Hi everyone!
The first quarter of the year has already reached its halfway point (and oh boy, if it hasn’t been a 2020 Part 6 already), so it’s time for the first Currently on my art post. This time, I have some releases to announce!
So, about the releases: My Tribble Month 2021 and 2023 collections, How could it get worse? and Beginnings or Endings?, are out. I had not initially planned to release them so close to each other but then the universe decided the monkey wrench was no longer enough, switched it to a baseball bat and as one of the results I stress-cranked-out the latter collection and here we are now. (As a side note, what the universe did with the baseball bat isn’t my business to broadcast here, so all I can say about it is “bad shit happened.”)
Now that I’ve got the Tribble Month collections out, it’s finally time to announce the secret project I did back in Q4 2024: Tribble Month Flashback. Since I had to skip TM 2022 back in the day and TM wasn’t organized in 2024, I decided to make use of my free November and do a 2022 flashback out of perfectionism since I had collections for 2020, 2021 and 2023 on the TODO list. Since I realized that 2020 was the only TM where I didn’t consistently use prompts, I decided to add to the flashback and combine the 2022 prompts with the 2020 prompts.
I didn’t want to crowd my blog again when there wasn’t an official event going on back then, so I decided to instead write the flashback stories straight-to-print – the collection that I’ll be working on now that I’m done with the previously known TM collections. And once that’s done? My TODO list says I still have The Gauntlet collection as well as an “assorted stories” collection planned (although I am now considering combining the two), so those will be next and unless either a miracle grants me a job (unlikely in the current state of my country’s job market) or the universe swings the baseball bat at this direction again (maybe even harder this time) (unfortunately likely), they’ll likely be out before FFM 2026 too. And at least some of the TM Flashback stories go into my World Collections, so I’ll have to sort through them too in preparation for the 2026 collections. Oh joy.
A part of me wants to pray to Hydra for help but I did this to myself, so I guess I’d better not bother FFM’s overlord while they hibernate.
As for any other news, I once again took part in the Finnish Game Jam (and thus Global Game Jam). It was… a personal flop, to be entirely honest. I had been hoping to do something other than the “fill the blanks (usually meaning audio)” role I’d been taking on in the previous game jams and instead doing more with my practiced skills. I actually came close to that, too, as one of the ideas my team considered would have made use of my game writing specialization… and then the idea that put me to “fill the blanks (meaning audio)” as we had too many programmers and no use for a writer with that idea won the vote. It was a pretty disappointing turn of events. The idea of something narrative (particularly something about social masks, as the jam theme was Mask) kept living in my head rent-free through the bus ride home on the first day. Then I got home, took one look at the unimpressed Whoops plot bunny and said, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”
Enter The Zeldron Urrang Experience, starring the older brother of Steirdrar, who those who have read my FFM 2025 stories got acquainted with, and his path to becoming an admiral despite not being keen on getting into a leadership role. It’s actually going to be included just about as-is in the next Whoops Full Collection, as I was able to include it in a fully functional form (although at least on Calibre’s ebook reader you need to have some specific layout settings on or else the scrolling doesn’t work). I think it’s decent for something I rushed in one day in the bits of time when I either multitasked with audio or was taking a break to reset my ears as well as the morning before heading on-site and the night once I had gone home for the day.
Anyway, in addition to getting the short end of the stick with the team project, I also wound up making the beginner’s mistake of not eating properly before the “build and upload” crunch started and as a result I got very cranky and then ended up feeling so sick I had to leave early once we’d finally gotten the final build uploaded. Far from my proudest moment. I had to apologize for my behavior that day the following day when I had properly recovered since it was extremely unfair of me to snap at the others the way I did.
The game that I put together the audio for in the team is TAPE everything. It’s what it says on the tin and it’s a really neat hypercasual game – my teammates did a fantastic job with it – so please do go check it out.
That’s all for this time. Let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 89 is finally in editing. I’m still not particularly close to beating my writer’s block. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I still haven’t found the time (and energy) to revise another chapter, though.
- 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. I’ve been thinking about resuming this project since I do want to finish the translation but so far I haven’t had the drive to go for it. Maybe sometime in 2026?
- 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 researched for my master’s thesis. I’m currently working on chapter 87 out of 89. I’ve written 1497 words in this quarter; it’s still very slow progress but the end of the round is already in sight. Next will be going through all the comments I had left for later and addressing them. Then? It just might be time to start editing and releasing each chapter (unless something new pops up before that).
- Whoops: I’ve been writing the story. I now have three stories plus The Zeldron Urrang Experience ready, some more worldbuilding done (and some more on the TODO list), two stories with the first draft ready and a bunch of both backstory and current-story-arc stories on the TODO list as well.
- Gaming: Habitica keeps on going. I played through A Short Hike (it’s really lovely and fun) and I started playing Soul Hackers 2 although it’s been on a break for a month now. I also tried Super Kiwi 64 but it wasn’t my cup of tea. That’s all on the gaming front.
- Other projects: I finished my TM 2021 and 2023 collections, as discussed above, and will now work on putting together the now announced Tribble Month Flashback collection.
- Reading: I’ve read some fanfiction and finished reading the Star Wars Rebels comic collection, not really anything else.
- Personal life: Nothing aside from continuing job hunting and the universe swinging a baseball bat at this direction.
That’s all for this post. Thanks for reading and take care!
WindySilver 