Blog (Archived)

12 September, 2018

June Recap: Skating, Singing, and GLORIOUS SHORTS WEATHER

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 JUNE RECAP OF AWESOME.

It was actually tough to think back three months for this one. My memory’s not what it used to be!

June

We had our annual family drinking day at the European Pipe Band Championships.

I had the absolute joy of meeting fellow Gaelic-speaker and choir badass Evan (author name: Emmie Mears), alongside their wonderful partner. They were also travelling with Olli, a Friend from the Internet who I got to put a face to! It was a very wonderful visit and I miss them all terribly.
WE SAW HIGHLAND COOS. IT WAS THE BEST.
My mum did absolutely amazing at the local MOD (a big Gaelic singing competition). I’m so, so proud of her successes.

It was Freshie intake day at skating, which meant meeting lots of new local faces who wanted to try on wheels.
SHORTS WEATHER. I wore shorts! In summer! In front of actual people! This is not a usual occurrence for me and was a pretty big Emma-overcomes-awkwardness milestone.
I read some books! To Kill a Kingdom, Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and the Vox Machina Volume 1 comic were my favourites for this month. Romancing the Beat was also a solidly useful read!
London visit! I went down there for very un-glamourous reasons, but hey, London! I managed to wind up wandering in a gorgeous trail over near Essex, which was a definite highlight (alongside getting a chance to snag a box of katsu chicken from Wasabi while running around catching trains).

After the trip, I got to return to my natural habit: on the couch, with blankets and books and a dog beside me.

FROOFY SUMMER DRINKS WERE HAD. I had so many caramel crunch Frostinos from Costa. Possibly too many.
Outdoor skating with my pals!

TV watched: Voltron: Legendary Defender S6, the Sense8 series finale (I will miss this show SO MUCH).
Mac was a good boy.

I drew a little bit of art! Here’s a first attempt my Kenku Dungeons and Dragons character Snipsnip, a strange and creepy bird lady who can only speak in echoes of what others are saying around her.

1 September, 2018

SPOOKY SEASON HAS ARRIVED!

AUTUMN’S HERE! WE MADE IT! Crunchy leaves, pumpkin spice, rainy reading days and crisp cold starry nights all lie ahead.

It’s autumn. My favourite season is upon us, and you guys, I am SO ready for it.

A seasonal autumn drink called a Pumpkin Spice latte with the text 'pumpkin spice & everything nice'

This summer has felt really unfocussed and unproductive, though looking back on that I wonder how much of that was just me… having a good time and enjoying summer. Doing summery things.

I’m still actively working hard to get away from my past ‘MUST BE WRITING ALWAYS’ attitude. I achieved a lot in these last few months! It’s just very different stuff to what I used to define as productivity. I used to measure productivity in finished manuscripts and wordcount, but instead these last few months are measured in social events, new things tried, experiences had, and good habits formed. It’s quite a shift to get used to.

I had an awesome summer, full of Dungeons & Dragons and travel, and I’m looking forward to talking more about it over the next few days with my June, July and August recap posts.

Now we’re hitting peak books-and-writing season, and I’m ready to get my words in order.

With that in mind, some goals for the month ahead:

WRITING: Finish the Divide the Sky (epic fantasy with m/m romance) edit
WRITING: Write 30k.
WRITING: Blogging catch-up! Buckle up for the June, July and August recap posts as well as a one-year-overdue Helsinki photo post.
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

READING: Read 6 books, with a focus on finishing all the ones I’ve started but not finished because my focus was so scattered this summer. I’ll be joining in mind-reader Miss Cole’s amazingly named SEPTEMBER TBR PILE DECIMATION challenge as I tackle those six books!
It’s a bit funny looking back at when I last did this challenge in July 2015. Some of those books are still sitting on the TBR pile. …Woops.

HEALTH: Lose over 5lbs.
HEALTH: Finish Couch to 5k and start doing regular 5k lunchtime runs with the Zombies, Run! app
HEALTH: Continue increasing strength work to build up core strength/squats/quads for roller derby.

LISTEN: Listen to The Night of Cake and Puppets by Laini Taylor, the Alice Isn’t Dead Podcast, the Bright Sessions.
LEARN: Finish the Mindshift course.
ART: Create and share five illustrations.

