or pet…or anything else in between) I send warm thoughts your way that you’ll find some joy in the season.

I had a lot of topics I was going to cover the past few months. More story contemplations. Nanowrimo (I did hit my 50K on Nov 14th for that). Random other things that popped into my head, but my job offline tends to steal a lot of my spoons for other activities, but my goal is to work my way through that next year.

I could go into my 2024 plans, but I think that’s gonna be my first entry in the New Year (because it would be suitable that way).

So, for now, I’ll leave this blog entry kinda short and sweet (ish) (If it’s too sweet we can add salt) and wish you all a very Merry Winter Holiday and I hope that 2024 brings you all the best plot twists ♥

♥ ~ Myriai

It’s me, I’m the problem

So as I alluded to last month, one of my other muses has finally awakened and I am hard at work on The Ashes of Hanazakari with plans to take it into Nanowrimo 2023. I did toy with the idea of making it into a Trilogy I. The Girl who would be King, II. Sea of Mists, and III. City of Gold, but I don’t think each section is gonna be long enough. I anticipate each part is pretty easily going to hit 50,000 words in this draft. That’s gonna bring The Girl who would be King to a whopping 150,000 words–not exactly an ideal length for a first novel according to this infographic I found at http://writersdigest.com:

…BUT this is a draft and not a final manuscript and so I’m not terribly worried about it. I’m pretty sure alpha and beta readers are going to be able to tell me where I have too much going on or I’ll figure out how to condense it. Maybe I’ll even have less words than I think–I’m not holding my breath on that one, I cannot do short no matter how I try. I’ll also be saving for a professional edit before I start thinking about submitting it.

Throughout the latter half of August, this month, and into Preptober I am working on fixing up some things in one of my newer drafts so that I can enter Nanowrimo with a clean slate, some solid world building, AND maybe finally nail down something that’s been bugging me since about halfway through draft…uh five or six of The Girl who would be King. I think the 2023 draft is going to be #12 and I’ve still not managed to write it to the point I can confidently finish with “THE END” though I’ve written a variation of the full novel draft (there’s a lot of brackets with “cool stuff happens here” in the draft, but at least I’ve brainstormed it out to the end) that I’m working with this time.

My project from August 18th to September 6th was to work my way through some events in the distant past that shape things for the present day in the novel. I then wound into timelining The Bird Empress’s life (the main character’s corrupt ancestor that nearly destroyed the world) and writing a full synopsis of each part of the story. I made my goal word count, if not exactly the way I planned on doing it, but it’s helped with a few things I’ve been struggling with. Namely the series of events in the third part that leads to my ending (and lead-in for book two), but it didn’t help with another issue I had.

One of my trio of main characters.

In the initial drafts of writing this story, I created this interesting country and King of the Country–or at least it was interesting in my head, but when it came to writing him out it fell a little short of what I was hoping for. I was going to make him into this Pirate King type character then I changed him to just a straight up King of said interesting country and started working on things from there. In my latest read of the draft I got frustrated with what I saw as a lack of character for him and so I sat down and wrote down everything that I had in my head for his character.

It turns out he’s a pretty awesome character–there’s a lot of depth to him when I look over everything I put together. He has motivations, flaws, and a solid backstory.

The problem it turns out was me.

While I had all of the cool stuff I knew about him in the back of my head, it never came out in the writing. The way I wrote him was very two-dimensional, a man who did everything for a girl he couldn’t have (that part gets a bit long and complicated) and abandoned everything else. While one of his flaws is that he’s on the selfish side of things (definitely not a good thing as a ruler), it isn’t everything that made up his character and that’s where I failed as a writer–and where I aim to improve as I embark on what I hope is the final first draft of the story.

While I know that massive deep diving into characters isn’t everyone’s cup of tea as a writer, I think sometimes sitting down and just writing everything down is supremely helpful. I feel like when you put a character in writing whether you’re writing paragraphs or just doing a bulleted list of things that make up the character it helps immensely with how you depict them in the story.

