Shannara Readthrough: Armageddon’s Children

March Books: 4/5? (Armageddon’s Children, obviously)

Howdy, squiders. How’s life?

If you’re new around here, or even if you’re not, here’s a quick recap. The Wishsong of Shannara was the book that introduced me to epic fantasy back when I was a kid, and seeing how I’m still hanging out in the epic fantasy genre decades later, it was definitely a formative book for me. So at some point I decided that I’m going to read through the whole series in chronological order. Armageddon’s Children (2006) is the fourth novel, coming in after the Word and the Void trilogy, which was originally written as a separate universe and then retroactively added into the Shannara storyline.

I’ve been reading about a book a year, but I suspect that will have to change. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Armageddon’s Children and the other two books of the Genesis of Shannara trilogy are the bridge between the urban fantasy Word and Void trilogy–where there are demons and faerie creatures, and the Lady of the Word (good) and the Void (evil) vying for control of humanity and the world–and the more traditional high fantasy books in the Shannara series, many of which date from the late 70s through the early 90s. You’re welcome to go back and read my thoughts on those three books (search “Shannara” in the sidebar), but the Word and Void books are quieter, darker books that, aside from demon attacks and whatnot, explore issues such as grief, addiction, homelessness, and others. They take place in more or less modern day, in the real world.

At the end of Angel Fire East, I found myself hard-pressed to see how we were going to make the transition, but I was optimistic. The early Shannara books were some of my favorites as a kid. How much of that is nostalgia? No idea! I guess we’re figure that out when we get there.

So, having read Armageddon’s Children, how am I feeling?

Squiders, I am ANNOYED.

Spoilers, potentially, but the book is 20 years old, so do with it what you will.

I have no idea why the decision to add the Word and the Void books into the Shannara timeline was made. Their magic systems are completely different, and there is not a logical way to go from Point A to Point B. I got the impression from the Shannara books that there wasn’t magic before the apocalypse that ended everything, and that all the different races that exist had originally come from humans.

I suspect it came down the marketing. Maybe the Word and the Void books didn’t sell very well on their own. I have no idea. It’s not like Terry Brooks didn’t also have other multi-book fantasy series.

First of all, the structure of the book is aggravating. You can barely go five pages without getting a massive backstory dump about someone. You can only get away with this sort of crap when you’re 20 books into a best-selling series. There’s head-hopping and POV issues that I’d never be able to get away with. And most people’s backstories are very similar–they had relatively good and safe childhoods until their parent or parental figure was killed by demons or what have you. Repetitive.

There are also a lot of viewpoint characters, but that aligns with earlier Shannara books so is to be expected. We’ve got two Knights of Word, Logan Tom and Angel Perez, several members of a street gang called the Ghosts, and demons occasionally (including our best friend from the last two Word and the Void books). We jump kind of willy nilly among all of them, and honestly I kept forgetting about the Knights because we don’t see them all that often. The world here is still very much that of the Word and the Void, just 80-100 years later. Humanity has fallen, demons are everywhere, things are sad, boo hoo.

And THEN about halfway though, THERE ARE ELVES.

The same elves! From later! With the Ellcrys and elfstones and everything! THEY’VE BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME.

The transition from gritty, dark urban fantasy to the normal Shannara elves was so badly done I had to put the book down for a minute.

So, what, we couldn‘t figure out how to transition from Point A to B? The elves have just always existed? Squiders, I am so let down. It’s like we didn’t even try to figure anything out.

On one hand, I can see the reasoning. The Word and Void series has established faerie creatures as being real, from the sylvans that guard the forest to tatterdemalions that are created out of the memories of dead children. There are literal demons. So why not elves? The modern fantasy elf from Shannara and LOTR has its roots in the Tuatha De Danann from Irish mythology and the elves that are said to live in Iceland and other nordic countries. So it’s not a huge stretch to be like, oh, hey, there’s other faerie creatures, so why not elves?

