It's a quiet night, so I thought I'd put together a general update for those of you who like getting news through this blog.

I heard back from my content editor for Earthkeepers and I'm currently going through the manuscript, making revisions with her feedback. It doesn't look like the story requires any drastic changes, which is good because I really want to get it out. I know it's bad to rush things, but you know how sometimes you reach a point in a project where you're just so done with it? Not necessarily in a bad way, but in that you feel like you can either call it done now, or spend months tweaking minutiae, never feeling satisfied that it's absolutely 100% perfect. 

In college, working on long and laborious animation projects, my mantra was "it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to work". Because really, only the harshest critics will even notice tiny imperfections. And something that the creator, as their own worst critic, thinks is a huge flaw may not even be an issue for most of their audience. I have a fan who absolutely loves Skydwellers and it's her personal favorite book of mine--despite the fact that I feel like it's old and terrible. Clearly the imperfections don't bother her enough to detract from how much she enjoys it as a whole.

There comes a time when you just have to pull the trigger and let your story fly, and feel satisfied that even though it may not be utter writing perfection, it's still the best you could have made it with your current time, skills, and energy. I am not the type of writer who would like to spend years on a single book, waiting to publish it until I'm absolutely certain there is nothing wrong with it. I have so many story ideas that it feels like my creativity is just bursting at the seams to get them all out in a timely manner. (I'm also kind of impatient.)

Plus, honestly the nice thing about self-publishing is that if I do put a book out there and it turns out to have some sort of critical error, I can always correct it and the changes will go live in a few days. It's not actually a big deal in this wonderful era of digital publishing. :)

Stuff was pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks because really, writing that first draft of Earthkeepers drained me so much (and I had some other work going on besides) that while the editor was looking at it, I just wanted to let myself rest and recuperate for as long as I needed. And I'm glad I did, because the editor surprised me (in a good way) with her swift job, so it was good that I didn't procrastinate relaxing.

That said, I am still very much interested in putting more Neopets fanfic up here when I get the chance, possibly while my proofreader is looking at the manuscript. That's assuming I finish the cover art before she finishes the manuscript, because let's be real, I am not going to be able to resist doing the cover while the book is getting its final proofreading. :) I already have the cover planned and I think it's going to look really cool! Vastly different from Skydwellers's cover, but still cool. Think more along the lines of Pixeldust's cover.

Speaking of Neopets fic, I got way too excited the other night when the idea popped in my head for another story featuring Terra's zany Neopian family. You know you have a problem when you keep writing fanfic for a game you don't even play anymore. :) What can I say, I just got way too emotionally invested in my cast. I was planning on writing it this week, but then Real Work happened, wah-waaaah. Oh well, it's all about getting Earthkeepers moving, so it's all cool!

Also, I am still suuuuuper excited for the Thunder Girl audiobook (recording should start next month!!!!!) and the Pixeldust blog tour (in March!!!!!). Good stuff is happening with my books and I love it. I think one of the cool parts about writing a book is that once it's out there, it's out there. You can keep milking it for all it's worth, because it's A Thing That Exists. I mean, just look at everything that has come out of just seven Harry Potter books. Incredible. (I may or may not be implying that I want to be the next J. K. Rowling.)

So yes, fun times ahead. I'm looking forward to all of it. I'm starting 2021 off with a bang and I hope to keep that momentum going. Happy trails, all!

I haven't had much time for doodling lately, but last night I decided to give it an effort! Here's some Earthkeepers sketches!

First, Yonwin! He was super fun to write. He sometimes goes by the nickname "Yon", but Fraa often calls him "Yonnie", much to his embarrassment as that was his nickname when he was little. But you know aunts, you'll always be their little niece/nephew to them. :)

Miette and Kieri couldn't be bigger opposites, but that's what makes them such great friends. :)

Email newsletter!

I've finally gotten around to starting an email newsletter for my authorly deeds, including but not limited to books!

Please click here to subscribe!

I promise I will not give your email away to anybody and my newsletters will not be obnoxious. They will probably come out every month or so, and will be fairly simple updates on books I'm working on and other projects and events related to them.

If you enjoy getting email newsletters from your favorite authors, this is a great way to stay in touch with what I'm doing!

I was chatting with my art pupil the other night, and we were doodling, and I ended up doing a bit of concept art for Earthkeepers! 

