Photo included specifically for everyone who read Level 99 Self-Doubt. <3 (Pineapple on the left, chocolate on the right.)
Spouse and I just got back from a long weekend trip to Washington, DC to belatedly celebrate our anniversary and see a band we both love, The Go! Team, who was closing out a US tour. Since we’re from a midsized city, we’ve traveled to two different bigger cities to catch the last two tours, and it has been 100% worth it both times. Before and after that excellent show, we saw a slew of national landmarks including the US Botanical Gardens, where the above photos were taken.
DC was less weird than I expected leading up to the election today — it was actually a lot worse in our home state, which is a “swing state” (not a foregone conclusion for either party) and therefore has been bombarded constantly with political ads for the last six months. We had both already voted by mail weeks ago, so that wasn’t a concern, but I had expected more ambient aggravations. I guess everyone was up here campaigning. Lucky us.
(Apologies if I sound cavalier about the election. It’s important. But if any eligible citizen is still ~uncommitted~ at this point, I don’t particularly want to speak to them. In real life, or otherwise.)
With Spouse’s always supportive help with beta reading the magnets, I should be able to start the new newsletter within the next few weeks. Just so I don’t have to re-upload everything twice, this will, if all goes well, also mark the release of the new covers for the Healers series.
(Past beta readers, you are fantastic; I just didn’t feel like it was appropriate to bother you for short stories? Impostor syndrome, I guess.)
Once it’s up and running, some of the chitchat usually included here will migrate to the newsletter in a more organized form, including book talk (unless I stumble across something I REALLY have to yell about, plus year-end roundups) and game and anime talk (which I’ll spread out and keep brief). This blog will be more or less reserved for progress reports and announcements.