#got two commissions done yesterday so wanted to draw something fun today ^_^

[beastwhimsy]

friend challenged me to revamp the outfit on the left... ft. magus [:

[clarktooncrossing]

DUMPSTER DUDELZ III: Revenge of the Dumpster

HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW!

IT'S ME, CLARK!

Happy New Year, weirdos of the world! The last year might've been a mixed bag in most regards, but in terms of artwork I was riding a creative high. Like, holy crap, the amount of artwork posted is surprising. You better believe the goal is to keep that streak going well into 2025. What better way to start then looking back on what didn't make the cut in 2024? By now showcasing my leftover sketches in these compilations has become sortuv' a regular tradition. Not that you'll ever hear me complain about it. I hate seeing artwork go unused, plus it's fun seeing how my skills have improved over the last twelve months. So what awaits us in the dumpster?

(1) ABBY K. DABBY

Y'ever wonder why rabbits are considered sexy? Lola Bunny, Jessica Rabbit, Judy Hoppes, even Playboy loves dressing their models up as the small critters. Why is that? It was while pondering this, looking up artwork of Zatanna, and watching clips of Penn & Teller: Fool Us that this feisty sorceress came into mind. Meet Abby K. Dabby, the resident magical mistress of the Clarktooniverse. At the moment there's nothing there outside of a cool design, though my plan is to further fill out her backstory so she's more than just eye candy with a quirky name.

(2) BLOOD ON THE SADDLE

Disney fans everywhere rejoiced when Disney finally renovated the beloved Country Bear Jamboree in Orlando. Less so when the show finally opened and prioritized shoving tracks from the company's library down our ears in favor of maintaining the oddball humor the show's known for. Personally I just counted my blessings, especially considering the fates of Dinosaur and Muppet Vision 3*D. You could say D23 was a real disappointment. At the very least, I thought Big Al singing "Remember Me" from Coco was funny as ever. Oh Al, you are truly the bluest bear we've ever met. Never change, buddy!

(3) ROSIE STARDUST

This was quickly sketches after looking at a commission done by @zernna. Like a lot of my characters, Rosie looks better when drawn by somebody else. Regardless, the cosmic cutie is always fun to draw.

(4) JACKIE'S WARDROBE

Speaking of commissions, my buddy @burningthrucelluloid commissioned me to create a sweet picture featuring his two space characters, cosmonaut Jackie Valentine and wasp princess Exa. He left it up to me what the former should wear, thus several options were offered. The three presented here include the heroine's regular spacesuit, a sexy pair of space undies, and something more akin to what she wore before leaving Earth. In the end we decided on something fancier to better fit the romantic mood. Anybody interested in checking out the final result can click here.

(5) FREDDYS OF DIFFERENT LANDS

Along with Abby, Freddy Fox's walk through Whimsyland is the result of a failed Sketch BOOM. Or more specifically, one that never got finished. It could easily be finished now since nothing went wrong with its production. Still, I'd prefer just to scrap it and move on. Not without saving what's already been completed first. This depicts the theme park's mascot walking through each land with an appropriate attire to match. From left to right we have classic Freddy walking down Whimsy Warf, crossing into Cowboy Country, jaunting towards Jungle Junction, frolicking through Fantasy Forest, making his way into Monster Marsh, and finally trotting through Tomorrow Town. It's the last outfit I'm particularly proud of, calling back to the campier costumes parading through other parks. Let's hope a trip to Whimsyland is in our foreseeable future.

(6) AN-D SHARK (DOO DOO DA DOO DA DOO)

In case you missed yesterday's post, a Secret Santa was held on my Discord server this year and I got Void-Android Anybody doubting his present wasn't drawn by hand can now kiss dirt and eat my rubber! They can also check out the final product by clicking here.

(7) BAT BARNEY

@princessofDisney27 wanted me to check out Waiting for Santa was a part of this year's Christmas Specials Special. Obviously that review didn't get finished in time. That's a story for another time. For now, Hannah unlocked my purple-tinted nostalgia before sending me down a rabbit hole of odd finds on YouTube. Learning who Bob West and David Joyner were, seeing the dino rock an epic drum solo whenever not purse snatching, watching the theatrical movie a thousand times over, that tyrannosaur from Texas found a way back into my heart. It's the only explanation I have for this. Why Batman? Blame Barney, he encouraged my weird-ass imagination.

(8) HELP WANTED

Many tough decisions were made this year. Cutting 3K was one of them. The story of ERN-E and the Knights of the Square Table never came together quite the way I had hoped. So now the plan is to work certain elements into other stories. As we've established, throwing away ideas isn't my cup'a tea. Especially not when Candy Banger's ready to shoot me if she's not given a new job. Rest assured folks, this won't be the last you see of this android assassin.

(9) SO, NO HONEY?

Did you know that Popeye and Tintin enter the Public Domain this year? Along with several other Mickey Mouse shorts? Can't wait to see them all be turned into horror media produced by lazy douchebags. Yes, we get it, the joke is seeing these family friendly franchises going dark and disturbed. If we pretend it's funny will you stop telling the same, unoriginal joke? Regardless, I decided it'd be fun to include A.A. Milne's cast of beloved characters for Whimsyland as a nice parallel to certain other theme parks. Their colored sketch actually debuted earlier this year on my deviantART account. Hopefully you all love'm in black and white too. And here's hoping something more creative is made with these characters other than trashy slasher flicks.

(10) STEAMBOAT WILLIE

Did you know that Mickey and Minnie Mouse entered the Public Domain last year? Of course you did! You couldn't go anywhere without hearing about it, no doubt to Disney's dismay. Granted, it was only these characters as they appeared in Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy, and Gallopin Gaucho, but this was still big news in the world of animation. No longer could Mickey be locked away in the vault. Anybody was allowed to use the rodent as they see fit. Immediately I wondered what a Clarktoon version of him would look like. Designs are still being worked out, but as you can see, some liberties have been taken.

(11) TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART

Hey, anybody remember that eclipse that happened earlier this year? Wild times. Rosie certainly remembers it. This was the sketch that eventually became this picture:

(12) SUPER-DEE-DOOPER

Back in my early years, Barney was all I bothered drawing. Or at least what could charitably be considered a crude approximation of the character. Honestly, he looked more like a stop sign wedged into the top of a potato. Gimme a break, I had yet to refine my artistic skills. Years later it was decided to see if my skills really had improved at all. The results more than speak for themselves. Although Little Clark is a lot taller than he ott'a be. Gimme a break, this was drawn at 2 AM while watching Expedition Theme Park's video on the Universal stage show. For the record, that show would've been the only reason Little Clark would've preferred a trip to that park over Disney World. Nothing you tell me could convince me that wouldn't have been the greatest hug of all time!

(13) TEENAGE MUTANT FREELANCE POLICE

deviantART making dumbass decisions? Stop the presses! By now I think it's safe to say we've become accustomed to the media sharing site changing things for the worse. This includes removing sta.sh from the platform. It was a convenient place to store your art until it was time for posting. My Studio isn't terrible, but it pales in comparison to its predecessor. At least it's not frustratingly redundant like the updated messaging system. Nope, still not over that. Still, seeing as sta.sh was about to get the ax, I elected to remove any artwork still lingering there. Included was this sketch from 2014 featuring a Ninja Turtle from the original Mirage comics meeting Sam and Max of the Freelance Police. You could say it was oddly fitting considering both started out as independent books with odd senses of humor. Though it's up to you to decide who's crazier; a Mirage Turtle or Max?

(14) SANTA'S BUDDY, THE ICE CREAM BUNNY

Suddenly, a siren starts to wail! And you'll never guess who's coming down the trail! Or will you? Meet the Ice Cream Bunny, star of 1972's Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny. It's a hilariously awful Holiday feature filmed at the defunct Pirate's World theme park, a precursor to Walt Disney World. Many factors led to its downfall, one of them being pictures produced on the cheap at their property. This is made especially evident by the lackluster costume made for the titular rabbit. Most folks find him incredibly creepy. I am not most folks, then again clowns don't scare me out either. People are weird. Oddities like that aside, here's my attempt at making the character cute. Why not? He's also public domain! How else would you explain all the times Rifftrax tore this movie apart?

(15) EASTER BUMPER

Less creepy are the lagomorphs surrounding Bumper. @foxhatart has tried convincing me to sell Bumper stickers before and this was my attempt at making them. Granted this sketch is still useable, but like the aforementioned BOOM, it's better to start fresh. Still, you lot would kill me if something this cute went to waste.

(16) WANDA ZIGGY

Meet Wanda, wife to alien grease monkey and Clarksburg's resident cinephile, Wonder Ziggy. His design was based on Robot Monster from the similarly named movie. Wanda was based on Virginia Leith as she appeared in The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Originally my exposure to this movie came in the form of the Whose Line game Film Dub, where the cast basically pulls an MST3K by providing their own commentary over footage of public domain B-Movies. Never mess with a winning formula, folks. Even back then, the image of this hauntingly gorgeous woman's head kept alive on a mad scientist's table stuck with me. All of that was before I discovered the bonkers plot of the movie. In this story, the head doesn't die, Ziggy saving her and the two sparking a romance. She comes off as cold and detached only because of how her last marriage handled her. Really she loves Ziggy and is just laser focused. Fingers crossed I can do a full-fledged color picture of the oddball couple soon.

(17) BUMPER & BUTTERFLIES

Yet another remnant from a failed Sketch BOOM, albeit a different one. There's not really much to say here, it's simply another excuse for Bumper to look cute.

(18) WONDER ZIGGY & PIZZA MONSTER

Speaking of Wonder Ziggy, here he is alongside the always hungry Pizza Monster. Made these with the intention to use'm for something Christmas relayed. Obviously that didn't happen. Both ended up looking better than expected, so expect to see them again in the future.

(19) THE ORIGINAL XENA

Turns out 2024 marked a major milestone in the Clarktooniverse. Around ten years ago, I decided to finally check out the Alien franchise. Like most things horror, exposure began slowly by first checking out Markiplier's playthrough of Isolation. Seeing how passionate he was for this freaky franchise led me to finally watching the movies, the first two being excellent masterpieces rightfully loved by audiences. We don't have to discuss the sequels. Point is, my obsession with xenomorphs quickly grew. For some reason I wondered what would happen if my best buddy Crocie came into contact with one. Cue this crude sketch of a xenodile which eventually became the basis for Xena. Yes folks, Croc's daughter turned 10 last year. Happy birthday, kiddo! Here's to 10 more years of absurd adventures!

(20) MALEFIDOT

I know you, I waltzed with you once upon a dream. Or rather, once upon an absurd suggestion by @burningthrucelluloid. Couldn't tell you how exactly this idea came to be, other than it combines my favorite character from Steven Universe with my favorite Disney villain. Like I said; weird-ass imagination. XD

(21) CONFUSED COW

No doubt this was the look on Jim Cummings's face when Mr-Herp-Derp asked him to sign my Supercow pic at Comic Con this year.

(22) APES TOGETHER STRONG

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was all my mind could focus on back in 2014. Rise was already a fantastic film when its sequel surpassed every expectation. And then some! The fact that Andy Serkis was never nominated for an Oscar is a sign that humanity really is screwed. If nothing else, it's leagues better than this year's Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which felt like a soulless retread of themes found in prior entries. Still, I'm not here to bash on newer sequels. For now this was yet another drawing from 19 year old Clark rescued from sta.sh.

(23) TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA BUMPER

Ninja Turtles turned 40 last year. By now it's safe to say their teenage years are long gone. My wish was to draw some spectacular piece celebrating the occasion. This was the closest I got. Ah well, maybe when the Turtles are 50.

(24) ZOMBEAGLE

Rounding things out is this psychotic pooch plush toy for a yuletide one shot held during December. Years of Alec badgering me to give Dungeon Mastering a try, I set up a short seasonal story loosely based on Jingle All the Way for my friends. On the final week before Christmas, everybody and their grandmother is out looking for the Holiday's hottest toy, Zombeagle. Whiny parents forced it's recall back in the 90s before vit became viral on ClockFace. Now our players must fight to see who leaves Barney's Toy Box with their prize. Said players include Alec as the cyborg goblin Vrellunk, @Foxhatart playing her ponysona Autumn Scribble, @JetProject portraying the multiversal menace Pic Shell, @Mr-Herp-Derp dealing damage as the hyper-evolved dino Stokes, and @princessofDisney27 thinking outside the box with her magical princess turned mother Heather Heartland. In the end, Fox won the battle but Hannah left with the toy. All got a happy ending, myself included. Plans are already set out for a sequel and a full-length campaign, though that's a discussion for later this year...

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

BlueSky || Cara || deviantART || tumblr

[theloneliestshipper]

I don't always do collaborations but when I do it's an utterly self-indulgent crossover of two Star Wars properties that have absolutely no reason to overlap and a potential audience of about five people. Also I do it with @nyelung.

AO3 Link

And never kick the ball! Rated T

“... Hutts don’t have feet!” The final words of Baroness Deathmark echo through the arena. Having heard the introduction a few dozen times or more in the last year alone, Boba could say it with her if he were in the mood. He’s not.

They’ve changed the arena up for the season. There’s only so many ways that the Nar Shaddaa Huttball arena can be changed but apparently they went all out this time and rearranged a significant portion of the walkways and traps. He can make out something that looks suspiciously like a series of trapdoors surrounding the mag-ball’s centre spot, undoubtedly hiding some nasty surprises. Well, since Fennec managed to draw Djarin in as the team captain he’s not too worried that one of their team will find out what’s beneath those trapdoors the hard way.

Two minutes into the game Boba is scowling inside his helmet - not an unusual occurrence if the Quesh Rotworms were to be asked. He came aboard as a coach last year, when there were children’s teams on Tatooine who could play better so they had seen it a lot.

“It’s nice that for once it’s not our players getting maimed,” Fennec comments. “It was getting hard to find new ones.

Huttball is one of the most brutal semi-legal sports in the galaxy and even though all players are fully armoured - part of the reason why the sport is so popular in the Mandalorian sector - and killing during the game has been forbidden since the Cold War, injuries or even crippledom aren’t uncommon because the players are also armed to the teeth. That’s what the Frogdog wearing the number seven just found out the hard way when Djarin and Aelto perfectly executed a manoeuvre to take the ball from him.

