writing

2023: Aliens

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In a year that was terrible for a lot of people, I’ve seen improvements and actually have some plans for next year. It’s an odd place to be, but I’m making the most of my improved health, because I don’t know how long it’ll last or what else will happen. Food still has random shortages and the government is threatening more right wing laws, so it’s not like it’s going well locally. But right now, I’m relatively safe.

 

Health

At the beginning of the year, things were stable, both the good and bad. I’d improved a lot, but still had some additional executive dysfunction issues. I’d attributed these to needing to relearn to do stuff and having an overwhelming list of things to do, but now I’m not so sure. Basically because I started taking Astragalus membranaceus and the issues pretty quickly resolved. One person can be a coincidence and all that, but it was a rather sharp and well-timed coincidence if that was the case.

I caught nothing at all. Since starting to use regular nasal spray (Viraleze) in addition to a mask, that’s stopped being a thing. This has meant there were no relapses and I could get out more with reasonable safety. I visited the local museum and saw a play.

During this time, I also got a walker (it’s purple!), so I could get out for more walks. The extra support helps me to walk better and it means I can sit down anywhere. Though I prefer the stick if I’m going inside or will need to use steps.

Towards the end of the year, the inflammation/arthritis in my joints faded completely and I was able to stop taking antihistamines (this caused some itching and sneezing, as I’ve been on them for years, but it wasn’t that bad). The knee with issues straightening has something else going on, though that’s also seen some improvements.

At this point, things are likely to be where they stay, other than possible improvements in the one knee. It’s pretty clear that my joints will remain fragile. I get headaches and motion sickness if I overdo things. But it’s all very manageable. I can get outside to fill the bird feeders and go for short walks. I can make plans and work on projects.

 

Writing

I’d initially planned to publish single short stories with notes. This didn’t happen, but for the best reason. The first I was working on was “Rewilding Nova”, which had been accepted for the Rosalind’s Siblings anthology before that fell through. As I was working on the notes, that anthology found a new home with Atthis Arts. So I was paid, the story went into the world, and I included a few highlights from the notes on the release announcement. I still think the single stories idea would be neat, but the money meant I didn’t have to rush it.

Photo of Rosalind's Siblings

Image Caption: A paperbook book on a purple cloth. The book is Rosalind’s Siblings and shows a person with short hair looking into a microscope in shades of purple. A small paintbrush and a bowl with two jammy biscuits are next to the book. These items relate to my story.

I also ended up writing a whole bunch of flash fiction. As long as nothing terrible happens, this will be out next year. It’ll be a novella-length collection of stories on the theme of really alien aliens.

I have no idea what I’ll end up working on after that, but I am writing again more regularly.

 

Art

My tale of multiple art shops starts with Zazzle. Sales were down, but it didn’t appear to be due to any of Zazzle’s recent changes. Product views were fine. People just weren’t buying as much. But they were buying enough to keep my website going, so this carried on being solid. All is not well in the POD world though, so the story doesn’t end there.

Society6 has been my backup art shop for many years. I didn’t sell much and the uploader for products was the worst I’ve ever used, but customers liked the quality of the products. Until this year, when they decided to introduce subscription fees for artists. I reduced my designs down to the ten allowed for the free plan, but this shop will most likely be removed in the future unless sales really pick up.

Threadless was one I’d looked at, but hadn’t tried until now. It has some things in its favour, including being able to donate some profits to charity and a commitment to wanting to promote marginalised creators. Unfortunately, they have a curated marketplace and only really seem to like a certain busy style that I don’t have. I wouldn’t recommend this one to anyone starting out, because if you’re not in the main search and don’t have fans, you’re unlikely to sell stuff. It’s a pity they don’t allow customers to search the extended marketplace if they want.

Inprnt needs an invite from a current artist or submission of three pictures for current artists to vote on. I submitted my rainbow cat, rainbow squid and fungi meadow. I was voted in on my first attempt, so that was great. This is mainly a site for art prints, and the shipping costs mean mainly for people in the US, but the quality looks nice. I’ll aim to add more stuff over the coming year.

Ko-fi is not really a shop. It’s a tip jar. Though it does allow some selling, they don’t handle the VAT, which is too much of a nightmare for a small creator. So this will remain as tips only.

