Good morning, Readers.

There is a lot going on in Canada right now. A lot that has me sad, and frustrated and utterly ashamed.

I want the RCMP to GTFO of the protest camps. I want the Canadian government to start doing the right thing by the people we have spent centuries wronging. I want us to stand up, and beside our Indigenous neighbours.

I am most ashamed of how exhausted I am, and how I can step away and rest. This is a privilege that Indigenous Canadians do not have.  They're fighting for their lives.

They're fighting genocide.

Here.  In Canada.  In 2020.

I am angry.

I am so ashamed.

More than anything, I want my fellow settlers — because that's precisely what we are — to not just sit idly by while all this happens. I want us to read this open letter to us, and seriously sit down and reexamine our own biases, unconscious or otherwise.  I want us to step up.  To do better.

Be better.

To make this country the Canada I fell in love with.

A Canada that I now realise does not exist.

But it could.

There are things we can do to help. Call, write or fax our representatives. Educate ourselves, our friends, our family. If you can, consider donating to the legal fun (here).

It won't feel like nearly enough.  And it won't be.  But it's something.  And something is better than nothing.

Good morning, Readers!

I'm over at Black Gate today, talking about Fan Fiction, and why I think it's wonderful.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of late.  Shocking, I know. Anyway, I had been struggling with finishing the second book of a series I’m currently trying to sell, and so decided to move on to another story for a while to give my brain a break and let it figure out the story in the background while I work on other stuff.
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This other project, though, is something that I’m not going to be able to sell to anyone. It is, essentially, fan fiction. Sort of. I mean, I’m absolutely using the world and assets of another thing (a video game, if you must know) in order to tell this story.  It’s fan fiction.  But this post isn’t really about the fan fiction I’m writing.  It’s about fan fiction in general, and how wonderful I think it is (with some caveats)

Good morning, Readers!

My publisher is running this awesome online spring catalogue party, where they will be doing a whole bunch of cover reveals, and the authors of the books will be answering questions.

It's happening tonight!

My friends and fellow authors, Éric Desmarais and John Haas, have a book each in the spring catalogue, and I'm excited to see them launch.

The event is on Facebook, but I'm pretty sure they're doing something on Twitter to.  Check out the details here.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

So, it is now the very beginning of week three of this I.F. experiment I'm running on myself.  While I haven't noticed many changes with my body, and I am yet to weight myself for the second time (it should be the third time, but last Monday was Family Day (a holiday), and I just couldn't be arsed to do it), there have been some pretty obvious changes going on with everything else.  Here are some of the purely positive things that have changed that I have noticed:
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• Better Sleep

Sleep has never really been a big issue for me.  I can rather famously fall asleep anywhere and everywhere.  However, my sleep at night seems to have increased in quality.  Ordinarily, I would be groggy and feeling not particularly well-rested of a morning.  Most mornings, provided that cats haven't been too much of a bother, I have little trouble rolling out of bed.  I often choose to stay in and cuddle the kitties for as long as possible (this is prime Galahad cuddling time), but I am wide awake and alert.  It's a pleasant, if a bit weird, change.

• Energy Increase

​The first week resulted in crazy energy levels.  I was full of beans.  I'm not sure I can attribute this to the I.F. but it's really the only change I've made recently, and was probably related to the better sleep, so it's the only explanation I have.  My energy has since levelled out, however, I'm not getting the 3:00pm crashes in energy levels that I used to.  So, while I'm not bouncing from the walls and ceiling anymore, I'm also not ready to face-plant into the nearest soft surface mid-afternoon, either.​
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• Better Digestion

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but everything is working so much better than it was before. That's all anyone needs to know about that, I think.

• ​No More Sugar Cravings

This was the first and most immediate thing I noticed.  I would crave something sugary in the afternoon; chocolate or something similar.  This evaporated in the first few days.  There just wasn't room in my belly during my eating window for sugary treats, and more, seeing or smelling them did not provoke the same level of impulse eating that it did before.  Listen, my self control around food, let alone chocolate, was never great.  The fact that it's now so easy to turn it down is new and weird for me.

There is one peculiar thing happening with me that has me scratching my head.  It's not a problem so much as something to definitely keep an eye on, and it's this:

• Loss of Appetite

Anyone who knows me probably has their eyebrows raised to their hairline, and for good reason.  I am... or, I guess, was... always hungry.  Always.  Most everything I did was food motivated.  I would joke that I must have starved to death in one of my past lives, I was so food fixated.

Breakfast isn't a problem.  I feel peckish when I wake up in the morning, and I want to eat when my fasting period ends.  But, despite needing the calories, I often find myself struggling to eat my second meal of the day, let alone my third.  I'm often just not hungry, and, in an unusual turn of events, I don't particularly want to eat.

Oh, don't worry.  I eat.  I make myself eat.  I'm all too aware of the damage severe caloric restriction has done to me, and I'm not willing to sacrifice my health, or my strength.  Even more, I'm eating more calories now than before.  I've upped my intake to roughly two thousand calories a day (though I need to do a quick calorie count this week to make sure that I am still eating enough.  It's a lot of food, and I'm still not sure what, exactly that is supposed to look like).

Before anyone freaks out, this isn't the same as the disordered eating I had before.  I'm not denying myself food when I'm hungry.  I'm just... not hungry.  I don't feel like eating beyond breakfast.

