Author: Tanya

  • Gatekeeper’s Key review

    Gatekeeper’s Key review

    Back to my physical TBR and another book from the Pulp Lit event! Naturally, I did not remember what the book was about and just picked it up because it was the next one on the list, but I am pretty happy with what I found! It’s been a while since I’ve read some fantasy.

    The story follows Kyer as she ends up being recruited into a party on a mission. The country is being slowly overtaken by another power on the edges, but Kyer is mostly just trying to figure out her own life and along for the ride and the experiences. Due to a duel at the start of the story, she is pursued by a man named Ronav whose plans she has thrown a wrench into and he is on a mission to get what she owes him as a result.

    This may be because I’m currently putting together my character for a new campaign, but this whole story had a D&D feeling to it where the campaign is based around one character. The magic and the worldbuilding just felt like I was in that world, which felt both very familiar and a bit off at different points, and I was waiting for more side quests that would allow other characters to shine as well.

    Despite that, it felt like a familiar journey back into my fantasy days where there was a quest to be fulfilled and a lead with a mystery about themselves that made them the chosen one. It’s a fun read and I’m interested to see how the rest of the story goes. This is, after all, only the first book and I would like to see how some of the threads about Kyer’s past progress. Check it out if you have an itch for a fantasy book!

  • Ways to calm the anxious mind

    Ways to calm the anxious mind

    I am someone whose brain is constantly going on and on, and I need a way to manage it. I’ve tried a lot of strategies over the years, some great and some not so good. Here’s some things I’ve tried, and how I personally felt about them.

    Disclaimer: Your milage may vary! There are things that work for some people and not for others. This has just been my own personal experience and I am not a licensed professional, just someone who has been trying a variety of things to help bring my life together.

    Morning pages

    Every morning, sit down with a pen and paper and write three pages of your stream of consciousness thoughts. This is intended to get all of those thoughts and ideas out of your head and in a place where you can either take some action on them or let them go so that you can continue with your day.

    Rating: 3/5 – It was nice in the morning, and I do well with stream of consciousness writing, but as the day progressed my brain got cluttered again

    List making

    Sit down with a pen and paper (This is a theme) and write down a list of something. This can be a list of things you are grateful for or that bring you joy, which you can use to reframe your ways of thinking about things. Or, if you’re me, it can be a list of things you can do next and a chance to pull those ideas together into something you can take actionable.

    Rating: 4/5 – I like having actionable items, the gratitude and joy stuff doesn’t really stick.

    Meditation

    This is the idea of sitting down and being aware of not only yourself, but being more okay with letting your thoughts come and go. In time, this practice can make you a calmer person because it can teach you to better handle things like intrusive thoughts and unwelcome emotions. If you want to give it a try, regardless of my feelings on it, Headspace is a nice app to go for some guided meditation practices, or you can check Youtube for more.

    Rating 1/5 – Made me actively more anxious on a regular basis. I kept thinking of things I wanted to remember for later, stressed about keeping those thoughts in my head, and then was frustrated that I forgot them.

    Guided journaling

    This references writing to a prompt of some sort. You can get these as books, or look them up for yourself, and they are meant to give you something specific to write about to help you figure out your thoughts and to reframe your experiences, often in a more positive light. Or that’s been my experience.

    Rating 2/5 – I tried a book with prompts and they so rarely aligned to what was actually the problem that I found it frustrating. Looking online for random ones also ended up being frustrating because, again, they just didn’t align with what I was dealing with.

    Continuous brain dumps

    This is the thing I do and the thing that has helped me the most. I find a place to put a journal that I go back to throughout the day. Maybe it’s the bathroom, or a couch. Somewhere where you are a few times a day and can be alone. I put it by the cat’s food, because she will lead me there to watch her eat.

    Every time I’m there, I open it up and start to write complete stream of consciousness. This helps me to constantly dump out the buzzing thoughts and put them on paper, where I will either remember them for later or let them go.

    I have also paired this with having a second notepad close by to take note of any things that I want to get done.

    Rating: 5/5 – Of course the method I created for myself is the one that works the best! It’s one that’s kept me calm, and better at dealing with the nonsense that life has been throwing at me these past several years.

  • Making questionable choices on purpose

    Making questionable choices on purpose

    In trying to turn Scrap Paper Entertainment into a more formal business, I’ve taken a step back to try and understand what I need to do in order to just… keep going with it in general. I’ve struggled a lot to think of it as a business for reasons that were very specifically highlighted in How to be Everything.

