Hi everyone!
This quarter is at its end, so it’s time for a new Currently on my art post. Today, I have some news to share!
And the news is: my FFM 2023 collection The Last Dessert is out! It’s actually been out for a few days now, although I did spot an error in its description while writing this post that I had to correct, so a new version is on the way and hopefully will already be online by the time you’re reading this post. In any case, you can check out where you can get it for free via this Universal Book Link (UBL for short; it’s one of Draft2Digital’s tools, one meant to make it easy to find where you can get a specific book): https://books2read.com/u/baLerP
The book is also out on Smashwords as usual, so if you want to keep getting my books there, that’s still possible. The only thing is that the number of formats is much smaller now, with EPUB being the only one available through there (which is a disappointing downside that I came across only once the book was out).
Now that I’ve published a book via Draft2Digital, what can I say about it? Well, it was a whole lot painless than I dared to hope it would be. For the most part, the automatic formatter handled my file without issues. The only thing I had to adjust was adding an extra line break between the challenge description and the story (and similar sections where I wanted an empty line between parts of the text) and thus the resulting book file turned out fine. Since I already had things like title page in place and didn’t want to add anything new as to not break the in-series cohesion further than it would already break, I didn’t try any of the automatically generated things. All in all, a positive experience, although I am a rather disappointed about the lack of formats on Smashwords.
A positive addition that came with Draft2Digital is the option to make print and audio versions of the book. I haven’t touched either of those options yet, so I can’t comment on how easy or good they are to use but not needing multiple platforms for that is certainly welcome. I am going to make print versions of my collections someday but I’m not going to get into it until I have stable income (and as such can afford to get copies of my books in print for my bookshelf). Nevertheless, it’s an option, and I sure like having options.
Speaking of stable income, I have a status update on my master’s thesis: due to my supervisors being super busy with things like grading already submitted theses recently, I’m stretching the finalization phase to the next semester so I can get all the feedback I need to polish my thesis (one of the comments I got on my latest draft is that “on the whole, it looks very good” and I’m very stoked about that). I’ve already lost count on how many deadlines I’ve busted at this point, so if anyone asks about that, all I’m going to say is that Strömsö’s crew did not take part in this project.
A sidenote to add context: in Finnish, there is the saying “Ei mennyt niin kuin Strömsössä” which translates so “It didn’t go like in Strömsö”. This refers to the Finnish show Strömsö, where the people in the show do crafts, cooking, gardening etc. and it always goes well and smoothly. And, well, stuff like that sure does not go like it does in Strömsö in real life, hence the saying.
Back to the topic at hand. Fortunately, I was also able to get an extension to my student allowance for a few months, so I’ll be able to stay properly afloat for the rest of the year without having to go into debt. My current cautiously optimistic estimated time for submitting my thesis is now October but we’ll see how it goes, what with the amount of work I have left and the supervisors’ timetables. At least it’s going to be a great thesis, that’s for sure!
In any case, I’m taking a break from heavily working on my thesis for July, both to give my brains some time to rest and to focus more on FFM 2024, which is starting tomorrow! I’m very excited to see where it goes this year; last year was, admittedly, not a good one for me headspace-wise but hopefully with much less stress and other stuff cluttering my headspace I’ll whip up better and nicer stories. Will Bereth’s storyline continue this year? Maybe. I don’t know yet; we’ll see whose story comes to me the clearest when I turn on Scrivener tomorrow to take part in FFM for the tenth time (holy shit, it’s already the tenth time).
