Tanya Lisle

Creative on a health break

Tag: old books new formats

  • Oops, new hobbies

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    I have been influenced. I already had a pretty bad fountain pen habit, but somehow the algorithms didn’t know about it until very recently. Seeing all of the pretty pens and inks, not to mention the notebooks 1Which, honestly, less tempting. Pretty notebooks have been a problem for me since high school and these practical but plain ones just don’t do anything to me. have got me back into journalling. I already had my brain dump one and one for when I actually finished a project, but pulled out one of my notebooks that have been collecting dust to start a journal just daily creativity journalling.

    Will I spend all my time journalling instead of doing actual projects? MAYBE! But my health is better during the summer and the books is small, so this might just be a thing I do for a short amount of time and drop when the weather gets bad.

    The Trilogy

    I really should rename this to Scions, since that is the name of the trilogy. I’ve been using the name for a while now and it was the name I used for it when I thought about making it a single long volume, but I just never got around to it. I’ll add it to the list of to dos for the next block of time, I guess, but heads up that the title will probably change and some links might break as a result.

    Audiobooks

    No actual progress has been made on the current project. Whoops. I managed to record a new chapter on the next book instead and got the files into the program I use for the first pass of editing. It only gives me an hour worth of audio a month and I had files from last month I hadn’t loaded in, so unfortunately the next book is also going to take a damn long time because my ability to read is pretty bad. Still, at least I’m not going to be procrastinating by trying to record more this month? That’s probably a good thing.

    Fantasy RPG

    I really need to just accept that I can’t work on actually building this right now. Which should be fine! I don’t have anywhere near enough of the story together to even think about building this, but I saw that the Steam sale had RPG Maker available and I was very tempted to purchase a version that would actually work on my OS. I did not give in, but I did spend far too much time staring at it.

    White Noise Game

    It’s been a while since I have looked at these books. I have my notes for what happened in this prequel story, but I did need to go back into the books eventually to see what actually made it into the final books about what happened. Luckily most of it is in just the first book and contained mostly in one chapter, so I needed to pull this information eventually. I should really check Dead Air again before I start putting together a final story line, but maybe next block.

    I also need a better title for this. Something like Tinnitus but better.

  • Progress, at last!

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    One of the better things about summer is that the nice weather tends to help ease symptoms. I’ve been doing my best to have my one adventure a week 1Still all I can handle, but there’s actual stuff to do now! and catch up on the chores that I’ve been taking a lot of short cuts with.

    Which means I finally swept the floors and vacuumed one rug. Still, progress!

    The Trilogy

    Speaking of progress, the second pass of book 2 is done! I think the structure is finally solid, but it’s definitely going to need another pass to make sure all the information is in the right place and the prose is good.

    While I am really happy about it, I can’t help but remember how this used to take me a matter of weeks to do. It’s weird taking so long, but I try to remember that this is not actually as slow a pace as it feels like. It’s just slow compared to what I used to be able to do.

    Audiobooks

    You know, if I just kept up doing just one audio file every 2 weeks, I could have been done one book by now. At this rate, maybe I’ll get the first book done by the end of the year. But hey, another chapter edited and finished is another chapter edited and finished!

    Fantasy RPG

    So, I haven’t actually done any work on this. RPG Maker still doesn’t work on my computer, so nothing’s really getting built until I can be upright long enough to use the desktop.

    What I have been doing is I’m slowly creating some templates in Notion so I can make notes and keep track of asset creation. Luckily, I’ve already more or less made my standard templates for this kind of stuff, so it’s just digitizing it and adding a little extra for video game specific elements like attacks. With any luck, I will be able to use this for that other game.

  • Might as well be summer

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    I’m calling it, it’s summer. I know technically I should wait for the solstice, but if I’m having to use the aircon, then I think it’s worth making the call here. My health should start to even out with the good weather and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to enjoy more of the local events that the city puts on over the summer. I know the craft fairs have expanded to the outdoors and the farmers markets are in full swing, so I’ll have plenty of chances to enjoy the weather.

    I also got myself a rollator so I can go out more! Still having some feelings about being so visibly disabled, but hopefully I will get over it and be able to enjoy the nice weather.

    The Trilogy

    I’m finding it hard to do much else besides the books these days, and for good reason! I’m getting close to finishing the rewrite of book 2 of the trilogy! It’s nice to have so much of the world building done, though I am going to miss all my fade to black chapter endings.