 

Blogging

I reviewed a game, wrote a post about book covers and reopened my review requests. I set up Ko-fi so that people could tip me if they liked the content. My brain is back in the game.

My old posts on subjects tended to get death threats, but more people would read them over a longer period of time compared to reviews. The threats weren’t the only issue though, as the trouble with posting early thoughts on something is that things change, and the posts aged badly. So my focus this time is more on roundups of things that happened with a focus on my experiences.

Another possible is discussions of themes or tropes that could do with a roundup. I’ve often ended up describing these in reviews, but that could be turned into a more general article that I could then reference.

This means reviews won’t be as common as the height of my reviewing. I’m trying to find more of a balance of content. Whether people will read any of it, who knows. Blogging and long reviews went heavily out of fashion. But I hate email newsletters, so I’m still blogging for now.

 

Social Media

The positive side of social media is I found a new microblogging site that works for me. Bluesky is now my main microblogging site, where you can hear how sink spider is doing, how my knee is doing today, and whether I saw a cat when I went out.

Bluesky needs invite codes to join, which are handed out to current members. I got as many out as I could before Twitter stopped being useable. I donated a few to code handout schemes. I used Reddit and Second Life to send out more. There are still holes in the community, but the creative side is getting established over there. What it could do with are more readers and fans, who aren’t necessarily writers and artists.

It’ll be a long time before my social media recovers. I built up followers over many years and I won’t get them back quickly. I’m not famous enough for that. It’s also harder to get people to repost silly little things now, which is basically how I grew my early Twitter audience.

 

Short Version

My health is stable and I’m working on things again. I had a story out in the Rosalind’s Siblings anthology. I have new art shops on Threadless and Inprnt. You can tip me on Ko-fi and follow me on Bluesky. As long as my health holds, I hope to be blogging more and also publishing a flash fiction collection about aliens.

On Self-Published Book Covers

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Work in progress of a chalk pastel squid drawing.

The Same

When I started out self-publishing, there was a lot of pressure to use covers that looked like the ones big publishers would use. What a terrible thing it would be if people noticed the book was self-published. They might think it was different in some way. Different is bad.

I’d often had my short work rejected for being too different, too weird, too unlike what we’ve published before, not the direction we’re going in, and many other ways of saying it’s just plain odd. This raised the question of whether I actually wanted a cover that looked like I was writing something I wasn’t. The stories were different and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. The cover should surely reflect that.

It turned out that big publishers didn’t disagree. There were covers that stood out from the crowd as being different, because that’s how the book was being marketed. One that stuck with me was The Perks of Being a Wallflower, where the majority of the cover is a solid colour. There’s a small picture of someone’s legs and feet in the top corner. The text is pushed to the edges.

A lot of online critique means well, but without context about the book and the publisher, that cover would be slammed. The elements shouldn’t be at the edges. Make the picture fill the whole space. Look at covers in your genre, because they don’t look like that. Indeed, some versions of the cover are more typically laid out. But it’s the one with the tiny picture that I noticed.

 

The Different

People talk about professionalism and quality, as though they’re carved in stone and never subjective. This is usually the artistic equivalent of a generic business suit, as though that would be suitable for every job and situation.

The Garden Gang books were written and illustrated by Jayne Fisher. She was a child and you can tell that from the drawings. The pen lines are clearly visible where the characters are coloured in. These books are not bad, low quality or unprofessional. The art and writing is just right for them. They were also published by Ladybird Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Yayoi Kusama dresses in bright polka dots. She’s an artist known for her work with patterns. There’s nothing unprofessional about that.

In a creative industry, there’s a very big range in what is acceptable. If it works, it works. Sometimes there’s no way to know if it will work without trying it.

 

The Unchoice

In the end, I didn’t really have a choice about doing my own covers. I couldn’t afford anything else. But thinking about these issues helped me break away from trying to make covers that looked like other people’s covers. I made covers that fit my books, with a focus on the styles I was best at doing. The result was people have bought my books based on the covers and I started selling art as well.

The one people most often talk about is Werecockroach, because I drew it in wax crayons. It was a bit of a dig at people who complain about self-published covers drawn in crayon, though it’s also a scene in the book. This has worked when I’ve run adverts, because it really stands out in a line of book covers (crayon covers are not actually the most common sort outside of jokes). It marks the book as being extremely self-published in a way some readers want.

