Progress Post:

I did a lot of work on Fated Mates of the Drakoan this last week. Finished episode 4. I sent out a mailing list email that included a survey. Looking forward to seeing the results. I started working on updating my author bio, which has desperately needed a revamp for quite some time.

I finally figured out how to get Clickup to do a formula field to tell me when to post to free sites for my serial (so helpful because then I can just post when I’m sharing on Ream and it’ll tell me when to share elsewhere). I could have done this in like 5 seconds in Excel, but Clickup is embedded into my website, making it so people can see my schedule and updates without me having to do extra work. I like it. I don’t want to have to do a lot of different tools if I can help it.

On Sunday, I started working on a short story for Ream. I used “The Story Engine” deck to come up with a prompt. This is what I got:

It’s a little challenging, but also fun to play around with. It’s my first time using the deck, but I think I might use it more in the future for coming up with these types of stories. I’m really good at coming up with ideas, probably too good, so sometimes there’s a bit of decision paralysis involved when it comes to starting to write. This takes some of that away.

Yesterday, I wrote 2379 words in Matched to the Alien Captain and got another 1408 done today. I’ve gotten a pretty decent amount of writing done this month, which is promising.

I started taking a course called “Youtube for Authors” yesterday. Probably got over halfway done with the course. Will probably finish it next weekend and hopeful start producing videos again. I did 1 video on my channel like a year ago and never produced another one. I like the idea of doing Youtube for a few reasons, one of which being its more personable and allows me to connect with my audience more. We’ll see how that goes.

I also rearranged my desk today. I’m not sure how much I like it, but now my monitors are at the correct ergonomic heights (mostly), so that’s good. I had to take a lot of plushies off my desk (not good), but I still have some dead space on shelves that I don’t know what to do with so maybe in the coming weeks I’ll figure something out.

Finished Reading

Rescue for a Rebel by Laura Taylor – not alien romance, but I really like this series. I talked about it a bit on my instagram, but it’s an omegaverse that is set in an alternate history of 1800s France. It delves into some interesting political topics in a roundabout way, using the treatment of omegas as an example of a lot of things related to women’s rights.

Demonbreed by Lizzy Bequin – also not alien romance, but there’s a demon, so almost? It’s dark and interesting. I liked it and am thinking about reading more by this author. It’s kind of neat how you have the lack of trust initially between the two because the demon wants revenge on her father (who’s dead) so he’s planning to take it out on her. There’s a lot of depth to the bargains they make, like how much is stuff he truly needs to do what she asks and how much is him trying to fuck with her. You don’t know and often can’t know until it’s in his POV again. I like that. It’s also very nuanced how they slowly come to care about each other, even though they probably shouldn’t. It feels like she was destined to be his (which we find out was what her father promised the demon originally and is the reason the demon wants revenge. Her father didn’t follow through). As the book progressed, I had this feeling like her reactions to the demon are because she was destined to be connected to him since before she was born, resulting in the only thing holding her back being her own religious mores, which she slowly loses.