    I am going to need at least one more pass on this before anyone sees it, but I’m still excited to have this pass almost done.

    Audiobooks

    I had a good upright day, so another chapter of book 2 has been recorded! Meanwhile, I’m working on editing chapter 7 of book 1. At some point, this audiobook will finally be out of my hands and I am excited for that day.

  • The unexpected

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    Alas, I spent another week crashed and so not a lot has been done. On the bright side, I learned what some of the different tax forms are called, so not a total loss. I do wish I was spending that time on something less stressful, but there’s no going back now. I’ve just been trying to ease myself back into things and not think too hard about the possibility that I did something wrong and this will be just the excuse insurance needs to kick me off.

    I may have spent too long working with US healthcare. One insurance call and form has me very stressed.

    On the bright side, I think they finished repairs to the roof. I may not have mentioned it last time, but I have been living directly under a construction zone and let me tell you! The sound of banging, power tools, and the walls shaking due to what’s happening directly above you for weeks does not do great things for your mental health!

    The Trilogy

    As much as I want to publish this trilogy like the rest of the books, I am hesitating now. I keep getting reminders from my private health insurance and also from the Canadian government that if I dare to make too much money from a series that has taken me years to write, I could get kicked off of my insurance entirely. $7,400 annually to get investigated, $21,000 annually to be removed entirely. That doesn’t even cover housing, much less is that enough to live on. Not to mention if insurance isn’t covering my medication, my expenses go up. It would be catastrophic for me.

    On the other hand, I know what my traffic numbers are on this blog. I know my sales numbers of previous books. This is likely not going to be an issue.

    Audiobooks

    You know what a great test of noise cancelling headphones is? Roof construction! Stress meant that there hasn’t been as much writing, but I still wanted to get something done and getting the final edits done on another short was it. I know I can hear all the times my brain fuzzed out while I was recording, but I do wonder how much that is going to matter. I have heard a few audiobook samples now and I’m starting to think I’m being too hard on myself.

  • Distractions happen

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    This two week period started out so well until the major distractions hit. Unfortunately, that did end up taking away some of the time I would have spent on projects, but it had to be done. And luckily I have already set up most of what I need, so it’s been pretty smooth making the changes. The unlisting has been done, and now I’m taking my sweet time setting up getting the books elsewhere while focusing back on the things that I want to be working on.

    The Trilogy

    Slow and steady! Emphasis on slow right about now, but that happens when you’re restructuring.

    Audiobooks

    Nothing edited, but I did manage to get another chapter recorded! It took 5 days, 10 minutes a day, and I really hope my voice doesn’t sound too different between each recording, but another chapter recorded!

    Because Pretty Stuff

    Before all of the Draft2Digital nonsense, I finally got some photos taken! The plan was to list some things, but hopefully that can happen next week.

  • Slow and steady

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    I’m doing my best to take things a day at a time. I’ve had a few odd spikes in motivation, but as is the case with chronic fatigue, I cannot act on it without pretty severe consequences. It does mean I’ve spent a lot of time working on things outside of projects, like baking or cleaning or generally crossing off to do list items relating to chores around the house that have been sitting there for ages. Using that extra motivation on things that I don’t lose track of time on, you know?

    The Trilogy

    These first drafts require a lot more work than I thought. Every time I think that I’m getting close to the parts where I got the story pretty close, I realize just how little is actually salvageable. Which, like, not terrible for me. I am having a lot of fun reworking the story and finding out I get to do some fun things with it. 1Like killing off that character instead of just leaving them around as a way to exposition dump! Honestly, much better impact on the narrative that way. It’s still fun, even if I’m a little frustrated with just how much longer it takes me now to write something.

    Also, decided to get the tablet out and figure out some stuff with the covers! I still don’t know what the titles of these books are, but I think I have a general idea of what I’m doing with the art for each of the covers will be. I am leaning toward a long title this time around, though, albeit with a different font.jrwi

    Audiobooks

    I got another one edited! Two of them, actually! The second one was a lot shorter so it felt almost like cheating, but it’s still another one! I am going to need to start signing up for all the services to distribute the audiobook at some point, and figure out what to charge, but it’s getting closer ever so slowly. Please tell me what services you use for audiobooks so I can get that done.