With National Novel Writing Month on the horizon, if you’re participating there’s going to be a lot going on in your head, but figuring out your characters a little bit before you put that first keystroke down at 12:01 AM on November 1st may help a bit.

♥ ~ Myriai

PS This post was actually started, oh about September 20th or so I think and should’ve been posted about a week ago, but better late than never right?

The Shadow of Summer

It’s been a rough summer here in AZ–almost every day in July was 110+(F). We only just got a couple of our usual monsoon storms about a week ago (usually late at night and completely drying out before 6 AM the next day). My usual summer slump kicked in super early this year (like the middle of May instead of the end of June, early July–I’m usually good until after July 4 before things really fall apart). As a result I’ve spent a lot of time in Hyrule (Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (beat it with lots of help), currently working through Tears of the Kingdom) and on a new Animal Crossing Island because apparently my distraction this summer was video games. On the bright side, my focus on Legend of Zelda opened an opportunity to spend a lot of quality time with my niece (who loves Zelda) and it’s been a lot of fun. On the down side, that writing thing…haven’t done it (seriously) in probably three or four months, though, to be honest, the entirety of 2023 hasn’t had nearly enough writing involved.

Though for all that the summer slump started early, it’s apparently ending a bit earlier than usual too (it’s usually mid-September, early-October before my mind starts pulling itself out). As a result, you get this lovely blog entry in August–kind of impressive in its own way given my track record on various sites/blogs I’ve done over the years (most of which no longer exist). Usually there’s a post in June (if I’m lucky) then there is nothing until maybe October or even sometimes January. Then I post once a month (or try to) from January until June then nothing again. Though I actually have organized/clean/neat spaces this year and don’t have to spend the first month out of the Summer Slump getting those in order this time.

I’m not entirely sure I’m out of the valley of the shadow of summer, but I am starting to turn my attention to my various projects and ideas that were gathering dust for the last several months. I’m not sure I’m going to pull anything good creatively out of the wasteland 2023 turned into, but at least I can plant some seeds to make 2024 bloom (or so the theory goes).

To that end I’m putting my various projects in order of some form and maybe I’ll actually get some work done on and off on them. For the curious, I currently have four(ish) projects going that I’m hoping are going to break out in 2024 (they won’t be finished, but solidly started):

1. Shadows of Kurelinn–for reference, this is the D & D inspired story I’ve mentioned a few different times. What am I going to do with it? I’m going to turn it into a YT channel. I’m going to write the chapters and read them (and practice voice acting and maybe drawing as it progresses–I don’t plan to make either a career, but it’s something I want to do) and touch on other fantasy/sci-fi/writing related topics, but that’s something to discuss later (maybe even next month).
2. Ashes of Hanazakari–otherwise known as “The Girl who would be King” (the first novel of the series) will hopefully start picking up steam again. It’s actually the current catalyst for me starting to break out of my creative drought and the reason I’m here writing this blog entry instead of shaking wasps out of the trees on my ACNH Island or trying to find the Bubbulfrog in the latest cave I discovered in Tears of the Kingdom. Though actually I am working on Pact of the Nightingale–the story that comes 1,000 years before Amaia flees Aluaria on Winternight–but writing is writing and I’m glad to at least mostly be back at it.
3. The Imperium Chronicles–this is a series of novels that begins with “Ashigo’s Shadow” and moving on from there, I’m hoping to pull this one out of the folder its been moldering in and get a few more details hammered out so I can make some good progress. I found a book at the grocery store yesterday I may actually try and read because the little excerpts and stuff I read of it sound a lot like the tone I’m going for in Harmony’s story–at least to an extent. ISC is definitely more of an adult bent in terms of violence and other aspects.
4. Kitakaze no Yakusoku//Promise of the North Wind–yep, the comic is still going though there have been some bumps here and there because two creative types with various mental issues (diagnosed and undiagnosed) sometimes run into production problems. After 2-3 years–we think we’re making a breakthrough on how to go about being more consistent and hoping it pans out.