LET’S GO GO GO! Onwards into autumn! I’ll leave you with a surreal autumnal Tumblr post that always makes me laugh.

young man
there r leaves all around
i said young man
eat a leaf off the ground

i said young man
won’t they make a cool sound
when you stuff! them! in! your! leaf hole
Tumblr users puppercat (first verse) and r5h (second verse). SOURCE.

(Please do not actually eat leaves.)

Love,
Emma

GIF of a dancing man with a pumpkin mask on

3 June, 2018

May Recap: Cherry Blossoms and Busyness

Whoa, May was a busy month! I’m feeling good about my progress: 21k words written, two beta reads delivered, and 6 goals met.

Of all the books I read this month, I think my favourite was the fantasy novel Heir to the North by Stephen Poore, which delivered some really fresh twists on traditional tropes, and the writing craft book 5,000 Words Per Hour by Chris Fox (which is a freebie from his mailing list). 5K Per Hour really surprised me… it’s such a simple method, and can basically be summed up as ‘do writing sprints’, but here’s something about his system that I loved:

He tracks editing sprints and writing sprints separately. And what really made it click for me was hearing other writers over on the ‘20 Books to 50K‘ Facebook group talk about their editing goals, with a few writers tracking similar ways to Chris: aiming for editing 1,000 words an hour in the early edits, and 3,000 words per hour later when the draft is more polished.

I love this! I’ve previously tracked editing page count, but that one can be flaky because I chop and change so much that the page count can go down as much as it goes up. But having solid goals of ‘I will edit at least 1k an hour’ is really helping me out of my editing hole.

So this month, I’m going to keep going with timed writing sprints and timed intervals (using my beloved Tomighty timer app, though I might try and use the Android app Forest for this purpose too and see how that goes).

Let’s go! Onwards to this month’s goal of 30k words and a finished draft!

Mac’s IB GDBY post code makes me crack up every time, I’m so weak

Gaming

I’m still playing Mystic Messenger. This month’s route: the traumatic backstory for the sunniest boy of the group, and the K-drama behind the rich catmum and corporate heir. The rich corporate cat-fancier’s route was… weird, and definitely as far from my cuppa tea as you can get. But now I’m moving towards the end of adorable hacker/secret agent 707’s route, so it’s going to be a fun way to start the month.

Life, the Universe and Everything

It’s peak cherry blossom season here in Scotland, and I have been LOVING IT. This is one of my favourite times of the year: not too hot yet, not too many midges, and I get to live my best anime life with cherry blossoms everywhere around.

I lost my exercise groove a bit towards the start of the year, but I got it back this month with my spinning routine and skating routine! June is looking trickier, unfortunately, with a change in skating times, a bit of work travel, and some troubling knee pains that I’m going to try and address with strength training… but I’m going to hang in there and do my best.

I finally got the hang of one-foot glides in roller derby! Feeling super good about that. And there was a new members intake yesterday so I got to meet some awesome new skaters, who all had great skills straight off the bat. I’m looking forward to seeing them again at other sessions.

IT ME! SQUINTING AND BAD AT TAKING SELFIES ON SUNNY DAYS!

Dave helped clean up Forres river! He was amazing, and I watched from the banks because I was too chicken to brave the river. He was awesome.

Food food food

Okay, so, time for me to fess up: despite having weight loss goals for every month this year, I’ve not been meeting them. I’ve been fairly lax about my food choices over the last months, buying in too much white chocolate, alcohol and ice cream (…which isn’t a problem in itself, it’s more the speed at which I make both things disappear).

So we’re both getting back into the healthy meal game, as well as the meal-prepping game. May was a month of slowly getting back into the flow of eating healthy and not keeping too many temptations in, and that’ll continue into June.

Dungeons ‘n Doggos

It’s weird thinking that I only had my first Dungeons & Dragons game this April, because we’ve been having games weekly recently and it’s become a regular part of my life. I’m really loving it: in Campaign 1 (‘Murderhobos’) my traumatised teen warlock is still fumbling around to find her place in the world, while in Campaign 2 (‘The Trio Not Terrible/TNT’) I’m playing an awkward half-orc fighter gal who’s also a WERESHARK.

I’ve been keeping her shark form under wraps for a couple of weeks and I finally got to unleash her last Friday. YESSSSS SHARK POWERS ACTIVATE.