    So I’ve taken a little time to consider it, and here’s a few… Principles? Ethos? Guidelines? Things I can decide to do now that will hopefully make it easier for me to keep working at it when things get tough. These had to be entirely practical, not big ideals, and I think I’ve got at least an initial set that I can work with.

    Put myself first

    This shows up in two main ways.

    First, I am giving myself the permission to pursue things that are creatively fulfilling first and then figuring out how they can be monetized second. This is not really how you do things, as I well know from years in tech, but doing things like writing to an audience has always made me hate the things that I once loved. So I’ll do things for myself first, and figure out how to make it work for the business second.1

    Second, I am currently chronically ill. I need to feel like I can step away and recover now and then when I need it. This is a new practice, but one that I’m going to work on more actively because, well, I’m never going to see improvement if I work myself like I once did.

    Document everything

    This is a general practice that I need to start putting into place. It’s something I do at work, but one that I need to start to put into place for myself as well. I am going to write down everything and keeping documents so that I can look back on how things were done in the past and see how I have been able to evolve. This is also something that leads into…

    Repurpose everything

    If I have everything documented, it makes creating content easy, right? Blog posts, social media posts, everything is a lot simpler if I can just keep track of it all and then repurpose the documents for when I want to talk about everything.

    On a larger scale, though, this also extends to some of the things I am making. Different people have different needs, after all, so if I am making another workbook then I should also make everything in that workbook into something that people can download and re-use over and over again once they’ve finished with the book. Or maybe let them just pick the parts of the workbooks that are useful to them. Maybe that workbook can also turn into a podcast with just the information sessions, or even a small course so that you can hear the instructions instead of reading it. Maybe some of that workbook can be turned into an infographic or a poster for people who just need a reminder and not the whole thing.

    Essentially, the idea is to make a thing, and then figure out how to make that thing available to the most people in the most ways.

    Create systems for the long term

    All of that is a lot of work, so I need to create systems that are going to work for me long term. This shows up in two major ways.

    First, I need to focus on making long term sustainable processes for everything I am doing. That’s figuring out how to integrate the marketing into my creation time, and being sure I can balance all of the things I need to do.

    The second is that I am not going to jump onto something just because I think it might get me a boost in sales right now. It’s a lot of not doing one time things as I have been doing for so long, but coming up with something that I can sustain and provides some stability.

    I’m realizing the last three are all about business process, so let’s step back to something else that’s more of an intentional decision that I can use to help me in the future.

    Encourage people to walk away

    This is a bad business decision I am making on purpose.

    Marketing makes me incredibly uncomfortable because it feels not only like I am bothering people, but also like I am supposed to mislead them in order to get them to try out whatever I’ve made. There’s this feeling that in “enticing” someone into getting my stuff, I’m leaving out information that you would need to make a fully informed decision.

    So instead, I’m just going to tell people exactly what’s in it. No trying to create a need that they never knew they had before, no leaving out any important information. I don’t like the term transparent (Tech will make you hate the term, it means basically nothing over there) but that’s the only word that’s coming to me. Essentially, it’s going to be a lot of marketing that consists of showing and not telling. This is the thing I made. Take it or leave it.

    And with those now decided, let’s see how this goes! Hopefully putting all of this in place will let me keep a clear head about what I’m going to do next.

    1. Or decide that it’s not going to be a business or monetizable thing. That is also something that will probably happen. []
  • The Hollow Places review

    The Hollow Places review

    Today in I don’t remember why I put a hold on this book but it came in and I did not even read the summary to find out what I was getting into, body horror! Do I normally have absolutely no issues with this kind of thing normally? Yes. Is my brain pretty fried from work burnout and stress and still recovering from all the brain issues, making it much less okay with this kind of thing? Also yes!

    The book follows Kara (Carrot to close friends and family) as she finds herself living in her uncle’s Wonder Museum and helping him care for it while he’s out having knee surgery. A small hole appears in the wall, likely caused by a tourist accident, she discovers a passage to a strange world between worlds where you hope desperately that the willows that cover the place are hungry, because if they aren’t they are curious and will find new and interesting ways to toy with the humans who are unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped there.

    The worldbuilding is a lot of fun, especially in how the willows become a very strange, alien force that creep into the minds of people. There’s also the fun that is seeing what was left behind by others, and how Carrot finds out that these are people who did not come from her world, but from parallel universes that are just a little off of her own.

