Sharing is Caring!

As promised, I'm sharing what mischief I was up to in making a gift for my friend's birthday.

You may or may not recognize the hat from Dramatical Murder, specifically belonging to a character known as Noiz. I always feel odd when I admit I'm not a modern anime fan. I haven't watched anything that's come out in the past ten years, my entire influence in the style dating from between my freshman year of high school up to my mid-twenties. I simply stopped being an avid consumer and switched to being a creator. Likewise, I have never seen this anime, but anime costumes are still among the most inventive so they're great fodder for my creative pursuits still.

The crochet version, since I don't knit. I realize it is a ridiculously busy picture, but such is the nature of my sanctuary.

There is also another issue I face and a confession to be made: I absolutely suck at wrapping gifts. My friend Emily must have inherited the superhuman ability from her mom because she is amazing at it. In fact, most people I know are at least decent at it but my attempts look more like a hostage situation. Instead...

 My motto is 'If you can't wrap, rap.' In this case, I whip up some whimsical poetry to slap on the boxes.

Boxes, giftbags, shoving ribbons and stickers on things is my go-to for avoiding the failed origami I produce.

Now, baking, I can do baking! Baking and cooking are something of a superpower. My dad used to flip out because, even on boxed meals, I didn't follow the directions. After surprising the hell out of people that it was just my version of Hamburger Helper, even my dad adopted my way of bumping up the quick meals with some winging it.

And yes, cooking from scratch is not excluded. I'm definitely not one of those crock-pot chefs that congratulates themselves on their ability to swipe a recipe from social media.

So that's my gift-giving share! Feel free to swipe the idea whether wrapping is something you dread or not!

I love sharing so writing novels is always going to make me squirm with impatience. I'm very guarded about how I share my unpublished work. In any case, I want to offer up something a little different. Even though I started a short story on here that hangs in limbo for now, I am thinking of working on some short pieces branching off of UnNamed. Because I had once entertained trad-publishing it, I kept the word count low, but I really felt like I would have liked to stretch some things out a bit like I have been for UnSung. It's very difficult to sell agents and publishers on big manuscripts, which is one of the main reasons the first Harry Potter book was so small in comparison. Since I've decided this series needs creative control more than the industry standard offered, it was a real breath of fresh air being able to expand the idea without staring a word count. It grows or shrinks depending on the story's need, not the market.

So keep an eye out for a short story scene branching off of UnNamed. Might be a bit of a spoiler if you haven't read UnNamed, but I'm actually going to build these scenes around his life prior to events in the book so while you'll recognize the mention if you have read it, it doesn't actually overlap the book itself or spoil the main plots.