Baroness Deathmark on the other hand should avoid dark alleys tonight since the ban on killing did not apply to the way she verbally tore Frogdog Seven apart with her remarks. The handsigns he throws in the direction of the commentator box are basically a promise to hunt her down and kill her slowly and painfully. At least that’s what they mean in Mandalorian space and that’s what has Boba scowling. Why promise the commentator utterly brutal torture when it was Djarin and Aelto who maimed him?

It’s not his problem, Boba reminds himself and concentrates on giving Djarin reports on the Frogdog team’s movements. If Baroness Deathmark earns another deathmark to her name, it’s nothing he has to worry about.

In the end, Boba doesn’t have to feel too bad about the Rotworm’s performance even though they took quite the beating and lost by two points against the Frogdogs. Baroness Deathmark’s final comment is just as cutting as the spikes Tika fell on in the second half. They’re still stitching all the muscles and tendons back together in the med-area but Tika will probably never play again.

Still, just one player permanently out of commission and eight points scored versus ten lost is much better than the Rotworms have managed in decades. Overall Boba is quite content. “Do you think they serve Spotchka here?”

Fennec raises one brow. “Do you mean: Do they serve affordable Spotchka here that’s not actually engine grease? No idea, let’s find out.”

___

The commentator booth is quiet now. Leia takes a second to let her head fall back and to roll the stiffness out of her neck. When she turns her chair around, the event producer Lando Calrissian is standing in the doorway, his headset still on. “Nice work today,” he says, covering the mic with his hand. “You really live up to your name.”

“Let them try it,” Leia scoffs as she picks up her satchel and jacket. “If I had a credit for every huttballer who threatened to kill me I could retire yesterday. And anyway, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t blatantly obvious to every being in the stands.”

“Still, I’d watch your back while you’re on Nar Shaddaa. And listen, my buddy Han is in town this weekend. Why don’t you let me set you up?”

“I’m busy next weekend.”

“Sure you are. Where are you going now? Home to your tooka and the latest episode of Sith Mansions?”

“For your information I’m going to a cantina. To meet someone.”

The fact that she doesn’t yet know who she’s going to meet doesn’t seem important. She might be a farm girl from Anchorhead, but she’s never had any trouble getting someone to pay for her drinks. Maybe she’ll get really lucky and it’ll even be someone who isn’t a spicer, slicer, smuggler or assassin. That would be a nice change of pace.

The Slippery Slope cantina is crowded with fans. Some of the Frogdog and Rotworm players are there for their contract-mandated mingling. As usual the Mandalorian players keep their distinctive helmets on for the personal holos their fans will want and to protect their privacy.

She passes by a knot of fans in Frogdog colors, several different languages conversing in varying tones of outrage. She hears “the Baroness” and smiles to herself as she finds a seat at the bar. She doesn’t need a helmet to keep people from recognizing her face. It’s her voice they know...and sometimes despise.

There’s a man two seats down wearing Mandalorian armor, but it’s not painted with team colors. He’s a fan, maybe. His helmet is resting out of sight beneath the bar while he nurses a glass of Spotchka. Spotchka sounds pretty good, actually.

He glances in her direction, but there’s no shift in body language, no smile. Shame. He’s a good-looking man and probably has a very nice smile. Leia signals the bartender and nods in his direction. “I’ll have whatever he’s having.”

That catches his attention, if briefly. He lifts his glass in a silent salute, one eyebrow slightly raised. Still no offer. Maybe he’s partnered. She lets her eyes drift down over his armor, applying what she’s learned from interviews with the Mandalorian huttball players. It looks like beskar to her.

The bartender delivers her Spotchka and her attention strays from the Mandalorian to any other likely candidates at the bar. Everyone is talking about the match.

“She’s dead,” a heated voice rises behind her, but not addressed to her. “Who does she think she is? That play was bullshit. You know it, I know it. There was nothing he could have done.”

Leia doesn’t have to turn around to know that the person speaking is wearing Frogdog yellow. They can whine about it all they want, but their player had at least two opportunities to pass before the Rotworms took him out.

Some players want all the glory. That’s not her fault.

“She had no right to tear into him like that. No wonder everyone hates her.”

“It’s her fucking job.” The unexpected defense comes from the Mandalorian sitting two seats down. He’s turned his chair to face the yellow-clad group, and there’s an unmistakable challenge in his low tone. “If your player did his, you wouldn’t have lost him two minutes in.”

The man who was speaking turned a startling shade of purple. Almost Rotworm purple. “Who asked you?”

“It’s a public place. If you want to have a private conversation I suggest you go home.” It’s not a suggestion. The Mandalorian makes that clear by standing up.

“You can go to hell! You and that fucking bitch-”

“Did someone say my name?” Suddenly there’s a woman standing between them, and Leia recognizes her instantly. Fennec Shand. Her iconic steely gaze is now fixed on the outraged fan. “You want to go home.”

In spite of the clamor around them there’s a silence and stillness that makes the threat implicit. The fan bares his teeth in a snarl before turning to go. Some of his friends leave with him and the rest drift away.

Fennec’s head tips toward the bartender. “Her drink is on me.” She winks at Leia before walking away. Maybe she’s more recognizable than she thought.

“Well. That was exciting,” she says, more to herself, but the Mandalorian nods as he reclaims his seat.

“You know Fennec?”

“Just by reputation.” She takes a quick sip of her paid-for drink. “That’s definitely the first time a huttball coach has bought me a drink.”

“Your lucky night.” The corner of his mouth curves up just enough to make Leia feel validated. A very nice smile indeed.

“And she’s a legend, obviously. It’s a shame she’s stuck holding up the Rotworms by herself.”

His smile hardens, just a little. “Is it?”

“There’s gotta be a dozen better teams who would be delighted to have her. And the Rotworms might be better than they were a year ago, but their offense is still half-awake at best and I heard her defense coach only got the job because his daddy rules Mandalore.”

“You believe everything you hear?”

“No, but I kind of have to keep my ear to the ground. Like you said, it’s my fucking job.”

“You’re Baroness Deathmark.” He says it with disbelief. “That’s why-” He directs a look of annoyance at the place where Fennec Shand vanished into the crowd.

“My friends call me ‘Leia.’” She leans forward, resting her chin on her hand. “I don’t think I got your name.”

For a moment the Mandalorian hesitates. Then there’s a shift in his posture, a slight relaxing of his shoulders and Leia’s willing to bet that that twitch in his face could become an actual playful smile. “Why don’t you tell me? Since it’s your job to know everything.”

It’s a challenge that makes her sit up. He’s someone connected, then. A promoter or a staff member. That explains how he knows Fennec. “Okay,” she says, intrigued. This could be fun. “Where did you grow up?”

“Kamino. What about you?”

She’s never heard of it. No help there. “Tatooine. My local team was the Anchorhead Womp Rats.”

“Did you play?”

“I’m supposed to be the one asking the questions,” she reminds him. “Did you play?”

“Yes. For the Skullhunters of Mandalore.”

“Fenn Shysa’s team?”

His head tilts to one side. “How do you know Fenn?”

“Everyone knows Fenn. Are you single?”

“You think that will help you figure it out?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Maybe I just want to know.”

“Yes. I’m single. You?”

“Yes.” She pauses to take a sip of Spotchka. “I wanted to play, but Uncle Owen wouldn’t let me. Too violent. I tried telling him that it wasn’t like the old days where entire teams could be massacred in a match, but for some reason he didn’t find that convincing.”

He nods in agreement. “It used to be a rite of passage in Mando culture. Now it’s just sports.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic for someone hanging out with Fennec Shand.” For a short moment Leia entertains the question whether he resents the no-killing-part or Huttball itself.

He shrugs. “There’s better sports.”

She hates to admit it, but she’s stumped. He knows the game but doesn’t particularly seem to like it. He can handle himself in a confrontation but it’s not as if the legendary Fennec Shand needs a bodyguard. Is it possible that someone actually hired a Mandalorian to take out Baroness Deathmark? But no, his surprise about her identity had been genuine. “Okay, final question. Why are you here?”

“Don’t quote me on this… nah, forget it.”

Oh, so it’s a story. “Come on. Entertain a lady.”

It’s clear that he’s tempted, calculating loss of face versus the chance to win her over for wherever this flirtation is going. Leia’s got a few suggestions already lined up in her mind. With an inaudible sigh he comes to a decision. “Dad kept nagging me to make connections beyond bounty hunting and Huttball is a lucrative enough business. It could be worse.”

Now there’s a hint. “So your father is…?”

“Some might say he rules Mandalore.” He gives her a quick smirk before finishing off his drink.

It all adds up quickly in her head, his history as a player on Mandalore, his knowledge of the game and his connection to Fennec Shand. She sets her glass down hastily in case she needs to make a very quick exit.

“You asked for my name,” he says, drawing it out with the ruthlessness of a professional Huttball defensive coach. “It’s Boba Fett. And for the record, that’s not how I got the job.”

As he speaks he stands and removes his helmet from the shelf under the bar and Leia recognizes it immediately. For one thing, it has the Rotworm logo painted on the side. She couldn’t say a word now even if she tried, but when Boba Fett turns to face her, it’s with a smile.

“I’m sure you have more opinions on what my team did wrong. Maybe you’d like to tell them to me over dinner.”

“I do,” she manages. “Especially about your team’s inability to follow through.” Feeling a little bit daring, Leia leans in to make her intentions perfectly clear. “What about dinner at my place?”

[wizardessheart-sideb]

[Image ID: A chapter image done in the style of Wizardess Heart. A large, off-white imagine with a guy on it. He’s wearing a dark gray uniform. There’s a lavender bar over him that reads “Tsukasa Kuze.” The rest of the text reads “Main Story” and “Chapter 7: The Love Holiday” /End ID]

Chapter summary: The Love Holiday comes out of nowhere and Tsukasa’s sick from class. I hope he’s feeling okay...

I sat in our homeroom, waiting for Tsukasa to get to class. The atmosphere in class was strange. Lots of people were writing Magic Notes to friends and loved ones, I assumed, and a few were on their phones, talking to their significant others. It felt extra lonely without him to talk to. Maybe it was just that weird sort of melancholy that happens when the Love Holiday comes around or maybe I’ve gotten so used to being with Tsukasa, but there was an ache inside of me. I just wanted to see him. Especially considering how he wasn’t feeling well yesterday.

The events from yesterday flooded my mind and again, my cheeks flushed a bit. The door to the classroom opened and I stood up a bit straighter. It was just Fandamilia, a small sack over her shoulders.

“Hi everyone! Happy Love Holiday!” she called out cheerfully. Only Clive, Viggo, and I responded to her.

“What’s in the bag, Millie?” Viggo asked, lazily pointing to it.

“I made special cards for everyone in the Night Class! I spent all day working on them!”

She started handing them out to everyone. A few people murmured thanks, but most just quietly accepted them. She got to us and her grin widened even more. I could see the dark circles under her eyes. “I made you guys special ones since you’re my best friends!” Fandamilia handed us three cards much larger than the other ones. Mine was coated in glitter and in surprisingly clean, elegant writing, the words “Thank you for being a great friend!” adorned the front.

“This is so sweet. Thank you,” I told her.

“You’re welcome! It’s the least I can do for you guys!” she replied.

“You’re so sentimental,” Viggo said with an eye roll. But even I could see the ghost of a smile on his face. And how he carefully tucked the card into his notebook.

“Thank you, Fandamilia,” Clive said, holding his own card. She beamed as she took her usual spot. I glanced over at his. A surprisingly well-done inky sketch adorned the front of it.

“Did you draw that?” I asked her.

“No, I commissioned a friend to draw it. I personalized everyone’s cards!” she explained. She pulled a few out of her sack. “I made some make up doodles on Isabelle’s, a Magic Board Game for Matthew, some demonology stuff for Aika and Dorian’s cards, that sort of thing.”

“Demonology?” Clive cocked an eyebrow at her and Viggo melodramatically slumped his shoulders.

“They’re super into demons. I thought everyone knew that,” Fandamilia frowned. “Do you think that’s too weird to put on a Love Holiday card?”

“Yes,” Viggo responded bluntly.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I reassured her. “Uh, off topic, but when were heading over here, did you see Tsukasa at all?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m kind of surprised he’s not here yet. He’s always on time,” she answered and my stomach dropped.

“Oh, okay. Thanks anyway.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here soon!” she tried to reassure me. But the bell rang and the only person to come into our class was Prefect Nox. For some reason, I couldn’t get the sinking feeling out of my stomach. Why wasn’t Tsukasa in class today? Was he feeling even worse? Was he okay?

---

“Hey, come over here for a moment,” Rex called to me, motioning for me to come to the podium. The final bell had just rung and students were even faster to leave class than normal. I quickly got my stuff together and went over to Prefect Rex. “Is Tsukasa feeling all right?” he asked.

“I don’t know. He wasn’t feeling good yesterday and I wasn’t able to check on him during lunch today,” I replied.

“That’s too bad,” Rex lamented. “Could you go take his make-up work to him?”

“Of course.”

“Great. Thank you.” He handed over some paperwork and I slipped it into my backpack. We said goodbye and I started a beeline for the dorms. For some reason, the walk seemed so much longer, even though I was hurrying. Maybe I was just worrying too much. Maybe it was stress. I just wanna see if Tsukasa’s okay.

As soon as I got in the dorm building, I saw Dorian, Aika, and Isabelle in the foyer. Aika looked like a corpse and Isabelle, although not as drastic, looked downright ghoulish.

“I didn’t know today was Halloween,” I commented. Aika just laughed.

“There you are! What’re your plans for today?” she asked me.

“My plans? I’m just going to go check on Tsukasa and then study, I guess. Why?”

“Well, every year on the Love Holiday, Rex and Nox ask me to pretend to be a ghost to scare Day Class students away from our turf. Apparently, fooling around in graveyards is very popular,” she explained, crinkling her nose in disgust at the last bit.

“We were thinking this would be an all-hands-on-deck operation,” Dorian elaborated. “But if you’re going to be spending tonight with Tsukasa, you don’t have to help.”

