Tag Archive | writing

‘Touching Base’

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. Even longer since I’ve written anything for the site.

I’m not sure if that’s a negative or not. I’ve had a lot going on in my life over the two and a half years since my last blog post. Some of it has been unfortunate, but most of it has been very good indeed.

I see you…

Where should I start?

I had my heart broken pretty badly a couple of years ago. It had been a while since that happened and it was a painful revisitation to a state of which I am not overly fond, but it’s worth noting that while it was hard, I think I dealt with it better than I have other instances in the past. How much that counts for remains to be seen, I suppose.

I won’t go into the details. The broad strokes are that I fell in love, it wasn’t reciprocated, it ended. A tale as old as time, no doubt, and my situation is far, far from unique.

New love

However, a little while after that I fell in love again. It was a tricky situation to begin with and part of it was not dealt with elegantly by yours truly. I think things have settled down for the best, however.

Irrespective, in January of 2022 I entered into a relationship with my partner, Kitty. Being polyamorous I am also still in a relationship (of almost 20 years!) with my other partner, Han. The two get along very well. They’ve even convinced me to start hate-watching the Twilight series, something I never thought I’d do. As the song says, ‘The things we do for love.’

New project: Hedgerow RPG

Somewhere in all of this I’ve started writing a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) called Hedgerow. It’s coming along very well and is almost – almost – at the playtesting phase. You can read a little more about it on my Ko-fi page. It will eventually be ready for release, most likely via itch.io, but I’m still considering my options. We’ll see how long it takes.

Further to the above, I’m learning how to illustrate. Specifically, as I’m disabled and very, very poor, I can’t afford to commission an artist for the Hedgerow core rule book – so I’m going to do it myself. I used to make visual art all the time, so the process is as much relearning as of learning from scratch, and an interesting process it is, too. I may post art updates here. We’ll see.

And next?

I don’t know. The world is a strange place right now. There’s a lot of fear, misinformation and hatred… but there’s also a lot of good, love and potential.

Try to be kind to others, and try to be kind to yourself. That’s what I’m focusing on.

Changes & Challenges

I have several unfinished drafts of blog posts here on Ink-Stained Worlds that I will almost certainly never publish.

Most of them attempt to put into words my feelings regarding the death of my mother and the unusual relationship with grief that I seemed to have developed following her passing.  Alas, I am not as eloquent as I would like, so I will quickly sum up the core of it:

I have not cried for my mother, and I do not expect to, since she died.  I am not upset that she is dead – at all.  I miss her fiercely, and I wish that I could discuss many things with her as once I did, but seeing the literal agony in which she lived the final months of her life, I am grateful for her death, because it has given her peace.

Jennifer Thornby

Jennifer Thornby

Grief counselling has never been something I have gelled with, but in my mother’s case I simply don’t feel the need.  I have closure here – or, at least, as much closure as anyone could wish to have upon the death of their mother.  I said my goodbyes.  She knew that I love her.  She is no longer in pain – and those things, for me, are enough.  Grief is a very personal process and I had a quiet but intense friendship with my mother that grew and deepened in the years leading up to her passing.  I appreciate that time.  I do not wish for more, exactly, because I would not wish more life on her without being able to assure her quality of life, and that was denied to her by her condition.

To wish more life on her simply so that I could talk to her some more would be selfishness of the highest order.  I would wish death upon the worst of Humanity before wishing upon them the ordeal through whish my mother passed – and she was the best human being I have ever met.

This post, as I am so wont to say, isn’t about that.  It’s been bugging me that I haven’t written the above clearly and succinctly, and unlike the former posts (which I wrote with the mindset that I’d maybe put them out there, if I liked the way they turned out), I do fully intend to publish this one.

So.  On to what this post is actually about. Continue reading

To Now, From Then

A Poem

Too long has passed, too many years are gone
Since someone who was loved has gone to lie,
No more to walk and laugh beneath the sky;
To never more set eyes upon the dawn.