Naturally, all of this is going to be kinda scattered (at least until the end of September) as I have to take care of some stuff for the job that currently pays the bills, but at least I’ll have a starting point.

However, I’m back in the saddle and here’s hoping to make some breakthroughs on actually being consistent about more than just finding Dr. Pepper in my fridge.

♥ ~ Myriai

Just Write

I did plan to work on The Coin has Two Faces this month…I got about 485 words and my brain said, ‘Nope, I wanna do Dungeons & Dragons’ so I said fine, let’s do this…and got about 3,280 words into that and my brain said ‘Nope don’t wanna after all’…and that is how we get to where I am now. I am about 24,629 words into a section of that story I mentioned I was working on with one of my best friends–so at least it’s writing (and I’m a bit under 10,000 words shy of my goal with 5 days left), but it’s not really something I planned on working on. However, when the muse decides it wants to do one thing–there’s nothing in this part of the multiverse that will derail them and sometimes you just have to go with it.

Sometimes people vilify stuff like fan fiction or writing that serves no other purpose than to just get some words on the paper, but the truth is there is a place for writing like that too. Sometimes shoving a lot of words on a page that make no sense clears the garbage from the gutters so that creativity starts flowing again. Other times it just adds in more garbage–but I’ve rarely found that writing just for the sake of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard doesn’t have some kind of benefit.

I, for one, see no shame in pouring your heart and soul into a fan fiction and then eventually turning it into an original story and getting it out there. Some of those fan fictions out there are really freaking amazing and sometimes the writers change names and circumstances and publish it to massive success (look up the origins of 50 Shades of Gray if you don’t believe me–I haven’t read it personally, but I do know a lot of people who have).

Will I ever do something like that? I’m not sure actually. I have written a lot of fan fiction in my day, some of it’s even made it onto the internet, but I don’t think any of it would actually work as a stand alone novel without the backbone of whatever fandom I wrote it for, well, except one, but that one’s too short to be a novel. Of course, my goal when I write fan fiction is to actually write it in such a way that if it were somehow dropped into the middle of the story/manga/animé it was written from it would fit in at least mostly seamlessly. I’m not generally one to write AUs (not that there’s anything wrong with an AU mind you–it’s just not usually my cup of tea, unless it’s a Reylo fan fiction, in that realm I eat up AUs because I hated the way canon turned out, but that’s something I won’t get into). I suppose, in a way, my Dungeons & Dragons story may kinda fall under that? I do kind of want to publish it or at least put it out to the masses–but we’ll see what happens. Though really, at its core, Shadows of Kurelinn is a fantasy novel masquerading as a homebrewed D & D Adventure with epic level characters and a whole lot of ‘Rule of Cool’ thrown in.

When it comes down to it, writing doesn’t necessarily have to be done with the end goal of selling it via a publishing company or KDP or self-publishing. It doesn’t even have to be written because you want to get 29189471892 Kudos and a hundred pages of comments on your preferred fan fiction site. It can be written because you wanted to write it. It doesn’t have to be published. It doesn’t have to be on a site. It doesn’t even have to be typed out (ye olde notebook and pen is peachy keen), but if you pull it out every now and then and reread it and it brings smile to your face (or spurs your creativity) then it has accomplished its purpose even though no eyes other than yours have seen it.

I probably would not call this a ‘productive’ Camp Nanowrimo as this story will likely be purely for mine and my best friend’s entertainment (aka it’s not publishable), but perhaps it’s a necessary Camp Nanowrimo. As a writer, I’ve come to realize that sometimes those words just don’t want to flow and sometimes you just have to write whatever gets you writing again.

Take a beloved character and write a story about them–it doesn’t have to have anything to do with their actual story.

Write some fan fiction.

Just go on a random freestyle ramble and see where the meandering words take you.

Just write.