“I… Uh, I don’t know how to unpack this.” I didn’t even know where to start. People trying to go to pound town in a GRAVEYARD?! Dressing up as ghosts to scare them away?!

“The graveyard stuff or us pretending to be ghosts?” Isabelle was visibly fighting back laughter. “It’s really only Aika that pretends to do it since her magic is harder for people to detect and she can pull out all the stops. We’ll step in if needed.”

“No, I don’t want them to hang out with us if they’re planning on seeing Tsukasa. You two have fun, all right,” Aika smiled. I was left spluttering as she winked and moved passed me. Dorian smirked and Isabelle just gave me a little wave and told me she’d see me later. They’re an interesting bunch. I guess I should make more of an effort to spend time with them.

Taking my chance, I hurried into the elevator and up to Tsukasa’s floor. I finally got to Tsukasa’s dorm room and immediately knocked on the door.

“Tsukasa, it’s me. Can I come in?” I asked.

“Of course!” He sounded more chipper than yesterday. Maybe he just stayed home today as a precaution? Or he was just skipping? The locked clicked as the door swung open. Tsukasa was propped up in bed, still in his pajamas. He looked paler than he did yesterday.

“Are you okay?!” I dropped my things and shut the door, hurrying over to him.

“I’m just feeling a bit under the weather, is all,” he told me.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. How are you feeling right now?”

“I’m fine…” The stern look on my face made the fake smile slip from his face. Tsukasa sighed. “Okay, I’m feeling pretty bad.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just feeling dizzy and weak. And I have a bit of a headache today.” Poor thing.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“It’s fine. I took some pain medication and hopefully that kicks in soon.”

“I hope it does too. I can go, if you’d like to get some rest,” I offered. I didn’t want to go, but if it helped him rest up and get better, I’d do it. It was probably the only thing I could do for him right now.

“No, I like you being here.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to keep you from resting up.”

“No, I’d rather have you here. You always make me feel better,” he admitted sheepishly, a slight grin on his lips. Cute my heart melting into a puddle. A large, goofy smile tried to worm its way onto my face, but I did my best not to smile too goofy.

“I’m happy to hear that,” I replied. There was a beat and Rex randomly popped into my mind. Right! The make-up work. “By the way, I brought your make-up work for you. Where do you want it?”

“On my desk is fine, thank you,” he said.

I started going through my bag, placing my things on the floor to get to his packet. I really needed to stop shoving my things into my bag willy-nilly. But I guess that was a project for later. I felt Tsukasa’s eyes on me as I piled more and more things on the ground until I hit pay dirt.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the pile of things I’d pulled out.

“The card? It’s from Fandamilia. She gave everyone cards today. You can read it if you want.” I didn’t wait for an answer, handing it over to him as I got up. His lavender eyes quickly glanced over it. “I’m sorry I didn’t make you anything for today. It totally slipped my mind the Love Holiday was even coming up. I’ve been so preoccupied on studying.”

“No, you don’t have to apologize for anything. I guess I was just surprised you got one too. For a moment I thought she had a crush on me,” her laughed. Something inside me twinged. “She had Viggo deliver mine to me.”

“Yeah, Clive, Viggo, and I helped her pass them out during lunch, which is why I didn’t come. She made one for everyone in the Night Class,” I told him.

“She’s a kind girl.” Again, deep inside me, I felt a twinge of irritation.  “But…” His voice trailed off.

“Hm? What is it?” I inquired. He just shook his head.

“No, it’s nothing.”

“I won’t make you tell me, but I’d like to hear it.” We made a promise to be more open with each other. Maybe he just needed a little push. I placed his work on his desk and when I turned around to face him, his face was bright red.

“I… I was just worried someone else had given you a Love Holiday card,” he stammered, falling over his words.

“Oh, it’s no big deal! Some people give those cards to their friends and stuff, but it’s really fifty-fifty, so you don’t have to worry about me feeling owed something from you, or something,” I explained. This must be his first Love Holiday. Part of me felt bad if he was worried about giving me anything. Tsukasa’s eyes glanced to his blankets, face even redder than it had been a moment ago.

“It’s not that… I was just worried that it was a romantic card,” he mumbled.

“‘Romantic?’ Why would you worry… Oh!” The butterflies in my stomach started fluttering around in a frenzy and my heart started pounding in my chest. I could feel my face burning from the inside out.

“I-I-I uh… You don’t have to worry about anyone else,” I stammered. His face lit up.

“I don’t? Do you like me too?”

“I do.” Electric excitement was flowing through my veins and I was surprised that I even managed to speak.

“You do? … Oh, I’m so relieved.” He relaxed and I couldn’t help but giggle at his exaggerated movements.

“I was so worried you only saw me as a friend,” he admitted. I shook my head and reached out to grab his hand.

“I like you a lot, Tsukasa. I want to be your partner.”

“And I want to be your boyfriend.”

Even with all the jittery excitement and happiness flooding my body, there was just a smidgen of embarrassment. Tsukasa gave me that warm smile I’d come to love. He reached his hand out and I took it. Wordlessly, he moved over so I could lay beside him. We snuggled up together, his arm around my shoulder and my arm across his chest. We laid there, just basking in each other. Although my racing heart started to slow down, the giddiness inside me kept going and going.

This was a new chapter for us, and I was beyond excited to start it with him by my side as my boyfriend.

[leomitchellart]

I was hoping to have a picture done in time for Earth Day today, but recent events meant that just wasn't happening.

First, and most important of all, was one of my dearest friends being hospitalised after a mild stroke. I found out late after he’d been admitted, because I hadn’t heard from him, so I called my old neighbours to see if everything was alright. So once I heard, for two days straight I felt like I was stuck in this hellish limbo. Just devastated and worried. The idea of him having a stroke is already harrowing enough, but thinking about the affects afterwards, wondering how bad it is AND being in a hospital during a global pandemic - I was struggling to cope. It wasn't until yesterday, when I got a call from his hospital bed, that I got to speak to him and get some updates straight from him. I cannot describe the level of joy I felt to hear his voice again after all that kind of misery. Even better to hear that he’s doing really well and on the mend. I was practically skipping as I went to the shops to pick up groceries for myself and him. I said it before, and I’ll say it here; All I want for my birthday, this Sunday, more than anything else in the world, is for him to recover and to be out of hospital, safe and sound. 

Secondly, as II’ve been working on a couple recent pieces, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m starting to struggle and enjoy the process less and less. I can’t just do a quick doodle where anything is in the right place. I struggled with the face for one figure over and over again. Not to mention, with one avatar commission I’m on with, I was just about to begin inking until I realised “No, this isn't good enough” and I made the choice to scrap it entirely and start again.

It’s made me think that I have far more weaknesses as an artist than I realised. I need to be more disciplined and do more studies and practices. Build-up better habits and muscle memory. The more i do those, the easier it will be for me to just draw. Just draw without panic of stress. ‘Cos I’ve gotten to the stage where I can’t even sketch or draw just for fun. I’ve started to miss the days when I was a teenager, when I could just draw and draw because it made me happy and I could just create things I couldn't get anywhere else. The zest that came with my inspirations, comics and drawing. Perhaps now could be a good time to look back at some old inspirations? I suppose with this pandemic, now’s a good a time as any to dedicate more time just to studying between main pieces. 

Speaking of which: With said pandemic, some of my favourite online art teachers have put a lot of their brush sets and tutorials on sale. I already purchased a few from Aaron Blaise’s website and I’d love to finally purchase some of Istebrak’s brushes and PortraitStudio. I recon they’ll a long way in helping me improve.

So with this Earth Day image, I realised that there’s no way I could get it done in time. I just need to take my time with the image and publish it when it’s ready. Same with some other pieces I’m planning. Just do them and not get too stressed about having them done on certain dates. ‘Cos I have screwed myself over many times and released bad images by doing that. I’ll take my time with this piece, make sure it’s something I can be proud of. Granted, I know it’s a mistake for me to do these “masterpieces” while I’m still learning and studying. But I’m already committed to the ideas I have in mind. I just need to use my time in between major pieces more wisely. 

[sofreakinmanyfandoms]

November 15 - The Chibi Falcon

Halfway through November! This one’s a little short because I’m ahead on my word count and my hands hurt.

Word count: 1360

Warnings: Other than totally BSing the details of this thing? None.

Pairing: Sam Wilson X Reader

By the time the twelfth person had asked you where the “lovely violinist” who used to sit on your corner had gone, you were ready for the day to be over, but thanks to years of practice you managed to keep on smiling. A number of them actually sat down for you to caricatures of them, so it was still a profitable morning.

It had been your spot long before it was the violinist’s, but people seemed to have short memories. You’d allowed your cousin to busk in your normal spot during her summer break, while you’d worked a temporary but well-paying internship. Now her school had started back up again, and you were back to doing caricatures and portraits for tourists.

“Hey there, stranger. I missed you over the summer. Where have you been?”

At the familiar voice, you looked up and smiled. No matter what his reputation was to the rest of the world, you knew Tony Stark as the man who always stopped by after visiting the nearby coffee shop and dropped you a tip, even when he didn’t have time to sit for a picture. Today he was joined by his friend Colonel Rhodes and two others you didn’t recognize.

“Hello, Tony,” you replied cheerfully. “Hi, Colonel Rhodes. I let my cousin take my spot for the summer while I did that design internship you recommended me for.”

“Knew I was shooting myself in the foot with that letter,” he teased. “Got time for a couple of portraits? I’m showing some friends my favorite parts of the city, and we couldn’t take the tour without stopping by the best  caricature artist in town.”

“I’ve always got time for Iron Man and company,” you said with a wink. “Who’s first?”

“After you, Cap,” one of them said when Tony looked at the two you didn’t know.

The blond sat down on the milk crate you had for people who wanted portraits and the others settled on a nearby bench. You went over your different styles, finding out what he wanted, and started in with your sketch.

“Add color,” Tony told you, coming up as you started your first few lines. Before the blond could protest, he added, “I’m buying, Capsicle, so no arguments. I like supporting my friends.” He patted you on the shoulder and returned to his seat.

You started a conversation with your subject to help him relax, and it didn’t take long for you to figure out that he was Captain America. (“Please, just call me Steve.”) Going off what you knew about the Avengers, that meant the other man you hadn’t met before was probably Sam Wilson, the Falcon. You silently thanked your experience with famous people wanting their picture drawn for helping you stay relaxed and friendly instead of fangirling all over the heroes.

Even with color, the bust portrait you did of Steve only took you twenty minutes. He was impressed with your speed, and you let him know that the amount of practice you’d had doing portraits over the years had actually made it hard to slow down.

“Is it possible to get a picture in color for a black guy?” Sam joked as he flopped down on the crate.

You flashed him a smile and gestured to the display board behind you. “You’ve got a great skin tone, so it wouldn’t be hard at all. Have you decided which style you like?”

“What’s this style called?” he asked, leaning forward and pointing to a selection of miniature Avengers you’d drawn.

“Chibi. That what you want?”

“Yeah, but can you do me in my gear?” He was studying the tiny Falcon closely with an expression off pure delight. “Or do you need to have something in front of you to draw it?”

“Your gear won’t be a problem,” you informed him. “Not if I’m drawing it chibi, anyway. If you wanted something detailed I would need to see it or work off a press photo.”

“Awesome!” He relaxed and brought one knee up, wrapping his hands around it and leaning back, balancing himself with a well-practiced ease. “Well, then, draw away!”

The two of you talked for the fifteen minutes it took you to draw and color your Falcon sketch (chibi drawings were always faster, even if you did the whole body). You found the conversation fun, and you both spent a good bit of it laughing.

“There you go,” you said, passing him your finished drawing, “one chibi Falcon.”

“You even drew Redwing!” he exclaimed, showing the drawing to his friends. “Look! I gotta say, Stark, this is the best stop we’ve had so far.”

You smiled up at Tony and Rhodes. “Did either of you want one while you’re here?”

Tony shot you a wink. “Pepper thinks I have enough Y/N street-side sketches, but I wouldn’t object to commissioning another painting.”

“Send me a description of what you’re looking for and I’ll get started. My schedule is fairly clear since I haven’t picked up any more design work since the internship.”

“Wasn’t the point of that to get you more design work?” Rhodes asked.

“Yes, but I cleared my schedule to focus on the work they gave me the last three months and it just ended yesterday.”

“Well, gentlemen, shall we be off?” Tony asked, waving for the group to follow and heading down the street. Sam, however, lingered instead of following immediately.

“Would it be alright for me to…?”

“Oh, give it here,” you said with a grin, grabbing his hand and using your pen to write your number across his wrist. “Call me sometime.”

He grinned back. “Absolutely.”

----------

“So, what brings a beautiful lady like yourself to a place like this?”

You turned to find Sam leaning in the doorway to the common room at the Avenger’s compound and broke into a smile. The two of you had been texting daily, but this was your first time seeing him in person since you’d drawn him.

“A rich genius bribed me with money in exchange for a service,” you teased, “or I’d never dream of hanging around such rabble.”

“You finished it, then?” Tony asked, sweeping into the room in his usual attention-catching manner.

You pulled the cloth off the canvas you had brought and displayed your work. “What do you think?”

Tony’s face lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Perfect, as I knew it would be if you made it.”

The canvas was a mass of color. You’d worked off press photos for the details and painted all the Avengers, family portrait style, in their full costumes in front of a statue of the Avengers “A”.

“This is incredible,” Sam breathed, taking in the detail. “You painted this?”

“My talent does extend past drawing caricatures on a street corner,” you smirked. “I’ve done a few other large pieces for Tony over the years. You’ve probably seen them and never noticed.”

“I keep your work in the penthouse,” Tony corrected you. “This is the first painting of yours he’s seen.”

“You included Bucky,” Sam observed, studying the painting closely. “We haven’t found him yet, though.”

You shrugged. “I worked off news footage as best I could for his gear and historical photos for his face. I thought Steve might appreciate having him included.”

“It’s perfect,” Tony declared. “He’ll be joining us once you’ve found him if he wants to, and maybe this will help him realize he’s welcome.”

Tony supervised as Happy took the painting to settle it in its new home location. Sam again hung back to talk to you.