This is one of the main characters, Apparat Drone Model 473 Alloy, a.k.a. "Zuben". He's a friendly, energetic little fellow who enjoys perching on shoulders and exploring the world around him. Miette and her friends found him lying defunct in a secret passageway, and Yonwin restored him to working condition.

But why does Zuben have the same name as the Graling folk hero Zuben Elgenubi? And where does he come from? The answers will change Miette's world forever.

I'm not super great at mechanical design, but I actually got Zuben's design from a dream I had once about this little arthropod creature. When I started brainstorming about Earthkeepers and Zuben, I just couldn't picture him with anything but that creature's design in mechanical form. I use arthropods for mechanical design inspiration a lot because their exoskeletons remind me of metal plating. :)

Those red feather things are aether collecting vanes. Zuben uses them to collect aether from charging streams, as he and the other Apparats run on aether.

Also he speaks Old Gralish, an ancient form of the Graling language, which is represented in the book by Shakespearian English. When the idea first popped into my head, I wasn't sure how well it would work, but as I kept writing it, I liked it more and more. :)

I'm working on some revisions to the manuscript, and I hope to have it ready to send to the editor by the end of the week!

Update bits and bobs

I've been super busy lately, but things have finally quieted down enough that I could put together a coherent update on various projects! Here's what's going on:

- Last week I finished the first draft of Earthkeepers! I am so relieved and excited to move forward! I think it's looking really awesome and I'm looking forward to sharing it with readers. I think fans of Skydwellers will love Earthkeepers, and people who have never read the first book will be able to enjoy Earthkeepers as a standalone science fantasy adventure.

My next step is to go through the manuscript with a fine-toothed editorial comb and make it look as good as possible before I send it to a story editor. Already I have a list of things I'd like to change about earlier parts of the manuscript based on stuff that came up later on in writing, so during this process I will also incorporate these changes. Honestly I don't think it will take me that long, and I should have it ready for the editor by the end of the week. It's coming along!

- Production for the audiobook adaptation of Thunder Girl is projected to start in February! Benjamin Fife and I are super excited to bring this project to you, and we're hoping it can help introduce a whole new demographic of story lovers to the fun and nerdy world of Thunder Girl. I will keep you updated!

- It's looking like Pixeldust will be getting a blog tour March 8-12! I think this will be a great opportunity for Pixeldust as it will be introduced to relevant book bloggers and their followers. The world of indie publishing is based a lot on convincing people that your book is worth reading, and getting it out there and getting (hopefully favorable) opinions helps readers become informed! 

During the blog tour, Pixeldust will be featured on different book blogs every day of the tour, through content like reviews, excerpts, and author interviews. I will definitely share each of these tour stops as they happen! Right now I'm thinking I will share each tour post daily on my Facebook page, and then after the tour, compile the list of posts here on my blog. I think it will be a very exciting boost for a novel that I worked hard on earlier this year, but released to little fanfare (despite my advertising attempts).

As for what I'll be doing while Earthkeepers is at the editor's? I keep telling myself I'll take a break, but I tried that for about ten minutes and then got bored. So I'll probably do some illustration work, try to watch and work from some art tutorials, and probably put more Neopets fanfic on the blog!

I hope everybody has a lovely holiday season! Take care!

Thunder Girl audiobook!

I'm very happy and excited to announce that Thunder Girl is getting an audiobook adaptation!

I'm partnering with audiobook narrator Benjamin Fife to make the quirky, paleontology-laced alternate history world of Thunder Girl come to life! 

I'm so thrilled to have Benjamin on board, as he actually knows how to do accents and I do not, except when I'm pretending to be British which is more often than I should admit. (Mostly when I'm talking to the TV while watching back episodes of The Sky at Night.) Other authors praise his work, I myself like his work, and he just seems like a great person who likes to help the indie authors he partners with. 

I'm looking forward to working with him, and I hope this is just the first of many adaptations we can produce to help bring my work to a new audience.

Tentatively we are looking at a release date of sometime in Q2 2021. I will keep you guys updated!

So I just sent this email to Astronomy.com's editorial team, and, well, I felt like it was so important that I wanted to share it here. It's an example of where I feel someone's writing went wrong, and it's also an issue I feel so strongly about that I would like to share my opinions on the matter. 

I don't know if they'll ever reply, or if they'll just read this and laugh. But I felt I would be remiss if I didn't alert them to the fact that hey, I don't like how they're doing things right now and I don't think it's good for other people either.