But on the other hand, one, the elves just…live in the forest. Not like a magic, through the veil, otherworld forest, just the literal forest of the Columbia river basin. And two, from a worldbuilding standpoint, you have the Ohmsfords from the original Shannara trilogy who are part elf, so if the elves are a separate species and always have been, how are you interbreeding a thousand years in the future or whatever it is?

(Kit, you might say, this is fantasy, why are you worrying about interbreeding? After I wrote the first draft of Book 1, I gave it to some friends to read. At that time my main fantasy race had green blood, because they were inspired by Star Trek’s Vulcans–who also have green blood–and because they had green skin and it was a motif, okay? But I also had humans in the story, good ol’ red-blooded humans. And one of my friends said, Kit, how do you have two sentient species on the same planet whose evolutionary paths are so different and distant that they don’t even have the same circulatory mechanism? That’s unrealistic.

And arguably I could have been like IT’S MAGIC, LISA but she was right. And now everyone has red blood, which has nice symbolic connotations.

Anyway, my point is that you can get away with a lot in fantasy but you have to be internally consistent, and especially now that we have rooted the beginning of the series in the real world, with real world mechanisms, you’ve got to stick with them, for goodness’s sake.)

(Also, is it just the one set of elves in the Columbia River basin? How? Why would there not be other elves in other forests? I have questions.)

Anyway, I’m frustrated that the best we could come up with to transition magic systems is that the elves have been there the whole time, and they just are what they are. Missed opportunity to do something really cool with evolution and magic.

Now, to get back to the once a year thing. Each of the Word and the Void books were self-contained. This ended on every cliffhanger it could. Nothing was resolved. Nothing was accomplished, arguably. If I leave the series and meander off for another year, I am going to forget everything that is happening.

So, alas, I guess we’ll be on to The Elves of Cintra sooner rather than later.

Read the Genesis of Shannara books, squider? How do you feel about the elves? (Do the books get better?)

A Surprising Weekend

March Books: 3/5? (Drop Dead Sisters)

(I’m also most of the way through Armageddon’s Children, which is, as I was warned, pretty dang awful. I may need to decompress with something else before I read any more.)

Last week I was on a cruise for spring break, which was lovely. All the stress and anxiety I’ve been suffering from for the last month vanished, and I was able to live in the moment, which is actually pretty rare for me. My internal monologue runs pretty constantly, and often it cycles around whatever is bothering me. There were a number of times while we were on the trip that I realized my internal voice was silent.

Of course, it couldn’t last. I had a vague hope that I’d be able to take this as a learning moment and integrate some of this silence into my normal life, but the stress came knocking pretty much as quickly as my phone reconnected to the Internet.

(Probably the lesson is to hide the phone for hours at a time. Unfortunately, we live in a society that will not wait for you if you don’t get back in touch fast enough.)

Along with the bad, though, I had a couple of pleasant surprises waiting for me.

The first was that I was accepted into SFWA’s mentorship program. This is a 3-month program that pairs you with an experienced author and I have been trying to get in for years. (SFWA is the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Association.) My mentor has already reached out, and I’m hopeful that this will be a rewarding experience.

The second is that I got a 5-star review on Hallowed Hill from Readers’ Favorite, and it is actually one of the most thoughtful reviews I’ve ever received.

Reviewed by S. Mathur for Readers’ Favorite

Hallowed Hill by Kit Campbell is a suitably creepy, entertaining, gripping tale set in a remote prep school in Vermont. This book is a real treat for fans of the horror genre, with all the classic elements present: a sinister landscape with ominous trees, a haunted mansion, a neglected cemetery, a sad ghost, and a heroine who is quite alone in the world. Newly-orphaned Martina Torsney wins a scholarship to the elite Greyson Preparatory Academy, with all expenses covered. The thing is, she did not apply for it, nor did anyone else on her behalf. Once there, the mystery deepens, as it seems none of the other scholarship students before her graduated from the school.