“You really are incredible,” he said, taking your hand. “I hope you know that. Are you free tomorrow night?”

“That depends,” you said with a blush. “Did you have something in mind?”

“Have dinner with me? There’s a barbecue place off 3rd and 73rd if you like that sort of thing.”

“I love that sort of thing.” You slipped your hand from his and grabbed your coat. “What time?”

“Pick you up at 6?”

“It’s a date.” You planted a kiss on his cheek on your way to the door. “See you then, soldier."

[romanoartsless]

Hey so I gotta write this quick so here’s a three chapter update because why not!

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Chapter 53

“I miss it.”

Victor got up off the chair and walked over to where Esther stood at the window. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders when he got to her. “Esther,” he said as he played with her chocolate braid, “Novak was never kind to you. It doesn’t deserve you.”

“I still miss it,” she almost whimpered as she pushed away from his touch. “It was my home for nineteen years, how could I not miss it?”

“But Esther, you have me now.”

“And I appreciate your help with Caterina, but I still miss it.” Tears welled up in her black eyes, her voice trembling as she spoke. “I miss my brother, I miss my sisters, I miss my friends, and I- I miss my fiance.”

“He never deserved you.”

“We were going to get married, we were going to start a family. Him, me, and Caterina. We could’ve had more kids. I wanted three; two girls and a boy. I want to go back. I want to just go back and finally be Mrs.-”

“Esther! Esther. You have me. Me and you. Aren’t we family enough?”

She hesitated, almost as if she was afraid to answer. The urge to use her compulsion to make his interrogation stop was strong inside her. She didn’t act on them, however. Victor was her friend, he’d know when he crossed the line. But he didn’t seem to get the memo. “I care about you Victor, but it’s not the same. Caterina deserves a family.”

“She has you.”

“But Victor, she deserves her father.”

“Esther.” He pulled her in closer to him. Esther froze, but eventually eased with the thought of Victor understanding her boundaries. His hand brushed through the strands of hair not in her braid. “Aren’t we enough?”

Next thing she knew, Victor pulled her into a kiss. She wanted to push him away, but his grip on her was so tight she could barely move. The first time he’d kissed her she didn’t enjoy it and this time was no different. There was one problem. Esther missed a lover’s touch. She’d been practically alone for almost a year, only having Caterina for two months out of it and Victor for one. She closed her eyes and imagined he was someone he wasn’t- her fiance.

She pretended he was taller and the hair her fingers were bunched in was black instead of red. It made it easier for her just to sink into the embrace. His hands moved under her skirt and brushed against her skin, drawing closer and closer to her brassiere. Her mind screamed at her to pull away, but her body seemingly craved touch so much she simply gave way when he pulled the shirt over her head.

As his lips trailed down her neck and collarbone, she only thought about the other people who’d done it. Even as they were half naked in her bed, she felt like a body without a mind. She only missed Novak more. The bed she slept in, the man she lied next to, all of it.

After she’d let Victor have his way with her, she sat lifelessly in the bed. She wanted to use his sleeping state to her advantage and grab Caterina to run back to Novak, but as she wrote the letter explaining the things she wanted to do, she felt guilt build on her shoulders. Maybe Victor was right. Maybe the three of them were enough.

She bent down on the floor next to her bed and pried open the floorboard she made sure wasn’t quite in tact. She took the box out of the hole and opened it. With the letter in hand, she took out the envelope full of letters she’d never send and added it to it. Once it was sealed again, she laid it down back in the box, putting the silver chain over it to keep it in place.

When she closed the box, she stared at the intricate designs on the top a little longer. She remember buying it like it was yesterday. Her fingers traced along the letters CD before she put it back into the floor and locked the floorboard back on top.

Before crawling back into bed, she went into the adjacent room to look down at the baby in the crib. She brushed the back of her hand along her cheek, water welling up in her dark eyes. “I’m sorry, Caterina,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you everything when you’re older, I promise.”

Chapter 54

Lucky was what they called Jonathan Warren. The death of Victor Delikov was sudden enough as it was, but Jonathan’s abandonment only twisted the knife in Samantha’s back. Jonathan knew Victor would never let him live it down if he left his sister. Compared to most however, Jonathan was a good husband. Him and Samantha had known each other since they were children. He’d supported her through her hardships over the years and made sure no one ever called her Sammuel ever again.

But his downfall was a baby left on their doorstep in the middle of summer. He’d never wanted kids and no amount of time with his son would change it. Gideon never felt neglected or abused by Jonathan, but he also never felt loved by him. He couldn’t help but feel like his parents would’ve just been happier without him.

He would never forget how his mother just sat at the table, piece of paper in hand, sipping on a glass of water. When she went off to her room, Gideon could hear her weaps through the walls. He used her absence to his advantage and ran into the kitchen to read the letter.

Samantha,

I’m sorry I had to do this, but I’m not happy. I don’t want to have you suffer through my unhappiness. I just don’t want to be a burden to you- or Gideon. You know I didn’t want to be a father, but just seeing how happy that boy made you, I knew I couldn’t take that from you. As you know, I have family in Bortain, so I’ve decided to go back to them. If you don’t already hate me, I have one request; don’t become Bartholomew.

Love,

Jonathan

In the years following, his mother never became bitter of her husband’s decision. Gideon sometimes wondered if she respected it on occasion. He’d never heard her cry since that first day.

“Is everything alright, sweetie?” she asked from across the table, her grey eyes looking back at him.

“I’m fine,” he replied, not even looking up from his sketchpad. “I just bumped into a few people on my way here, same as always.”

“Why don’t you check and see if there are any possible bruises forming? I could help you heal them a little faster.”

His eyes shot up towards her. The sight of her standing up to walk towards him flooded his veins with anxiety. “No! I mean no. You don’t need to do that, mom.”

Sorrow and disappointment shown in her face. “You’ve been insecure like this since you were thirteen, does it have anything to do with your father leaving?”

“No it doesn’t, I swear,” he said as he pulled down at the sleeves of his sweater.

“Well, alright then.”

She still walked towards where he sat, but only to look over his shoulder at the sketches he was working on. The Petrovs had commissioned him to design and tailor this Silvia Crocus’s dress and so he vowed to make the ugliest wedding dress his mind could conjure up. He even heard his mother cringe as she looked at his concept sketches. “Gideon honey,” she spoke with sarcastic worry in her voice, “please tell me you’re purposefully making it look this bad.”

“Do you expect any less from me?”

“What sort of creature have I raised?” she laughed.

He chuckled at her comment. “I could’ve made it worse, but I’d never hear the end of it from Sere.”

The smile on his mother’s face faded at the mention of the name. “About her…”

“Mom, she’s fine. She’s just a bit overprotective, that’s all.”

“She just- she reminds me of your uncle.”

“Uncle Victor was a wonderful man, there’s nothing to worry about.”

She rose her red eyebrows at the statement. “I grew up with him, Gideon.I know his baggage.”

“And I grew up with Sere, I know her baggage.”

As she walked out of the dining area, she let out a large sigh. Before turning the corner, she peaked her head around the corner. “If you want more inspiration, be sure to look at the Ranez’s wedding book.”

“Oh I will.”

Chapter 55

Caterina sat in front of the tree with the box in her lap. She did this every single year. Sitting in front of the tree her mother died on, she’d talk to her. It was therapeutic. Her birthday had always been the hardest day of the year for her to get through. It didn’t help that today just so happened to mark fifteen years since her mother’s demise.

“Hi mom,” she was already choking back tears as she spoke, “it’s me, Caterina. I mean duh, who else would it be? It’s my twenty-first birthday today, that’s fun I guess. I was what, two when you were twenty-one?

“I should probably catch you up on the past year. Well, I still haven’t opened this,” she traced her finger along the GVS engraved onto the lid of the box, “and I won’t. It’s not my place and I respect your privacy. The Crows are- Jackie and Blackwing are good, I don’t know about Silvertongue. She- she left. I still wish you could’ve met them. You would’ve gotten under Jackie’s skin, but who doesn’t.”

Caterina tilted her head back in a desperate attempt to keep the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes. “There is one thing that’s happened. The king’s having a competition for the throne. They’re supposed to find me and bring me in to make me like a slave or something. No one’s found me, yet. Well… There is Thomas. Unlike the Crows, I’m glad you’ll never meet him. I think you might scare him away with your lack of a filter I’ve been told about. He… he makes me happy.

���Is this how my father made you feel? I know you don’t want to talk about him because he’s dead and all, Victor told me you didn’t want to tell me about your past, but I still want to know about him. I mean he’s my father, but if you don’t want to talk about him can I ask you about your old friends? What about Natasha Petrov? I know her husband killed you- I only found out a month ago- but her son tells me you two were friends. Speaking of him, do you know anything about him when he was a baby? Blackwing would probably love to know.”

She couldn’t hold it in anymore. The dams in her eyes opened to a flood of tears and uncontrollable crying. Into her hands, she violently sobbed, “I miss you so fucking much. I want you back. I’m going to make to make Shaw Petrov pay for what he did to you.”

A hand was suddenly on her shoulder and she looked up to see Thomas. “Caterina,” he whispered in a sympathetic voice.

She pushed the box off her lap and stood up to wrap her arms around his neck. Her tears didn’t stop even as she was in his arms. The fabric on his jacket where her face sat even began to wet. After a few minutes, she was finally able to collect herself, pushing away from Thomas only to see a crushed purple flower in his hand. “Shit! Was this for me? Fuck. You brought me a flower and I crushed it.”

“Well,” he stepped away to reveal a trial of identical flowers, “there’s more.”

As she followed it, she began to realize what was going on. It was only cemented when she walked into the cabin and saw the six flowers she’d had since she was a child in a jar on the table. When she counted the purple flowers in her arms, there were only fourteen. “It’s my twenty-first birthday, Thomas.”

“You kind of crushed the last one.”

“Well, you did interrupt my mommy-daughter time.”

“And I apologize for that.”

“Don’t. It’s just a stupid thing I do on my birthday.”

“If it means something to you it isn’t stupid.”

She took the flowers out of her arms and strategically put them in the jar, one at a time. Once they were all in, Thomas handed her the last one and no matter how hard she tried to make it stand up, no matter what position she put it in, it always seemed to fall on its broken stem. “And what are we to do with this little guy,” she chuckled.

“It adds character.”

“If your definition of character is a sad, limp, little flower then yes, it adds lots of character.”

Thomas let out a faint laugh as he turned around to grab something off one of the chairs at the table. It was a bag. “Why did you get me something?”

“It’s your birthday.”

“Yes, but you didn’t have to get me anything.”

“But I did.”

She took the bag out of his hands slowly, her fingers lingering as they touched his. “You did…”

She pulled away the crinkled paper in the bag to reveal around a dozen violet hair ties tied together by a bow. “Thomas…”

“I know when you made that comment about purple hair ties you were probably joking, but I thought you still might enjoy them. I had them custom made because, you know, you’re the only person who has purple hair…”

Caterina took one of those ties, gave a heavy sigh, and pulled up her hair into a high bun. Her hand covered the back of her neck as she looked up at him and said, “Thank you.”

She was terrified when she turned around, not wanting him to ask about the scars on the back of her neck. Lucky enough for her, not a word about them came out of his mouth. “You’re welcome.”

He walked over to where she stood leaning on the counter next to her. Her hand slowly crept towards his until their fingers were tied together. His fingers traced over the tattoos on her hand, causing a faint smile to emerge on her face, her toes curling at the touch. With her free hand, she cupped Thomas’s face and pulled him down to close the space between them. His own free hand slid down her waist. The grip on each other’s hand released for Thomas to pick Caterina up.

Her hands were now both on his face, the tips of her fingers brushing his hair as he carried her off to her bedroom, closing the door behind them. “Lock it,” she whispered onto his lips.

Once the door was locked, the two of them fell back onto the bed and Caterina reached up to unbutton his jacket. Pulling away from their embrace, he looked down at her and asked, “Do you want to do this?”

And with the biggest smile she’d had in years, she looked back at him and enthusiastically said, “Yes!”

With his own grin, he brought himself back down to her level, his lips trailing down her neck and collarbone. Once he got to the collar of her dress, she could feel his hands pull up at the bottom of it until it was all the way over her head. Before he could get back to his trail, she glared up at him with a smirk as she said, “Don’t you think it’s a little unfair for you to be fully clothed as I lie here in my underwear?”

“My deepest apologies, Ms Scilia.”

He threw his jacket onto the floor himself, but Caterina made sure to help him unbutton and take off the shirt under it. When the two of them were both fairly undressed, Caterina reached up to her tied hair, took the hair tie, and flung it across the room. “It’s good to know you really treasure that gift I got you,” Thomas laughed.

“There’s more. Besides that, I’ll find it in like a year.”

The roll in his eyes was accompanied by a grin as he was pulled back down to kiss her again.

* * *

Caterina half panicked when she woke up to an empty bed until she began to hear Thomas’s voice from outside the door, along with Jackie and Blackwing’s. She grabbed her underwear and Thomas’s guard’s jacket off the floor and slipped them on. When she got to the door, she only opened it a crack, just enough to get a peek as she listened in on the three of them.

Jackie and Thomas sat at the opposite ends of the table, the Crow with a book in hand. Blackwing sat on top of the counter, kicking her legs as she picked at whatever food was on the plate she held. “Caterina’s door was locked last night,” Jackie said as she glared up from her book to the captain.

“Yes,” he replied as he picked up the glass of water in front of him.

“And you’re still here.”

“Yes,” he repeated, sipping the water now.

“So did you two have sex last night?” she bluntly asked.

She could hear Thomas almost choke on the water. There was also a warmth rising in Caterina’s own face. “No comment,” he coughed.

“The lack of an answer is an answer in itself,” Blackwing finally cut in, hopping off the counter and sitting down in the chair next to her sister.

“I was just about to say that, my dearest sister.”

The smile shared between the two of them would terrify even the toughest of men. “Smart minds think alike. Besides that, I heard them.”

In a desperate attempt to change the subject, Thomas looked down as he asked, “What are those scars on the back of her neck?”

Caterina’s heart rolled onto the floor, bouncing on the way there. Jackie and Blackwing’s faces simultaneously went blank. “The ones that say witch?” You could hear the hesitation before Blackwing said the last word.