    Twisted Eden Stuff

    I have a journal full of journaling prompts. I had plans to create some guided journals for Twisted Eden, but I didn’t want to do that without actually trying the prompts out myself to see which ones I found value from, or without figuring out how to modify those prompts so that they were actually helpful. After around a year, I finally picked it back up again to continue journaling with it. Not because it’s awful journaling, but because if I only have 20 minutes a day to spend on fun stuff, I am going to spend it on creative works than self improvement stuff, but I had a rough writing day and needed a break.

    Because Pretty Stuff

    If there’s one thing I don’t like writing, it is product descriptions. When I finally get these products actually and fully listed, you will see just how much I do not want to write these descriptions. But that part is at least done, so there’s that.

  • Getting back into it

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    The return to normalcy has been slower than expected. Life does not stop throwing punches just because you’re already having a bad time, it seems. Still, the brain is getting back to normal and I am getting back to distracting myself with projects again. As much as less than half an hour a day on projects cam do that, but I take what I can get these days and I am damn happy about it.

    I have already decided, however, that I won’t be increasing my time to work on projects next month. Between the medication stuff and everything else, I just wasn’t able to actually use my increased time in March anyway. If I don’t use it, then I don’t know if I can handle it, much less if I can handle an increase. That’s just the way things go sometimes!

    The Trilogy

    The more I write this book, the more I realize I have a very definite pattern to how the pacing of these books go. Book 1 feels like a stand alone, book 2 feels like a whole different thing where all of the world building happens, and then book 3 is the fallout from the chaos after the twist at the end of book 2. This is the third trilogy I’ve written and the second one that has followed this pattern. It is very much a second book slump, but narratively it works out better this way so I’m not entirely mad about it. It is weird how different the first book in the trilogies turn out, but maybe I can just claim it’s a style thing?

    White Noise Game

    I had a moment of nostalgia remembering old escape room games. I’ve made one or two in my day back when Flash was a thing (and in Figma as part of my day job) and started thinking about puzzles. Then looking into what engines supported making escape room games. And then realizing I had notes for a backstory that I never got into for White Noise. It could be a lot of fun, provided I figure out how to draw well enough to create all the art assets, by which I mean the human faces and bodies.

    I really have to start drawing more if I keep picking up these game projects.

    Audiobooks

    The number of times things crashed because I tried to export and import files was honestly frustrating. I didn’t get any actual stuff done, despite how much time I ended up spending on just getting the files in place. For something that’s going to turn out to be under 3 hours 1At least from what I’m looking at so far this process is taking a damn long time.

    Because Pretty

    I started getting a whole lot of errors from the sites, which I ignored because that started a couple weeks ago. Turned out that there were a few things going wrong, so Because Pretty should be working again now. While I was at it and because I was having a good day for being upright, I did manage to finally price a few of the new products that I haven’t gotten around to listing yet. We’ll see when I feel like writing product descriptions, taking photos, and the rest of what I need to do to list these!

  • Working through the stress

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    This has been a couple of weeks. Cat had her appointment with the specialist which… last time we were there she stopped breathing during what I thought was a routine procedure and ended up in the ICU so I have been stressed as a result. She is doing fine, though, which somehow did not make that stress lighten up even remotely. Turns out the new medication that’s doing great things for my energy is causing a whole lot of mental health issues. 1Did anyone warn me? Nope! Gotta remember to look up side effects of all my meds on my own just in case. The fun of chronic illness, folks!

    Follow that up with starting taxes and learning that being so disabled that I cannot hold down a job means I now owe more in taxes and this has been a very unfortunate couple of weeks for me.

    Hopefully life lightens up. Until then, I at least tried to distract myself with projects.

    Audiobooks

    This is turning out to be more of a pain than expected to work on. I’ve been moving more and more to working on the Linux side of my computer 2Thanks to all the Microslop and the sheer number of updates that have been breaking Windows in general lately where I just haven’t gotten things set up yet. Adding to that, it’s also a struggle to get some of the files moved between the different parts of the computer and there’s some things that I can’t install on this side of things and I have spent a lot of time figuring out how to get my workflow duplicated.

    Which, honestly, kind of fine? I still managed to finally finish the first pass edit of Syndicate after months, so now it’s just all the manual stuff that takes forever. Yay…

    The Trilogy

    While some people use bad moments in their lives to write great things, I am not one of those people. The writing happened, but it definitely slowed down while I dealt with life. It’s also a little slower in general because it turns out that, even though I am back in the part of the story where I can keep some stuff, I need to heavily restructure this part of the book still. I’m still setting up a bunch of foundational stuff for this new world, but at least things are happening alongside it so hopefully that makes sure the pacing doesn’t suffer and the audience isn’t too confused by the way this world works.