♥ ~ Myriai

PS Maybe I’ll talk YT next month…

Tides of March Be With You

Actually, I don’t even think that’s a thing, but it made me giggle and so here we are.

It’s been almost a year since my last blog entry (I guess more specifically it’s nine months as the last entry was in June 2022) and, honestly, not a whole lot has changed. I still dislike my day job, but my coworkers are pretty cool and now that we have an official somebody in charge, the schedule’s working out well–it’s also only like 8 min from home and that’s if I catch all the lights between here and there red. I just wished it paid a little more–I know I can probably find jobs that pay me around 3 to 5 dollars more than what I’m getting now, but at what cost? Sometimes money doesn’t make it all work (it just makes it work easier). So right now I’m considering other ways to pull in just a little more cash every month, but haven’t figured it out yet.

I’m still writing stories. For Camp Nanowrimo (v. April 2023) I am going to be working on The Coin has Two Faces which is the sequel to Ashigo’s Shadow. I’m also back at work on my Dungeons & Dragons story since the D & D Direct broadcast sent my interest circling back around to it. However, the D & D story is going to be a background program to C2F (my personal acronym for the story–AS=Ashigo’s Shadow, GK=Girl who would be King) for April, maybe it’ll be front & center for May. Also, one of my best friends has gotten to a place she can start being able to find some time again to continue writing (or right now, rewrite) a collaborative story/RP we started in like 2008–it been fun to revisit some old character friends, but a lot has changed and we’ve both had a lot of ideas to revise it and make it better.

I was playing with starting up a blog entry editing service. In which an individual sends me their blog entry, price is $10/per 1,000 words (minimum payment would be $10) and I go through and fix typos, minor grammatical errors, and spelling. I don’t touch the content. I don’t make suggestions or rewrite anything. I just literally go through and fix the spelling and simple grammar. There are so many times when I go to a blog and read the entry and I find some minor errors that could’ve easily been caught if it was read just a little more carefully. I’d limit it to something like 5 blog entries a week and if that seems to go well, I’d contemplate expanding it a bit–like just a basic edit of a manuscript (grammar, spelling, looking for missing words and typos) at the same price ($10 per 1,000 words (minimum of $10), that means if you have an 80K manuscript it would be about $800 and I’d only do one of those every quarter). Again this would be super basic edits, I wouldn’t change anything about the work or even really give feedback on it–literally just be like oh, you left it as ‘teh’ instead of ‘the’, you forgot a comma here, oh you don’t want to “bare a burden” you want to “bear a burden”. Y’know very simple stuff that we as writers sometimes miss because we knew what we meant when we wrote it so we don’t realize we left out a couple words or we used the wrong homonym for the situation, etc. or the spell check didn’t catch that you used the wrong word. Just that one extra pair of eyes to look it over before putting it up on the internet to see.

Of course to do that convincingly, I have to pay very close attention to what I’m putting up on my own blog.

The YouTube channel I mentioned a couple entries ago? It’s still going and I am hoping to launch it in June, but that’s gonna depend on whether or not I can get all my ducks in a row, etc. I’ll post about that project a bit more next month (I’m going to try and keep up with blogging here at least once or twice a month, we’ll see how it goes).

Take care 🙂

♥ Myriai

Summer Solstice

It’s the longest day of the year.

From here on out, the days will get a little shorter and darkness will come quicker.

Darkness isn’t really something I fear too much nowadays. Though every now and again the wide, gaping hole of blackness that’s my closet freaks me out for a moment when it decides to spit out a cat (one of the cats likes to make it a nest for long periods of time).

Let’s chat about darkness a bit.

Many years ago when I ran around in one of my fan fiction worlds (we’re talking like 1999), I wrote a Sailor Moon fan fiction called “Senshi of the Dark Star Alliance”, the story no longer exists anywhere except maybe in the wayback machine because my drive crashed in 2003 and took everything with it–just after I deleted everything in order to redo the site. However, one thing that I still (vaguely) remember from it is a couple of the themes from it were “The storm of darkness plants the seeds of rebirth” (or something like that) and “Darkness is just another shade of light”. The story was grim (not like Edgelord grim–I’ve never really been that deep into that), but in the end the “light” triumphs and the world of my “Dark Star Senshi” was reborn.

