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So, as I’m sure many have noticed, I’ve been busy trying to work myself to death for the past five years or so. So, in that time, I’ve worked ridiculous hours with very little time off, and often multiple shifts in a day. As a result, I was more than a little unproductive here. I retired the end of March, and spent the first fourish months doing nothing but sleep. Have one final test from my doctor on November 22nd, so should be done with all that shit for a bit as well by then. In the meantime, I am now checking all the email addresses I always did before, as I now have the time. Am easing back into the archive repair, minor hunting, and other things I did as well. Sorry for the absence, but, glad to be back

No prostate cancer for me! So that’s pretty good news to get just before Christmas.

Y’all, my husband needs a warning label. I’m sitting here, sucking on a peppermint and minding my business with headphones on—the better to block out his party chat trash-talk—and I hear THIS: “You ain’t had pussy since you came out a pussy.” I don’t know who was laughing louder, the recipient of the burn, Cold, or me, but I very nearly had a Star-Brite lodged in my throat. This guy kills me.

I’m juggling a lot of stuff in my life right now, from watching shows people want me to watch (Frieren most recently) to trying to overcome fears about my appearance to sign up for a dating site, but I hope there are still some people around here. I feel bad that I don’t post things as often as I did when I showed up here...six and half years ago now. I may not be one of the OGs, but I’ve been here a while, haven’t I? 😄 The good news is that I actually have a new story in the works! I’ve finished the first chapter, and will keep working on it. I don’t really want to start posting it until I’m done, but it’s a sci-fi/adventure fanfic and I had a lot of fun with that first chapter. In broader terms, I hope people here are doing as well as they can. I know I don’t show up as often as I’d like, but I think about you guys a lot! 🙂

The saddest little face in the world…

So, with having BP issues, and having to get an echo cardiogram late November, I’ve been monitoring my food intake and what I eat, when I eat. I’ve also started exercising regularly. So instead of losing weight, I gained twelve pounds in the last 2 weeks. What the hell??😡

So I’ve been away for months now, and it was for what might honestly have been a stupid reason. Last Christmas, I’d wanted to submit a story called Meaningful Gifts, and I didn’t finish it on time. I took two weeks off in January, and actually managed to make a lot of progress on it, but I still didn’t finish. If I’d taken three weeks I probably would have finished it, but that didn’t happen. I was so deeply ashamed of not having anything to contribute that I felt like I couldn’t show my face around here, so I just disappeared. Recently, I’ve realized that maybe not successfully submitting a story, even if it’s a story people are waiting on, isn’t as bad as I thought, so if it’s ok, I think I’ll be coming by here more often. I’ll finish Meaningful Gifts eventually, but hopefully the fact that I didn’t manage it last year isn’t as bad as I feared. In the meantime, I’ll work on reviews for a few other people’s stories and just try to be more active here in general.

Kids these days will never experience many of the rites of passage my generation valued more than gold. For instance: saving up your allowance for three weeks during the summer so you can buy one of those giant plastic Pixie Stix at the public pool’s canteen and downing the whole thing in one go to use it as a snorkel and spending the rest of the month with a burning feeling in the back of your throat that tastes like cherries, chlorine, and stale pee. …those lucky saps.

This day 6 years ago, I landed in New York, my first time in the US. Hard to believe it was that long ago. That trip was when I saw snow for the first time. That was very exciting. Although I soon realised what a pain in the arse it is.

I know it is a first world problem, my life is not in danger and no one is trying to kidnap me off the street, but dealing with FAFSA under this regime is beyond frustrating! Are we great yet?

Earlier tonight, I fed one of my non-fanfiction short stories through Pro Writing Aid’s “chapter critique” to see how it measures up against my fanfiction. I never thought I’d see the day when AI would smut-shame me. Yep. Seriously. “…some might find the level of detail in the sex scenes excessive.” What if I don’t wanna associate with that sort of person, huh? Fade to black is for wishy-washy people and FFN, not my filthy shapeshifter plowfest. Stay in your lane or bend over.

Happy Birthday!

Would really like a portkey out of here. Or a timeturner?

anyone have any advice on how to break a HORRIBLE, long standing writer’s block? 🙃

Just now, I saw something absolutely smoking hot on the internet. I mean, she was a seriously sexy beast—the kind of beauty I see in my dreams and drool over in centerfolds, regardless of whether I’m in public. If I encountered her on the street, I would absolutely embarrass myself, stare like a loon, and profess my undying adoration to her. A wolf-whistle, three muttered “damns,” and a couple of impressed tongue-clicks later, my husband gave in. Cold sighed, rolled his eyes, and grumbled, “just show me the car.” He knows me so well. 😆 It was, in fact, a classic muscle car—a ‘67 Oldsmobile Tornado. In my defense the lines on this bad girl are what wet dreams are made of, and I pity Cold for his lack of taste. It’s a sad way to live.