A photo from the ‘Street Sharks’ cartoon.

That’s about it for May recap! It wasn’t all sunshine and cherry blossoms, mind: work was incredibly busy and complex, and I had a few moments of overwhelming frustration at my stalled Roller Derby progress and stalled weight loss.

My elderly neighbours also had an accident late in the month which lead to a very stressful Bank Holiday night, most-midnight… I won’t go into details, but if you ever have a chance to learn first-aider skills, please take it. This is the second occasion where my office first-aider course has helped me in the middle of a terrifying and unexpected situation outside of work.

My Goals for June

Next month: MORE WORDS! Let’s go!

I also neglected my in-progress reading pile ~~a bit~~ a LOT so I’m going to spend a chunk of time this month getting through all the awesome books I’m in the middle of.

My goals:

Write 30k
Finish Divide draft. I’ll be using timed sprints to get this done.
Be ready to quick-draft Leviathan book over CampNaNo in July.
Beta Read #1 – for J
Beta Read #2 – for T
Roller Derby: Figure out crossovers.
Health: Work on quad muscles, hips and glutes using Strong Curves strength training.
Health: Lose five pounds.
Create art
Read 6 books, focusing on finishing my in-progress reads.

21 May, 2018

April Recap, with dog pics a-plenty

It’s an April Recap! April really flew by this year, and May is rapidly zooming along too.

Reading and Writing

Here’s your Mac of the Month. He be snoozin’.

This month I: wrote 18k, less than my goal of 20k words, but close enough that I’ll take it. I also totally flunked out of my CampNaNoWriMo, but hey, I got lots of words in!

Read 5 books:
X All Systems Red
X Empire of Storms (audiobook)
X The Art of Loish
X Roller Girl
X Earthsea (Twitter Readalong)

My favourites this month around were ALL SYSTEMS RED (a great novella about a murderbot trying to be better) and ROLLER GIRL (a graphic novel about a young derby skater). EARTHSEA was also a fun surprise: I didn’t like it going in but wow, the twists had me hooked.

Gaming

Finished the short, cute dating game Rose of Winter and started the weird and wonderful free mobile dating game Mystic Messenger. Honestly, this is one of the most novel and fun mobile games I’ve ever played: the whole premise is that cute boys (and a cute girl) hang out with you in a chatroom, send texts and call you, and the story plays out in that format. It’s such fun. In April I tackled the routes for long-suffering adorable admin assistant Jaehee, and narcissistic actor Zen.

I also picked up The Witcher 3, which is a masssssiiiive game and feels like it will take a lifetime to get through. But I’m super enjoying playing Gwent!

Life, the Universe and Everything

Had a lovely Easter Sunday meal with my parents and Dave.
Tried Hawaiian (pineapple and ham) pizza. It was not good. Waste of a ham pizza, that.
Our Dungeons and Dragons group had its second session. Go go Murderhobos!
I had a chance to hang out with my friend Rachel, and Mac met her lovely pup Luna.

Climbed up Nelson’s Tower, a monument to Lord Nelson built in Forres a year after he won the Battle of Trafalgar.
Re-started the C25K running program.
Finally got to grips with walking on my toe stops in roller derby! This month had a lot of kit-adjustment frustrations, but hopping around on my toestops made it all much more enjoyable.
We defrosted our freezer! ADULTING.
Went to a derby game in Inverness, and had a fab time introducing my parents to the sport.
Returned to the Ukelele Club, and continued making the plinky-plonky noises.

15 April, 2018

Snow, Glasgow, Dungeons & Dragons & Doggies

Those of you who’ve been keeping up on posts here will remember that February ended with some really tough real-life events. After all of that, March could only get better, right? Right! March was full of travel and tasty foods.

But I was also exhausted and spent a chunk of March just remembering how to be a human. Finding my balancing point again. And that’s still an ongoing effort into April, which is why this post is a bit late.