In the present day it seems a lot of things have taken a grim, dark turn in our media and I feel like that is spilling over everywhere. You can’t tread anywhere (even the local news) without echoes of a coming dystopian age. As much as I prefer happier endings (though oftentimes my endings are bittersweet) and happier things, I have to acknowledge the draw of the darkness. There is that moment as you get drawn deep into the shadows and you can feel the oppressive press of every heartbeat, every breath, and, for a moment (theoretically), darkness is the only thing you can see.

The problem now is along the lines of a meme that appeared in my memories on Facebook today (I’ll post the quote not the meme): “There is a rule of writing. If everything is funny, nothing is funny. If everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want the contrast.”

The same goes for darkness.

If everything is dark then there is absolutely nothing but dark and you’re just numb and in the midst of the numbness you aren’t going to remember any particular thing, it’s all just dark. However, if you light up that dark now and again–fairy lights in a jar, fireflies in the clearing–there is something to remember. It’s watching a disaster movie where everything is broken down and destroyed, but then you get that image–a flower poking up out of a crack in the broken concrete or a bit of sunlight through a broken stained-glass window that lights something up. It’s that moment when the ship’s crew’s been fighting against a massive storm, they’ve lost their friends, they’ve lost their cargo, and they’re damn close to losing their ship, but then a light breaks through the clouds or the sun’s visibly coming up on the horizon and they know that, for the moment, reprieve is near (or you can take it away a breath later to make it even worse).

The trick with darkness is that there has to be some form of light to make it matter, to make it real. You can use that light as a beam of hope or you can use it to lead to more crushing despair depending on your purpose.

I always prefer hope to despair, but that’s a personal thing.

The Adventure Begins

(Picture is of me somewhere around 1997-2000ish, I might’ve been 19 not 17, but who’s counting?)

Twenty-five years ago, give or take a day, I graduated from high school. I wasn’t anywhere near the top of my class, but I wasn’t at the bottom (was somewhere in the middle of the pack). I had a lot of plans. I was going to be a best-selling novelist (fantasy, sci-fi, and romance), I was going to be an international business woman with a bachelor or masters in international finance who spoke three to five languages, and I was going to be a wife and mother (how many children depended on how old I was when you asked–I think at that time it was four kids). I was also going to be well-traveled with a passport full of stamps and dozens of memories of different places to turn into story settings.

Before I turned 19, I’d derailed a chunk of those when I got dazzled into going into a trade school (that no longer exists) because it would be a fast track into the then newly booming IT field. I was supposed to learn computers and networking then get a bunch of certifications and find myself on easy street with a nearly six-figure income before I was 25. Suffice to say that didn’t turn out as planned–the trade school was a huge farce (when I can read Wheel of Time internet forums and still practically ace the courses there’s a problem). They changed the program I was in midway through to straight up electronics because they started a separate networking course. I did not sign up to do hardware and electronics and quite frankly didn’t give a damn about it, but I was already on the hook for the 18K in tuition so I figured I’d at least finish it and see if I got anything out of it.

I didn’t.

So now here I am. The year is 2022 and 25 years after high school I haven’t accomplished any of younger me’s dreams. In fact, several of them have fallen by the wayside. I’ll be 43 in a bit less than a month (June 15 to be precise), there isn’t a significant other or any children in sight and I’ve since discovered I don’t really have a desire for either (I do, however, have two fantastic nieces and one wonderful nephew though and my roommate is pretty rad). I have a pile of college credits (that may or may not be expired now since I last attended classes in 2011) and more student debt, but no degree to show for it. I don’t have dozens of stamps in a passport…I don’t even have a passport (it’s on the to-do list, been on it for the last decade).