There are other mysteries as well; someone trashes Martie’s room and classroom, making sure she gets the blame. There are flickering lights, doors that lock themselves, and cryptic messages left for Martie in notes and on mirrors. The tension builds slowly and surely. The characters are perfectly defined; the rich kids with varying attitudes toward a presumably poor scholarship student, the teachers, good, bad, and creepy, and Martie herself, who must find the courage she didn’t know she had to face inexplicable terrors. Kit Campbell tells the tale with style and conviction, and crafts a very satisfying, unexpected, and genre-defying ending. Hallowed Hill is one of those books that will send chills down your spine, keep you up way past your usual bedtime, and leave you approaching mirrors with caution. Highly recommended.

Interesting that I got two bits of good news after months of silence, but I’ll take it! Cautiously optimistic that this is a sign of good change in the near future.

Plan moving forward here is to finish up my class (hopefully before April) and work on writing the short stories associated with that.

Hope you’re doing well!

Is Secondary World Fantasy Dead?

Hey, squiders, hope March is treating you well!

As part of my SkillShare class on interconnected short stories, I did some market research in order to show my students what they might do with the stories after they’ve written them.

(This is for if they’re planning on publishing the stories separately; if they’re doing a composite novel or short story cycle it’s different, of course. But the idea is to help them think about what they might be doing with the stories when they’re done.)

The stories I’m working on as part of the class all take place in my sentient Forest from the Trilogy and World’s Edge. That makes them secondary world fantasy, which, if you’re new around here, is fantasy that takes place in a made-up world that is not Earth. Secondary world fantasy tends toward epic or high fantasy, but not exclusively. Many cozy fantasies or romantasies also take place in secondary worlds.

Now, cozy fantasy and romantasy aren’t dying, obviously. In fact, they may be the only secondary world fantasy being published these days. Oh, and LitRPG is often secondary world fantasy.

Actually, now that I’m writing out my thoughts, maybe it’s really just traditional high/epic secondary world fantasy that is dying.

At least, the amount of publishers buying stories in these genres seems to be down. I’ve found that with my querying too, that agents that are listed as taking fantasy tend to be looking for “grounded” fantasy, which roughly translates as fantasy that is easy for non-fantasy readers to pick up, which tends to be real world-based with only some fantastical elements.

My market research pointed to much of the same. I use the Submission Grinder to look for open markets, and then of course you have to actually read the magazine/anthology descriptions to see what they actually want. A fair amount wanted dark fantasy on the horror side, for example, rather than straight “traditional” fantasy, and several of the more major fantasy magazines that I’m used to seeing seem to be closed for submissions.

Sad times for me, I guess. Horror is having a renaissance, but I’m not feeling it at the moment, of course.

What do you think, squider? Do you read fantasy, and if so, what books/movies have you been into lately? Is the “traditional” fantasy of magic and world-ending stakes dead? Does it deserve to be?

Looking Like a Writer

March Books: 2/5? I forgot what I set as a goal this month. (When All the Men Wore Hats)

I’m in a weird spot where I can’t make progress on any of my bigger goals because of other life responsibilities. I only have the outlining workshop portion of my class left to film, but I do need a decent chunk of uninterrupted (ish) time to do it, since it will be a longer section, and I need the kids to not be home, so I probably won’t be able to get to it until next week sometime. And I have a fairly major Scout thing to work on as well (unrelated to the drama) but that needs to be put off until the end of the month. I’m lucky enough that my work stays at work, so I’ve found myself trying to find ways to be productive/creative despite not having anywhere to really put that energy.

(Still no clue on the index cards with the holes. My new plan is to ask everyone who comes into the office but especially people older than me. I shall report back. Thus far people my age have proven to be no help.)

Occasionally I will go through a phase where I decide I am not dressing appropriately for my chosen vocation. I don’t know why I do this, but I do, despite most authors dressing like normal people. Some authors I know do wear more goth or alternative styles, but in general, authors are people and people are people, and everyone should do what makes them happy.

And, surely, I would be happier if I dressed like a forest witch.

Would I really? I mean, logically, no. Arguably I would have done so a while ago otherwise.

But I do cycle back to the idea periodically, and here we are again, because I can troll Pinterest and pretend it’s productive and that I am getting somewhere with something.

That being said, Pinterest is, like, so much worse than I remember it being. Every other “pin” is actually a product, so when you click on it you end up on some other site, and it feels like fully half, if not more, of the images that do exist are now AI generated.

