Blog (Archived)

16 April, 2019

2018 Art Recap

This was my first year feeling confident enough to have an Art Instagram! Here are my most-liked nine pieces.

As per my yearly tradition, it’s time for an art progress recap. This one is…uh, four months overdue, because it turns out I haven’t done a year-by-year since 2015 and it took a while to dig out the art.

2018 was a fun year… I took a few chances and I’m happy with how my style is improving. It’s easy to compare myself to other 27-year-olds and feel unhappy about certain struggles I have, but hey, we all know comparison is bullshit don’t we?

In 2019, I’m hoping to explore more painterly works and some gaming sprites. I’m really looking forward to seeing how my style shifts as I get more comfortable using the iPad and Procreate and trying painterly pieces instead of my usual toony/cell-shaded style.

Let’s go go go!

6 January, 2019

40 Things that Rocked in 2018

Hey hey lovelies! As is my yearly tradition, I’m starting off 2019 with a recap of some of 2018’s highlights.

Tried Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in March, and it rapidly took over my life. There’s no going back.
Went to a Ukelele club! Couldn’t continue going because it conflicted with DnD night, boo.
My skin cleared up! At age 27 and after about 16 years of terrible acne, my skin finally chilled out enough to give me a break. THANK U SKIN, IT’S ABOUT TIME.
Took a trip to Glasgow! Glasgow gets better ever time I visit.
Getting comfortable visiting Dundee. I love that place now and visited a few times over the years.
Getting a solid productivity system in place with Pomodoro timers.
Gaming: Finished Persona 3 (after 9 YEARS! And 135 hours) Rose of Winter, Mystic Messenger, and the first Spyro game remastered on the PS4.
Games started but not finished: NITW, Tomb Raider, Persona 5
TV watched and loved: The Office Season 4, Black Mirror, Star Trek Discovery, Stranger Things S2, Brooklyn 99, Critical Role, Digimon Tri, Samurai Champloo, Aggretsuko.
Visited Dundee for my buddy Theo’s housewarming, and got to experience the delights of Dundee (24 hour bakery! Rainbow bagels! Adorable cafes!), test my driving ability on a motorway for the first time ever (super enjoyable!), and we had a chance to visit the amazing Camperdown Wildlife Park. Below you’ll see me making friends with a gibbon.

Movies loved: Your Name, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Podcasts listened and loved: Archive 81 S3, Welcome to Night Vale, Strange Animals Podcast, The Adventure Zone, Alice Isn’t Dead.
Audiobooks listened and loved: The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, Tremontaine, Six of Crows, the whole Throne of Glass series.
Kept my finances stable. I failed my savings goals for the year but I still kept in the black and kept my emergency fund higher than it’s ever been in the past.
Dyed my hair for the first time in January! I didn’t like it much, hah, but I learned a few things.
Curled my hair for the first time in August! I LOVED IT.
READ SOME BOOKS Y’ALL. The Hate U Give was a highlight.
Celebrated my 11th anniversary with Dave. We had pizza. :)
Got OBSESSED with Critical Role. Thanks to all the new spin-off-shows it eats up at least seven hours of my week every week but I still love it to pieces and want everyone to join me in one of the deepest and most rewarding fantasy worlds I’ve ever had the joy of experiencing. And wow, this was a heartbreaking and wonderful year to be a fan.
Submitted a piece of fanart to the Critical Role art carousel! It never got featured but I was super proud of the piece anyway.

Active Adventures in 2018

Ran my first ever 5k at the Elgin Parkrun… and then ran it three more times!
Roller derby: it was a YEAR. Finished up with one club, joined another, and got a ton better at one-foot glides and crossovers. I’m looking forward to what lies ahead.
Taking up jogging again and finishing C25K stronger and better at jogging than ever! Started the programme in April, finished it in September.
Visited Essex for the first time ever. It was green and pretty, no complaints there.
Getting regular sports massages which fixed some major issues in my calves and back. Without these I never could’ve taken up jogging again.
Getting back into lifting at the gym! And then falling back out of the habit again, woops, that’s something to fix for 2019.
Watched the Roller Derby World Cup with friends!
Started learning Pilates! It’s been super fun so far though now quite hitting the Yoga-learning itch I’ve been having, so I might need to do more YouTube Yoga classes in 2019.
Got shiny new derby kit, which turned out to be an absolutely nightmare of configuration issues but heeyyyy SHINY NEW KIT.
Climbed up Nelson’s Tower in Forres.