TL;DR: News doesn't have to be depressing, guys. And being realistic actually means having a healthy dose of optimism.

Hello,

I am a lifelong astronomy enthusiast who enjoys keeping up with the latest news on all things space-related. For a while now, I have gotten my space news from Astronomy Magazine as I find it to be reliable, informative, and interesting.

However, sometimes I am bothered by the negative, almost pessimistic tone of some of your news articles, in which I feel that the downsides or potential negative effects and implications of an event or idea are given undue emphasis, with little or no regard to positive facts or the potential for desirable outcomes.

A good example of this is the article you ran on the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope. I found the article to be very informative as to the details of the collapse, but then it began delving too far into negative thinking for my liking.

"Too little, too late" is the phrase used to describe what the author seems to perceive as an ignorant blunder on the part of the NSF with regards to the timing of the decommissioning process. For a project of this magnitude to be carried out correctly and safely takes a lot of planning and engineering. I think it is reasonable to assume that the NSF was doing all it could to put together a plan to dismantle the telescope swiftly but safely. The platform collapse happened mere weeks after the prior cable break, which is not much time at all when dealing with an engineering issue of this magnitude.

And no attention, save a brief note, was paid to the fact that, due to the NSF's sound judgment in not attempting repairs and evacuating personnel after the cable break, no one was injured in the platform collapse. Telescopes are replaceable, but the real tragedy here would have been a loss of human life. Because of the NSF's foresight, that tragedy was averted and they should be lauded for it.

I appreciated the mention of the hashtag #WhatAreciboMeansToMe, and it is wonderful to see the astronomical community fondly remembering Arecibo, but then the article again took a turn for the negative as it quoted individuals with very pessimistic outlooks. While I understand that many are grieving the telescope's loss and need time to process their emotions, I do not appreciate that some people's emotional reactions seem to be taken as fact by the article writer, and again they were not balanced by quotes from individuals with more hopeful and resilient outlooks.

We do not know what the future holds. I firmly believe Rosario-Franco can have opportunities to work in radio astronomy in Puerto Rico if those opportunities are made available, and there is no good reason to close the door on that. She may very well be the person to spearhead such valiant efforts, if she does not allow herself to lapse into defeatist depression, but moves past this loss to see the potential of future achievements.

And perhaps the demise of Arecibo was a timely wakeup call to the federal government to pay more attention to science and education in Puerto Rico, and that has the potential to bring about wonderful change. I believe true societal progress is made when we focus less on a non-optimal current situation and focus more on the goals we want to achieve. Sitting around and complaining about current states of funding does not do much but make destructive, reactive anger and bitterness fester in oneself and others. Becoming solution-oriented, and having a willingness to forgive and move on from the mistakes of the past, is what will bring true solutions.

Overall the tone of this article struck me as hopeless, dour, and critical, and in my opinion that was wholly unnecessary. Especially in the face of everything our world is going through right now, there is no need to make readers feel that another absolute tragedy has happened, one which can never be recovered from and which also conveniently draws attention to contentious political issues, with no suggestion of solutions or the possibility that things might actually get better. Because they do. History has shown us time and time again that yes, bad things happen. But so do good things. And very often, good things come out of bad things and we would be wise to remember that.

I feel this was a grave misstep on the part of the editorial team, and I ask them to remember that in these trying times, we must all do our part to uplift and encourage each other. Writers have tremendous power over the mental state of their readers, and Astronomy Magazine does not need to slide into the sort of irrational gloom-and-doom negativity of so many other news outlets.

While I appreciate the factual quality of your articles, if their emotional tone continues to trend in this direction, I will have to seek my space news elsewhere, because I am tired of being bombarded by others' negative and despairing opinions. Space should be fun. Let's keep it that way.

Regards,

T. K. Arispe

Also, if you wanted a writing update, I am getting very close to the last chapters of Earthkeepers! I am very excited. I also have some fun promotional stuff in the works, like a blog tour and quite possibly an audiobook! You can keep up with the news on that on my Facebook page.

And, if you want a sneak peek of the novel I'd like to work on next, here's a teaser: Giant robots. Space-time anomalies. Alien space pirates and lupine galactic invaders. Young adult on her way to a new job on the Moon gets thrown into all the craziness due to a space-warp quantum-entanglement mishap. Tentative title: Blue Diver, because the giant robot pilots are called Divers.

I don't even know, man. It's gonna be fun.