    I also appreciated the interplay and relationship between her and Simon, the barista from next door who also ends up experiencing the horrors with her. There was a distinct attempt to ensure there was absolutely no sexual tension between Carrot and Simon by pointing out he was, in fact, gay, which was just a weird reminder for me that they would have been expected to end up together otherwise.

    Overall I really enjoyed it! It was a creepy story maybe not best read at bed time with some haunting imagery and an appreciated lack of a clean wrap up for the situation. If it sounds even vaguely interesting, definitely check it out!

  • How I decide when to release a book

    How I decide when to release a book

    It’s been ages since I’ve been able to write again, but I’ve finally gotten back into it of late! It’s a lot slower than before, but it’s been so great writing again. But with the book starting to come together, in the back of my mind I am thinking about what comes next.

    Publishing.

    This is not an announcement of when the book is coming out, but it is a look at how I schedule those releases so if you’re curious about when you can see the next release, or you want some guidance on how to schedule your own book release, this is for you.

    Finish the series

    This is mostly a me thing, but I like to have the first draft of the whole project done before I start to think about release dates. I am terrified of not hitting a deadline! Or finding out at some point that I need to completely revise something in an early book to make sure the ending goes according to plan! So I find finishing the whole thing first helps ease my nerves.

    Wait a month

    I have started to set my projects aside for a month before I start the rewriting process. I find this ensures that I can come back to it with not enough memories of what I was trying to do to make it good. If I read through it and I don’t understand it, then I know it’s going to need a major rewrite. If I come back and it still feels like it all works pretty well, then I know it won’t take too long to get to a state where I am comfortable showing someone else.

    Plan the editing

    I have a pretty good understanding of how long a rewrite is going to take, so from there I can add an extra three months as the earliest release date for the first book. This gives me time to coordinate editing with second and third and fourth sets of eyes if need be, as well as gives me time to figure out all of the files and get everything ready.

    Release planning

    Because I’m usually working on a whole series at once and preparing it for release, I’ll often try to make sure those releases are spaced out over a long enough time to get another series done. In the past, this has been about a year. In the case of Cloned Evil, I did delay the release of the first book for a little longer, just so that I could get all of the books released over the one year.

    I do give the dates some weight in terms of significance. For example, I like April 4th as a release because that was the date I published my first ever story. October 25th is also a favourite because, well, birthday celebrations are always great with a book release! But for the most part, it’s just trying to figure out how to best space out the releases in a way that makes sense and gives me time to get the next series ready for release for the next year.

    And, of course, that’s probably going to change because writing is a lot slower for me now. But that’s how I did it for the last few releases! Let me know what you think, or if you have any of your own strategies for scheduling your books.

  • Invisible Kingdom review

    Invisible Kingdom review

    I swear I’ll be going back to fiction soon, but a bunch of nonfiction has been coming in lately and I need to get through them all first! This one I’ve picked up pretty much directly as a result of my recent health issues, and the difficulties I’ve had about getting treatment and understanding it.

    Invisible Kingdom is mostly the discussion of how the author navigated the healthcare system to find a diagnosis and treatment for a condition that she had been dealing with for years, from doctors dismissing her to misdiagnosis to the desperation of trying anything to get some kind of relief, to finally finding something that made her life bearable and the understanding that this was going to be something she would have to deal with indefinitely.

    As someone who has more recently found themselves with a chronic condition1 and who has been struggling to get things like accommodations from work and a doctor who can advise me on what I can do to mitigate some of the issues, I really resonated with the ideas in the book. It’s not a plan or an outline for how to get treatment so much as a journey and discussion about the things that could be better. And on the whole, I agree with a lot of the sentiments and commiserate with the issues. It would have been nice to have solutions, but ultimately this is an issue that patients are not going to be able to resolve at this point, so familiarity is a great comfort.

    Overall, I did really like this, even if it wasn’t necessarily the hopeful read or guidebook that I wanted. If you’re also dealing with some strange health conditions and struggling to figure out how to manage a life where they may never go away or trying to navigate the healthcare system, this may be a good read for you too.

    1. Thanks Covid []
  • How to write a fight scene

    How to write a fight scene

    There are a lot of ways to approach what can be a very daunting part of the writing process. In my opinion, you should write your fight scenes like a dancer would write their performance. Talk about it like an overall experience first, then obsess over the parts that were important to your character.

    Blow for blow is a little dull and gruesome, and while people don’t necessarily understand the mechanics of a particular fight as well as sex, they understand that they are probably going to be trying to hit one another.