The stardust called you back to it too soon
Beyond our temporary state of life;
You left behind so many filled with strife –
So many hearts beneath the sun and moon.

Too soon, too soon you left and went your way,
With many words unspoken ever more,
This broken heart with tears began to pour;
Too soon, too soon we met that fateful day.

Today my broken heart is company –
So many days have passed to now from then;
And though we are to never meet again
I know from pain and anguish you are free.

— Scott Thornby, 2015.06.10

Queermance Anthology vol 2 – Coming Soon!

Q2: Queermance Anthology, vol 2Earlier in the year I was fortunate enough to be able to submit a story to Q2, the Queermance Anthology (vol 2) by Clan Destine Press.

The good news: I was accepted!  My short story, Purple Forever, will be in the anthology.  As this is the first thing I’ll have had professionally published – and is the first thing I’ve submitted for professional publishing – I’m pretty excited.

The bad news: There isn’t any!  Well, there kind of is; I’m currently down with the flu, so I can’t attend the launch at the Hare Hole in Fitzroy, Friday 17th of April (ie. tomorrow).

Purple Forever is a short story of about 10,000 words that follows the story of Yvonne and Chrissy, a pair of women from Victoria, Australia who certainly know that the course of love never runs smoothly.

Clan Destine Press have collected a number of authors with varying experience, from well-known names to complete unknowns (such as myself).  It’s a humbling experience to be listed among them.

Q2 will be an excellent ebook.  My (admittedly biased but still quite sound) advice is to buy it, read it and then tell all your friends to do the same.

You can find Clan Destine Press at their website or on Facebook.  They also have a Twitter account, @clandestinepres, which you really should be following.

You can find details regarding Q2 on its product page.

NaNoWriMo 2014: The Aftermath

NaNoWriMo 2014: completed.

Verdict: I lost.

There are many reasons this happened, of course, and lots of excuses I could give – many of them relevant and valid.  but in the end it still comes down to one thing: I lost.  The real reason for losing is simple.

I didn’t keep writing.

But I did reach half the goal and I did finish up with a strong beginning of a novel that might, one day, be worth reading – and that’s more than I had before NaNo started.

Read on for more about why I failed and, much more importantly, what I’ve learned.

Continue reading

NaNoWriMo 2014 – The Lead-Up

NaNoWriMoSomething different is happening for me in the lead-up to NaNoWriMo¹ this year.

I’m not looking forward to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to do it, but the high-energy anticipation that gripped me in previous years is absent this time around.  In its place is a hollow dread, a nervousness, a feeling that I might just flub the whole thing.

There’s always a little of that and, I suspect, a lot more writers have it than they might care to admit.  There’s always the possibility that life will throw you a curveball and you’ll find yourself needing to abandon NaNoWriMo in favour of not having your life collapse around your ears.  I’m not talking about that.

What I’m talking about is more insidious.

Read on, if you care to…

Continue reading

NaNoWriMo 2013: After-Thoughts

book001The month has come and gone with surprising speed.  To be fair, though, that’s the nature of time.

As you’ll know if you read my previous post on the matter I’m a big fan of the (inter)National Novel Writing Month.  It’s a hard slog at times and serves to illustrate exactly how much life can get in the way of writing but it’s almost always a rewarding experience.  The benefits definitely, in my opinion, outweigh the disadvantages.

I can’t quite remember when I determined to go through with NaNoWriMo this year but I did, a fact that I’m glad of.

Here are my thoughts on this year’s effort.

Continue reading

Writing Exercise: The Rambler

book001Hello, folks!  It’s been a while since I posted.  I’ve been working on a few things.

One of the things I’ve been working on is refining my writing and working on ways to get past writer’s block.  Almost every writer get writer’s block and so I’ve decided to put up some writing exercises that I’ve been using.  If they’re popular enough I might continue to put more up so if you like this make sure to click the ‘Like’ button down the bottom of the page.

This writing exercise is called The Rambler.

Continue reading