My phone doesn't always err on the side of salaciousness. Today, when I dictated the words “her deep cleavage,” it heard “her deep Cleveland.” Although admittedly, if America had cleavage, that's probably where it would be.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite (age-appropriate and modern) books described a place as “a screen door town.” The explanation was that every time something happened, no matter how trivial or innocuous, every screen door up and down the street would open and slam shut twice in a ripple effect—once when the occupants came out to snoop, and again when, having discovered it was unimportant, they went back inside. Last year, Cold and I moved into “a lawnmower neighborhood”—meaning every day, there’s at least one person outside mowing somewhere on the block, and most days, their neighbors join in whether or not they need to mow, and the ripple travels further and further until everyone in earshot is mowing. Cold and I sleep during the day and we can only deal with the lawn very early or on his days off, so the constant mowing is a sore point. Well, earlier today, I heard the mowing start up again while I was trying to drudge through beta-reading a chapter from someone who might not have proofread first. As close as the mower sounded, I figured it must be that one neighbor who has an overpowered mower and an undersized lawn. I suffered through reading the same sentence half a dozen times, then stormed into the kitchen to get some tea and wait it out. When I heard Cold come through the door, I started ranting about “whatever asshole is mowing this time can kiss my ass” and a few things otherwise. Then I saw him and I froze. My husband was sweaty and covered in grass clippings. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Asshole. I mowed your lawn. Prepare to give me butt.”

Awhile back, someone on a random Reddit post suggested I might be neurodivergent. I’d only heard the term used for people with autism – yes, I live under a rock – so my initial response was disgruntlement. My husband, after all, is autistic, and I had a mental image of the time he met my prudish religious neighbor for the first time and made a joke about his dick; if we were both that awkward outwardly instead of just on the inside, we’d be a right mess. There was also a sidenote of, “shit, I’m even more fucked up than Cold, how dare this person compare him to me? He doesn’t deserve that insult!” indignance. Come to find out “neurodivergent” applies to several diagnoses and disabilities; it applies to most (any?) condition resulting from deviations in how the brain is wired...including mine. Apparently, I am neurodivergent. So is Cold. So many things make sense now. That Redditor was right and I had no idea. That said...I’ve been editing a chapter of my novel with Boney M.’s “Rasputin” playing on repeat for...uh...an hour? ...or three? Because it’s stuck in my head? Okay, so maybe there were signs. Maybe.

Cicadas when I’m trying to write late at night: “I respect you and want you to succeed, so let me sit on your window and scream about it.” I just opened my office window and told the damned bugs on the screen to go get laid somewhere else because I couldn’t think straight from their noise. Our neighbors probably think I’m nuts. Meh. They drive ugly cars; people who drive ugly cars don’t get an opinion on my sanity or lack thereof.

The other day, I noticed a draft coming through gaps in a few of our windows (it’s an older house, but not old enough to have been built well) which led me to this long list of actions: Find appropriate sealant. Fix one window (it looks like a toddler finger painted with dad’s tools but whatever) and move onto the next. Prep window frame. Realize the windowsill was probably last cleaned in the 90s and is full of grease, lint, dust, and animal hair. (Hurk) Decide you don’t want to seal that junk into permanence with something that dries clear. Grab cleaner and scrub the gap clean with a bristle brush (cleaner sprays brown crap everywhere, barf) and knock loose some paint that may have been white back in the 80s. Realize the cleaner will need to be rinsed out and the paint touched up before sealing the gap. Give up. Sit on the couch and question your life choices while staring at the tube of sealant and convince yourself that cussing at inanimate objects is immature and you’re better than that. (I’m really not.) Realize that the entire time, you were standing in the window with the blinds open and the lights on at night wearing a man’s shirt and no bra with People-of-Walmart hair, and your next door neighbor is out on their porch watering their plants…at night. Homeownership would definitely keep my millennial ego in check if it ever got big enough to worry about.

A very big birthday shout-out to WillowDarkling! Happy Birthday, Neko-baby!

May the fourth be with you all!

2k words today

🍀 Happy St. Patrick’s Day! (We need the luck this year.) 🍀

There are many unmentioned benefits to marrying your best friend…benefits such as them bringing you a cat to cuddle because said cat got too comfy in their lap and ripped a loud, wet, nasty fart. Yep, it was Heiferlump. Also yes, Cold did run away cackling afterward. Boys.

today i join the jack benny club! Im gonna be 39 til im in my 80s! LMAO!

Well, y’all, we finally did it. We’re moving to a new house in my hometown! And nobody died in it so I should be the only Ghost there! Going on hiatus sucks, for sure, but I’m still so happy I could squeal. Heifer and Woozle are predictably unenthused, but cats don’t get a vote. This area has gotten too damned expensive and dangerous for us, and I’m tired of being homesick. Fortunately, the Woozle-bug already has a great vet in the city to help with his health problems (the scariest of which is showing some improvement, yay!) and Heiferlump? She’s going to have an entire neighborhood to give her attention when she inevitably convinces them she’s stuffed then moves. (Yep. It’s gonna happen. She’s got a history. We expect heart attacks on the regular.) Now if we can just finish everything early in the year so I can get back to writing!

Did anyone else want to do Winter 2024? If not I’ll post it ere when I get back from my shift lol.

