Three Years of Bleeding Ink - if this goes on much longer I may need a blood transfusion

 

Hello hello hello. 

Bleeding Ink is now three years old (happened a few days ago). Huzzah. We made it. Congratulations us. Woo hoo. Such celebrate, very party. 

What are we going to do about this momentous occasion?

I don't know. Eat cake, or something. Probably not. I'm saving my money to build a bookshelf and thus can't afford cake. But you can buy yourself cake if you want. 

Anyways. 

I should probably get on with the yearly review thingy thing that we unofficially do every year, right?

Okay. Updates and then celebration stuff.

Order of things

Updates:

Writing

• Year of writing
• Project updates

Bleeding Ink

• Giveaways
• Statistics
• Slow going activity
• More WIP updates to come
• The kinds of posts to expect

NoQu

Life

Celebration:

Support these people

Spam comments!

• Spam comment 1
• Spam comment 2
• Gary's Blogs
• Conclusion of the Gary Segment 

Post Conclusion + An Excerpt

Upppdaattesssssss

Writing

So like. *sips tea* This year was really not-productive where writing is concerned. 

Why is that? 

Well.

*straightens bowtie* 

I don't have any good explanation. 

Something to do with a lack of motivation. Although when I had that adventure back in August, my companions helped me write via percussive maintenance. The rewrite of Roslyn is now at 74,173 words long, which is probably a third of the way through the book. I've done a lot of condensing and cutting, and yet still am on the path to making this draft even bigger than the former one. 

I do have some updates on all of my projects though, so here's that

Projects

Updates on my current leading projects and where what's going when and the like.

Roslyn - Halted

A brick wall fell on top of me and I now do not know how to get up and continue with this project.

I know where everything needs to go, I know why, and I know how. I just can't seem to write. It is deeply frustrating and discouraging, because I love the characters in this story and I know them and the world so very well. 

But many doors have shut when it comes to the project, that aside, and so I'm taking a break from it. It genuinely pains me to do that, but it also is genuinely paining me to force the process while its so presently discouraging. 

Hopefully I will return to it soon and be able to get it going again. I believe I was just starting to break real ground for the first time in five years, so I am eager to get back to it when I'm, for lack of better terms, better.

The Rising - Simmering and Plotting

The Rising is my newest story idea. And it actually isn't new. I came up with the concept about three years ago, and let it kind of hangout rent-free in my mind for a time. Then something happened - don't remember what - and I was thinking about it more and more.

Due to the nature of the story, I'd like to be able to say it was God's calling. Whether it actually is or not I couldn't say for certain, because people in my life have had conflicting reactions to this particular concept, but an awful lot of convenient things fell into place to motivate this project for it to just be coincidence. 

But who knows.

Currently, I'm letting the idea simmer as I begin to loosely plot it. This is a very precarious process due to this story specifically, so I'm not rushing it right now. 

The Little People of Their Place - Revisiting

Now that's a name I haven't heard of since... well, a long time. 

For those of you that have snooped around my blog, you may be aware of the fact that I have a project with this name. What you may not be aware of is the fact that I have had this project even longer than I've had Roslyn.

This story is a simple and endearing one for me. It's about two sisters and a whole lot of magical creatures. You can read the early synopsis for it on my "WIP" page. 

It's somewhat of an unofficial tradition for me to come back to this story every so often and reread chunks of it. Even as early of a draft as it is, I have always thought it flows very naturally and holds a lot of potential in its delightful simplicity. 

The reason why I halted the project originally was because I hit a wall and didn't know how to progress, probably due to the fact that I didn't actually plot this story at all. 

But now, with several years worth of writing between me and the last attempt at writing it, I'm revisiting it. It's a simple little book, and I'm hoping to be able to rework it and maybe even finish it as I recover from the pounds of brick that Roslyn dropped on me.

What revisiting this project will entail is something along the lines of rereading the whole thing, lots of time brainstorming and time spent staring at the wall, and repotting. Kind of directing the whole thing and putting it back together again.

