it's like a train wreck, only fluffier

Okay, so, I participated in homemade2homemade this year. My recipient has received her gift, and here's a little bit about making it.

I thought I'd taken a lot more process photos, but when I looked at my camera afterwards there weren't nearly as many as I remembered taking. o_O

I started off with a Doctor Who theme, but after asking for clarification on a different thing it was clear that Venom was the fandom of my recipients heart, so I overhauled and made a Venom themed traveller's notebook. They still got these TARDIS earrings with their main gift though, lol:



( More )

According to husband I should record my handwriting practice and put it on YouTube as ASMR. He reckons there's a market for a steady scratch-scratch-scratch of pen, mingling with a husky, female, Yorkshire-accented voice muttering a constant litany of shit; fuck's sake; balls; knob-goblin; why am I doing this to myself; motherfucker...

One argument that anti-vaxxers have that I really, really can't stand is that vaccinations are a conspiracy by Big Pharma.

Don't get me wrong, pharmaceutical companies are fucking shady. I used to work for a company that did genetic screening for clinical trials, and that is either as shady as it sounds, or shadier.

BUT the profit margins in vaccines are not lucrative by Big Pharma standards, for them the real money is in treatments for lifelong health problems - such as the ones you can get from catching childhood diseases.

Estimated profit margins on vaccines are 10-40%. The average retail price for MMR is roughly £100, give or take, so if you take a kid for the recommended two doses the company's going to make around £80, maybe as little as £20.

I'm prescribed a topical shingles treatment off-label for my wonky nervous system. The patches cost the NHS just under £300 for 30 of them, up to three can be worn at a time, and shingles can last 3-5 weeks. So let's split the difference and say 4 weeks, 30 days or so, (28 days and a couple left over until you're sure it doesn't hurt any more), and they only have to wear one patch, and let's assume that the profit margin is still 40%. Big Pharma made £120. If three patches were needed they make £360. And you can get shingles more than once! More than twice is rare, but even twice racks us up to between £240 and £720.

So do Big Pharma want a vaccinated population? Or a population riddled with shingles?

And that's before we factor in how much they can make off all the other lifelong problems measles can leave in its wake, including immuno-suppression (you wanna talk about lucrative?), or even what mumps can do, or getting into other vaccinations.

I just...

January was not the greatest month for writing - I managed 14 days, and only 1,718 words, mostly on an ongoing serial. A friend threw me for six when she suggested that I should shift my attention to my Urban-Fantasy/Sci-Fi mash-up instead of just the straight Urban Fantasy I've been working on, since the straight Urban Fantasy market is so saturated, and I want to build my world in a way publishers won't be comfortable with, and also the success of Gideon the Ninth has probably opened the door for 'magic in space' as a more common theme.

And... I think she's right. I'm also not sure how well my urban fantasy project would play since it's more 'police procedural which happens to have magical creatures in it'. The Odd Squad don't actively police the supernatural community (the community does that themselves), they're there for the cases where there's some overlap - if someone dumps a body in a lake that happens to contain a minor water-deity then that deity is going to be pissy enough without normal police questioning about why they happened to be in the area. The Odd Squad can placate them and get the info without six weeks of rain and a plague on all our houses. The normal cops are going to focus on a witness who fled the scene, whereas the Odd Squad know exactly why a nightwalker-vampire legged it twenty minutes before sunrise and won't waste police time following that false lead to the far end of a fart. And so on. It's a question of whether urban fantasy readers will be disappointed because there aren't any big battles, threats to the world in general, etc. whereas police procedural readers won't pick it up because it's urban fantasy.

Also I need to decide whether I'm going to use a specific short story for my writing group anthology, or keep it for a competition by a local publisher, and what to write instead... Feck it all.






ETA: I've been procrastinating on signing up for homemade2homemade, thinking that I had until the 8th, and finally got around to it today. So glad I did, as it turns out I'm the last in.

Seems like a place to start...

Currently Reading:

Empire of Booze: British History Through the Bottom of a Glass, by Henry Jeffreys. I actually picked this up at this year's Crossing the Tees festival, which is a local literary event. The author came up to do a talk, but his train got stuck in Rotherham and he was two hours late to a ninety-five minute lecture. We had a local historian in the audience though, so he got up and did an impromptu talk on the history of local pubs (which husband really wishes he'd been there for), and a Master of Wine also did a quick talk (and the author was gutted he wasn't here to hear that, so.) Anyway, when we did get the heavily-abridged talk it was really interesting, as is the book.