My highlights:

Started off March with a trip through snowed-in Ullapool and across to Stornoway, with a journey on the shiny new M.V. Loch Seaforth ferry sailing between them. This was all kind of bittersweet because it was for the funeral, but Stornoway and Ullapool are still beautiful places to visit, and it was nice to see them. I just hope when I next see them it’s for happier reasons.
Mac was adorable when I returned home, as always.
Achieved another 2018 goal this month, getting to visit Glasgow. I was sick as a dog for the entire trip and lost my voice for half of it, so I wasn’t on peak tourist form. Instead I went full Scottish witch mode to try and fix it. LEMON & GINGER TEA. THROAT TEA. FANCY HONEY. A BILLION SCARVES. SUDAFED. ANY POWDER THING WITH GUAIFENSEN. DISSOLVE SLIPPERY ELM IN BOILING WATER UNDER THE LIGHT OF THE MOON.
When I wasn’t doing my best impression of a hotel-room-witch-coven, we had fun! Lots of Japanese food was had, bubble tea was enjoyed, and we managed to catch a derby match while we were in town. I visited 5th Blocker, my nearest thing to a local skate shop, and they spent a ton of time and effort fixing up the skates I’d been sent poorly assembled by a London skate shop. Unfortunately as I write this post in mid-April, they’re already playing up again, boo.
Costa brought back their white hot chocolate, YESSSS. Also I didn’t snap a photo of it but the Glasgow train station does a fantastic chilli hot chocolate, as does ‘Tea and Cakes’ in Dundee. Chilli hot chocolate is a new and wonderful experience for me.
Joined a beginners Ukelele Club, because I own a ukelele and don’t have a clue what to do with it. I’ve got a better idea now but I still can’t play much of anything.
Made Pasta E Olio a TON this month. I’d never made it before and I bought a ton of tagliatelle so it ended up a regular March meal. It’s really tasty.
Finished Stranger Things Season 2! It was real good. REAL good.
Got my Loish artbooks from her kickstarter! I’m hoping these will help fuel my efforts to make more art this year.
Wrote 10k.
Read An Accident of Stars, the novella The Jewel and Her Lapidary, and my favourites of the month: ‘Jackalope Wives’ (5k) and it’s Hugo-award-winning sequel ‘The Tomato Thief’ (14k).
Listened to the new Panic! At the Disco song “Say Amen (Saturday Night)” A LOT. Like, so much.
Took part in (MY FIRST EVER) Dungeons and Dragons group, which was a dream come true. Everyone got to meet my weird traumatised teen (who I hastily sketched up an hour before the campaign started so I could picture her design). She’s Taro, a Tiefling teen who’s gonna find out who murdered her dads and burned down her family home. This haunted lil’ emo kid gives out such a ‘sad stray kitten’ vibe that strangers help her out of pity.

That’s it for just now! I’ll see you in three weeks for a recap of my April shenanigans.

8 March, 2018

Frosty February Highlights

February was a messy month, but there were plenty of highlights to share:

Watched the Roller Derby World Cup with friends! It was an amazing time and such a great experience to watch the matches live with derby friends, my teammates, and derby Twitter. I’m still gutted I couldn’t be there in person in Manchester, but being part of the livestream was amazing fun.
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. Here’s me making friends with a gibbon.

Got back into spin cycling regularly. Yay spinning.
PANCAKE DAY! Dave made awesome crepes and I tried out a recipe for a Dutch Baby pancake for the first time.

Finished a great audiobook, Queen of Shadows.
Took a nice long walk down the Dava Way on a beautiful, if blimmin’ cold, winter’s day.

Tried skating in two different new halls, including with a few hours with the Inverness team of skaters which was a fun experience!
Got much stronger at my sticky-skating and ploughstops.
Got my new derby kit.

A few challenging things happened this month, too. My derby kit arrived with severe issues, which has been causing me a lot of hassle and holding back my practice. My skating progress went backwards in a lot of areas as I adjusted to the new kit. My writing wasn’t moving forward, my weight loss wasn’t progressing at the weight I wanted, and I was getting frustrated as heck with my lack of forward momentum.

Then the month ended with an unexpected close family funeral, and I had to travel through the snowstorm to be with my family and then get across to the Western Isles. Oooftttt.

In the midst of the funeral prep, I fell sick with norovirus.

Just. Oooftttt.

So, aye, hell of a month. It left me feeling pretty beat-up and run-down, which makes a lot of sense considering… y’know, everything. But March is already on the up-and-up, so let’s keep going!

For March, I’m going to concentrate on resting and recovering from this before heading onwards to the next challenge. Gotta be kind to myself and allow that recovery.