 

The Twist

That hasn’t been the end of the story though. There’s a plot twist, because the issue of AI generated covers is at the forefront. Suddenly, it’s become an advantage to have a cover that doesn’t have a style that screams AI.

My humble crayon drawing is very difficult for AI to get right, because the AI is not one of Asimov’s robots. It copies things based on probabilities, with no understanding of how a tool might be used to create it. Smooth finishes are preferred over brush marks and sketchy wibbles where someone’s hand shook. Attempts to copy these things never look quite right. More like a digital filter put over the top.

I visited the Tate Modern’s exhibit on Matisse some years back. Viewing his cutouts up close, the pencil lines can be seen, along with the pin marks where the paper was held. It’s something AI is currently unable to accurately copy.

It’ll be interesting to see what this means for self-published covers. In a world where readers will increasingly judge anything that looks like it might be AI, and there’s no guarantee that hired cover artists will be honest, there’s a bigger push for self-published authors to make their own covers. An author might be better off with a cover that’s simply a nice typeface on a plain background.

 

The Future

For myself, it’s clear that I’m better off producing art by hand as much as possible. It’s going to be an advantage to show the sketchy lines and other marks, to the point of thinking of ways to make them more obvious. Embracing the imperfections that show thought behind them rather than being the result of mathematical mistakes.

There’s a sadness to this though. I like doing my own covers. It’ll be fun to see if more authors go that route. But I wish it wasn’t something that was forced and going to make it harder for artists who do cover art commissions.

Maybe the future will end up more balanced, but until then, it’s time to break out the pencils.

2019: Death

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The previous year was difficult due to the heat, meaning I was behind on everything. I started to catch up in the beginning of 2019 and my air conditioner arrived. Then one of my family died. During those events, I also injured my knee, which continued to cause issues throughout the year. Just as things started to settle later in the year, another family member died. About the only good side is Brexit was delayed, so I didn’t have to deal with everything at once.

The result was I didn’t do very much at all when it comes to business things. I mainly focused on family and recovering from the injury.

 

Art

I had little time to make products for my Zazzle store. I made a few things and cleaned up a few things, but it was minor. My sales continued to increase without having to do anything. This is a great form of passive income and I’m glad I had this set up before this year. I’ll work on getting some new designs done and increasing my overall number of products.

 

Writing

I sold two short stories during the year. “Rewilding Nova” sold to Rosalind’s Siblings, which is an anthology about marginalised scientists. “Busy Little Bees” sold to Common Bonds, which focuses on aromantic characters. These were the short story submissions I mentioned in my previous yearly update, so it was great to end up selling both of them. I believe both anthologies are due in 2020.

I didn’t have time to finish Conduit with everything else happening, though this is still in the queue to be released. This wasn’t only due to me, as one of my family helps with editing and wouldn’t have been in a state to do that either.

This is where the tough choices come in. Longer work can potentially mean decent income for a long time, but this hasn’t really happened for me. I make more selling a short story for a single payment than putting longer work up for sale for several years. A short story usually takes a few months at most, but long work can take several years to write, so this is completely out of proportion. I can earn a tiny bit for several years of work or a reasonable sum for a few months.

The obvious conclusion is that it isn’t a good use of my time to write novellas and novels. I do still have ideas and want to work on them at some point, but I need my income to be more stable, as they’re basically passion projects. They don’t pay for themselves. So once Conduit is out, I’m not setting any deadlines or making any public plans for other longer work. It’ll happen if I can afford the time to write.

I will be writing some short stories if I can find some suitable submission calls. This isn’t in as good a place as this time last year, as I’d already been asked to submit to the two where I ended up selling work. They were good fits for my sort of work. So far, I don’t see anything on the horizon that looks suitable, but there might be a surprise call at some point.

I’m also hoping to do some video readings of some of my existing work, which leads on to the next thing.

 

YouTube

I put a few videos on YouTube years back, with the thought that it’d be a good idea to do something with it. Years went by and I didn’t do anything, but that first video (of a wild bee swarm) managed to get an average of 500 views every year for ten years. I probably really should have done something to build on that earlier.

I needed something I could work on in small doses, so I decided it was time. I started uploading videos in October. I went through older videos and uploaded those, as well as working on some new content. My aim was to do relaxing videos of various sorts, including nature, art, my pets and some sensory/ASMR videos.

