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 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...

Last week, during a community call with the In Surreal Life crew (that's the poetry fellowship I've been taking part in all month), I was asked the question "When did you start writing (or other art form if you primarily do that as your creative outlet)? What got you excited about it?" I'm actually pretty pleased with my answer to the question, and since the call was recorded, I was able to transcribe the answer here: So, I don't remember learning how to read. As far as I can tell, there were just always books in the house, and they were all mine. I mean, technically they were my mom's and my dad's and my brother's, but they were mine. And I just always had them, and they just were always there. And we'd go to the library and there were books there, and we'd go to the bookstore, and there were books there and I had no idea where they came from, they were just there. And at some point, I don't remember exactly when, I was pretty little,...

It's hard to believe it's only been a week since the Flights of Foundry convention - it feels simultaneously like it was forever ago and just yesterday. It was a marvelous convention, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a more literary-focused convention that's both international and online. One of the biggest discoveries for me was the world of speculative poetry. The last few months, my writing has tended toward poetry, at least in part, and I have no idea why. If you had told me even five years ago that I would be regularly writing poetry, I would have thought you were nuts. High school and the need to analyze the bejeesus out of every word of every poem pretty well ruined any appreciation for poetry that I had for a long time, and it wasn't until I started realizing how much poetry is meant to be performed (thanks, Shakespeare, for a big part of that realization) that I started letting myself be interested again. Speculative poetry is a space I hadn...

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!

 You know how we always talk about waiting for the other shoe to fall? Basically, when things are going well, we're waiting for the negative things to come and balance the scales, because it's not possible for things to go TOO well - something's going to bring us back down to Earth. Well, lately things have been going pretty well. I've been asked to do a panel at the Flights of Foundry convention at the end of the month, talking about copyright and public domain basics. The convention is being put together using the things that the attendees say they can bring to the table, and so I had said that I could talk about copyright, and I could also demo a board game. They've asked me to do both! I can't say that I expected them to take me up on that offer, but here we are! I'm also doing a workshop at GeekGirlCon  in November, talking about how embroidery can help improve your mental health and teaching the basics of cross stitch and blackwork. In this case, I ha...

The last few months, I've been spending every Sunday morning writing with Mary Robinette Kowal's Make Me Write Zoom group. It's been really useful to have a dedicated time to focus on writing, and I've made some real progress on the novel I've been working on for *mumble* years now. I've also, for reasons unknown, started drafting poetry. I've submitted a few things for publication and gathered up the rejections, but I'm working on sharing some of it a little more. This one...I've been fighting with some stuff, and this one came easily to me, though it hurts a little to read now. So, obviously, I must share the pain! Not Like That Ask for what you deserve, they say, Don’t expect people to just give you things. You teach people how to treat you. Advocate for yourself! Fine. I deserve respect, I deserve kindness, I deserve to be paid what my work is worth. I want to be treated the way I treat others; I have the right to expect these things. Well, no, n...

 Would you look at that - I have returned once more! It’s been a minute, and there has been too much, so let me sum up. The important bits for the purpose of this post is that I have been diagnosed with bipolar II (AKA, all the lows, not quite the highs) and autism in the last two years, so I’ve been working with a therapist to try and figure out what that all means for me now. Also, my Daisy-cat passed away suddenly a couple of months ago, and we recently welcomed a new member of the family, QWERTY.  He’s living up to his name on a regular basis, but I got a keyboard cover to protect my laptop (or rather, to keep him from doing more new and exciting things to my laptop), and it’s been working out pretty well so far. So! I’m working with Mar Rodriguez with Holistic Child and Family , and they are MARVELOUS. I highly recommend the practice, though they do currently have a 4+ month waitlist. In my opinion, totally worth the wait. Mar is fantastic, and working with a therapist wh...