Murder on the Writerly Wreck - Off and On

This is my murder comedy that I started writing a year or two back. I think it was last year.  

It's a fun parody of sorts of Murder on the Orient Express and various other stories of that nature. It's actually heavily inspired by a true situation, as well.

The comedy partially relies on the visual affect of things; fonts and spelling and the like all add to its tone.

Because of this, it's a very loose and free project that's easy for me to use as a break from other projects. I'm not dedicatedly working on it at the moment, but I am using it in-between writing. 

Reading

Oh stars I read a lot this year. Well, I read a lot for me. 

I read 13 indie books (one of which is unpublished but is going to be published next year I believe), which makes me very happy and also very confused because it feels like that happened two years ago and not this year. But I'm happy about it because that means my indie author book rec page has been fairly active on my part this year. I've had two recommendations, one which I've read and one which I intend to read, so I think it's not been terrible all things considered. 

As of November (who knows if I'll update this draft of the post before publishing it to correct this) I've read *27 books. I'll do my year-in-books thing sometime in December or January maybe probably possibly, so I won't go into all of that now. 

But generally speaking it's been a good year for reading. 

(*It's actually 29 as of today.)

Bleeding Ink

Giveaways

We hosted two giveaways this year, both of which were for indie trilogies that turned five years old  *party-blower thing that rolls out when you blow into it noises*  Happy birthdays once again to Dragons' Bane and The Fire Rain Chronicles. They're some of the coolest YA books ever. 

We didn't get a lot of interactions on those giveaways, but what we did get has been valued and will hopefully be doubled a hundredfold by the time we come to the next giveaway. Which will be.... *digs through piles of papers* Ah, it will not be until August of 2022.

Anyways, that's how that went. 

Statistics and Updates

I wrote like eighteen posts or something. We got like 3.31k views this year, and we have 5.1k views since being created, which means we have progressed a lot in that regard, even for so few posts. How, I don't know. But thank you to ye lurking followers of the blog who read all and say little. 

As for updates on Bleeding Ink *long inhale* noupdateshavebeenmadeonthenewwebsiteasI'mstrugglinggreatlywithunderstandingeverythingandworkingonmybrandandblahblahblahstillwanttodobooktubeprobablywon'tforanotherfewyearsbecauseyyeaahhhhhcamerascostmoneyandstuff.

Also indie rec page will be on-going as perusal. 

(Wait, what's this? Thinks Editing Edna. That's not true, I have many updates now. I'll just insert those here, and perhaps no one will notice that it was written weeks after the prior part was.) 

Slow Going Activity

I'm currently very secluded when it comes to writing. Due to things, I no longer have a writing group which I can rely on, and my individual writing friends are all occupied. My family is occupied as well, and isn't able to offer any direct help either. 

So it's just Marvin, Erwin and I, sitting around a typewriter and trying to figure out what to do with it (Marvin and Erwin are my inanimate assistants, if you didn't know). 

Because of this, I'm in a very strange place, writing-wise. That includes blogging, and running NoQu. I am trying to maintain everything at a slow but intentional pace so that I don't overwork myself or burn out, but it's very likely I drop some things here and there.

I ask for your patience concerning posts during this time, and if you'd like to help, commenting on both Bleeding Ink and NoQu's blog and forums truly does help. 

I also ask for your patience when it comes to things such as my Indie Book Recs page and general indie reading and support. I have every intention of still putting that to good use, but financially and mentally can't presently afford to maintain them to the degree which I would prefer.

More WIP Information

There have been several blogs spring up over the course of Bleeding Ink's lifespan which very quickly surpassed BI as well as several other blogs which I frequent. It's no wonder why they're doing well - after all they are very good blogs - but the wonder is why the other very good blogs, the ones which I frequent, haven't gotten as much traffic. 

Well, I don't know for sure. But it seems that the popular blogs are certain personality types, and they either do more "how to write [blank]" type posts or they talk more frequently about their own projects.

I'm not about to change my whole personality for the sake of improving Bleeding Ink, of course, and I'm really not the best at giving instructions (though I do mean to give more "my process for [blank]" type posts here and there), but I do believe I could stand being a bit more open about my projects. 

