Snow day. My kids sledded, then their sleds were food trucks, & ice factories, & boats. It’s freezing & they’re totally unbothered. I thought, this is what resilience looks like. Finding joy in the face of the storm. I’m depressed about the state of the world but in moments like this, there’s joy.

Life update… aka the most adorable reason to press pause on your #querying journey 🥰

Distilling the three main characters in the africanfantasy manuscript I’m about to query down to one quote…

Art is via portrait works (every element hand drawn by human artists)

#bvm #fantasy #sff #writingcommunity

“If you see this, post any photo in your gallery with no explanation.”

Even though I’m unlikely to finish revisions in time for #DVPit, I’m still participating in #DVParty. Here is day 1: a moodboard of the #africanfantasy #highfantasy #epicfantasy story I #amwriting #bvm

All images from Canva / Pexels / Adobe Stock and edited in PhotoPea (🧚🏿, 👗& 🌕 🧙 from Pinterest)

(Unedited) excerpt from today’s writing session. I am really struggling to write this character, specifically with making him sound distinctly different from my other MC. Writers of Bluesky, help out a newbie? How do you approach removing your own voice from the characterization of various POVs?

Snippet from today’s writing session, tiny excerpt from my African Fantasy WIP

After many many froggings I’ve given up on trying to get this planned pooling to work up in the pattern I would like and now we’re just forging onwards and seeing what happens

Tiny #excerpt from my #AfricanInspired #EpicFantasy #WIP
#WritingCommunity #AmWriting

Both kids also think slugs are very cute so they insisted I take pictures of these guys. I didn’t think the app would be able to ID them (it has trouble with worms usually) but was pleasantly surprised when it came back with “meadow slug” (darker) and “western dusky slug” (lighter) 8/8

Red milkweed beetle. I thought it was a weird ladybug at first. 7/

Banded longhorn beetle 6/

This is a New York Bee Killer and around the time my husband took this picture, he spotted another one buzzing around with a bumblebee it had captured. I felt really bad for the bumblebee. 5/

We’re not sure what these are… 4/

A couple of weeks ago we found this white-spotted sawyer beetle also on the deck. I still can’t get over how long her antennae are 3/

They also want to bug hunt whenever we are outside (even though 6 is a little afraid of crawlies) so we’ve discovered some pretty cool critters this way. Like this red shouldered pine borer that was hanging out on our deck today. 2/

Any earth (planet?) science enthusiasts on here? If the valley surrounding a gulf is ringed with mountains à la my very finely drawn exhibit here, what would the weather / climate inside the valley look like? The mountains may or may not be naturally occurring.

It’s 1am and it took more than two hours but I won yarn spaghetti and this feels like the perfect first post. Or maybe I’m just deliriously tired. Either way, woot!