Also, the intersection of stuff I like versus clothing that will look good on my body type is smaller than one would hope.

The idea remains, however. I bought a couple of dresses off of Amazon, and they were both see-through, so implementation is not going well.

(The solution, of course, is not to buy cheap crap off of Amazon. I have run into an issue, though, where the only sites that seem to sell the styles I like are scam sites (no doubt generating the images through AI) and sometimes Amazon has something that is remotely close and has non-terrible reviews.)

(If anyone knows of a legitimate site that sells fantasy-esque clothes that are not $400 a pop, let me know.)

Also, arguably, when I do buy something more fantasy-esque, I don’t wear it, except maybe to a writing conference or a convention, so I am trying to pick things that I won’t feel weird about wearing to the grocery store.

Is this all silly? Absolutely. Does it make me feel somewhat productive? I guess? It at least gives me something to do until I can focus more fully on stuff that actually matters.

Does anyone actually care what their favorite author looks like, or if they look appropriate to their genre? Doubtful. I wonder if some of it is not just a way to distract myself from other, more important things. Or a yearning for a simpler lifestyle, where I would live in a cottage with an overgrown garden and write with the window open while my tea grows cold beside me.

Who knows?

See you next week, squiders!

Marching Forward (Har Har)

March Books: 1/5 (The Murder at World’s End)

February is always such an interesting month. It’s short, but sometimes it feels long. Like, I got a lot done in February (and dealt with a lot of crap this year as well) this year. Most of my class (still working on that last section) got done, most of a book of writing exercises, enough books (February traditionally comes up short in that regard). I’d say that I was just as if not more productive than I typically am in a month.

Now we’re four days into March, and it feels like all my momentum got eaten. Funny how that works.

(Also I smashed my finger in a drawer this morning, which is unfortunate.)

Writing-wise, I do need to finish my class, and I also need to write the short stories I’m prepping for said class. I’ve started a new writing book, Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk. So far he offers writing advice but it doesn’t have the built in exercises Ursula Le Guin’s book did.

I think I mentioned this last week, but I’m also considering working on a kind of found footage sort of story using random paper people left at work. I’m an office administrator in my day job, and people feel like they can just donate notebooks or office supplies that they don’t want any more, often by just leaving them on my desk with a note.

(Generally I am pro-notebook, but sometimes they donate dozens at a time, or a lot of really strange supplies that no one is actually going to use.)

A few weeks ago I got a bag on my desk of small notebooks, index cards, and what I can only assume are cards meant to be used in a card catalog or rolodex. Functionally useless, from a work standpoint, but it feels wasteful to just recycle the lot of it, so since I don’t have book-based exercises anymore, I thought I might do a card a day for some sort of story.

The cards look like this:

A pile of index cards with a hole in the middle of the top.

and they’re about 3×5 inches. (This is maybe a third of them in the picture, so there is room for creativity.)

I’ve been watching some YouTube videos about found footage horror so I like the idea of doing something along those lines, like notes between people in some sort of circumstance of which I do not know as of yet. Or maybe I’ll just write bits of a story on it, a little bit each day, as a warm up.

And then I can tie them together, I don’t know.

(Seriously, what is the hole for? People who are more experienced with card catalogs/rolodexes, is this what you used for them? How old are these cards?)

That’s kind of on the backburner for now, until I figure out some other things, but I guess if a story idea comes to me we can get going on that.

That’s the plan, anyway. What are your plans for March?

Oh No, It’s Demo Time

February Books: 4/4 (The Murder of Mr. Wickham and Steering the Craft)

I don’t know if you remember last year, squider, but Steam apparently has a demo event at the end of February each year called Next Fest, where you can play demos of games coming out in the next twelve months.

Hundreds of demos, they claim! I picked out, uh, seven.

(Anything to avoid playing a real game, I guess.)

Of the demos I played last year (I downloaded six, but didn’t realize you had to play them during the week of the event, so only played five) I put three on my wishlist, and bought exactly none of them when they came out. So do with that what you will.