I originally didn't want to do this because I figured either no one would care, or someone may inadvertently take inspiration from my own work and produce a project similar. But you know what, that doesn't really matter. 

So I intend to do posts and tags that allow for more conversations about my leading WIP, whatever that would be considered right now, and which will hopefully attract more reader interaction. 

Because while I really don't care for blogging, I do like sharing my thoughts and projects and getting feedback on it. And, I do like the idea of publishing, which certainly won't go well if I don't first have an audience of some sort. 

So moving forward, you can expect more openness regarding my projects.

Types of Posts

I want to talk a bit about what posts you can expect to see more of in the future, though like I mentioned at a slower pace. I'm going back to why I made Bleeding Ink, and trying to tailor my post types to match that. Because really, only occasional posts of mine accurately represent why I started Bleeding Ink in the first place.

My Approach

I've recently found that I'm really not the kind of person that can supply you with writing advice. And really, it was never my intention to be one of those anyways. 

I wanted to be a person who shared my experience, not a person who guides other people through theirs. And so I am going to continue the "My Approach" post series, which details my approach to various things as a writer as well as a reader. 

My main goal is to just let you in on my own journey, but if you find that it helps you along yours, then we will have accomplished quite a feat. 

Concerning Classics

Before I started this blog I was talking with my mother about a blog post we were reading together about Anne Shirley. I remember saying that this was the kind of thing I could do, and the kind of thing I wanted to do. 

But I'm a writer as well as a reader, so I made this blog to promote myself and build an audience, totally forgetting that I wanted to talk about other books, not just my own, from the very beginning. 

And now I find myself coming back to that; the older I grow, the more I come to love classical literature, and the more and more I find myself wanting to talk about them and dissect them and collect them. I want to explore past literature in more ways than just reading it.

So I'm getting back to those roots., and now intend to really focus on that more than I have in the past. I've already begun this; you may remember I recently began a post category called "Concerning Classics" (or "CC"). I will be continuing on with that, talking about everything from classic authors to their books. Diving into the culture around the books, studying characters, that sort of thing. 

Indie, New, Young Author, and Blogger Spotlights

Though I am trying to reign the focus of Bleeding Ink in to once again be Bleeding Ink itself, I still have every intention of supporting my comrades in the writing and blogging field. 

So I'm hoping to do a post, perhaps once a month, that is spotlighting a particular person who fits these categories. It will include things like all of their works, my favorite things about them, quotes, a bit about their history even, my favorite posts by them, things of that sort. 

It's kind of like the "Upcoming Author" book tag that I invented, but not limited to authors, and it won't be a tag. 

Tags

I do not intend to doing any more blog tags, unless they are directly related to writing and/or reading. While blog tags are often a quick and easy kind of post to do, I find that they're very unfulfilling and actually take me more time than usual, because I have to go find other bloggers. I also don't think readers really enjoy them all that much, so they're not really good for any of my purposes.

So unless the tags are on-topic, I do not plan in participating in them any longer. 

(Oh yeah, Editing Edna thinks. That was seamless.)

NoQu

So NoQu is a thing I did this year.

We (that'd be just me) haven't (*hasn't) gotten a whole lot of interaction, but that's to be expected given we (I) didn't even know the site would be live in time for November.

SO. That's going well all things considered.

Life

I have a new sword, started a collection of pretty classics, I've decided to stop building that desk I began two or three years ago so that I can instead build a whole room (sort of), I discovered I loved goblins, work has been going well, I met three people who I knew for a long time and that was awesome, learned how to make ink, I have a new niece, I worsened my caffeine addiction, annnnnnddd I have a tophat now.

So. 

*thumbs up*  

Okay the part we all hate is out of the way so now onto the cellebrattionnnn

and by THAT I mean it's time for me to be bossy and tell you to support THIS PERSON and THIS PERSON and THAT PERSON OVER THERE and whOOAAHH that PERSON who is RIGHT BEHIND YOU AND HAS A KNIFE!!

just kidding. 

well, no, she does have a knife (a sword, actually) but she's not like, going to stab you with it. she might throw a rock-hard baguette at your head though. She's nice like that.

also 

THAT PERSON and THAT ONE and THAT ONE. 