New Food that I Loved in 2018

TRIED HALO TOP ICE CREAM FOR THE FIRST TIME AND OMG IT’S SO GOOD
Tried Hawaiian (ham and pineapple) pizza. Not my cuppa tea.
Made Pasta E Olio for the first time and proceeded to make it a TON forever after.
Made a Dutch Baby pancake for the first time. Weird name, good pancake, but Scotch pancakes are still my favourite.
Tried beef carpaccio! That one is VERY much my cuppa tea, I loved it.
TRYING MORE NEW FOOD! YEAAHHHH! HAD MY FIRST EVER KFC. It was pretty darn good even though I still feel uneasy about their welfare standards towards chickens. Good chicken burgers though.
FIRST EVER KEBAAAABBBB. I got a mixed one with barbecue chicken, donner, shish chicken and all sorts. That was really good, and unlike the KFC I feel like I could repeat the order without feeling too guilty about it. Also now that I’ve had a kebab I feel like a proper Brit.
More food things tried for the first time: Milo Dinosaurs (so good!), Gingerbread pancakes at the Pancake House
And just to counteract all the junk food, I discovered that I actually like the taste of water for the first time ever! WATER, IT GUD, DRINK LOTS.
Foods I got pretty good at making: salads (using the Leon Happy Salads book), pumpkin spice lattes, poached eggs on toast, Oreo/Malteaser milkshakes.

That’s it for the 2018 recap! Let’s see what adventures lie ahead in 2019, the year of Dublin Worldcon and who-knows-what-else.

6 December, 2018

The Beginning of an Arty Autumn

Hiya folkies. I hope you’re warm and cosy and ready for a quick look back at September and October.

My pumpkin, released into a pile of leaves in the woods after Halloween — My pumpkin, released into the woods after Halloween

September Recap

September started off with a new art tool in my arsenal and the discovery that I look mega cute in curly hair. From there, we entered a month FULL OF DOGGOS. We played lots of Dungeons and Dragons, of course, and had lots of wonderful canine guests.

The Gallery includes Bear the mini-poodle trying to become our Dungeon Master, and Foss the collie hanging out with Mac. I finally got a chance to break out my one-shot character, a Kenku rogue/warlock who can only speak by mimicking those around her—and she usually hangs around with horrible people, so her ability to say nice things is non-existent.

I did a lot of the day job with lovely Gizmo, our family Lhaso Apso, by my side just like old times. He’s an old pup now, and as soft and good as ever, content to just quietly sit wherever the people are and ignore the rest of the world. It was really nice having him back by my side while I worked and when I wrote. He’s such a good, relaxing dog to hang out with.

I finished Monument Valley, a super relaxing mobile puzzle game.

Fitness

I ran my first ever ‘official’ 5k by going to the local Parkrun! It was super exciting, and despite a wardrobe disaster with sliding-down-leggings I hit a personal best that I haven’t been able to match on any of my runs since, haha. I really enjoy the Parkruns, it’s nice to jog with a crowd and a ton of adorable dogs.

September Goals

[X] Writing: Finish the DtS word doc merge.
[X] WRITING: Write 40k.
[3/4] WRITING: Blogging catch-up! June, July and August recap posts as well as a one-year-overdue Helsinki photo post.
[ ] WRITING: Finish the DtS (epic fantasy with m/m romance) edit
[X] WRITING: Get to week 5 of the Couchto80k writing course.
[ ] WRITING: Start the Witch of the Western Isles (urban fantasy with f/f romance) book rewrite
[1/6] READING: Read 6 books.
[X] HEALTH: Finish Couch to 5k and start doing regular 5k lunchtime runs with the Zombies, Run! app
[X] HEALTH: Try a Parkrun!
[ ] HEALTH: Lose over 5lbs.
[ ] HEALTH: Continue increasing strength work to build up core strength/squats/quads for roller derby.
[2/3] LISTEN: Listen to The Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini Taylor, the Alice Isn’t Dead Podcast, the Bright Sessions.
[X] LEARN: Finish the Mindshift course.
[2/5] ART: Create and share five illustrations. [Silly Sharklady Doodle, More Serious Art of Same Character]

LOADS of words this month! It felt really good, especially alongside my first ever official 5k. All in all, a really great month.

Art

At the end of August, I gifted myself with an early birthday present: an iPad for art and music work. It took some time for the ‘expensive purchase’ guilt to ease off, but man, through the second half of the year my art has really been moving in interesting ways.

Feels good to be back into that habit.

October Recap

October is my birthday month, and often a tough month for me because I disappear up my own navel for a while thinking about things achieved this year and marks missed.

BUT I GOT A TEA CLUB SUBSCRIPTION WOO TEA.