Scrivener actually brings a good segue to my next topic: my shenanigans with Garuda Linux, which I’m slowly shifting to from Ubuntu. Why? Two reasons: first of all, I’m tired of the bad choices Canonical is making and second of all, the driver support for my Nvidia GPU is poor at best and nonexistent at worst (I couldn’t use Ubuntu on my current laptop for the first three months I had it because the GPU support rendered it unusable). Hence, after research and thinking I ended up switching to Garuda, which has a dedicated build for gaming, Dr460nized Gaming Edition. I knew going in that it would be bloated but I figured that I have the space for it and since I’m switching to completely new things – switching from Debian-based to Arch-based (which affects software installations, most importantly) and from a versioned release to rolling release, which means that updates to the operating system come constantly rather than in major standalone versions – I decided to let someone else think for me in terms of what should be included in a gaming system software-wise. Excessive things can be removed, after all, which I actually have done already when I’ve spotted stuff that I know I don’t need.
Although, it’s still a work-in-progress to make the system how I want it to be – I spent a lot of time internally screaming at Dr460nized’s style of having windows and various UI elements partially transparent and thus messing with my eyes (whether it’s just my hyperawareness of contrast things ever since learning how to design accessible UI or the way my brains handle information, I don’t know, but I hated it so much) before I managed to get things to look the way I want them to look. So, a lesson learned: next time I distrohop, I should just do the research on the gaming software and pick a package that doesn’t do transparent windows, haha! And before that I’m going to have to learn how to uproot Ubuntu from my computer without breaking boot systems once my thesis is finished and I’m fully free to return my triple-boot system to dual-boot (for now I’m going to keep Ubuntu for software that I don’t expect to use on my own laptop once I’ve graduated so I don’t have to clutter Garuda with that stuff).
Scrivener actually also brought a conundrum of its own; due to no (up-to-date) Linux version, I’m running it on Wine, and I noted that not only were the latest tests on Wine’s Application Database from an older version of Scrivener but also with an older major Wine version than currently available to boot, so I decided to do some testing myself and report how it works. To my positive surprise, after some extra things added to the system it turned out to work much better than my very cobbled-together contraption that not only freezes from certain actions but also might crash if I launch it too early into starting the computer… at least I think it is the timing in relation to how long the computer has been on, but I don’t know. I’ve never tested it properly, just made do with it since I could work around the issues I had. It’s so nice to be able to turn Scrivener on through the start menu again! It’s far from perfect, but it works much better for my use and that’s all I can ever hope for.
Anyway, that’s a project that’s going to be ongoing for a while. There’s still plenty of stuff to be set up, adjusted and wrangled but I’m actually writing this and making the statistics on the Garuda side, so it’s already operational to an extent! Woo!
Speaking of stats, let’s check those out.
Welp, as you can see, TFW is still going weakly. IDTS has also slowed down, in part due to more effort going into editing and planning the reworking than raw wordcounts and in part because so much of my energy has gone into other things. It does still have some solid progress, though, and now that I’ve ironed out the hardest parts of planning, reworking freer to continue.
Let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 84 is even still in writing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I haven’t found the time to revise any more chapters.
- Off-DA projects: My master’s thesis is progressing well despite the delays; finalization is ongoing and I’ve got a bunch of comments to go through and address.
- Lyokostar: The second part of story 7 is still waiting for alphareading, but that’s a thing for once its indefinite hiatus ends. This story is in need of massive reworking, so it’s going to take a long time to finish when I do find the time and energy to resume it. References need to be done.
- A Wandering Aura: On indefinite hiatus.
- I’ll Draw The Stars: I’m reworking to add a considerably big plot bunny into the fic and lots of smaller plot bunnies in the form of the background characters I’ve been researching for my master’s thesis. I’m currently working on chapter 18 out of 81. I wrote 22996 words in Q2.
- Gaming: Habitica and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going. I’ve also played some other games: I completed the 3D remaster of Final Fantasy III and Himno as well as started playing Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne and Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S.
- Other stuff: I finished the FFM 2023 collection and released it just in time for FFM 2024. I have been reading fanfics mostly, although I also started reading The Gods Themselves.
- Personal life: Just master’s thesis -related stuff and switching operating systems. This half of the quarter has been quite uneventful.
That’s for all this update. Thanks for reading and take care!
WindySilver 