*draws in a deep breath* okay what else. I feel like I'm forgetting something.

...

...

...

well. I guesswAIT NO I REMEMBER!

(Editing Edna tsks at her own forgetfulness, but decides to leave it in for comedic effect.)

we have recieved 

S̵̛̼̘͂̿̾͘P̶̙̻͉͔̉͑̏̈̅͑͝͝ͅA̸̺͊̊̇͑M̶͉͓͔̱̍͛ ̸̡̰̠͔̪̲̟͚̔͑̈́̊̿͘̕͝C̷̬̯̣͛Ò̴̼̖̠̅̅̊̄̈́̚͘͝M̵̠̼̳̱͍͒̕M̶̳̠̻͖̺̗̤̮͆E̶͙͍͕̹̥̰̣̣̲̒͆͒͑̉̍̓̌̕ͅN̵̹͍̠͈̱̭̪̆̀͜T̴̡̛͚͚̟̩̤̩̑̍͋̏͐̑̚S̵͈̦̻̪̬͖̻̪͛̅͜

Yes my friend, after a YEAR of no spam comments (making for a verrrryyyy boring celebration post) we have MULTIPLE SPAM COMMENTS! WOOOOO!

At least, I think they're spam. It could just be a confused person. Who knows. But yes, they are from the same potential human. And there are only two of them. So we're not just reviewing spam comments, oh no oh no oh no, we're going to review the blogs of this spam commenterererer.

Our Honored Spam Spotlight

My friends, meet the individual who I can only guess is referring to themselves as "GBY." That's a boring name, though, so we're going to make it "Geráld Butingham Yip." We'll call them "Gary" for short ( am assuming they are male given their profile picture). 

Gary left his two comments back in July on a post I had made in May. The post was a cover reveal for indie author Jenna Terese's new book, Ignite.

This is what our intriguing individual had to say about that in Comment 1:

"IGNITE: very passionate wurd, girl, one which describes the utter sense of ONEness in Seventh-Heaven... or the overwhelming sense decay in Hell Nobody but you can choose2utterly reject Jesus and fall into the Abyss or accept the Trinity and live in the Paradise sHe has created4u since time began.

CHOOSE everything...

or lose everything.

I hope our BlogOramma 

will help you choose." 

- Geráld Butingham Yip, 2021

So as you probably know, reader, I am in fact a Christian.

So when I beheld this comment with mine own eyes, I presumed momentarily that this may be an individual who is attempting to witness to me. Which would mean they have not been around my blog very long but that's alright. 

But our friend Gary has some fundamental issues in his theology which we will now go over, line by line. 

"IGNITE: very passionate wurd, girl, one which describes the utter sense of ONEness in Seventh-Heaven..."

Well first of all - thank you! I'm sure Jenna really appreciates that <3 It is a very passionate word for what I am sure is a very passion-led project on her end, though I have failed to read it yet so I can't know for sure.

Second of all, well, I'm a bit confused. You say "oneness," which is the belief that the Trinity is not three in one but is in fact just one, but theeeen you refer to the Trinity, so I'm a tad confused as to what kind of belief you subscribe to. 

Now as for "Seventh-Heaven," I think you have been mislead. Seventh-Heaven is actually not a thing. It is an expression we say for when we, for example, have a darn good piece of devil's food cake (devil, get it?). Ex. "*eats cake* *shuts eyes dramatically* *with my mouth full, says,* ohhhh, man, I'm in seventh heaven."

If you mean to refer to just heaven heaven, you should just say heaven to avoid the confusion there. 

Lastly before we move on, I don't understand what ignition has to do with onenesss. But okay! 

"... or the overwhelming sense decay in Hell"

(I'm guessing there was meant to be a period at the end of that.) 