“Those…”

“It was her sixteenth birthday,” Jackie began, “Cecelia Delikov showed up randomly and asked her if she wanted to go to the Delikov manor to celebrate- I mean, it was a milestone birthday. After deliberating for a few minutes, she went.”

Please stop, Caterina screamed in her mind, stop.

She didn’t.

“The three of us stayed here as usual, but when we woke up…” And there was one of the handful of times Caterina heard Jackie Crow almost cry. “Blood. So much blood. She was just sitting in a giant pool of blood. We thought she was dead.

“She didn’t say a word when we stitched her up. We made sure there weren’t any infections, but we couldn’t stop the scarring. When she came out of her room the next day, she had those tattoos on her face. We always assumed they were a control thing. Like if she couldn’t control her scars or her eyes or her hair, she wanted to control those tattoos.”

Before any more words could come out of any of their mouths, Caterina burst through the door and sat down at the table. Jackie shot her a look that told her she knew she had been eavesdropping. In an attempt to lighten the mood, like a teasing sibling, she simply said, “Caterina.”

“Jackie,” she replied in the same tone.

“How’d you sleep last night?

“Amazing.”

“Good to know.”

Only by Blackwing’s grin did Caterina realize she had subconsciously reached for Thomas’s hand and was currently holding it. A couple of months ago, she would’ve ripped it away, but right now she just wanted to hold it. Something came over Blackwing and she left the table, coming back with something in her hands. Caterina almost immediately pulled the box off the table after she set it down. “You left this outside, so I brought it in.”

She could feel Thomas peer over her shoulder at the initials on the box. “It was my mother’s.”

“Wasn’t your mother’s name Esther?”

“Yeah. It’s just…” She looked down at the initials and really thought about why those letters in particular were on it for the first time since she’d originally found it. GVS. “...I don’t know.”

Thomas shrugged as he got up off the chair to go and grab his clothes, but not before leaning down and planting a kiss on Caterina’s lips. She could hear Jackie groan, but before she could comment, her sister elbowed her. Caterina couldn’t help but smirk. She eventually followed him back to her room, leaving the Crows to have their sibling bickering in privacy. After she pushed the box under her bed she said, pointing to the jacket she still wore, “You probably want this back.”

He shook his head while he buttoned his white shirt. “Keep it.”

“Isn’t it part of your uniform, though?”

“Yeah, but I have more so keep it.”

“But-”

“Please just keep it.”

She gave a small smile as he softly kissed her forehead before walking to the door. Before he could turn the knob, she let out, “Wait.”

He turned around, his brown eyes tinted with a little concern. “What is it?”

“Thank you.”

“For… for having sex with you?”

“No! I mean yeah but… What I meant was thank you for remembering the little stuff I mentioned. No one’s ever done that for me- not even Victor.”

“You deserve to be remembered.”

Once he was gone, she was left alone to her own thoughts. Maybe she did deserve to be remembered. Maybe she wasn’t a dim candle that would barely even leave a trail of smoke when it was blown out, maybe she was a light that refused to go out no matter how hard anyone tried. Five words. You deserve to be remembered. She didn’t want to be in parentheses next to Shaw Petrov’s cause of death in history books, she wanted a chapter all to herself; Caterina Edith Scilia, last magic user of Novak.

[pinclock]

Life, Brawl Minus, and Johou Battle

I don’t normally do text posts, but some stuff yesterday and getting drunk off my rocker made me think about a lot of things. Nothing is changing with any of my projects, I just wanted to sort out some of my thoughts. If you want to pour yourself a glass and read my little ramble, I’d appreciate it. If you want to start a dialogue with me, that’s cool too. I suppose I should start with my life, the reason why I got drunk in the first place. To be direct about it, I don’t feel like I’m doing as well as I should be for someone my age, making a whopping “it’s better than nothing” and working less than 20 hours a week (Heck I’m going a full week without them giving me a single day!), trying to reclaim my partial unemployment when the call center keeps telling me to call back tomorrow, and all this is happening while people younger than me see much better wages I feel. I had to get my first car (which was kind of overdue) but that made my bank account sink fast. This is compounded by my mother’s situation also being bad (not medical bad, financial bad) and I feel like I should be doing better to be able to support us, but I can’t do anything. Just scramble searching for other better paying jobs and praying I’ll land something that sticks. Money is just an eternal struggle and feels like something I can only beg for and begging makes me feel like a terrible person.  One of my major finances is of course paying back my college loans. Seeing my degree on the wall feels kind of insulting, both like I’m a total sucker for spending that much money on an education that has not yet benefitted me in a career sense, and also because if I have a degree in this field, why don’t I feel talented as an artist? Thank you for following me in my art, but when I see most other people’s art, I always think “I should at least be able to draw on that level, why can’t I?” and get pretty down on that. A key example of this is in both Brawl Minus and Johou Battle. While in Johou Battle it was just a matter of “No, the easy way out will not suffice”, the Brawl Minus illustration feedback...never feels as intended, like my illustrations are called MS Paint jokes. While I aim for a cartoony look with those, my thoughts were never “Intentionally bad”, and that some people like it because it looks bad...leaves me with very mixed feelings, but still feelings of incompetence none the less. I suppose I wanted to use this to segment into my next point, which is Brawl Minus. Brawl Minus has been a long time love for me, and I was happy to take over as Leader back in 2014, and honestly I wouldn’t have anyone else take my role even today. This isn’t a “I’m quitting Minus” like Armada quit Melee singles, but just some gripes I’ve had and struggles, possibly also explaining the slower releases. This next paragraph will be all about that, what I wish to see out of the game, and other misadventures. Many other Minus veterans will agree with me on this statement, but Brawl Minus feels vastly watered down compared to what it was years ago. Taming some of the stuff like Multi Laser was to cater to the more competitive scene that Minus was developing, but there were also many nerfs I personally disagree with (A personal example that comes to mind is that while Mario’s Double Fireball was hard to fight against, I felt it more natural (in the gameplay sense) than the double on ground and run cancel that is currently there. For a more objective one, Charizard’s Stealth Rock only appearing above him feels weird and unnatural (in the “this doesn’t look right” sense) compared to how it was previously, which would shield Charizard.) These two examples are just from Minus 4.2′s changelog, if I went back I’m sure I could find more. I feel like the focus on competitive depth has not only driven away older players, but newer players looking for a comp game wouldn’t think of Minus first and wouldn’t give it a shot. My vision for Brawl Minus, as I’ve always stated, is a crazy fun game that makes you shocked at how absurd it is at first glance, but has enough depth to keep players playing rather than turning it off after 20 minutes. While its depth is fine and getting fine-tuned, I feel like Minus has lost what made it so entertaining to start with. I’m much more interested in taking it back there than I am continuing forwards in this more “competitive tunnel vision” direction. Now when we talk about working on the game itself...actual new content getting done is always a huge miracle. This is due to not only my situation, but a team situation, since most members of the Minus dev team lead busy lives and don’t get as much time to work on the game as they’d like. (Shoutouts to Sammi Husky, for a notable example). Despite this, I feel like it’s my fault as a leader for not pushing as hard, despite us having tons of content planned, we’ve made about an inch a month worth of progress as far as actually getting any of it done. If I had expressed more enthusiasm and desire for the content, I’d get it done. I love Brawl Minus to death, but I know it can’t be my living, so I’ve been researching how to make games by creating Johou Battle, which has taken up a ton of my time, and is my next topic.

Right when Johou Battle was revealed, some people in the Brawl Minus Discord immediately went “Brawl Minus died for this”. Which while they were probably just memeing about Icons (I hope), it has a ring of truth to it that hurts and I feel guilty for it. Especially since after the initial reveal I feel like the “Pin Clock community” as it will hasn’t really grown, despite posting regular updates. No, it’s not gonna make me stop doing that, but it is a bit of a let down that I’m trying to turn into creative energy, but it isn’t always working. A Touhou Jojo combo is pretty niche (and Ichirin isn’t exactly Reimu levels of popular herself), but...yeah. A month of remaking Ichirin’s animations without making progress on the game itself is also a demotivator a little I’m trying to get over. Sure this is a game I’m making to learn how to make games, but I just feel frustrated with myself not doing better is all.

So in short, I feel like I’m not only not where I should be in my life, but things have taken a turn for the worse. My social life is pretty much entirely online at this point, but that should be natural at this between jobs stage of my life, so this could be where you come in. if you’d like to have a chat, I’m all ears! If you want to follow me, follow me here, on Twitter, and maybe join the Johou Battle Discord here: https://discord.gg/DZNmke . If you have some spare change, perhaps buy a commission or support my patreon. I prefer feeling rewarded for what I do over simple donations. Really though, what I need above all else is some creative drive, some fixes in my life, and a little help from my friends. It’s been a long ramble but there was just so much I needed to get out. Thank you for sticking with me through this!

Talk to you again soon, Pin Clock

[kristinejrosario]

222: From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story

From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story

In today’s episode we’re continuing our series where I’m handing the podcast over to you as listeners to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs.

It started yesterday with the story of Brittany Bailey, a DIY blogger who grew her blog to hundreds of thousands of readers a month.

Today I want to introduce two tech bloggers whose blogs have allowed them both to leave their corporate jobs to start their own businesses around their blogs.

We’re sharing these stories and tips in the lead-up to the launch of our free ‘Start a Blog’ course, which launches in the second week of January. If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, this free course will walk you through how to do it, and provide you with a good foundation for building a business around it.

Links and Resources for From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Blogger:

ProBlogger Start a Blog Page

Facebook Group

Paul’s blog  

Sumit’s blog

How to Create an Efficient Contact Page That Boosts Your Productivity

How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start a great blog to create some amazing content that will change your readers’ lives and to build some profit around that blog too. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all that we do over at problogger.com.

In today’s episode, episode 222, we’re continuing our series of blogger stories where I’m handing the podcast over to you as listeners, to tell your stories and to share some tips of starting and growing your blogs. This series started yesterday with the story of Brittany Bailey, a DIY blogger who grew her blog to hundreds of thousands of readers a month. You can listen to that. She did the introduction to these series, in episode 221.

Today, I want to introduce you to two bloggers, two tech bloggers. Both of whom whose blogs enabled them to leave their real world desk corporate jobs to start their own businesses around their blogs. We’re sharing their stories and tips in the lead up to our Start A Blog course which launches in the second week of January.

Have you been thinking about starting a blog? This free course will walk you through how to set up that blog with good foundations for building not only a useful blog to your readers but also good foundations for building a profitable blog. You can get notified when this course goes live by signing up over at problogger.com/startablog. You can also find a link to that in today’s show notes where I’ll also link our two bloggers of the day over at problogger.com/podcast/222.

As I said at the top of the show, today, I want to play you two stories, both of which are from tech bloggers who started their blogs in the last four years. Both of whom have grown their blogs to a point where they’ve been able to give up their previous corporate jobs to become full-time bloggers which I know is a dream of many listeners of this podcast.

I’ve decided to put these two stories together today because there are some real similarities and I know also that there are many of you who are our listeners to this podcast who blog about these more technical things. I thought putting those two together will give you a couple of examples of the kind of blogs that have done well.

The first blogger that I want to introduce you to will be familiar to many of you, it’s Paul Cunningham from practical365.com. Paul will be familiar to many of you who are part of their Facebook group because he’s a regular contributor there. He’s also written at least a couple of articles on ProBlogger, as a contributor. His most recent one was a really popular post on How to Create an Efficient Contact Page on your Blog. I’ll link to that in the show notes as well. Paul also has made many of our Aussie events as well.

When he submitted his story, which I found really interesting to hear even though I’ve met Paul so many times, I wanted to include it. He’s an Aussie so you’re going to hear a different accent today or not different to me really although he’s from a northern part of Australia. I hope you find his story interesting. I’ve got another Indian blogger coming up after Paul as well, another technical blogger. I will be back to introduce him in a moment. I hope you enjoy Paul’s story.

Paul: My name is Paul Cunningham. I run the practical365.com website which is a blog focused on the topic of Office 365 cloud services for I.T. professionals. I started blogging over 10 years ago. In fact, my very first blog posts are still on my blog at practical65.com today.

I originally started blogging because I was noticing some of the people in my industry who had their own blogs and I was finding their blog posts when I was searching for solutions to problems. Up until that point, I was active in various forms and online communities but I was becoming aware that my efforts in these forms were not translating to any real world benefit to myself. It still felt good to help people but being in the I.T. industry which can be quite volatile at times as the economy rises and falls, I wanted to do something that more directly boosted my job prospects.

I basically figured that I should start a blog just like those other people that I was noticing who would build up name recognition in the industry through their own online writing. I also figured that it might be a way that I can earn a few extra dollars to go towards things like travelling to conferences in my industry, buying a laptop, getting some nice Christmas presents for my kids and that sort of thing.

I think in hindsight, the fact that I just stopped messing around with different blogging software and services and just settled on WordPress and started writing was the first good move that I made. WordPress wasn’t the obvious choice back then. It’s not like today where WordPress is kind of “the” factor in the blogging platform. But it turned out to be the right choice for me and ultimately, it was more important to just start actually blogging not messing around with all that technical stuff anyway.

The other good move that I made which in hindsight was probably the best move I’ve made as far as long impact goes, was rebranding my blog and setting on a particular technical niche that I really went deep on. I rebranded to a good name that mixed branding and keywords and so I was good for SEO. I’ve got a nice simple logo, I had it professionally made and I invested in a nice, professional premium WordPress theme. I think that just really elevated the overall appearance of my blog as an authority site rather than just be some guy with a blog sharing his random thoughts online.

As far as mistakes go, most of the mistakes I’ve made have really been about me being overly cautious or too slow. I should have started a mailing list sooner, I know we all say that but that didn’t really sink me, it just sent me back a little bit. I should have launched a product sooner. When I finally did it, I was still able to have success from it. They weren’t career-ending blogging mistakes by any stretch.

When I did find success in different areas, I was also guilty of not aggressively assuming those channels to really maximize them. Part of that is caution, and part of that was just juggling a blog with a full-time career and a young family. I probably could’ve gone full-time with my blogging sooner than I did but I was being a bit cautious about it. In the end, it still worked out okay.