I'm also listening to The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, by Steve Brusatte, on audiobook. It's read by the author and also pretty good - interesting topic, and I usually prefer when an author reads their own book: the natural rhythm of their speech usually matches the rhythm of their writing, and my ears appreciate that.


Writing:

I'm working on all sorts. I'll post my yearly totals in a couple of days, because otherwise I'll probably end up adding to them tomorrow. I've signed up to getyourwordsout and inkingitout for next year.

I'm in a weird headspace, because I want to change the name of my MC in the main novel project I'm working on ('Karen' has gained some connotations that I don't want associated with the character, but that leaves me with a gaping hole in her identity until I come up with something I'm happy with - that can't be a variation on Kath since that was my mother-in-law's name). And NaNo kinda proved that I need to change the name of the overall world, because people thought I was working on Stranger Things fanfiction. I called the 'world' Strange Natures, because nature figures pretty heavily in various ways, but I also have characters called Eight and Nine, so.

I don't want to rename Eight and Nine, because those names are intrinsic to their characters and arcs - they rejected the names Ciara and Duna and chose Eight and Nine as a 'fuck you, we're not going to build new lives, we're monsters", and then their arcs spring from there. I've put a lot of investment into plotting out their characters, and it's not like I've dropped trademarks or website money on 'Strange Natures', so the latter's gotta go.

Bum.


Crafting:

NOPE! Unless watching planner set-up videos on YouTube counts. And I regret nothing. I need to set up my own planners tomorrow, which is going to involve a lot of swearing at lettering, foil, pens, and stickers, so I'm resting up in preparation.

Random:

musyc linked to this daemon quiz. I got raccoon and feel pretty called out:

Your daemon would take the form of a raccoon! You are a curious and friendly individual who loves finding new adventures. More so than others with musteloid daemons, those with raccoons are creative people with a wicked sense of humor, highly impulsive and love to stick their noses into everything. Even still, they're known for being lazy procrastinators, more about enjoying spontaneity and the pleasures of life.

I find it kind of funny that I was torn between using a magpie or a raccoon for my shop logo. Ah, well, if I ever rebrand I know what my daemon would want.

 So, anyway, I continue to suck at journalling. I think I just got a bit overwhelmed.

Having another go. 

[img: notebook paper with "GYWO 2019" printed in large black
letters with a blue shadow. under that, "writing decathlon" in
handwritten black letters with an orange shadow.]
GetYourWordsOut: Year Eleven!
Pledges & Requirements | GYWO.net


I enjoyed doing the habit pledge for 2018 so I'm going to do it again - Journeyman this time. Doing the Apprentice level this year was doable, but I didn't start writing until like mid-May I think? Mostly down to AXA and the Saga of the Kitchen Leak. I find the habit pledge much better for me than the word-count ones; I think I've actually written more this year, not working to word-count, than I do when I have a number.

Didn't sleep well last night because there were odd noises coming from ICI.  If the plant goes up we won't even feel it, but I still get the hinkies when something weird's going on.  I listened to two chapters of the Rivers of London audiobook to distract myself.  Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is a great narrator, can recommend.

Looks like a couple of table challenge comms have sprung up since the migration, but I think I'm still going to go ahead since I've been planning to make one for so long (also I want to make one that's very friendly towards crafts as well as writing).  Anyway, need to concentrate on etsy stuff today; I have stitching to do so that's a lot of stabbed fingers. 

Also, I realised I hadn't posted the planner pics I took earlier, so I've just added them under the cut.  They're a bit random because I'm using up old sets from packs of misfit stickers I bought on the cheap last January.  I like stickers, okay?  (Also they're in my advertising budget, lol).

( Planner pics under cut )

Package finally got released from customs and, uhhhh... 




Russia Post r u okay?

Ooo, lots of new people flooding to the site.





I feel like we need to get lots more comms active, that's the platform's major strength. (I'm totally gonna get to that old-style table challenge comm I keep talking about, I just need to get through this batch of orders).