  • Whoops, so much for weekly

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    I was planning to keep with the weekly updates, really! With the lack of my main computer, I was on a temporary computer that has a keyboard that I absolutely hate. There’s keys that just don’t work properly, some things are just in the wrong place, and the feeling of it all is just too sticky. Surprise, I really struggle on keyboards that I dislike using and, given that I’m mostly relegated to bed when I’m trying to do anything 1If I’m typing, I’m lying down. If I’m doing most things, I’m lying down. I can’t really get an external keyboard plus laptop like this. Add to that the fact that this backup laptop will absolutely give me a concussion if I try to prop it up in the same way as my lighter laptop and I just didn’t actually get much done.

    Well, it was the laptop and the medication adjustment. I was encouraged to try increasing the dosage on one of my meds and I spent a week convinced that my cat was dying. One vet visit later and it turns out she is totally fine, but at that dosage the medication gives me severe anxiety. So probably for the best that I wasn’t online as much.

    Website updates

    I’m still not sure what to really do with the Project pages, but I started adding a little more information to them. It’s not much, just current status. The fact that I can’t heavily structure these pages the way I want still annoys me, but that might be for the best given how different all of these projects ultimately are. So if you want more information, there’s at least something more there. Let me know if there’s more you’d like to see on there!

    The Trilogy

    Got a whole one chapter done on this keyboard. It was frustrating because it was also a chapter that should have been really fun given the changes, but in the same way as a pencil that keeps breaking is going to make drawing a pain, a bad keyboard is going to make writing an absolutely horrible experience. But now that I’m back on my old computer I might actually be able to write some more! Hopefully.

    Audiobooks

    It’s been a while, but I finally recorded a new chapter! If you want to call them chapters. Tales from the Twisted Eden Sector is the anthology series, so technically everything is a short story and this was a twenty page short. It took a couple days and you can definitely hear my voice change over the days. Hopefully I can still use it and if not, well, hopefully I can record it in less than three days next time. I’m just going to go ahead and blame my reading struggles on the health issues so no one can make fun of my for some of these bloopers, okay? Cool.

  • Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part

    1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
    2. 2026 projects
    3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
    4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
    5. Whoops, so much for weekly
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last!
    17. Oops, new hobbies

    I made a few very specific choices this week that ended up being less than ideal for my health. It was worth it, but it also means that I wasn’t able to do nearly as much this week as I was last week. That and my computer breaking 1Thank you Dell and your notoriously shitty hinges means that I just didn’t get to do nearly as much this week. Still, I didn’t crash as a result of working on this, so I’m still on track!

    The Trilogy

    So. I forgot just how much work book 2 needed. This is the part where I need to do some structural changes and also change the names of half of the cast. It takes place in a fantasy world with a fantasy language and the first pass had a bunch of stand in names so I could get to writing instead of figuring out which sounds the new language had and which sounds it didn’t. So much stuff about the world and how things worked changed from when I started writing this to now, so I’ve got to go a lot more slowly through this section of the story.

    It’s not a bad thing, but it does mean that I will start getting distracted so I can rework things in the back of my head. Actively sitting down and figuring things out doesn’t work as well for me as picking up another project and letting the ideas stew.

    Audiobooks

    This is a bit of a cheat, but I’m loosening the definition of “worked on” for this week to make myself feel better. I’ve been using Descript to help me with the editing of the recordings I’ve made so far and they are not only making it worse with every update, it’s also been trying to hard to shove AI into the software that I don’t trust that they aren’t going to start training on my voice if I keep using it. This means I’ve been looking at how to get that art of what I liked about the software–The ability to edit audio via the transcript–into Audacity, which I use to do the rest of my editing.

    I think I’ve found something that could work, but unfortunately with the computer currently in need of repairs, it might take a bit to actually try it out.

    Because Pretty stuff

    I’ve been thinking about those trinkets that I made and trying to figure out how to adjust them so that they weren’t just cute things to put on a shelf. I may like them that way, but I do not want all of these to stay in my house. I found a keychain to throw one of these on, but something about glass on a keychain just feels like an awful idea.

    Apparently purse trinkets are a thing, though? I haven’t had a purse in a while, so I’ve been pretty out of the loop on that. Someone else is going to have to tell me if that’s a thing I should consider.