There’s been a lot of good things that have come from starting my blog. It certainly became easy for me to find jobs which was good because most of my jobs in I.T. ended to the company’s outsourcing my team or going bankrupt, or mergers and acquisitions and downsizing and things like that. I was regularly out there looking for new jobs and being a little bit known in the industry certainly helped me along in that respect.

I’ve also spoken at overseas conferences. That’s been a lot of fun. I’ve met a lot of great people and travelled a little bit and seen some interesting places. I’ve got some recognition from Microsoft themselves through what they call their MVP program which stands for Most Valuable Professional, which is their award to people like myself who had contributions to the I.T. community. There’s benefits that come from that as well. It’s not a paid award by any stretch but you get some nice sort of insider news and access to Microsoft through that award program.

I’ve been able to write and self-publish ebooks. I also landed a book deal with a traditional publisher. My first traditionally published book is in 2016. I also do some contract work creating training courses for one of the leading online training companies in the I.T. industry, they’re called Pluralsight.

All those benefits and revenue streams as well as the income that I’ve been able to build from affiliate commissions and advertising on their website, some private consulting and things like that, is what really made it possible for me to quit my full-time job a few years ago. Ultimately, that meant a lot more freedom in my life, more time to spend with my family, be more present for our kids, do more at home, now my wife had a lot more and allow her to pursue her career a lot more than she was able to when I had a full-time job.

My number one tip for new bloggers aside from being patient because a lot of the success takes time to build up very slowly, my number one tip would be to use your blog to answer as many simple and small questions as you can. The blogpost that you write that solve all those little problems, they’re not going to be blockbuster, traffic posts that draw in millions of visitors a year and go viral on Facebook and Twitter, but they will help the people who need help the most which is the people who are beginners in your area, in your topic, and in your niche. Those people have lots of small simple questions that made small simple answers and you’re the person that’s going to help them because you’ve got the information right there on your blog and those people will become your most loyal fans as your blog grows along with them.

Darren: I love those tips from Paul. He’s a great example of how niching down into a really specific topic is powerful. You don’t have to do all things Microsoft. You don’t have to do all things tech. You can become the go to person in a particular nichey kind of product or suite of products. That can be very powerful, to be that number one person or one of the main people talking about that. A very specific thing can be a good thing as long as that thing isn’t going to go away. Our next story is another brilliant example of that.

I also love that Paul went through some of his different income streams there. His blog has enabled him to do a number of things, that he’s self-published ebooks and sold ebooks, he’s written a traditionally published book and had income and royalties from that. He’s done contract work creating training courses and his blog has enabled him to get the profile so that people would hire him to do that type of thing. He’s done some affiliate promotion and earned commissions that way. He’s worked directly with advertisers and he’s also offered private consulting and coaching.

This is very, very typical. You’ve heard me talk about this before. In fact, back in Episode 153, I talked about my own journey from being a hobby blogger to being a full-time blogger and how I made that leap through a variety of income streams as well, some of which are the same as what Paul’s done. This is what I hear again and again from people who make that leap to full-time is that they have all these different income streams. If you’re thinking about starting out, you might have one income stream in mind.

I challenge you based on Paul’s story to think broader than that. Look at what other bloggers in your nature are doing. Presume maybe two or three different income streams to get you to that full-time level faster.

Lastly, I love that tip that he finished on there. It’s building your blog around solving lots of little problems and answering lots of little questions. It is the accumulation of those answers and solutions that often what makes a blog successful.

Now I want to introduce you to our next blogger. This is Sumit Bansal from trumpexcel.com. That might sound like a political blog, it is not. It’s a blog about Microsoft Excel. You’re already seeing a bit of a similarity here with both of our bloggers today are Microsoft bloggers. But I wanted to feature Sumit’s advice and story as well. He’s from India, a different part of the world. Again, we’ve got lots of readers from India and countries around India as well. I want to welcome Sumit and I will wrap things up after his story as well.

Sumit: Hello Darren, hello team. I’m a huge fan of problogger.com, the blog and the podcast. I’ve been following you guys for more than three years now and I have learned so much from you. A big thank you for all the work that you do at problogger.com. My name is Sumit Bansal and I’m from India. My blog’s name is Trump Excel and the URL is trumpexcel.com.

I started Trump Excel in May 2013 and I was working with IBM at that point in time. I started this because in my work, I was using Excel spreadsheets a lot. I used to work with a lot of data and I was learning a lot of new things in Excel. I started this blog and I photo shared what I was learning every and it’s also helping my team then. A lot of my colleagues would come up to me and ask the same questions again and again so I thought maybe I would write tutorials so that these guys can simply refer to those tutorials. I can also then share it on my social media or other people online.

With that thought, I created a Blogspot account and I started writing. And then I had written 10 tutorials, then I thought that this is something that I was enjoying, this is something that I wanted to do as a long-term thing. I registered a domain name and got the hosting and started this in May 2013.

My objective was very clear, it was to help people in doing things in Excel and shared what I was learning everyday. At the same time, I also hope to make a little bit of side income something that would supplement my full-time income. To be honest, at that point in time, I had not thought that I would be able to leave my full-time job in IBM and to be able to work on my blog as a full-time deal. That happened in January 2015. I was able to leave my job and now I work on my blog full-time.

Coming to the things that I’m really grateful for when I started this blog and there are actually two things. Let me quickly also share a short anecdote with you. I wrote my first blogpost, that was 10th May 2013. I also shared it on my social media accounts. I’m a little bit introverted so it takes a little bit of effort and courage for me to share stuff and post to my social media account. I’m not really active on my posts in social media, I am to my Trump Excel account but not in my personal account.

I shared my first blogpost on Google+ and Facebook. The first comment that I got in Google+ was, “Really? He found that worth sharing?” And then I read that comment, it really my broke my confidence, at least at that point in time, it broke my confidence. I felt sad and at the same time, I felt really, really angry because the person who had commented did not consider the effort that had gone into writing that blogpost, the courage that it had taken me to post this online on social media accounts. That person completely trashed it. After 15 minutes, I really could not come up with a response to that so I simply replied with a yes, and I moved on and I did not stop.

The first thing that I’m really, really grateful for is that I did not stop. Had I taken that feedback, had I stopped because I only have the blogs for the content, I may not have reached where I am, my life would have been really different. I’m really grateful that I did not stop there.

The second thing that I’m grateful for is that I created a YouTube channel and I thought that since I’m writing blog posts, I’ll also create videos for my audience. That led to a lot of traction off my blog.

Right now, I have close to 18,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel and it also made me realize that I can be a very good teacher. That has become my super power. It’s a nice super power that I can really dump down stuff and teach it to people which also led me to create more online courses. I really just created a YouTube channel because I thought that it would be nice to share to people and share a video of what I was writing, but in hindsight, I think that was a great, great thing that I did and it has really helped me. I’m grateful for that as well.

Coming to the mistakes that I made and I would advise others not to make, especially new bloggers, is to reach out to people in your industry, in your niche, the influencers in your industry. I did not do that. I did not reach out to influencers in my industry for at least two years. Had I done that, things could have been a little bit different. My blog might have taken off even faster. It took me close to two years to get to a level where I could think of making this as a full-time income. But had I reached out to influencers, to people who are doing great work in this niche, in spreadsheets niche, then I could have done much better.

If you want to start now, just make connections, just network with people, just comment on their blog posts, make a relationship, and that would help you. That may even land you an opportunity to collaborate with someone who’s really big in your niche. That’s a mistake that I would advise others to avoid.

The good thing that have happened to me since I started my blog, there are quite a few. As I said, my blog took off after two years and now it gets close to 300,000 page views every month which is growing exponentially every single month. Now I have a lot of social media following, it’s been close to 23,000, 24,000 people on my Facebook page. I have close to 17,000, 18,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel and these are people who are really engage, who would comment on the stuff that I would post. These are some good things that have happened.

I was also able to offer my own online paid courses. I have more than 500 students in my paid courses. I’m thankful that I’m now making close to five-figure income every month and hopefully looking forward to a six-figure year next year. Those are the good things that have happened.

There are top two things that happened after I started my blog, close to a year, somehow Microsoft came to know about the blog and I was recognized as one of the Excel MVPs. That is the Most Valuable Professional for Excel. I was recognized by Microsoft and that made me 1 of the 2 people in India to have that kind of recognition and 1 of the 100 other people in the world. That really lend credibility to anything I do. If I reach out to anyone, being a Microsoft MVP really helps. That’s something really good that happened. It also helps me in establishing my authority in this niche and in selling more online courses.

Another thing that has happened over the years is my blog has been recognized by many different blogs in many different websites as one of the best Excel blogs in the world. People or companies would randomly pick my blog as one of the best resources to learn Excel. This has happened over the years just because I’ve been consistent in writing tutorials and creating videos every single week.

One tip that I would give new bloggers is to focus on a niche, not cast a very wide net, but try and focus on one specific niche and then identify where your audience is hanging out.

For example, let’s say you’re a finance blogger, then I wouldn’t recommend you to talk about everything under the sun but rather talk about only mutual funds, only equity, or only property, or only goal funds, anything specific. Pick one niche and focus on that niche. Channel all your energy in that specific niche. And then also identify where your audience is hanging out. Maybe it’s a Reddit community, maybe it’s a Facebook group, maybe it’s YouTube, or maybe they’re finding these blogs through search engines.

Just identify where your audience hang out and focus your energy on those specific channels. Don’t try and cover everything. Let’s say Pinterest or Facebook or Reddit or StumbleUpon, don’t try and focus your energy on all these mediums. Just focus on those mediums that you think would be helpful in getting the kind of audience that you have and try and niche down. Don’t try and cover all things. That is what I would recommend as my tip for new bloggers.

I think that’s it. I’ve covered most of the questions. Thank you again, problogger.com team and Darren. I’ve been a huge fan and I have learned so much from you every week. I look forward to your podcast. I hope you continue to do this great work in many, many years to come. Thank you so much, have a good day.

Darren: Thanks so much, Sumit. That is just brilliant. I love hearing the stories. I love hearing the different accents. I love hearing the different experiences. I love hearing some of the overlap there between that story and Paul’s story as well, both in terms of topic, Microsoft blog. Who would have thought we would have two Microsoft bloggers submit but also some similar experiences, they are both being recognized by Microsoft.

A couple of things there that I love in what was said, pushing past those negative comments. I love what he said. It didn’t stop him. “I moved on and I did not stop,” were the words there. Don’t let those pushbacks and the negativity of others stop you. It could have stopped Sumit in his tracks and his life would have been remarkably different today.

All of us, every single full-time blogger that I’ve ever met has had something like that happen in the early days of their blogging. It might be a negative comment on social media, it might be a negative comment on the blog, it might be a friend who doesn’t get what we’re doing, it might be a technical challenge, it might be a fear or a doubt, it might be something else. In the scheme of things, it’s relatively small, someone leaving a negative thing. But it can become all consuming and it can be that type of thing in those early days of starting a blog where you’re feeling a bit fragile, you’re feeling a little bit horrible. It’s the type of thing that could quite easily stop you in your tracks. If it does, you never will know where things could have ended up. I’m so glad that Sumit pushed past that.

I want to encourage those of you who are thinking of starting a blog doing this course that we’ve got coming up to not allow those things to stop you in your tracks. One of the best things that you can do to not allow those things to stop you in your tracks is to join with other people who are at a similar stage to you. I would encourage you to join our Facebook group to join the course. We’ll try to get bloggers who are starting together, together to quick pass those little negative things that happen and to help each other. That’s really what this course that we’ve got coming up is all about. You can sign up to be notified about the course at problogger.com/startablog.

I also love there the idea of using video on the blog as well. As I was listening probably for the fourth time to that story because I love it so much, I went to across to Sumit’s blog at trumpmexcel.com and I had a look at his most recent blog posts. Every single post he writes is text but it’s also got a video. They’re three or four minute videos that illustrate what he’s talking about.

There’s something really amazing and powerful that happens when you can write about something but also illustrate it. With Sumit’s topic and many of your topics out there I know as well, a visual element can really bring a tutorial alive. Some people like to read, some people like and learn more when they watch. I’m one of those people. I know when I’ve got a technical challenge, it’s one thing to read a post and to read and have to do something but it really comes to life for me when I can see it. If you’ve got any kind of visual element to it and you can create a video that can really distinguish what you’re doing from what everyone else is doing. It can be very powerful, you’ll broaden your audience and you’d be much more effective particularly for teaching.

His videos are very simple. They’re just screen captures with him talking in a very similar way to what you just heard. But they do bring alive that article. Those tips there on reaching out to other influencers to making connections with other people. You’re going to hear that tip again in a number of future stories that we’ve got coming up in days ahead as well. Do take note of that.

Thanks so much to Paul and to Sumit who shared their stories today. You can find links to their blogs over on our show notes today at problogger.com/podcast/222. If you are inspired to start a blog like Paul and Sumit, head over to problogger.com/startablog and sign up to be notified when I start a blog and the course goes live. It’s completely free and it will help you to start a blog that’s not only technically set up the right way but also it helps you think through some of those foundational things to build a business around your blog and become more effective in your blogging as well. Thanks for listening. Chat with you tomorrow when I’ve got another story from another blogger. Thanks for listening.

How did you go with today’s episode?

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The post 222: From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story appeared first on ProBlogger.

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222: From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story

From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story

In today’s episode we’re continuing our series where I’m handing the podcast over to you as listeners to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs.

It started yesterday with the story of Brittany Bailey, a DIY blogger who grew her blog to hundreds of thousands of readers a month.

Today I want to introduce two tech bloggers whose blogs have allowed them both to leave their corporate jobs to start their own businesses around their blogs.

We’re sharing these stories and tips in the lead-up to the launch of our free ‘Start a Blog’ course, which launches in the second week of January. If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, this free course will walk you through how to do it, and provide you with a good foundation for building a business around it.

Links and Resources for From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Blogger:

ProBlogger Start a Blog Page

Facebook Group

Paul’s blog  

Sumit’s blog

How to Create an Efficient Contact Page That Boosts Your Productivity

How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start a great blog to create some amazing content that will change your readers’ lives and to build some profit around that blog too. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all that we do over at problogger.com.