I appreciate that you mentioned Hell! After all, what is the point in being saved to heaven if there's nothing to be saved from, right?

But mayyyybbbeee try a different approach when you're evangelizing, because that might make people think you're just fear mongering them into a cult, and not inviting them to pursue a relationship and religion that is beneficial to them in multiple ways. 

"Nobody but you can choose2utterly reject Jesus and fall into the Abyss or accept the Trinity and live in the Paradise sHe has created4u since time began."

True! That decision would be on me for sure, since Jesus' sacrifice made it so that all people can choose to follow him or not. Because before He came, we couldn't really choose that. We could follow the law, but we could never follow it perfectly, and anything less than perfect is not enough, because less than perfect = sin = Hell. 

So Jesus' sacrifice has made it so that we do not need to rely on the law, and our works in the law, to save us, for God knew that we wouldn't be able to do that. 

However, my friend, I noticed you said "sHe." It's spelled with just the H and the E :) 

Also, on the "and live in the Paradise He has created for you since time began" bit, that's not necessarily true. Genesis gives us a clear list of what things God created, and when He was making all of that - before time began - He didn't say anything about making me a paradise. 

He DID make the garden of Eden, which was perfect, because sin had not entered the world, but that has passed away. 

God has made a waiting place for us, though, and we will go to heaven when it is prepared for us. But that is not the permanent place for us, because God will create a new earth.

So close, but no cigar. 

"CHOOSE everything..."

Nono, friend, we do not choose everything. We choose one thing: God. And in following God, everything else that is good will be added to us. 

If we choose EVERYTHING, however, that will mean we also choose sin. And that doesn't work. But I think I see what you're doing. I think you are referring to God as "everything," which makes some sense, but it can be quite confusing. So being straightforward is a lot more helpful than being poetic when evangelizing, at least in my opinion. 

"...or lose everything."

Fair enough!

"I hope our BlogOramma will help you choose."

To be honest, my friend, I have no clue what you mean here, but thanks for the comment! 

Comment 2

On to Comment 2, on the same post:

"I'll be waiting for you Upstairs." 

- Geráld Butingham Yip, 2021

*eyes the floor above me*

Interesting, interesting.

Well, Gary, maybe don't say super ominous and vaguely threatening things when you're trying to evangelize. That's all I got to say on that one. 

But wait, that isn't all Gary has to say.

Gary's Blogs

If we follow Gary's profile, we will see this not only an intriguing bio which concludes with calling the reader "curly," but also a list of many, many, many blogs. Many.

A lot.

Now, is it smart to click on a list of links from a suspicious looking account?

Well no, my friends, it isn't. 

Did that stop me?

Well no, my friends, it didn't.

Gary's 20 websites all consist of the similar content and in a similar format. Usually his websites are only a single page, or a home page with posts, and they all are usually speaking of God, aliens, the "Upstairs," and generally attempting to convict and convert the reader.

This post is already long enough, so we're going to just review a few of Gary's websites. 

Each website reference will be linked to, but follow that link at your own risk. I've really only included them so that you know these things are in fact real, and not a fabrication of mine which came to me via fever dream at 3:04 in the morning.

Here's Website 1: cuTNToo 

This website starts off by saying Gary has information for us that will lead us in our writing journey. It tells the tale of Gary's time in purgatory(?) when he was in a coma. But he seems to get sidetracked as he tells it and then the website is telling us about all sorts of vaguely religious things and things about extroverts and metabolisms, referring once to Mork and Mind, and continuously referring to the Trinity as a "her." 

Here are my favorite quotes from this website: 

"So, gain altitude, not attitude." 

"Compelled by the ominous quality of my expensive genius (outta Pop's prodigious pocket), I'm at odds once again withe plastic reality of the present."

"Meet this intoxicatingly bombastic ex-mortal Upstairs."

I am absolutely going to start saying these things, swapping out some of the words when needed. Like the second quote, I'll just swap out "present" to fit the context. Because it's honestly comedy gold. 