October Goals

[ ] [17.6/30] Write 30k
[ ] [4/20] Do 20 editing Pomodoros.
[ ] Finish DtS edit.
[X] Finish C280k Course
[ ] Hit 145lbs
[ ] [3/6] Read 6 books
[ ] [3/5] Do 5 Zombies Run 5ks.
[ ] Put 5 art pieces online.
[x] Do a roller derby skate
[x] Do another Parkrun
[x] Read 3 books

Overall, a quiet month on the writing front, but I was really happy to be back at roller derby again for the Inverness Pride Skate.

A labrador wearing a lion's mane costume flops on a couch — Mac was not particularly fussed about Halloween

Life, the Universe, and Korean Dating Games

The mobile game Mystic Messenger broke my heart with its April Fools’ plotline, which is EXTREMELY meta. The character you’ve been wooing realises you’re separated from him by a glass screen and you’ll never truly meet, and you’ve been lying to him this whole time about meeting face-to-face. It was a really unexpected right-turn off a silly bonus storyline, and whoa, it destroyed me. Poor sweet Zen.

I had a month-long obsession with The Greatest Showman, especially the song “The Other Side”. Turns out I’m weak for dudes in suits that are CLEARLY flirting with each other over drinks.

Art

After bombing out of Inktober at the start of the month, I started drawing a lot more! And I started finding my doodling groove again, thanks to Austin Bachelor’s amazing digital art course.

And Finally, A Good Boy

He is still good, and oh gosh, look at his toebeans.

4 December, 2018

The November Blur

Wow, that month went past in a blur, didn’t I? I got caught up in the NaNoWriMo frenzy and zoom, there went the month.

My November Goals:

[30/30] 30,000 words
[ ] Finish the DtS edit.
[X] Return to roller derby
[X] Try pilates for the first time!
[4/5] Jog 5k five times.
[ ] Get weight below the XX5lbs mark.
[3/5] Read 5 books, including 1 beta manuscript. (The Tea Master and the Detective, Structuring Your Novel, Alice Isn’t Dead)

I’m feeling pretty content about this month, because I really went all-out on the tricky book edit. It was tough going but I pushed on and made some really solid progress. I’m proud of myself.

Writing

My favourite tool for writing this month was Jami Gold’s Scrivener templates, which combine her beat sheets (with suggested word counts for hitting each beat) with the Scrivener outline mode. This isn’t the sort of thing that would appeal to me for a first draft, but right now I’m trying to detangle a much-revised old project into sensible plotted order. Jami’s beats were a LIFESAVER for that. It’s no secret that I love a bit of maths and formula, and having the wordcounts in front of me for each section really helped me visualise where the beats fall in this knotted-up monster-book.

Building up the wordcount to hit the target is super satisfying and having wordcount goals per section is really helping me untangle this messy manuscript.

This is still a tough edit, but I feel like with the beat sheet I have a map through the woods. So let’s keep going!

A Scrivener screen with total word counts and target word counts

I hit my 365-day daily writing streak in writing game 4theWords (my referral code: VEOZB29724, if it takes your fancy), and my avatar got a spiffy (and manuscript-fitting) set of angel wings to mark the occassion. Here she is her monstrous weirdness.

An avatar image of a brown-haired woman with horns, a waistcoat, angel wings, and skeleton arms

Reading

This month I finished…

The Tea Master and the Detective: A genderbent Asian sci-fi Sherlock Holmes, and it’s absolutely as amazing as it sounds.

Structuring Your Novel: A pretty decent structure book, though there wasn’t much in it I hadn’t heard from other books.

Alice Isn’t Dead: The audiobook production quality on this was top-knotch, but it just ended up too similar to the podcast it’s based on. Since it was sold as a ‘reimagining’, I was left disappointed by the near-identical storyline (and the removal of some of my favourite episodes to streamline the plot for the novel).

I’m also in the middle of Tower of Dawn (by my bookish obsession of the moment, Sarah J Maas) and I’m really loving it.

Art

Unsurprisingly with my head stuck in NaNo-land, my art this month was ALL about pinning down the character designs for my Divide the Sky crew. I’m growing to like their new designs a lot as I doodle with them both this month.

A brown-skinned women with brown curls, short on one side and long with ombre blonde ringlets on the other. She's wearing gold shadow, a black top with a maroon cowl-neck and maroon lipstick. — Sorcha from Divide the Sky

A bat-winged dude, drawn in greyscale. He's got long floppy black hair, a scattering of moles on his face, a long infinity scarf and a Voidmerch DEATH ENERGY t-shirt. — Diego from Divide the Sky

I also made a worldmap for Divide the Sky, and I won’t lie, it was MEGA fun. Super handy for thinking about some worldbuilding things I wouldn’t usually consider, like how the hell rivers work. I used a very powerful little program called Wonderdraft.