In today’s episode, episode 222, we’re continuing our series of blogger stories where I’m handing the podcast over to you as listeners, to tell your stories and to share some tips of starting and growing your blogs. This series started yesterday with the story of Brittany Bailey, a DIY blogger who grew her blog to hundreds of thousands of readers a month. You can listen to that. She did the introduction to these series, in episode 221.

Today, I want to introduce you to two bloggers, two tech bloggers. Both of whom whose blogs enabled them to leave their real world desk corporate jobs to start their own businesses around their blogs. We’re sharing their stories and tips in the lead up to our Start A Blog course which launches in the second week of January.

Have you been thinking about starting a blog? This free course will walk you through how to set up that blog with good foundations for building not only a useful blog to your readers but also good foundations for building a profitable blog. You can get notified when this course goes live by signing up over at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. You can also find a link to that in today’s show notes where I’ll also link our two bloggers of the day over at http://ift.tt/2D0ErrK.

As I said at the top of the show, today, I want to play you two stories, both of which are from tech bloggers who started their blogs in the last four years. Both of whom have grown their blogs to a point where they’ve been able to give up their previous corporate jobs to become full-time bloggers which I know is a dream of many listeners of this podcast.

I’ve decided to put these two stories together today because there are some real similarities and I know also that there are many of you who are our listeners to this podcast who blog about these more technical things. I thought putting those two together will give you a couple of examples of the kind of blogs that have done well.

The first blogger that I want to introduce you to will be familiar to many of you, it’s Paul Cunningham from practical365.com. Paul will be familiar to many of you who are part of their Facebook group because he’s a regular contributor there. He’s also written at least a couple of articles on ProBlogger, as a contributor. His most recent one was a really popular post on How to Create an Efficient Contact Page on your Blog. I’ll link to that in the show notes as well. Paul also has made many of our Aussie events as well.

When he submitted his story, which I found really interesting to hear even though I’ve met Paul so many times, I wanted to include it. He’s an Aussie so you’re going to hear a different accent today or not different to me really although he’s from a northern part of Australia. I hope you find his story interesting. I’ve got another Indian blogger coming up after Paul as well, another technical blogger. I will be back to introduce him in a moment. I hope you enjoy Paul’s story.

Paul: My name is Paul Cunningham. I run the practical365.com website which is a blog focused on the topic of Office 365 cloud services for I.T. professionals. I started blogging over 10 years ago. In fact, my very first blog posts are still on my blog at practical65.com today.

I originally started blogging because I was noticing some of the people in my industry who had their own blogs and I was finding their blog posts when I was searching for solutions to problems. Up until that point, I was active in various forms and online communities but I was becoming aware that my efforts in these forms were not translating to any real world benefit to myself. It still felt good to help people but being in the I.T. industry which can be quite volatile at times as the economy rises and falls, I wanted to do something that more directly boosted my job prospects.

I basically figured that I should start a blog just like those other people that I was noticing who would build up name recognition in the industry through their own online writing. I also figured that it might be a way that I can earn a few extra dollars to go towards things like travelling to conferences in my industry, buying a laptop, getting some nice Christmas presents for my kids and that sort of thing.

I think in hindsight, the fact that I just stopped messing around with different blogging software and services and just settled on WordPress and started writing was the first good move that I made. WordPress wasn’t the obvious choice back then. It’s not like today where WordPress is kind of “the” factor in the blogging platform. But it turned out to be the right choice for me and ultimately, it was more important to just start actually blogging not messing around with all that technical stuff anyway.

The other good move that I made which in hindsight was probably the best move I’ve made as far as long impact goes, was rebranding my blog and setting on a particular technical niche that I really went deep on. I rebranded to a good name that mixed branding and keywords and so I was good for SEO. I’ve got a nice simple logo, I had it professionally made and I invested in a nice, professional premium WordPress theme. I think that just really elevated the overall appearance of my blog as an authority site rather than just be some guy with a blog sharing his random thoughts online.

As far as mistakes go, most of the mistakes I’ve made have really been about me being overly cautious or too slow. I should have started a mailing list sooner, I know we all say that but that didn’t really sink me, it just sent me back a little bit. I should have launched a product sooner. When I finally did it, I was still able to have success from it. They weren’t career-ending blogging mistakes by any stretch.

When I did find success in different areas, I was also guilty of not aggressively assuming those channels to really maximize them. Part of that is caution, and part of that was just juggling a blog with a full-time career and a young family. I probably could’ve gone full-time with my blogging sooner than I did but I was being a bit cautious about it. In the end, it still worked out okay.

There’s been a lot of good things that have come from starting my blog. It certainly became easy for me to find jobs which was good because most of my jobs in I.T. ended to the company’s outsourcing my team or going bankrupt, or mergers and acquisitions and downsizing and things like that. I was regularly out there looking for new jobs and being a little bit known in the industry certainly helped me along in that respect.

I’ve also spoken at overseas conferences. That’s been a lot of fun. I’ve met a lot of great people and travelled a little bit and seen some interesting places. I’ve got some recognition from Microsoft themselves through what they call their MVP program which stands for Most Valuable Professional, which is their award to people like myself who had contributions to the I.T. community. There’s benefits that come from that as well. It’s not a paid award by any stretch but you get some nice sort of insider news and access to Microsoft through that award program.

I’ve been able to write and self-publish ebooks. I also landed a book deal with a traditional publisher. My first traditionally published book is in 2016. I also do some contract work creating training courses for one of the leading online training companies in the I.T. industry, they’re called Pluralsight.

All those benefits and revenue streams as well as the income that I’ve been able to build from affiliate commissions and advertising on their website, some private consulting and things like that, is what really made it possible for me to quit my full-time job a few years ago. Ultimately, that meant a lot more freedom in my life, more time to spend with my family, be more present for our kids, do more at home, now my wife had a lot more and allow her to pursue her career a lot more than she was able to when I had a full-time job.

My number one tip for new bloggers aside from being patient because a lot of the success takes time to build up very slowly, my number one tip would be to use your blog to answer as many simple and small questions as you can. The blogpost that you write that solve all those little problems, they’re not going to be blockbuster, traffic posts that draw in millions of visitors a year and go viral on Facebook and Twitter, but they will help the people who need help the most which is the people who are beginners in your area, in your topic, and in your niche. Those people have lots of small simple questions that made small simple answers and you’re the person that’s going to help them because you’ve got the information right there on your blog and those people will become your most loyal fans as your blog grows along with them.

Darren: I love those tips from Paul. He’s a great example of how niching down into a really specific topic is powerful. You don’t have to do all things Microsoft. You don’t have to do all things tech. You can become the go to person in a particular nichey kind of product or suite of products. That can be very powerful, to be that number one person or one of the main people talking about that. A very specific thing can be a good thing as long as that thing isn’t going to go away. Our next story is another brilliant example of that.

I also love that Paul went through some of his different income streams there. His blog has enabled him to do a number of things, that he’s self-published ebooks and sold ebooks, he’s written a traditionally published book and had income and royalties from that. He’s done contract work creating training courses and his blog has enabled him to get the profile so that people would hire him to do that type of thing. He’s done some affiliate promotion and earned commissions that way. He’s worked directly with advertisers and he’s also offered private consulting and coaching.

This is very, very typical. You’ve heard me talk about this before. In fact, back in Episode 153, I talked about my own journey from being a hobby blogger to being a full-time blogger and how I made that leap through a variety of income streams as well, some of which are the same as what Paul’s done. This is what I hear again and again from people who make that leap to full-time is that they have all these different income streams. If you’re thinking about starting out, you might have one income stream in mind.

I challenge you based on Paul’s story to think broader than that. Look at what other bloggers in your nature are doing. Presume maybe two or three different income streams to get you to that full-time level faster.

Lastly, I love that tip that he finished on there. It’s building your blog around solving lots of little problems and answering lots of little questions. It is the accumulation of those answers and solutions that often what makes a blog successful.

Now I want to introduce you to our next blogger. This is Sumit Bansal from trumpexcel.com. That might sound like a political blog, it is not. It’s a blog about Microsoft Excel. You’re already seeing a bit of a similarity here with both of our bloggers today are Microsoft bloggers. But I wanted to feature Sumit’s advice and story as well. He’s from India, a different part of the world. Again, we’ve got lots of readers from India and countries around India as well. I want to welcome Sumit and I will wrap things up after his story as well.

Sumit: Hello Darren, hello team. I’m a huge fan of problogger.com, the blog and the podcast. I’ve been following you guys for more than three years now and I have learned so much from you. A big thank you for all the work that you do at problogger.com. My name is Sumit Bansal and I’m from India. My blog’s name is Trump Excel and the URL is trumpexcel.com.

I started Trump Excel in May 2013 and I was working with IBM at that point in time. I started this because in my work, I was using Excel spreadsheets a lot. I used to work with a lot of data and I was learning a lot of new things in Excel. I started this blog and I photo shared what I was learning every and it’s also helping my team then. A lot of my colleagues would come up to me and ask the same questions again and again so I thought maybe I would write tutorials so that these guys can simply refer to those tutorials. I can also then share it on my social media or other people online.

With that thought, I created a Blogspot account and I started writing. And then I had written 10 tutorials, then I thought that this is something that I was enjoying, this is something that I wanted to do as a long-term thing. I registered a domain name and got the hosting and started this in May 2013.

My objective was very clear, it was to help people in doing things in Excel and shared what I was learning everyday. At the same time, I also hope to make a little bit of side income something that would supplement my full-time income. To be honest, at that point in time, I had not thought that I would be able to leave my full-time job in IBM and to be able to work on my blog as a full-time deal. That happened in January 2015. I was able to leave my job and now I work on my blog full-time.

Coming to the things that I’m really grateful for when I started this blog and there are actually two things. Let me quickly also share a short anecdote with you. I wrote my first blogpost, that was 10th May 2013. I also shared it on my social media accounts. I’m a little bit introverted so it takes a little bit of effort and courage for me to share stuff and post to my social media account. I’m not really active on my posts in social media, I am to my Trump Excel account but not in my personal account.

I shared my first blogpost on Google+ and Facebook. The first comment that I got in Google+ was, “Really? He found that worth sharing?” And then I read that comment, it really my broke my confidence, at least at that point in time, it broke my confidence. I felt sad and at the same time, I felt really, really angry because the person who had commented did not consider the effort that had gone into writing that blogpost, the courage that it had taken me to post this online on social media accounts. That person completely trashed it. After 15 minutes, I really could not come up with a response to that so I simply replied with a yes, and I moved on and I did not stop.

The first thing that I’m really, really grateful for is that I did not stop. Had I taken that feedback, had I stopped because I only have the blogs for the content, I may not have reached where I am, my life would have been really different. I’m really grateful that I did not stop there.

The second thing that I’m grateful for is that I created a YouTube channel and I thought that since I’m writing blog posts, I’ll also create videos for my audience. That led to a lot of traction off my blog.

Right now, I have close to 18,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel and it also made me realize that I can be a very good teacher. That has become my super power. It’s a nice super power that I can really dump down stuff and teach it to people which also led me to create more online courses. I really just created a YouTube channel because I thought that it would be nice to share to people and share a video of what I was writing, but in hindsight, I think that was a great, great thing that I did and it has really helped me. I’m grateful for that as well.

Coming to the mistakes that I made and I would advise others not to make, especially new bloggers, is to reach out to people in your industry, in your niche, the influencers in your industry. I did not do that. I did not reach out to influencers in my industry for at least two years. Had I done that, things could have been a little bit different. My blog might have taken off even faster. It took me close to two years to get to a level where I could think of making this as a full-time income. But had I reached out to influencers, to people who are doing great work in this niche, in spreadsheets niche, then I could have done much better.

If you want to start now, just make connections, just network with people, just comment on their blog posts, make a relationship, and that would help you. That may even land you an opportunity to collaborate with someone who’s really big in your niche. That’s a mistake that I would advise others to avoid.

The good thing that have happened to me since I started my blog, there are quite a few. As I said, my blog took off after two years and now it gets close to 300,000 page views every month which is growing exponentially every single month. Now I have a lot of social media following, it’s been close to 23,000, 24,000 people on my Facebook page. I have close to 17,000, 18,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel and these are people who are really engage, who would comment on the stuff that I would post. These are some good things that have happened.

I was also able to offer my own online paid courses. I have more than 500 students in my paid courses. I’m thankful that I’m now making close to five-figure income every month and hopefully looking forward to a six-figure year next year. Those are the good things that have happened.

There are top two things that happened after I started my blog, close to a year, somehow Microsoft came to know about the blog and I was recognized as one of the Excel MVPs. That is the Most Valuable Professional for Excel. I was recognized by Microsoft and that made me 1 of the 2 people in India to have that kind of recognition and 1 of the 100 other people in the world. That really lend credibility to anything I do. If I reach out to anyone, being a Microsoft MVP really helps. That’s something really good that happened. It also helps me in establishing my authority in this niche and in selling more online courses.

Another thing that has happened over the years is my blog has been recognized by many different blogs in many different websites as one of the best Excel blogs in the world. People or companies would randomly pick my blog as one of the best resources to learn Excel. This has happened over the years just because I’ve been consistent in writing tutorials and creating videos every single week.

One tip that I would give new bloggers is to focus on a niche, not cast a very wide net, but try and focus on one specific niche and then identify where your audience is hanging out.

For example, let’s say you’re a finance blogger, then I wouldn’t recommend you to talk about everything under the sun but rather talk about only mutual funds, only equity, or only property, or only goal funds, anything specific. Pick one niche and focus on that niche. Channel all your energy in that specific niche. And then also identify where your audience is hanging out. Maybe it’s a Reddit community, maybe it’s a Facebook group, maybe it’s YouTube, or maybe they’re finding these blogs through search engines.

Just identify where your audience hang out and focus your energy on those specific channels. Don’t try and cover everything. Let’s say Pinterest or Facebook or Reddit or StumbleUpon, don’t try and focus your energy on all these mediums. Just focus on those mediums that you think would be helpful in getting the kind of audience that you have and try and niche down. Don’t try and cover all things. That is what I would recommend as my tip for new bloggers.