People love saying, “Love is blind.” I have to disagree. I think love is looking at someone, knowing that somewhere out there, a tree gave its all to ensure they have air to breathe, and feeling feel sorry for the tree…and knowing you’d burn a whole forest to the ground if a single tree took offense at supplying your idiot with oxygen. I love my husband. He’s an idjit, but he’s my idjit. I’d love him even if he had to be reminded to breathe.

Superman is now on that rather exclusive list of action movies whose best fight scene doesn't involve the main character. (The best fight being that between Mr. Terrific and Lex Luthor’s armored goons.) The only other examples I can immediately think of are both from the '80s: Total Recall, whose best fight scene is between Rachel Ticotin and Sharon Stone’s characters, and the James Bond movie The Living Daylights, which included an amazing fight between a random MI-6 agent and Necros, an assassin who strangles people with the wire from his Walkman.

Time for a shameless brag: I have just reached 100 favorites in the archive. As far as I know, I’m the first author on AFF to do that.

Fanfusion 2025 was a blast! Had to cut it short to Con Crud! Haha!

Would anyone be up for a second opinion on a single chapter of a work in progress? I don’t really need any editing. (…unless someone notices a missing word or comma both I AND my editing app missed.) I asked on Reddit and got a reply, but they ghosted me. Ghosting someone who goes by “Ghost” is a bit on the nose, but whatever. It was a dick move. To put this as simply and briefly as possible, my brain got fried with the packing, moving, and all that entailed. I had no time to write. Now that I have time, my brain is struggling to switch back to non-crisis mode—the storms and renovations aren’t helping—and focus. It’s stuck in a hamster wheel of “so tired/gotta keep working/where’s the box tape/shit, is that bug something to worry about/fuck, my ass hurts, why do I hurt so much,” and so forth. My writing muscles are atrophied to noodles and I’m struggling to get sentences out. I’m not really happy with the second half of my most recent work, the flow, or the pacing. It’s been well over a year since I updated the story, and I won’t even get started on the delay my others are experiencing. If anyone can help, I’d appreciate it more than my fried brain can express. This can be a one-off, and I’m happy to correspond by Google Docs. The chapter has some cursing and questionable humor but nothing really dirty; the bulk of it, sans headings and notations, is just over 3,100 words, and I’ve already done what I can for editing. You shouldn’t run into any mistakes. Also, if you’ve read any of my other writing, I’m not writing any accents or using non-English language aside from a couple of words in elvish. I’m trying to keep this story simple, easy, and posted in small bites unlike my usual approach to writing. Fandom is Dragon Age: Inquisition; I’ve got the other chapters posted in the archive if anyone is morbidly curious.

Looking for work but getting the jitters as it looks like self/indie publishing might be viable. Idk the garbage collectors may over 30+ an hour here lol.

Beware the Ides of March! 🗡️

Happy PI Day everybody. (It’s also my character Jeff’s birthday!)

Thank you for your review of my story, “First Date.” I did work for a while on the dialog between Zuko and Jin about going all the way getting it to sound plausible – clearly in the series she was hoping for more than she got. “But Mai would kill him,” becomes a recurrent phrase when talking about Zuko boinking anybody but his goth-girlfriend.

Just checked the YT link to the Naruto-reader’s channel and got a 404 error. https://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/topic/73569-beware-this-patreon-plagiarist/#comment-449045

Rewrite is doing better. Felt like I had to separate it. Now for some reason I have a romance story prequeling/concurrent with the dark fantasy one. … No I don’t know how that happened.

I managed to get a new iMac I didn’t want to buy yet a hop, skip, and jump before the old one died. My “old” version of Office won’t install on the new one. I’ve tried “Pages.” I’m a lot less unimpressed than I was before trying it.

Happy Birthday!!!

Had the echo cardiogram yesterday, won’t hear anything of what they found, or if they found anything until Tuesday. Ugh. I’m going to be a basketcase!

A very happy birthday to @DemonGoddess! Let’s hope this is the best year yet!

Hate when i get hit with so much inspiration and prompts but I also want to finish stories when the ol noggin goes oh hey, you know what that’d be cool! Quick write them or or post them so you don’t forget!!

If life could just take a break from randomly skull-fucking me for once—or at least schedule a time and ask consent—yeah, that’d be great. (In which Ghost is a cis-woman who gets sick like a man and requires medical intervention on the regular and inevitably ends up with horrible cramps AND yet another random household crisis, all at the same time.) I’ll live. I feel like roadkill, but I’ll live.

Got to love when your role expands but there’s no appropriate compensation.

So. Learned a lesson while upgrading my OS. Somehow, my personal IP was blocked from the domain. Manta and I have been pulling our hair out trying to figure out why the hell I couldn’t connect

Got to be honest, sitting down is pretty rough when you’ve had a prostate biopsy. Even sitting on a pillow doesn’t help much!

Life has been crazy lately, between my car being totaled, granny having a brain bleed ER managed to staunch to having a minor stroke directly in in the ER. Alot is happening all at once. 😅

Annikin Skywalker has truly lost his voice. US Actor James Earl Jones dead at 93 according to published reports in Variety and other news sources. Fair winds and following seas.