Here's Website 2: GainAltitudeNotAttitude

I had to include this one because one of the quotes mentioned before is clearly a nod to this website. The former site and this one look very similar design wise, but surprisingly Gary has actually posted multiple times on this blog. Gary has been inactive on it since 2019.

Favorite quotes:

"Precious, precious RollyPollies in their black, RollsRoyce."

"I nominate YOU for bugOyear, every year (dragonflies would come in less-than-a-nanometer behind.)"

"Decide, Mountain Dewd." (The pun here is not lost on me and I find it deeply hilarious.)

A less light note: This blog in particular has some directly disrespectful things to Christianity. The whole referring to God as a "sHe" and the Trinity as a "her" was one thing - inaccurate though not uncommon - but referring to Judas "letting one rip" as God eats stale bread and fish with a raggedy sheep, and the said "juicy" passed gas overwhelming Israel and Jesus asking people if they would like to see the holy magnitude of the "phart," isn't even humorously bad. It's clearly a mockery of scripture.

Here's Website 3: Audacious DNA

This website is designed in a way which looks distinctly Easter-ish. It's rather nostalgic and sad at the same time, like an abandoned CD from the 90s that your grandma's church has in its storage rooms for some reason, causing you to wonder about many things and yet nothing at the same time. This makes sense, given this post is about Easter (I think).

This website has only one post, returning to the usual for Gary. It has also been inactive since 2019.

Favorite quotes:

"MEEKness ain't WEAKness, bro."

"He [Christ] actually made that filthy, stank in Lucifer BOW!!! to the Trinity!!! WhahahaWhahaha!!!" (I don't include this because it is accurate but because it is hilarious. I don't recall a time in which Christ made Satan bow.)

"Make a stand. Stand thy ground. Speak-up, bro. Never back down."

The second comment on this post is absolutely hilarious. The poor lad is as lost and confused as the rest of us.

An Interesting Comment on Gary's Site 

On one of Gary's other blogs, Gary received this comment, and replied with the comment below it: 

Maria: "you are reading this massage yourself. God is preparing a great blessing for your life. God can do anything amen ....."

Gary: "I know, dear; sHe already has: my finite existence. Pray, pray, pray the Trinity would have mercy on them Satanists. Don't doubt prayer to our Mother - she has gobbsa lottsa powler o'er El Diablo. And I'll see you in Seventh-Heaven, dear. Love you. Cya soon. be@peace. - GBY!

Now what I find interesting about this is 1. Maria seems to understand what Gary is saying, and 2. Maria's profile picture. 

So I click on Maria's account to see further information about her. And I see that she has been on Blogger since 2014, whereas Gary has been on it since 2018. Maria's bio is all spelled similarly to the way Gary spells things. 

When you click on Maria's blog link, you may believe that this is because she doesn't speak English as a first language. Yet Maria's English in her comment seemed perfectly fine. Interesting.

Also, once you translate Maria's website to English, you'll find it very interesting as well. Her blog, in English, is called "Mary's prayers," it has 112 followers, and she seems to have a bit of a testimony. She mostly posts videos on her blog, very Catholic looking videos. And she posts very many each day. 

To the side of her page, she details how commenters have said that she claims her blog is new when really it's been around since 2014. She says that this is because that is when she made it, but that she only started using it recently.

Perhaps that is true, but I think the bit about the comments may not be, for I'm digging through her site and can't find any. I stopped eventually, for I was told that the website was not secure.

But anyways. That all is to say, I had thought maybe Maria was an account Gary made to comment on Gary's own blog, but unless Gary made this originally ages ago, this is not the case. Perhaps Maria is a real individual who just happened to agree with Gary's unconventional theology.

Concluding the Gary Segment 

Alright, we've spent a good amount of time talking about Gary. Now I want to say something which I find necessary: 

You may think that perhaps Gary is not a troll. That Gary is, instead, just a confused person. Or maybe a young kid who doesn't know what they're doing. Well, that I did consider, while I spent much time viewing his various websites.

First let me address the latter: Gary knows quite a big of science and historical people and things of that sort for him to be a child. Perhaps Gary is a very intelligent child, but if he were then I doubt he would have... well, done and said certain things. 