So, there's that.  Happily, though, things seem to be going well.  I'm feeling well, and healthy.  I haven't had to stop martial arts training or weightlifting at all because I don't have the energy for it.  So far, it's been going really well.

Right, I have videos to edit, a couple of books to write and other things that need doing today.  Have yourselves a lovely Monday.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Forgive me if this post makes little sense.  I was up well past my bed time last night, trying to figure out how to get the furnace working after the knobs that come in to do their check up came in... and managed to get the thing to start furiously blowing cold air into the house.

Turns out, they didn't restart it properly and the pilot light was out.  It took me a small temper tantrum and a little bit of research to try and figure out what the instructions for lighting the bloody thing actually meant.  Then I followed the instructions and got the heat working again.

I must have done a pretty decent job at it, too, as the heat was still on this morning, and the house hadn't blown up yet.  That's always a good sign.

Anyway, if I'm not making much sense, that's why.  I was up late, stressed and angry and now I'm thoroughly exhausted.

Also, almost forty is too damned old to be learning how to get a furnace pilot light lit.  I feel like I'm failing at this whole adulting thing.

Speaking of failing, I've been doing it a lot of late.  I've dropped a whole lot of balls that I should be juggling.  Again.

I need to get back to my French lessons, but I've not managed to do that in weeks and weeks.  Part of it was, of course, the executive dysfunction that comes with my bouts of depression.  I was querying, and querying is a depressing process.  It was also part of the reason why I struggled to write in the period while I queried.

The painting I wanted finished at the end of last year is still not done.  It was supposed to be restarted last Sunday.  That didn't happen.

I have two books I need to read - one by Sunday - that I haven't even touched yet.

In fact, the only thing that I've managed to do with any efficiency is, rather ironically given how much I struggled with it just a fortnight ago, is write.  I've reached ten thousand words on The New Project and I'm liking where this story is headed and how it's heading there.  I don't think it'll be a full novel, probably a novelette, though who knows.  I am, it seems, wholly incapable of keeping it short.

As this very blog post proves.

Right, I've blathered on enough.  I need to get writing.  Or maybe I'll attempt the next French lesson. Or something.  I have to go, is what I'm saying.

Have yourselves a wonderful day.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I have a very legitimate question, my friends.

Would $2 000.00 be too much to spend on a three-day holiday?

I'm asking because there is a three-day LARPing thing in Poland, where you get to pretend to be Witchers in training.  You get a character sheet (complete with background, and current objective), a costume, you're fed for all three days, there's sword-fighting training, and you even get to mess around with signs, all while there's a story playing out in front of and around you.

I knew about it long before now, but I recently watched a YouTube video of someone who went and was explaining his experience.

And... well... I'm sold.

The weekend itself is that expensive, considering all you're given (roughly $800.00 or so).  The real cost is getting there (round trips are around $1 300.00-ish when I checked).

It's literally only three days.  $2 000.00 is a bit extreme for a weekend... right?

Still, I really want to go, and am considering taking a new side-hustle to pay for it.  Because I'm not busy enough, right?  I think maybe I might do some editing on the side through a freelancer site (like Upwork or something), and just put whatever I make from that kind of work into a holiday fund.

'Cause let's face it.  I'm not being paid enough at work, and don't make enough from my writing, to be able to afford any holidays whatsoever, let alone a two thousand dollar weekend.  And my other side-hustle; the whole teaching martial arts thing is really there so I can pay for a bus pass... and now the dentist.

Anyway, I'm putting down this Witcher weekend on my bucket list.  One day, I'll head to Witcher school.  One day.

Right, I have to write stuff now.  Hopefully I'll get in a few good words in before I head off the gym this afternoon.

​Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I'm so sorry there was no post yesterday.  It was Family Day, which here in Canada means a holiday for those of us not working in the government.  I was at home.  I did intend, though, to be us and writing a post, but as it turns out, I was struck by a fearsome migraine Sunday that persisted all the way through to Monday evening.

Like, full-blown, hiding in the dark, wincing at every sound, gripping my skull kind of migraine.

So I got nothing done.  Except laundry, and that was only late Monday night when things started to calm down again.

I meant to clean the kitchen.  I mean to vacuum the living room.  I was going to finally tackle the clouds in the painting I started months ago and then gave up on because I was frustrated with it all.  I really need to get that painting done.

None of it got done.  I was in agony.

Glad it's passing.

I also wanted to spend some time writing yesterday, but in addition to the migraine, all of my files are on my work PC, and I couldn't write even if I was able to look at a computer screen.

So, I'm in the market for a laptop.  I'm not after anything fancy at all.  I just need it for writing.  I need Word, since that's the easiest thing for me, and literally the only tool I use to write (when it's not blog posts).  I just need this laptop for writing.  That's it.  It doesn't have to be fancy.  I'll save up for a dedicated drawing tablet when I'm ready for it.  My laptop will just be for writing.  It needs to have Word, or a version of word that permits me to write while offline.  That's it.

So, if you know of some laptops that will serve the purpose well, let me know.  I'm researching it all right now.

Writing is going pretty well, all told. The New Project is fun, and because I have no intention of trying to sell it, the lack of pressure is making it an easy write.  I will be continuing with that today.  I might even write a few words in Avalon Book 2, as I think I have the next step or two in the story figured out.  I might aim for 500 words  or so there.  A thousand on The New Project.

Those are the goals, anyway.  I might not get there, but I'll try.

Right, I have to go now and attempt these things.

​Ciao!