Getting to the point of being able to run adverts on YouTube is not easy. It requires 1000 subscribers (and a certain amount of view time, but that’s the easier part). Even without adverts though, I’m planning on some videos that tie in with other stuff, like showing art and reading stories. It could be a good way to reach new people, even if I don’t reach the point of running adverts.

So far, I’ve been enjoying making the videos. My plan is to put out content regularly for a year and then review how it’s going. I’m open to video requests (within the sort of stuff I can do).

 

Other Things

I spent most of the year not reading anything or playing any games, though did get a couple of book reviews done. Patreon got a short story and some tank friends photos. It was a quiet year on those fronts.

In good news, I did get money from Amazon Associates and they’ve recently added the ability to get electronic payments for UK people. No more cashing foreign cheques.

 

Short Version

It was a difficult year with two deaths in the family and an injury. The release of Conduit was delayed, though should be out in 2020. I sold two short stories, which should also be out in 2020. Zazzle sales continued to do well with little input from me. I started a YouTube channel and will spend a year working on that before reviewing my progress.

Malala’s Magic Pencil – Malala Yousafzai (author), Kerascoët (illustrator)

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Malala's Magic Pencil CoverFirst Published: 17th October, 2017
Genre: Children’s Memoir / Picture Book
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Malala has a comfortable life playing with her brothers and going to school, until the Taliban takes over her town.

This is not the story of a girl and her magic pencil. It’s the true story of Malala Yousafzai for younger readers. I do have some doubts about this title choice, as the context is not necessarily going to be clear for children picking this up. An adult will hopefully recognise the name and realise what it’s about.

The focus is on Malala wishing she has a magic pencil to change the world, then slowly coming to realise that she could do a similar thing through her writing. I did like the way this storyline tied together, as it makes it relatable for a younger audience. It does also highlight how reading and writing can be used in a practical way, which reluctant readers can sometimes find difficult to see.

The pictures are fairly realistic watercolour paintings with black ink outlines. The details help to make the settings clear. There are also swirly patterns in places, examples of which can be seen on the cover, which invoke a sense of imagination and creativity.

There are obviously violent aspects to the story, as Malala’s town was taken over by the Taliban and she was shot. This is handled in an age-appropriate way. There are some images with men carrying guns and it’s clear people are scared, but there are no scenes showing the guns in use. The attack on Malala is very glossed over. It cuts from saying they want to stop her to her looking out of a window with a hospital bracelet on. I do think this image could have been clearer about being a hospital, as the small details would be easy to miss, particularly if the reader hasn’t stayed in a hospital before. It wouldn’t have needed to show all the gory details of the attack to do that.

The text is better suited to older picture book readers. There are some longer paragraphs and pages with multiple paragraphs. There is also a lot to take in, even in this simplified form. That said, I think the framing of the story does make it understandable for the intended age range. It’s a difficult story to simplify and it mostly succeeds in that.

[A copy of this book was received from the publisher for review purposes]

Polls and Patreon

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Winning Stuff

The results of the Strange Horizons 2015 Readers’ Poll are in. The piece I did with Bogi Takács (article here) came joint first in the articles category. The other first place article was by Rose Lemberg (article here). This is apparently the first time there’s been a tie.

It’s also the first time I’ve sold non-fiction, so that went pretty well, all things considered.

 

Patreon

I’ve started a Patreon. This is a tip jar, rather than a rollercoaster of nifty rewards. The main reward is it means I can keep doing stuff. If the Patreon does well, it’ll give me space to get my longer work complete (that includes novels and writing short stories for the next collection). It will also help fund the things I don’t get any payment for, like the blog. For example, it can help cover web hosting fees and pay for review copies (where free ones aren’t available).

Here is my Patreon: Support Polenth and get a warm glow every month!

 

Reviewing

I’m now on Netgalley, so there will be even more reviews with the little disclaimer so that the American government doesn’t try to sue me. Honestly, I don’t think anyone would think a free copy changes my view of the work, as I don’t gush unreservedly about everything I review. But you can’t be logical with bureaucracy.

Something I hadn’t realised is some books are available for all Netgalley members, without needing approval. These are their ‘read now’ books. I’d have signed up earlier if I had known this, as it’s obviously a great way for new reviewers to start getting review copies. I thought I’d pass that on for anyone else who didn’t know that.