In order:

Cleaning Up!

A cleaning game, not unlike House Flipper, though more cartoon-y. The tutorial was so impossible I thought I’d have to chuck it for control issues, but the actual gameplay after the tutorial was fine. I played through the whole demo in about half an hour. I put it on my wishlist but I don’t know that I’d pay more than $10 for the full game.

Flock Around

Some sort of multiplayer bird watching game. I tried it on solo mode, as I didn’t feel up to dealing with random people, and to get a feel for the game itself without the distraction of other people. I don’t know if it’s a problem on my end or not, but whenever I went to look at the pictures of the birds it would say no bird had been found, and if I tried to get closer to the birds to get better pictures, they’d fly away. Mostly frustrating.

Nippets

A hidden object game. Cute graphics, but too out of the box for me, apparently. I could do about half the first level (maybe the only level in the demo) before I’d gotten well and truly stuck, and if there was a hint system, I couldn’t find it either. (ha.)

Thrifty Business

A cute little shop-owning game where you buy boxes of stuff from people and resell them in your thrift shop. Looks like there’s some re-occurring characters and stories based off of them, and the opportunity to build community around the store. Took me half an hour to get through the demo (I may have played a few extra days) and I put it on my wishlist.

Hozy

This, too, is a cleaning game ala House Flipper (closer to House Flipper, honestly) but the game ran so slow the controls were practically unusable. I tried for a bit then gave up. Don’t know why I picked out more cleaning games when I already have one.

Birdwatching Notebook

Apparently I was into birds when I picked the demos as well. This one was cute, and it doesn’t take up much of your screen, so I suppose it may be meant to be one of those idle-ish games that sits onscreen while you do other things. I enjoyed it while I was testing it out, but don’t see much appeal long term.

The Last Gas Station

You have bought or inherited a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Most of the game is store management–buying stock/gas, helping customers, cleaning up the store, but there’s definitely a horror element to it as well, and some sort of mystery about the gas station. Took me two and a half hours to get through the demo. I put it on my wishlist. Probably the one I’m most likely to buy. You know how much I like horror adjacent games, and it has a cute pixelated art style as well.

So that’s the demos sorted. I suppose I should play a real game with a storyline (and an end!) here soon.

Happy weekend, squiders!

Making Progress (But Slowly)

February Books: 2/4 (Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom)

(I read Crooked Kingdom in three days. Been a while since I’ve plowed through a 500 page fantasy novel.)

Sorry for the Saturday post, squiders. But I’m sick of talking about things that are problems, so let’s ignore all that, shall we.

Writing

I’ve made good progress in the last week. The new microphone works great, and I’ve done all the theory videos, one of the workshop videos, and the intro and outro videos. Did run into an issue on Thursday where the videos were not recording sound for no apparent reason (everything was plugged in, power was on, settings were correct) but the recording software seems to have gotten over itself, thank goodness.

Only video left is the outlining workshop. I’ll do the outlining as part of that video, but I’m debating how much prep work to do first. Typically I brainstorm before I outline, and it may be easier/less obnoxious if I do that part not on video. But fingers crossed that I will figure out my plan forward and record on Monday, and then it’s on to the editing.

Where, fingers crossed, I shall not discover a ton of sound issues like I did that one time.

I’ve also done several exercises out of my Steering the Craft book, and am now nearing the end.

And someone gave me a bunch of tiny notebooks at work that they no longer wanted, so I’m toying with the idea of writing a single tiny notebook page of a story each day.

I’ve actually done something writing related every day this month except February 13 (though I did blog that day, so maybe that counts).

Reading

I finished up Six of Crows (which I know everyone else read ages ago) and went immediately into its sequel, Crooked Kingdom, which I read in three days, as I mentioned above. I don’t tend to go directly from one giant fantasy book into the next any more, so that’s noteworthy (but it is a duology, so really one long story anyway). I enjoyed both.

Other than that, I’m through Volume 15 in the Promised Neverland manga I’ve been reading (Volume 16 has yet to show up, so I may hunt it down on ebook, because of course Volume 17 has shown up). There’s 20 volumes total, so I’m about done with that. This, too, was published a while ago, but I guess it’s good to finally work through some things on my TBR list.