(‘Clockface Loch’ shouuuuuuuld really be Clockface Lake because the protags are from Yorkshire, Dublin and Dubai respectively but damn it guys lake just doesn’t sound right, so we’ll say the local Scots insisted on it.)

World map for a fictional seafront city called Shattered

Fitness

I’m back skating again! Roller derby has been super fun and I’m seeing huge improvements in my previous challenging moves, crossovers and one-foot-balance on my right leg. I’m really looking forward to testing out my new abilities in a big hall before Christmas and seeing how my skills are matching up to the skills test requirement.

I’m also now one of two Emmas in my derby team, so I took a few polls to help pick a derby name, over here and here on Twitter (poll 1, poll 2). The final results across both sites:

Em-Dash: 25 votes

Teadragon: 20 total

Banshee Maree: 16 votes

Writer’s Block: 11 votes

TeaMaree: 3 votes

TeaDemon: 2 votes

Some really interesting results, and I feel like I understand my buddy Malk‘s poll addiction now after this. I keep wondering if my wording influenced the results at all, haha. It’s a poll and not a blood pact so I’m not taking the results as gospel, but I’m looking forward to taking a few of these out on the track and seeing which ones fit right.

I also started out pilates to try and remedy some of my posture issues that are affecting my skating. I’ve seen a big improvement after just one class, so I’m going to keep it up and see how it goes from here.

An tree-lined autumnal path — My jogging path in full autumn colour

I’m also still jogging steadily—not as many 5k jogs as I hoped for this month, only three instead of five, but Mac has become a big fan of jogging on his nighttime dog walks so he’s helping me keep up the miles.

Life in General

Let’s see. I’m obsessed with the made-up girl-band for a video game, K/DA, and their song POP/STARS. It’s such wonderful catchy K-Pop and the visuals are slick and stylish! I love how energetic this song is, and wouldn’t be surprised if my nerdy arse ends up using it while doing the difficult endurance skating challenge in roller derby.

Tea club subscription set of wintery teas. Three tea packs: mince pie flavour, snowball (chocolate coconut) flavour, Fairytale of NY (coffee flavour). — I got back into my tea club subscription, which is always a wonderful surprise to receive in the post.

Trying to level up my salad game this autumn. First attempt was more effort than expected, but tasty! Chicken sausage, penne pasta, roasted cauliflower, grilled leek, and sliced apple the family apple tree.

And my beloved Spyro the Dragon made a reappearance, though with all the NaNoWriMo chaos I didn’t get much chance to game. December should hopefully have more gaming time!

That’s it for November! I’ll see you at the year-end, lovelies.

17 September, 2018

August in a Nutshell

Whoa, August 2018 was a heckuva month. And now that I’m all caught up on the June and July recaps, it’s time to dive in to what happened last month! But first, your monthly Mac photo.

A labrador dog lying down with a stuffed hedgehog toy in his arms — Good boy Mac and his soft toy hedgehog

Edited a TON this month. Finally got my various versions of Divide wrangled together into a coherent file, which was an incredible workload and waaaaayyyy more difficult that I even imagined. But I made huge progress, getting my Scrivener files in order and into one Word doc. I tried to love Scrivener, but I’ve slunk back to Word yet again.
Wrote 36,000 words!
Drove to Dundee for a charity derby event and ate some mega-fancy food. This one ended up being quite a pivotal moment in my month because it gave me the time away to think about how my year was going and make some changes for the better.

Myself and my partner by the waterside in Dundee — Myself and Dave enjoying Dundee! It’s so pretty there.

Started a 5-mins-a-day meditation habit. It’s been nice! I use the Headspace app/website for daily themed 5-min meditations.
Painted our conservatory (sunroom, for American readers). It’s looking so good!
Celebrated my 11th anniversary with Dave. We had pizza. :)

An aerial picture of a couple and a labrador. It's us, from above! — It’s us!

Joined a new gym! It was super overwhelming and terrifying but I did it! I also attended a ‘ladies who lift’ class. Had a lot of fun and managed not to get too disheartened when I failed to bench press the Olympic bar. It’s okay, I’ll get stronger!
Took some time away from roller derby. This was a sad one but I’m not giving up skating and hoping to get back to it soon.
Since I’m taking a skating break, I got back into running! Resumed my Couch 2 5K program (I’m using the BBC app because having Sarah Millican as a coach is neat) and got from week 6 to week 8.
Prepped to return to skating with increased strength training
Took part in the ‘#NoWrongPath’ hashtag which is a local Moray initiative to help teens who’re getting their exam results recognise that results aren’t the be-all-and-end-all to a career, and there are multiple paths into the workforce.

