Episode 10 of The Well Below the Valley is just finished, but I think I want to stick to the Wednesday schedule for the time being. It will go up on Patreon next Wednesday and here the following Wednesday. This will give me a little more time to work on the comic. My baby has had the worst time napping 4/5 days so far this week, and I didn’t have the time to work that I thought I would. As I type, she is asleep on my chest, because she will scream if I try to put her down.
Thanks for your patience. I’ll have new stuff for both Patrons and blog readers soon.
I’m not sure if I can say I’m back yet, but I’m giving it a try. I’m almost done with Episode 9 of The Well Below the Valley, so that will be up on Patreon later this week (hopefully Wednesday), and then up here next week for free reading. As I work on the next episode, I’ll be trying to work out a sustainable posting schedule.
I’m also maybe two thirds of the way done with thumbnails for the first volume of the comic! Basically, I’m just sketching out panel layouts based on the script I’ve already completed. Once that’s done, I’ll be starting to draw.
Having given it some more thought, I’m not sure how much I love the title Chrysanthemum Dawn. It maybe has too many connotations of Imperial Japan, which I would like to tone down for two reasons: the setting is not Japan, though it takes some inspiration, and I’m opposed to imperialism generally as a human and more specifically as a human of Korean descent. I’ll do some brainstorming and get back to you. I’ll also take some pictures of the thumbnails to show you later this week.
Here’s some petitions that I’ve signed and you might like to as well:
This is Miranda. I made her out of love and…mostly cheese (I had gestational diabetes). She is here and real and healthy as can be–almost a month old now.
I’m not quite ready to get back to regular posting, but I wanted to let you know that I’m still alive and slowly picking my work back up. I’ve finished the script for the first volume of Chrysanthemum Dawn! I’ll have some sketches for you soon. I’m also outlining the next episode of The Well Below the Valley today, and should start writing it this week.
I’ll check back in again soon. In the meantime, happy Pride, and thanks for stopping by!
I will be absent from posting starting May 8, 2025. I plan to have new content starting sometime in June, and return to in-person events at the end of July, but I’ve never done this before and will have to adjust as I go along. I should be able to answer comments here or on social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky) if you need me. Thanks for your patience, and wish me luck!
This is almost certainly going to be the last weekly update before I go on maternity leave. My baby is proving incredibly stubborn and likely won’t be born without some help (she’s still head-up and seems very comfortable there), so I’m going in on Thursday to get that help.
The latest episode of The Well Below the Valley will be up here on Wednesday, then you won’t hear from me for a little while. I plan to return you to your regularly scheduled nonsense sometime in June, probably later in the month. I’ll have a new episode (and, baby willing, a new posting schedule) and some comic sketches shortly after. There will also not be another newsletter until the end of June, and I won’t be at any in-person events until the July edition of the Kenosha Book Festival.
If everything continues to go according to plan, I’ll put some maternity leave announcements up here and on my social media on Wednesday. I’ll be able to answer emails and comments (though likely not immediately) if you need me for anything, and of course, my books will be available from wherever you buy books.
In the meantime, wish me luck, and I’ll be back soon! Thanks for reading.
Good morning! Bit of a throwback today. A moderate throwback.
I am experimenting with scheduling content this week. I normally post everything by hand, if that’s the correct term, which you have probably noticed, because chapters are sometimes a few hours late. I try to post them at noon on the appointed days. The first time I tried to use a third-party scheduling app for Instagram, it tanked my already abysmal engagement, so I haven’t really messed with it since. However, I’ve been told that scheduling content is the way to save me time and energy, and I want to keep a consistent posting schedule while I’m spending all my time on rewrites, so here we are. Don’t worry, I still get notifications for comments and things, so I won’t be absent from the blog.
On that note, I’ll have the LAST CHAPTER of Journey to the Water on Patreon tomorrow, and the second-to-last chapter will be here on Wednesday for free reading. If they post at 12PM Central on the dot, you’ll know I succeeded with the scheduling.
Not too many petitions this week, but here’s what I have:
There was an error with the registration of my domain, and ICANN shut it down yesterday (or, at least, I noticed it yesterday). As of this writing, it’s back up, and hopefully it will stay that way.
I was planning on participating in the Tax Day Strike for Gaza yesterday anyway, so in any case, my regular posting schedule has been moved back a day, as you can see because this post is going up on a Tuesday. I’ll have a new chapter of Journey to the Water up on Patreon tomorrow, and you’ll find last week’s chapter here on Thursday.
Since I couldn’t put them up yesterday, here are some petitions:
So, last month, new regulations went into effect that made it so I couldn’t send my newsletter from my Gmail account. As I understand it, the major email providers changed how they determine what is and isn’t spam, and sending a mass email from a free account made it very likely that said email would end up in the spam filter. The service that I use to format and send my newsletter, MailerLite, wouldn’t let me send out the newsletter until I registered a domain, created an email address for that domain, and verified and authenticated both the domain and the email.
After much deliberation, I upgraded my WordPress account. You may notice that there are no longer ads on this page! You may also notice that your bookmark or link to cranewrites.wordpress.com automatically redirects to spacewhalespress.com. You don’t need to update your bookmarks, unless you really want to.
Without further ado, the March edition of the newsletter is coming out at noon my time (US Central Daylight) on Sunday, March 31, and should continue to come out at noon on the last day of the month for the foreseeable future. If you aren’t subscribed yet, and need more cat pictures in your life, you can do so at this link. There’s another link down at the bottom of the page, under the WordPress subscription button (bottom right on desktop, all the way down on mobile).
In case you missed it, The Book of the New Moon Door is now available! Check out the “Buy my books” tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile) or take a peek at the sidebar. You’ve probably also noticed a few other changes, mainly that the serial version of this book has been moved to the bottom of the Stories page, and the Directory post at the top of the blog has been condensed to help with the visual clutter.
I’ve written a brief little chapter of Journey to the Water to get us back on track with that serial novel, and it will be available on Patreon tomorrow and here on the blog next week. I’m still finding my footing after leaving it for so long, but I want to make sure I’m providing new chapters on a somewhat regular basis.
Along with Journey, I want to get the audio play of The Well Below the Valley going again, and I want to make some changes to my Patreon and Ko-fi pages and create some better rewards. Stay tuned for more updates over the next few weeks.
Before you go, I’ve been collecting all the petitions surrounding a ceasefire in Gaza on Instagram. There’s a story highlight labeled “CEASEFIRE NOW” that has all of them together. If you haven’t signed any of them, I encourage you to do so. I think I have four or five of them from different organizations there.
As always, thanks for being here. I appreciate you.
I am hard at work on rewrites for The Book of the New Moon Door. I was originally trying to keep up with Journey to the Water as well, but I think at this point I need to concede and put Journey on hiatus until New Moon Door is done. Since I have plenty of chapters of New Moon Door, I can post one a week (first on Patreon and then here) for the next month or so.
This is for a number of reasons:
First, rewrites are going to take a lot of my time. The original draft of The Book of the New Moon Door is over 170,000 words long. In order to achieve an October release date, I’ll need to finish the new draft ideally by the end of August.
Second, I’m not going to lie to you: Baldur’s Gate III came out. I’m a fairly disciplined writer, but I’m not that disciplined.
Third is below the cut for medical stuff and complaining about the US healthcare system:
Space Whales Press 