AND I’m also reading The Murder of Mr. Wickham, which, as you can guess from the title, is a mystery based on Jane Austen’s books. It’s got characters from every book (I never read one of them…Mansfield Park, maybe?) which is proving to be Too Many characters, and I’m having a hard time keeping people straight. Which is bad, because everyone gets a viewpoint. We’ve finally gotten to the murder now, though, so I’m hoping things improve.

AND also When All the Men Wore Hats, which is by Susan Cheever on the stories of her father, John Cheever. Have I ever read anything by John Cheever? I don’t think so. So one could ask why I picked this book up, and I don’t rightly know, except it had a write-up in the BookPage (a free magazine my library gives out about upcoming and new books) that caught my interest. And it’s good to read outside one’s normal genres from time to time. Broadens the mind and so forth.

Art

I have done a few pages in my trip sketchbook, but have run into a potential issue that is going to become a problem quite quickly. Normally I take notes when I go on trips. I know myself, and I know, like many things in my life, I tend to binge working on scrapbooks or sketchbooks or what have you, so taking notes allows me to remind myself what we did when I get around to actually working on things.

I’m working through a cruise we took in November of 2024 (ahhhhhhhhhhh why do I do this to myself) and I just…stopped taking notes on Friday. (The cruise went through Sunday.) Now, I know why, the kids got norovirus and spent all of Friday throwing up all over the cabin, but it does mean I don’t know what the spouse and I did that day, or what any of us did on Saturday (our port got cancelled so we toodled around the ship). Sunday, well, we got off the ship and then I got sick at the airport and had the most miserable flight of my life. Yay.

Video Games

I’ve played some video games this month, but I’ve not done any of the real games I’m supposed to be playing.

If you recall, I have 60-some games in my library that I’m supposed to be playing through and either beating, or at least categorizing them for later.

This month I’ve played: House Flipper, which is a game where you go into people’s houses to clean, decorate, repair, etc. them, whatever they want. Also you can buy houses and fix them up and them sell them to other people. I’m pretty sure you cannot beat this game, that there are always more houses to clean. It is relaxing though, just painting or vacuuming or what have you. I played this earlier in the month to deal with the Stresses Related to Stupid Drama.

The Perfect Tower II, which is a tower defense game Steam just put in my library one day. I liked it a lot the first time I played it, but was less enamored of it this time around. I may give it a few more chances and then chuck it into a category.

Among Us and Goose Goose Duck, which you’ve probably at least heard about unless you’ve been living under a rock. If you’ve been here for a while, you’ll know that I was big into Among Us during the pandemic, even competing in and placing in tournaments. Goose Goose Duck is essentially the same game as Among Us. It’s free and I’ve had it in my library for years, but had never gotten around to it til a few weeks ago.

All four of these games are in my “Fun!” category already, which means they’re games I go back to periodically as the mood takes me. None of them count toward my goal.

So that’s me this week, squiders! Hope your week is going well, and that you’re taking care of yourself.

More Drama But On We Blindly Stumble

February books: 0/4 (Doing great. Have read four volumes of manga, though.)

(Sarcasm!)

The drama thing continues to take up all my mental and emotional energy, which is so, so dumb. The worst of it is that it took something that I was excited and confident about and has made it so I’m second-guessing everything. Sigh.

My friends and I in the Spork Room (my earliest online writing group) are doing a Baby Step challenge this month (and next). We’ve done one from time to time, but basically the idea is that you do just a little bit, every day, instead of setting a grand and perhaps unattainable goal. We set 100 words or 10 minutes of writing-related activities.

Thus far it’s actually been going fairly well, in that I’ve done something every day of the month. Main project wise, I tried to record the theory portion of my SkillShare class, which is just a PowerPoint with me talking over it. I tried this over two days, first using PowerPoint’s built-in recorder (which is actually not great, you can’t go backwards to re-record something if you mess up) and then with ScreenPal, which is what Screencast-o-matic is called now. I tried both with both of my current microphones, but all the recordings sounded distant, like I was shouting down a tunnel. My spouse says it’s an EQ problem but I can’t figure out a way to modify that, so I bought a new microphone to see if a better microphone might help the issue. That just arrived today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a chance to get it a test to see if it fixes the problem.