    Again, the actual fight itself is rarely the important thing. It’s the conflict coming to a head, one person winning out over the other or escaping in the end. Maybe it’s the climactic conclusion where they both die. Overall, the important thing about most fight scenes is not the fight but the conflict that the fight represents. The styles of fighting typically describe the characters.

    When you focus on the blows or attempted blows of the fight, focus on the pivotal moments of it and the parts that define the characters. Backstabbing, any hesitation moments or moments where there is no hesitation at all when there might have been, moments when they go in for the kill and where they are looking when they do so, when one person gets the upper hand over another and how, these are important moments that should get a bit of a focus because they can further illustrate the characters involved.

    The rest is about everything but the fight. The feeling of the ground under their feet. The weapons in their hands. The pounding in their chests. The sun in their eyes. The blood trickling out of open wounds. The pain as they try to balance on broken limbs. Make it a visceral experience.

    There are exceptions to this, of course. If you want to do this more from the perspective of a cold killer, on the other hand, describe every single blow. That makes it more cold, mechanical and removes any of the emotion from the battle. Removing the sensations can make it feel dull and monotonous, like an office job.

  • The growing acceptance of self publishing

    The growing acceptance of self publishing

    I’ve been going back to craft fairs and art markets, which is exciting in its own right, but I’ve started to notice a shift lately. When I talk to people who come to my table interested in the books the first question is if I wrote all of these books. The second is if I published them myself.

    The response is significantly more positive than when I started.

    There have been a lot of discussions over the last decade of doing this where people have opined about how self publishing is not to be held on the same level as traditional publishing and I have largely learned to tune the think pieces out over the years. I’ve been self conscious about taking the easy way out in publishing off and on for ages and the discussions were ultimately not giving me any new information.

    But the thoughts of the people who were actually reading the books, they were the ones I cared a lot more about. The majority of readers aren’t engaged in these online debates, though the hesitancy towards self published works was still definitely there at the start. That seems to be changing now, and the casual reader is a lot more willing to pick up something and give it a try.

    Some of this might have to do with being a local author that they were able to speak with directly, granted. But overall, watching the change in attitude gives me a lot of hope. I know how much work I put into my stories, and it’s nice to see that it’s not going to waste.

  • March new stuff roundup

    Another month and another set of new things that I’ve gotten out into the world! Slowly, I’m pulling all of this stuff together!

    Scrap Paper Trinkets

    I’ve finally got the instagram account set up for this, so do follow me there for more up to date releases of the new products that come out closer to when they come out!

    These items have been released on both of these shops:

    Medium

    And, of course, a few more posts on Medium! I do post here first, but would still really appreciate the support over there as well.

    Coming up

    I’m releasing a new workbook in a couple weeks! This is a guided workbook to help with character development, and to generally get you a more rounded character. Tentative date is April 10, so check back soon!

    Also, due to some requests from people in my life and online, I’m also starting to document and write out some of the processes I have implemented to help get my life and my writing together. I’ll be putting them all on Gumroad, along with also releasing some digital versions of the worksheets from the workbooks I’ve made so far.

  • Design Justice review

    Design Justice review

    Every once in a while, I will read books on purpose and not just because I randomly saw it in a search and figured that might be an interesting thing to read. For those who don’t know, I work in tech as a product designer and UX… everything lately, let’s be honest. So something about how to do research and design ethically is something that is very squarely something I am reading for work.

    The book outlines a lot of the issues that currently exist within tech and how some of it could be addressed. The vast majority of tech products are designed very specifically by and for a majority population (White, male, cishet, able bodied, etc.) which can cause issues for people who fall outside of those groups to access things. The primary solution to this is participatory design, or getting the larger community involved in the process of designing and creating these products so that they are inclusive of all people who might find value.

    The idea of participatory design is something I’ve been interested in, as has the idea of building off of what a community has already created for themselves and integrating those solutions into the larger landscape of a product or problem space. I do find it unfortunate that there was the acknowledgement that in order to get some of these opportunities and solutions prioritized, you really did need to frame them in a way that emphasized the monetary impact over the human impact, but I am also very aware of what tech in specific and business in general is like.

    No one is really doing this for the good of the people using a product. It’s for the profit.

    Overall, though, if you’re someone in product, design, or user experience, it’s a good read. I imagine the ideas aren’t going to be new, but the framing and context of them, along with the perspective, is interesting.