Can the world please slow down for a sec?
Oct. 5th, 2024 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ratbonesAt this point I think it's safe to say 2024 has been a Murphy's Law kind of year for me, and I'm in an especially Murphy's Law week of it -- the least of my problems is that my well pump went bad four days before I'm due to take an international trip. While I was in the shower. With shampoo in my hair. But I have some pieces of news that really cannot wait for a calmer moment. Also yes I have since been rinsed.
Somehow I managed to finish editing my novel manuscript amidst all the...everything. My betas are at various stages with it (thank you to them!) and I'm feeling fairly good about it. I am champing at the bit to write some fanfic, which I really haven't done since I started writing the novel apart from a couple weeks last November. I just want people reading my work; it drives me nuts to have no audience. Also I haven't written something properly plotty for my OTP of the past two years and I have a plan for that, if the universe would give me a sec.
I made a small lil website on a shoestring budget to house info about the novel as it comes, and I set up a mailing list to go with it. The mailing list is going to have a welcome email but that part of the workflow stumbled into the fracas I've been dealing with this week and died, so the welcome email will not exist till after I get home in a couple weeks. If you sign up for it now, you'll still be on the list and you'll get whatever news updates I send out. It works, you just don't get a confirmation. (If you're subscribed here, you...don't really need to subscribe there, at least for the foreseeable future, because I post everything here eventually, and in greater detail than I'm likely to email about it. But there it is.)
The process of setting up a site at all, even a simple one, was very intimidating to me, but the treat at the end is that I have the url ratbones.net at my disposal and something decent-looking occupying that space. That's fun. I also had some help fromcyberbrain (testing, fixed my favicon) and my bestie sylleblahsome (made the logo!) and even my childhood best bud (more testing). By the by, ratbones.com is taken but empty. I wonder if my nemesis, the Ramones cover band of the same name, owns it, or if someone's just sitting on it for greed reasons.
I can't decide whether I want a headshot on my site. I'm not using my pseudonym for anonymity, I'm using it because my legal name is common and I like being Ratbones better...but it does have anonymity as a side effect, and I can't decide how much I value that. I'm not exactly out here writing sneeze fetish novels or ideological manifestos, but on the other hand, I sorta hate it when people IRL who are not close friends find out about the writing thing. I just don't want to talk to them about it. Also, who knows if someone will decide they hate me at some point? I think I'm noncontroversial but the internet can make controversy out of anything.
Time to go see how many autumn-weight outfits I can fit in a carry-on. Cyberbrain and I are hanging out next week! Yay!
Somehow I managed to finish editing my novel manuscript amidst all the...everything. My betas are at various stages with it (thank you to them!) and I'm feeling fairly good about it. I am champing at the bit to write some fanfic, which I really haven't done since I started writing the novel apart from a couple weeks last November. I just want people reading my work; it drives me nuts to have no audience. Also I haven't written something properly plotty for my OTP of the past two years and I have a plan for that, if the universe would give me a sec.
I made a small lil website on a shoestring budget to house info about the novel as it comes, and I set up a mailing list to go with it. The mailing list is going to have a welcome email but that part of the workflow stumbled into the fracas I've been dealing with this week and died, so the welcome email will not exist till after I get home in a couple weeks. If you sign up for it now, you'll still be on the list and you'll get whatever news updates I send out. It works, you just don't get a confirmation. (If you're subscribed here, you...don't really need to subscribe there, at least for the foreseeable future, because I post everything here eventually, and in greater detail than I'm likely to email about it. But there it is.)
The process of setting up a site at all, even a simple one, was very intimidating to me, but the treat at the end is that I have the url ratbones.net at my disposal and something decent-looking occupying that space. That's fun. I also had some help from
cyberbrain (testing, fixed my favicon) and my bestie sylleblahsome (made the logo!) and even my childhood best bud (more testing). By the by, ratbones.com is taken but empty. I wonder if my nemesis, the Ramones cover band of the same name, owns it, or if someone's just sitting on it for greed reasons.I can't decide whether I want a headshot on my site. I'm not using my pseudonym for anonymity, I'm using it because my legal name is common and I like being Ratbones better...but it does have anonymity as a side effect, and I can't decide how much I value that. I'm not exactly out here writing sneeze fetish novels or ideological manifestos, but on the other hand, I sorta hate it when people IRL who are not close friends find out about the writing thing. I just don't want to talk to them about it. Also, who knows if someone will decide they hate me at some point? I think I'm noncontroversial but the internet can make controversy out of anything.
Time to go see how many autumn-weight outfits I can fit in a carry-on. Cyberbrain and I are hanging out next week! Yay!
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Date: 2024-10-06 12:10 pm (UTC)All the hugs for your terrible year, and especially the latest problem! I hope 2025 will be 10,000% better.
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Date: 2024-10-06 06:45 pm (UTC)Y'know, I haven't even had any huge disasters, no one died, just some new thing goes wrong every week... that trend's gotta break one of these days, right? I hope.
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Date: 2024-10-06 02:48 pm (UTC)Hope you have a good time hanging out!
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Date: 2024-10-06 06:50 pm (UTC)Thank you, we've got loads of plans if we don't get rained on all week! Or even if we do.
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Date: 2024-10-06 08:29 pm (UTC)Oh noes, website name clashes are the worst.<3 But your website looks very very neat! Beautiful browsing experience! <3
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Date: 2024-10-07 02:48 am (UTC)I'm happy enough with the dot net, though I'd feel better if I couldn't have the dot com due to someone actually *using it*...Anyway, thank you for checking the site out, it's good to hear it looks and works well for people!
hopefully Murphy will just back off for a while
Date: 2024-10-07 10:18 pm (UTC)The website looks and works great. I really love the logo. It manages to be simple and very expressive at the same time, which is harder than it looks. Also cute. Yay for having ratbones.net!
I hope you have a fun but otherwise unexciting trip.
Re: hopefully Murphy will just back off for a while
Date: 2024-10-08 06:35 pm (UTC)I'm so happy with the logo too, Sylle did a great job. I guess they know me well enough to pretty much nail it on the first try. If it was up to me alone, the site would just be text, so...
Fingers crossed for a fun trip and no big surprises, haha.
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Date: 2024-10-08 01:10 pm (UTC)I've been enjoying your book! Not finished yet but getting close. Know what you mean about the occasional longings to write fanfic that come up when working on original stuff, both for the sake of the canons and the sake of the comments ;)
That is a very elegant website! (now that you know how to do it, maybe you want to do more? she said hopefully. I couldn't begin to make myself one, but I would like one, and would be delighted to shell out for it some time...)
I hope your next week (this week?) hangout is delightful <3
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Date: 2024-10-08 06:42 pm (UTC)If you wanted a similarly simple site I would be happy to do that for you after I'm back home. Fair trade for the beta reading, honestly. I can't do logos or any kind of graphics myself but I know how to hook things up on the back end and I figured out Carrd's site designer (that part actually is fun...)
Thank you, I'm typing this from the airport and looking forward to a nice trip!
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Date: 2024-10-16 05:46 am (UTC)enjoy your trip! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡
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Date: 2024-10-23 07:50 pm (UTC)The trip was great -- except that CB got a nasty cold while we were there, and I caught it from her, although I didn't get sick till I got home. Stuff just keeps happening... but yes, London was lovely.