T. K. Arispe

Today's writing notes:

I finished my short story for the Neopian Times's Christmas Giving Day issue! (I understand that Neopia, being a fictional world with no real ties to Earth, would not really have a Christmas, but one thing I love about Neopets is how unabashedly British it is sometimes, and Christmas is such a huge part of British holiday tradition that sometimes I do wish Christmas proper was a thing in Neopia too. But at least I can add copious historical cultural references... although "Giving Day pudding" just does not have the same ring to it.)

Anyway, I don't want to give too much away, but like I mentioned before it's a cute little thing that revisits some characters and relationships from "The Spirit of Black Keep" and "Return to Lynwood". There were some characters in both of those stories that I'd really been wanting to write again, and when you can't think of extravagantly long adventures for those characters to go on, you just write about them celebrating a holiday. :) (Personally I like to think their lives involve much more happy fun peaceful times than dramatic save-the-day-type times.)

I almost wish I could have incorporated Lexora's family as well, but for now I am satisfied with the fact that they star in my Grey Day short story (hint: Lexora's daughter Millie is a grey Ogrin).

So now I'm trying to figure out what to work on next. Sometimes I get really into my novels and go on severe writing binges... but I'm making myself hold off on novels until I publish The Voyage of the Kaus Media. (Which I am still super excited for because the characters are adorable and the world is fun and it has some good Life Lessons about sticking up for yourself and going for your dreams and why giant robots are great.)

As far as updates for that, I've got another editor who says she can look at it, but not until December, so I'm going to go with that because she fits in my budget way better than other editors I've looked at (I'm sorry, but I just can't pay $500 to get a manuscript edited when I'm not going to make nearly that much on book sales). So yeah, not gonna meet that goal of publishing it before the end of the year, but you know, at least I finished the first draft, and that's always the hardest part, so go me! Yay!

I've got another editor looking at "The Shadow of Takeryuu" and she's really enjoying it so far, so that's good. :) Again, though, the Neopian Times probably won't see that one until a little later next year--it's 9 parts long, so I think I want to wait until after Illusen Day, so I won't have to ask the editor to pause the series so I can get my Grey Day and Illusen Day stories in.

So yeah, just wanted to give a general update. Maybe I'll work on another "Gourmand's Guide" article... I have a couple more shops that I wanted to spotlight, and doing writeups on Grundos Cafe food will give me a chance to geek out about astronomy in general and the history of spaceflight nutrition in particular. (Which is really a very fascinating topic!)

As a final note, I am turning on general commenting, so you do not have to have a Blogger/Google account to comment. I trust you will all be civil, but if I'm getting too much spam and/or abuse of this option, I'll revert to the previous setting. Have fun!