Who the Heck Are You?

Now that I'm working on launching a writing career, I thought it would be a good idea to spend more time, well, writing. It's nice to give myself a bit of a break from the heavy slog of first-draft editing, and thus, this blog was created.

A little bit about me: I'm Stephanie Wood Franklin, writer, reader, gamer, and crafter. I've been writing since I was about eight, but it's only in the last year or two that I've tried to actually finish something. I've done NaNoWriMo eight times, but only won three. Still, my win-loss ratio is getting better!

For my day job, I work in the legal department at Amazon.com. However, I do not speak on behalf of Amazon - any opinions stated here are my own. Also, I can't help you with your customer service issue or figure out where your order is. I've been working here for a little over four years, and I truly enjoy my job.

I'm currently working on an urban paranormal series tentatively titled "Paranormal Investigations, Inc." I say tentatively because the more I'm working on it, the more I realize the title no longer fits. I wrote part of Book One a couple of years ago, and let it sit; this year, I wrote a complete(ish) draft of Book Two for NaNo. Now, my biggest challenge is filling the gaps in between the two books, and seeing how the arc will continue on to Book Three. It's amazing how much changed between the books, and I've found it's been handy to keep a list of the things that need to be updated as I read through the incredibly rough drafts.

I have a few other projects that are simmering on the back burner, that I'll probably poke at on occasion. Among them are the Epic Fantasy of Epicness (with a story seed that came out of a fever dream) and an alternate history set in the time of the Conquistadores. I'm sure there will be other projects along the way, and I look forward to writing them and writing about them here.

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Wanna Hear Me Talk?

I mentioned in my last post, but now I'm doing the official promotional thing. I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at the Flights of Foundry convention next weekend! Specifically, I'll be doing a game demo for Rolling Realms on Saturday, September 28 at 1pm Pacific. On Sunday, September 29 at 3pm Pacific, I'll be doing a panel presentation on copyright and public domain basics; finally, also on Sunday, September 29 at 5pm, I'll be on a panel sharing my handwork (specifically my crochet, cross stitch, and blackwork) with a few other fantastic people. This is my first time doing this kind of presentation, and so I'm a wee bit nervous. Still, I'm super excited, and the fact that it's all online means that I'll at least be in my home, and the cats may or may not make an appearance on camera. So! If you're interested in what's looking to be a fabulous online convention (that's FREE!), come join us next weekend!

Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people). I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog ( here ). I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me somethi...

Hope is a Four-Letter Word

I've been bouncing around with this for the last few weeks, ever since I read a couple of quotes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book overall had some interesting ideas about reframing the idea of trying to get everything done. Even though there were a couple of things that made it clear the author was not approaching things with an eye toward neurodivergence (his discussion of distraction, for example, only talks about the "choice" to be distracted, and not how some people's brains simply don't focus the same way others' do), I was feeling generally positively toward the book until I got to the last chapter, and read this: "Hope is supposed to be 'our beacon in the dark,' [environmentalist Derrick] Jensen notes. But in reality, it's a curse. To hope for a given outcome is to place your faith in something outside yourself, and outside the current moment - the government, for example, or ...

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