It is interesting, though, because I didn’t notice anything weird with the sound when I did the video tests last week.

On the days I haven’t been fighting with my microphones or doing video tests, I’ve mostly been working through Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s prose practice as opposed to structure or anything like that, but it’s been good and I’ve appreciated the exercises. Sometimes it is good to look at the details rather than the big picture. Thus far the hardest exercise has been one where I had to write without using any adverbs or adjectives, and also one where no sentences could be longer than five words. Her goal is to make you focus on rhythm and flow, and how each word is working toward the tone and feel of your piece. It’s a good reminder.

Currently I’m working through some POV exercises. She has a narrator-observer POV which is not one I’ve seen before but which is actually super fun to write.

Today I sent out some queries because why not. I haven’t sent any out, really, since November, so it’s something that needs to be added back into the monthly routine. At the end of the month we’ll be at a year a querying. Not sure what the next steps are there, exactly, but hope springs eternal. At least for now.

So it is nice to do just a little bit each day, and built up some consistency, but I do wish I wasn’t having to spend some much time on drama, and I do wish the filming was going a bit faster (fingers crossed for the new microphone). The kids are off school til Tuesday, so not sure I can film while they’re around, though I can at least test the new mic.

Have anything you’re working on, bit by bit, squiders?

Why is There Always Drama (and January Thoughts)

January Books: 5/4 (Weird Parenting Wins)

No February books as of yet.

Sorry I missed my second update last week, squiders. There’s been ~*~drama~*~ with my volunteer commitments, which is always so dumb. We’re all adults, why can’t we act like it? Anyway, I was livid for like 48 hours straight and I didn’t get anything unrelated to that accomplished.

Anyway, that’s awaiting mediation and we’re moving on as best we can.

I’m tracking my goals a little differently this year. I made a spreadsheet. In theory I am noting days when I do each of my normal goals (writing, reading, art, video games, and a fifth column for word count when applicable) but in practice I’m remembering the tracker every few days and so January is a little piecemeal.

According to said tracker, I did 5 writing days, 11 reading days, 2 art days, 12 video game days, and wrote 572 words. I suspect the writing and reading are underreported, but oh well.

I did get through the theory portion of my SkillShare class, which often takes the longest (aside from video editing), and do two exercises in the Ursula Le Guin craft book I’m slowly working through.

So now we’re up to the filming portion of the class. I spent yesterday looking at my options for doing screen share with my face in the corner, since it’s been a while and my webcam no longer supports that functionality, and today I tried them all out, which, I’m not going to lie, was pretty fun. I basically talk to myself and it’s all a bit silly. Maybe I’ll make a blooper reel at some point.

But, basically, my requirements were:

Free
Easy to use
Supports the dual inputs I need for the workshop portions of the class

I came up with four options and made a short video with each (and also, in some cases, played with the editing and exportation options).

Zoom

The idea is that you go into a meeting by yourself and record the meeting. There were some pros to this; Zoom has built-in background blurring and light controls, and you can easily move between your face and screen sharing.

However, I found the video quality of the recording to be quite poor. Easily the worst of everything I tried. So I doubt I’ll use this.

Canva

Canva records screen recordings with talking heads if you download the Desktop app (which I thought I had at some point, but apparently if I did it got eaten one of the times I’ve had to reset the laptop). The image quality is nice, sound levels are good. No blurring of the background that I can see.

You can’t do just screen recording or just video of yourself, as far as I can tell. The editing suite is fairly intuitive, and it’s easy to add in text and other effects, but unfortunately without paying for a subscription I can’t control the resolution the video is exported at, which makes the whole thing kind of grainy.

ClipChamp

I’d never heard of this, but apparently it’s the built-in Microsoft video recorder/editor in Windows 11. I’m pretty sure I used its predecessor for editing before. The video quality is good, and it supports screen/face, just face, and just screen. It too is fairly intuitive on the editing (or at least, is close to what I’m used to) and also supports text and other effects.

