Everything starts somewhere

Why I started this and what to expect

I used to have a blog. Very occasionally, I made posts about dissing the Encyclopedia Britannica in Hollow Whispers, or the nerdy logic puzzle from The Revenant of Surolifia. But nobody read them because WordPress is old school, so I shrugged and stopped.

But all the cool kids are now hanging out on Substack and I kinda miss having a place where I can shout into the void, so, et voilà, me voici! (I google translated that. I don’t actually know any French. Yes, I am ashamed.)

What to expect (and not)

1. No set schedule. I tend to write stuff only when I have something meaningful to say, and I can’t really force my brain to churn out genuinely meaningful stuff on a set schedule.

2. Lots of “making of” type posts. The making of the promotional stuff I’ll be posting on my Instagram leading up to the launch of Revenant. The making of pitch event moodboards and graphics. Maybe even the making of the books themselves.

3. Thoughts about book/writing stuff I’m qualified to have thoughts on. But probably not about current happenings in trad pub; I don’t get out from under my rocks enough to have well-informed thoughts on current happenings.

4. Occasional book news. I’ll keep these brief and limited to only to major milestones (ARC, pre-order, launch, etc) because I’m not here to advertise at you, that’s what IG is for.

5. Free posts only. If you want to support me, pre-order my book when it’s available! I don’t want you to pay me (and Substack) for newsletter posts.

If you’re already a subscriber, thank you! If not, here’s a blue button. Pressing it will literally make my day because I’ve been having a shit-tastic week and someone gave me their nasty microbugs. 🤧

And on that note…

#PosterPit happened on Twitter and Bsky a week ago. I wasn’t originally planning to participate because I didn’t have time to make anything new (thanks for nothing, day-job!). Except, FOMO got me bad a couple of hours before event, so I quickly cobbled this together:

But I forgot Twitter is stupid and has a specific aspect ratio for previews, so my poster ended up being cut off and it really bugged me. Instead of deleting it to fix the poster size, I thought I’d just let the tweet fly under the radar, unpin my tweet after the event, and fix it for future events.

Well, the post is still pinned despite how much I hated the cut-off preview because…

Y’all liked it enough to nominate it and vote it into 2nd place for Best Formatting in the post-event #PosterPitAwards. 😮 (Thank you for your support! 🥰) Then a small wave of you asked me about the featured artwork, how I made the poster, what software I used, etc.

So that’s what my first (real) post will be.

I’ll break down the making of that poster, the design decisions, and some general tips. Y’all apparently wanted to know so…. stay tuned? 👀