Now to address the former: Sure, it's possible. But many of the things Gary says are wrong, hilarious, or disturbing. And also due to the abundance of websites Gary makes instead of using one or two for all purposes, the nature of Gary's typing (which you have only seen a sample of), and the nature of Gary's comments, Gary is, by all accounts, a spam artist. 

And so, Gary, whether you are a real person or not, and whether you are or are not doing all of this just to spam people and get them to fall down the rabbit hole of your online activity, I hope we have no hard feelings. Thank you for the laughs! 

Post Conclusion + Excerpt

Alright my inky friends, that concludes the end of this year's celebration for Bleeding Ink's existence. I'm not really sure that this post actually exists; it feels like a very long, very strange dream, which I'm semi aware of being a dream, but can't figure out how to wake up so I just roll with it. 

Being very tired at the time of writing this probably doesn't help. Especially after spending so much time on Gary's websites. 

But there you have it; updates, celebration, and something else that happened at some point but I'm now forgetting it. *yawn* I'm very tired. 

Oh hey I just had a brilliant idea. I'm just gonna go like this real quick....

yAaAaAWWwwWwnNNnnn...

Okay now if you care to join in the fun, comment variations of that yawn below. 

Why, you may ask? Well because if Ariel ends up reading this for whatever reason, I want to mess with her. Typing "YAaAAwWWnNn" has never failed to irritate her and get her to yawn in the past, at least in my experience.

Anyways.

If you made it through this entire post, well, congratulations. I honestly don't know how or why you'd do that, but go get yourself a cookie or something to reward yourself.

But before you go, I have one more thing. I said earlier that I want to be more open with my projects now. And so to start that off, here's an excerpt from Roslyn. 

(For context: Roslyn is one of four Keepers of Elements; the Keeper of the Stars. The people of the world rebelled against their Keepers, and Roslyn was transformed into a small, flat, and circular stone. Michael has now been on his quest to see her turned back and reinstated for five years, and grows close to a milestone.)

He pulled Roslyn from his jacket pocket, then wandered outside the cave. He was tired, but also restless, and the rain had finally settled to a light sprinkle. So he went to the beach and sat down on a great stone. He craned his neck to look up at the stars, and his eyes fell on one that Roslyn always pointed to. He could practically hear her voice saying, “There it is - there’s my star.” 

The first time she said that he had asked her why, but her mother had sent him away before he could hear the answer. He’d stayed up that night, sitting by his bedroom window and watching that star as he tried to determine what it had done to make it so special to her. 

Now the star, once a strong light with a rim of purple around it, was glowing weakly. Beyond it he could imagine the smaller stars, the ones that required the powerful telescope in the observatory back in the palace to see, as they pulsed and changed colors to various rhythms. They were what made the sky so colorful, tinting the morning sky and bleeding across the night’s. But now, with the moon gone and more stars falling every night, with Roslyn gone… now the sky was just dark, and unbearably silent. Practically lifeless.

But not for long. Michael gently touched the star embedded on the surface of the stone. “We made it,” his voice was hushed, “We’re finally going to see Lennox.” He held the cool stone to his lips and closed his eyes. 

Roslyn would be back soon. The moon would return, new stars would be born, the world would be anew when she ruled as Keeper. And most importantly, he would hear Roslyn’s voice again, and see her smile, and watch her thoughtful look as she gazed at the sky, and listen to her joyful laugh. More important than the moon’s return to the sky was Roslyn’s return to Michael’s life.

Just a little longer.  

Alright, well there it is, my first risk with this story; sharing an excerpt on the internet where anyone can see it. Oh well! I hope you like it.

What did you think of this post? What was your favorite post of the year? What was your favorite part of this very large post? What did you think of our spam comments this year? What's something in your life that has reached a yearly milestone recently?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

Best wishes, and in the words of Gary, "cya soon, girly." 

- E.P.

P.S. I challenge you to start saying one of Gary's quotes on a regular basis.