It runs a little slow, though, and the videos it makes are huge. Plus the default is to upload everything into OneDrive which isn’t where I necessarily want a gazillion gigabytes of raw video, but I think I can make it work.

Honestly, I’ll probably go with this.

OBS

I’ve had OBS for a while, as it ties in to Twitch and every now and then I do ponder streaming video games. But one would need free time for new hobbies, and we barely have time for the ones we already have.

ANYway, I’ve had issues with sound levels with OBS. When I tried streaming some games last year, the audio for the game ended up being way louder than my commentary, to the point where you couldn’t even hear it in some cases, and I’m not sure how to fix it. It’s potentially easy, but it feels very overwhelming because I don’t understand the menus.

OBS also supports just screen or just face or both, and as an added bonus you can select where your face goes over the screen and how big it is. Video quality is good.

Audio is still so, so quiet. Part of me says that it’s fixable, and maybe I should poke at it and figure it out.

The other part says that ClipChamp basically does everything I want and just use that instead of making things harder for myself.

Wednesday

I started this entry yesterday and then had to go do productive and responsible things, so today I’ve poked around a bit on just screen recording options. Traditionally I’ve used Screencast-o-matic, which has worked well but does put a watermark on the screen. But it does allow me to select a portion of the screen to record, which is useful, because typically I teach from PowerPoint in Presenter mode.

I tried ClipChamp here and discovered that if I put it in Presenter mode and share my screen, it will just do the presentation, but it puts the presentation controls on the screen, and doesn’t have an option (that I’ve found, anyway) to remove the cursor. Perhaps if I recorded the video it could be removed after the fact. Who knows? Not me!

Canva doesn’t seem to do just the screen without a talking head.

Apparently you can also record directly in PowerPoint, which may be the easiest thing to try. And if it doesn’t work, well, Screencast-o-matic still exists.

But I think I’ve done all the research and playing around that I need to, so the next step is to start filming. That’s for next week, I think.

I’ll let you know how things go!

Hope you’re doing things that bring you joy, squiders. See you soon!

Always Pondering

January books: 4/4 (Love’s a Witch)

You know how long I’ve had this blog, squider? 15 and a half years. That’s an insane amount of time to do anything, really. This blog is older than my children. Ha!

Like any longer running project, it’s gone through cycles. I definitely spent a long while writing more authoritative posts–here’s how you do this, here’s what this means, here’s a long write-up about some aspect of writing. (My character archetype posts are still some of the most popular posts I’ve done to this day.) I spent some time doing a lot of Landsquid related things–drawings, short stories, guest posts from other writers. I’ve shared story aspects and vulnerabilities, good times and bad, write ups about conventions and conferences, written parts of my nonfiction books here first.

There’s always an aspect of “is this working” that runs in the background when I post. Do people like when I share stories? Do they appreciate when I share my hardships or successes? ARE YOU ENTERTAINED and whanot.

I haven’t shared a lot of work, traditionally, aside from the Landsquid things, because of a couple of reasons: 1) I’m not always brave enough to put something out for other people to see, especially if it hasn’t been edited and beta’ed, and 2) the idea of writing stories for the blog sometimes feels…unfocused. Like, it’s taking away from other projects that I should be focusing on.

But I do revisit the idea from time to time. Would people like stories? Or would it be like shouting out into the void?

I feel like the blog has been a bit of a downer lately. Yes, the world sucks and terrible things are happening everyday, and it is hard to create in such an environment, and I’m not in a place in my life where I can create as easily or as much as I have done in other times, but when even I am sick of my own moping, that’s saying something.

So maybe it is time to try something new.

Nothing’s clear yet, but the wheels are turning. Maybe we take the best of the morning pages for the week and add a little sketch to go along with them. Maybe we do a prompt challenge once a month.

We shall ponder. But let me know what you think, squiders, if you have opinions. Has there been cycles here at the blog you’ve liked better than other ones?

See you later this week! Maybe with answers!