However, I never did let go of my dream to be a best selling writer. Even when everything else was put aside, my dream to write remained firm. Though I probably am not really inclined towards writing romance (at this time) except as a facet of my fantasy and sci-fi stories. Even though my progress is slow, I keep moving slowly towards making that dream a reality.

Starting in 2023 (exact timing TBD) I am going to hard launch a YouTube Channel and possibly a few months later a Twitch stream. A lot of the details are still up in the air, but the plans are slowly forming. Right now I’m trying to gather all the starting pieces for my channel including using my MasterClass subscription to learn about VO work–not to break into the industry, but to utilize with my channel and maybe while I’m DMing. I am also trying to decide on a channel name currently “Myriai’s Myriad of Worlds” (or maybe Words?) is frontrunning with “Myriai’s Multiverse” in second, but neither name is set in stone–I intend Multiverse as a call to D & D, but most will take it as a Marvel reference. The channel will have a lot of D & D on it, I know YT is bloated with D & D content anymore, but it’s near and dear to my heart so it’s going to be there. I intend to use the VO lessons to start reading chapters of my story for the entertainment (theoretically) of my viewers. Eventually it will diversify into the worlds of my writing including “The Girl who would be King” and “Ashigo’s Shadow” (Also known as the Imperium Chronicles…oddly enough loosely based on another TTRPG) and probably a bit into writing territory as I find my footing and figure out where I’m going to get myself to fit in.

My first task right now, however, is to figure out the first video and how I’m going to film and edit things. More on that next month I think.

It’s going to be an interesting journey.

Let the Adventure Begin.

Hello There

Since my last post I managed to read all thirteen “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime” light novels (Written by Fuse, Illustrated by Mitz Vah) and despite what you may think these light novels are pretty word dense–so I am proud of myself that I managed to read (even if it isn’t a book a day as it was in my youth). I just started “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” (Gregory Maguire) and am working my way through it. I also managed to embroil myself deeper into Critical Role, start DMing a new (Dungeons & Dragons 5E) campaign for a group of my friends, and put “The Girl who would be King” back on the back burner. I have also developed a new obsession with Survive Said the Prophet (a Japanese rock band) and to a lesser extent STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION. (Admittedly that means I’m on a J-Rock kick rather than K-Pop for the time being).

Also Kitakaze no Yakusoku//Promise of the North Wind is back off to a (somewhat stuttering) start (Mother Roshiya is still battling a lot of real life and mental demons). We’re working really hard to make this work, but it’s probably going to be touch and go until things settle down one way or another.

I made my Camp Nanowrimo goal of 25,000 words (I got started about mid-month because I got stuck on something else) as of April 25th–though I am writing Shadows of Kurelinn Book One (“Shade Tree Rest” or “Seventh Concord”–one of those two titles, I’m currently wavering) instead of “The Girl who would be King” or “Ashigo’s Shadow”–I may try and pick GK or AS up for Camp Nanowrimo in July, we’ll see where my brain is going then or I’ll just keep writing Dungeons & Dragons. There is something oddly relaxing about writing something that I can be as over-the-top or silly with as I want and if I can’t decide what to do next…roll a D20. I can also use it to practice writing a lot of different things ranging from description to battles to character voice.

Currently in AZ we’re heading into summer and 100+F weather, my most hated time of the year. Some years, like this year, I intend to bury myself in projects to try and avoid the usual seasonal listlessness and depression that comes with it (other years I play video games non-stop if I’m not at work or trying to sleep). For now I intend to continue writing about the adventures of Summer Forrest vs the Seventh Concord which, more or less, boils down to a Level 20 Character Legendary Adventure vs a bunch of the biggest BBEGs in D & D (including ancient chromatic dragons, witch queens, death knights, beholders, and demons).

I’m working on a couple things behind the scenes (possibly a website, maybe a YT and/or Twitch Channel, and things along those lines–who knows), but I’m going to work on blogging more too.

So hello and welcome (and if you’ve been here a while, good to see you).

♥ Myriai