Switched from audiobooks to podcast to shake things up a bit. Current favourites: The Adventure Zone, Strange Animals Podcast, Archive 81 (Season 3 is SO good), Welcome to Night Vale.
I’m also doing a writing course in podcast form—the wonderfully-named Couch to 80k by Tim Clare. Really enjoying it so far, just finished Week 1. It’s fairly low effort with 10-mins-a-day writing exercises and a really positive, upbeat approach.

When you change the things you notice, the things you notice change.
Tim Clare, paraphrasing Dr Wayne Dwyer

Read: The Adventure Zone comic (an amazing adaptation), and uh, that was it. Not a good reading month.
Helped a few lost tourists, including the lost French couple who were 8 miles away from where they should be and the lovely South Carolina couple who wanted to see the local golf course.
Dave visited Skye! I did not get to go and was mega jealous.
Watched the Orkney Viqueens vs Inverness City roller derby game! It was Orkney’s first game and they did amazing.
LEARNED THINGS! I finished the Coursera ‘Learning How to Learn‘ course and really loved it. It’s a free course that helps people learn more effectively and tackle procrastination habits. It’s really helped me a lot with keeping writing and artistic focus.
Started the Mindshift course by the same people, which is aimed at helping people shift into learning difficult or unfamiliar-to-them subjects.
Tried to get a fancy haircut, ended up walking out because the stylist was mid-transphobic-rant and it only got worse as I sat there. August was definitely an ‘all out of fucks to give’ month, especially towards the end.
But it’s okay because the haircut I got from someone else was AMAZING. Look at these heckin’ cute curls!

Played SO MUCH DND. SO MUCH. It’s the best. My wereshark fighter became the apprentice of a grumpy soap-making hardarse old lady, and my traumatised Tiefling had a VERY BAD DAY on a boat.
Watched a bit of anime, finishing Samurai Champloo and watching a bit of Digimon Tri.
Watched a ton of TV, including: Luke Cage S2, Critical Role, Talks Machina, Voltron: Legendary Defender S7.
Didn’t do much art, but watch this space because I’ve got some new gadgets that should REALLY change that next month. I’ll sign off for today with my first sketch on my new gadget.

A white-haired girl with a birthmark on her face. She's hiding her mouth behind a white cardigan collar. — Current Work in Progress: Birthmark Girl

Wishing you all an awesomely spooky September.

Love,

Emma

14 September, 2018

July Recap: Fine Dining, Good Dogs, and Derby

It’s been a while! I’ve been off having fun, but now that I’ve set my Spooky September goals I’m back for a JULY RECAP OF AWESOME.

July

Highlight of this month was hanging out with Lisa from Dear Geek Place and our friend Nik from all the way across the pond! Had amazing food at the Rocpool in Inverness, saw Urquhart Castle, went on a Jacobite Cruise, had an amazing DnD game, and basically had an amazing super-summery time.

Visited Cumbria in England! Lovely part of the world, beautiful coastlines.
Laid flooring in the conservatory.

A labrador lying on the floor. — Mac helped.

- - GOT A MEGA-COMFY CONSERVATORY READING CHAIR YASSS.
  - Read: Days of Blood & Starlight (loved this audiobook), Sleepless Domain (webcomic about magical girls, SO GOOD), The Golemn and the Djinni (another fantastic audiobook).

- - Was left VERY UPSET by a certain plot twist in the mega-popular Critical Role Dungeons & Dragons YouTube series. Still not over it, honestly. Long may he reign.
  - Other TV watched: Luke Cage S2, Talks Machina, The Flash, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Samurai Champloo.
  - Volunteered for STEMNET at the Highland Glider Club open day. Helped lots of kids learn more about science and tech.
  - We fought spiders in DnD. Please don’t make me fight spiders in DnD.

A Dungeons and Dragons battle with four players against five spiders.

- - Took Mac into Pets at Home for the first time, where the staff spoiled him rotten and he was a very good boy.

A labrador sitting expectantly — Mac at Pets at Home, awaiting treats

- - Attended the ‘School of ARRG Knocks’ roller derby boot camp! That was incredible fun.
  - Sat in a GINORMOUS TRACTOR.

I'm sitting in a massive yellow tractor. — There is an Emma in there!

- - In July I just did a few scrappy doodles of my traumatised Tiefling, Taro, who you might recognise from this post. She’s not developing as fast as my other campaign character, a charge-into-the-battle wereshark, but she’s getting there.