I think that’s it. I’ve covered most of the questions. Thank you again, problogger.com team and Darren. I’ve been a huge fan and I have learned so much from you every week. I look forward to your podcast. I hope you continue to do this great work in many, many years to come. Thank you so much, have a good day.

Darren: Thanks so much, Sumit. That is just brilliant. I love hearing the stories. I love hearing the different accents. I love hearing the different experiences. I love hearing some of the overlap there between that story and Paul’s story as well, both in terms of topic, Microsoft blog. Who would have thought we would have two Microsoft bloggers submit but also some similar experiences, they are both being recognized by Microsoft.

A couple of things there that I love in what was said, pushing past those negative comments. I love what he said. It didn’t stop him. “I moved on and I did not stop,” were the words there. Don’t let those pushbacks and the negativity of others stop you. It could have stopped Sumit in his tracks and his life would have been remarkably different today.

All of us, every single full-time blogger that I’ve ever met has had something like that happen in the early days of their blogging. It might be a negative comment on social media, it might be a negative comment on the blog, it might be a friend who doesn’t get what we’re doing, it might be a technical challenge, it might be a fear or a doubt, it might be something else. In the scheme of things, it’s relatively small, someone leaving a negative thing. But it can become all consuming and it can be that type of thing in those early days of starting a blog where you’re feeling a bit fragile, you’re feeling a little bit horrible. It’s the type of thing that could quite easily stop you in your tracks. If it does, you never will know where things could have ended up. I’m so glad that Sumit pushed past that.

I want to encourage those of you who are thinking of starting a blog doing this course that we’ve got coming up to not allow those things to stop you in your tracks. One of the best things that you can do to not allow those things to stop you in your tracks is to join with other people who are at a similar stage to you. I would encourage you to join our Facebook group to join the course. We’ll try to get bloggers who are starting together, together to quick pass those little negative things that happen and to help each other. That’s really what this course that we’ve got coming up is all about. You can sign up to be notified about the course at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que.

I also love there the idea of using video on the blog as well. As I was listening probably for the fourth time to that story because I love it so much, I went to across to Sumit’s blog at trumpmexcel.com and I had a look at his most recent blog posts. Every single post he writes is text but it’s also got a video. They’re three or four minute videos that illustrate what he’s talking about.

There’s something really amazing and powerful that happens when you can write about something but also illustrate it. With Sumit’s topic and many of your topics out there I know as well, a visual element can really bring a tutorial alive. Some people like to read, some people like and learn more when they watch. I’m one of those people. I know when I’ve got a technical challenge, it’s one thing to read a post and to read and have to do something but it really comes to life for me when I can see it. If you’ve got any kind of visual element to it and you can create a video that can really distinguish what you’re doing from what everyone else is doing. It can be very powerful, you’ll broaden your audience and you’d be much more effective particularly for teaching.

His videos are very simple. They’re just screen captures with him talking in a very similar way to what you just heard. But they do bring alive that article. Those tips there on reaching out to other influencers to making connections with other people. You’re going to hear that tip again in a number of future stories that we’ve got coming up in days ahead as well. Do take note of that.

Thanks so much to Paul and to Sumit who shared their stories today. You can find links to their blogs over on our show notes today at http://ift.tt/2D0ErrK. If you are inspired to start a blog like Paul and Sumit, head over to http://ift.tt/2Cz9que and sign up to be notified when I start a blog and the course goes live. It’s completely free and it will help you to start a blog that’s not only technically set up the right way but also it helps you think through some of those foundational things to build a business around your blog and become more effective in your blogging as well. Thanks for listening. Chat with you tomorrow when I’ve got another story from another blogger. Thanks for listening.

How did you go with today’s episode?

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The post 222: From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story appeared first on ProBlogger.

     Related Stories

221: From 0 to 500,000 Page Views a Month – A DIY Blogger Shares Her Story

217: 4 Things to Consider When Choosing a Domain Name

210: Launching a Blog: How Many Posts Do You Need?

  222: From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story

[bizmediaweb]

222: From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story

From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Bloggers – 2 Tech Bloggers Tell their Story

In today’s episode we’re continuing our series where I’m handing the podcast over to you as listeners to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs.

It started yesterday with the story of Brittany Bailey, a DIY blogger who grew her blog to hundreds of thousands of readers a month.

Today I want to introduce two tech bloggers whose blogs have allowed them both to leave their corporate jobs to start their own businesses around their blogs.

We’re sharing these stories and tips in the lead-up to the launch of our free ‘Start a Blog’ course, which launches in the second week of January. If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, this free course will walk you through how to do it, and provide you with a good foundation for building a business around it.

Links and Resources for From Corporate Desk Jobs to Full-Time Blogger:

ProBlogger Start a Blog Page

Facebook Group

Paul’s blog  

Sumit’s blog

How to Create an Efficient Contact Page That Boosts Your Productivity

How I Diversified My Blogging Income and Became a Full Time Blogger

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: My name is Darren Rowse. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a blog, a podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks, and courses all designed to help you to start a great blog to create some amazing content that will change your readers’ lives and to build some profit around that blog too. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all that we do over at problogger.com.

In today’s episode, episode 222, we’re continuing our series of blogger stories where I’m handing the podcast over to you as listeners, to tell your stories and to share some tips of starting and growing your blogs. This series started yesterday with the story of Brittany Bailey, a DIY blogger who grew her blog to hundreds of thousands of readers a month. You can listen to that. She did the introduction to these series, in episode 221.

Today, I want to introduce you to two bloggers, two tech bloggers. Both of whom whose blogs enabled them to leave their real world desk corporate jobs to start their own businesses around their blogs. We’re sharing their stories and tips in the lead up to our Start A Blog course which launches in the second week of January.

Have you been thinking about starting a blog? This free course will walk you through how to set up that blog with good foundations for building not only a useful blog to your readers but also good foundations for building a profitable blog. You can get notified when this course goes live by signing up over at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. You can also find a link to that in today’s show notes where I’ll also link our two bloggers of the day over at http://ift.tt/2D0ErrK.

As I said at the top of the show, today, I want to play you two stories, both of which are from tech bloggers who started their blogs in the last four years. Both of whom have grown their blogs to a point where they’ve been able to give up their previous corporate jobs to become full-time bloggers which I know is a dream of many listeners of this podcast.

I’ve decided to put these two stories together today because there are some real similarities and I know also that there are many of you who are our listeners to this podcast who blog about these more technical things. I thought putting those two together will give you a couple of examples of the kind of blogs that have done well.

The first blogger that I want to introduce you to will be familiar to many of you, it’s Paul Cunningham from practical365.com. Paul will be familiar to many of you who are part of their Facebook group because he’s a regular contributor there. He’s also written at least a couple of articles on ProBlogger, as a contributor. His most recent one was a really popular post on How to Create an Efficient Contact Page on your Blog. I’ll link to that in the show notes as well. Paul also has made many of our Aussie events as well.

When he submitted his story, which I found really interesting to hear even though I’ve met Paul so many times, I wanted to include it. He’s an Aussie so you’re going to hear a different accent today or not different to me really although he’s from a northern part of Australia. I hope you find his story interesting. I’ve got another Indian blogger coming up after Paul as well, another technical blogger. I will be back to introduce him in a moment. I hope you enjoy Paul’s story.

Paul: My name is Paul Cunningham. I run the practical365.com website which is a blog focused on the topic of Office 365 cloud services for I.T. professionals. I started blogging over 10 years ago. In fact, my very first blog posts are still on my blog at practical65.com today.

I originally started blogging because I was noticing some of the people in my industry who had their own blogs and I was finding their blog posts when I was searching for solutions to problems. Up until that point, I was active in various forms and online communities but I was becoming aware that my efforts in these forms were not translating to any real world benefit to myself. It still felt good to help people but being in the I.T. industry which can be quite volatile at times as the economy rises and falls, I wanted to do something that more directly boosted my job prospects.

I basically figured that I should start a blog just like those other people that I was noticing who would build up name recognition in the industry through their own online writing. I also figured that it might be a way that I can earn a few extra dollars to go towards things like travelling to conferences in my industry, buying a laptop, getting some nice Christmas presents for my kids and that sort of thing.

I think in hindsight, the fact that I just stopped messing around with different blogging software and services and just settled on WordPress and started writing was the first good move that I made. WordPress wasn’t the obvious choice back then. It’s not like today where WordPress is kind of “the” factor in the blogging platform. But it turned out to be the right choice for me and ultimately, it was more important to just start actually blogging not messing around with all that technical stuff anyway.

The other good move that I made which in hindsight was probably the best move I’ve made as far as long impact goes, was rebranding my blog and setting on a particular technical niche that I really went deep on. I rebranded to a good name that mixed branding and keywords and so I was good for SEO. I’ve got a nice simple logo, I had it professionally made and I invested in a nice, professional premium WordPress theme. I think that just really elevated the overall appearance of my blog as an authority site rather than just be some guy with a blog sharing his random thoughts online.

As far as mistakes go, most of the mistakes I’ve made have really been about me being overly cautious or too slow. I should have started a mailing list sooner, I know we all say that but that didn’t really sink me, it just sent me back a little bit. I should have launched a product sooner. When I finally did it, I was still able to have success from it. They weren’t career-ending blogging mistakes by any stretch.

When I did find success in different areas, I was also guilty of not aggressively assuming those channels to really maximize them. Part of that is caution, and part of that was just juggling a blog with a full-time career and a young family. I probably could’ve gone full-time with my blogging sooner than I did but I was being a bit cautious about it. In the end, it still worked out okay.

There’s been a lot of good things that have come from starting my blog. It certainly became easy for me to find jobs which was good because most of my jobs in I.T. ended to the company’s outsourcing my team or going bankrupt, or mergers and acquisitions and downsizing and things like that. I was regularly out there looking for new jobs and being a little bit known in the industry certainly helped me along in that respect.

I’ve also spoken at overseas conferences. That’s been a lot of fun. I’ve met a lot of great people and travelled a little bit and seen some interesting places. I’ve got some recognition from Microsoft themselves through what they call their MVP program which stands for Most Valuable Professional, which is their award to people like myself who had contributions to the I.T. community. There’s benefits that come from that as well. It’s not a paid award by any stretch but you get some nice sort of insider news and access to Microsoft through that award program.

I’ve been able to write and self-publish ebooks. I also landed a book deal with a traditional publisher. My first traditionally published book is in 2016. I also do some contract work creating training courses for one of the leading online training companies in the I.T. industry, they’re called Pluralsight.

All those benefits and revenue streams as well as the income that I’ve been able to build from affiliate commissions and advertising on their website, some private consulting and things like that, is what really made it possible for me to quit my full-time job a few years ago. Ultimately, that meant a lot more freedom in my life, more time to spend with my family, be more present for our kids, do more at home, now my wife had a lot more and allow her to pursue her career a lot more than she was able to when I had a full-time job.

My number one tip for new bloggers aside from being patient because a lot of the success takes time to build up very slowly, my number one tip would be to use your blog to answer as many simple and small questions as you can. The blogpost that you write that solve all those little problems, they’re not going to be blockbuster, traffic posts that draw in millions of visitors a year and go viral on Facebook and Twitter, but they will help the people who need help the most which is the people who are beginners in your area, in your topic, and in your niche. Those people have lots of small simple questions that made small simple answers and you’re the person that’s going to help them because you’ve got the information right there on your blog and those people will become your most loyal fans as your blog grows along with them.

Darren: I love those tips from Paul. He’s a great example of how niching down into a really specific topic is powerful. You don’t have to do all things Microsoft. You don’t have to do all things tech. You can become the go to person in a particular nichey kind of product or suite of products. That can be very powerful, to be that number one person or one of the main people talking about that. A very specific thing can be a good thing as long as that thing isn’t going to go away. Our next story is another brilliant example of that.

I also love that Paul went through some of his different income streams there. His blog has enabled him to do a number of things, that he’s self-published ebooks and sold ebooks, he’s written a traditionally published book and had income and royalties from that. He’s done contract work creating training courses and his blog has enabled him to get the profile so that people would hire him to do that type of thing. He’s done some affiliate promotion and earned commissions that way. He’s worked directly with advertisers and he’s also offered private consulting and coaching.

This is very, very typical. You’ve heard me talk about this before. In fact, back in Episode 153, I talked about my own journey from being a hobby blogger to being a full-time blogger and how I made that leap through a variety of income streams as well, some of which are the same as what Paul’s done. This is what I hear again and again from people who make that leap to full-time is that they have all these different income streams. If you’re thinking about starting out, you might have one income stream in mind.

I challenge you based on Paul’s story to think broader than that. Look at what other bloggers in your nature are doing. Presume maybe two or three different income streams to get you to that full-time level faster.

Lastly, I love that tip that he finished on there. It’s building your blog around solving lots of little problems and answering lots of little questions. It is the accumulation of those answers and solutions that often what makes a blog successful.

Now I want to introduce you to our next blogger. This is Sumit Bansal from trumpexcel.com. That might sound like a political blog, it is not. It’s a blog about Microsoft Excel. You’re already seeing a bit of a similarity here with both of our bloggers today are Microsoft bloggers. But I wanted to feature Sumit’s advice and story as well. He’s from India, a different part of the world. Again, we’ve got lots of readers from India and countries around India as well. I want to welcome Sumit and I will wrap things up after his story as well.

Sumit: Hello Darren, hello team. I’m a huge fan of problogger.com, the blog and the podcast. I’ve been following you guys for more than three years now and I have learned so much from you. A big thank you for all the work that you do at problogger.com. My name is Sumit Bansal and I’m from India. My blog’s name is Trump Excel and the URL is trumpexcel.com.

I started Trump Excel in May 2013 and I was working with IBM at that point in time. I started this because in my work, I was using Excel spreadsheets a lot. I used to work with a lot of data and I was learning a lot of new things in Excel. I started this blog and I photo shared what I was learning every and it’s also helping my team then. A lot of my colleagues would come up to me and ask the same questions again and again so I thought maybe I would write tutorials so that these guys can simply refer to those tutorials. I can also then share it on my social media or other people online.

With that thought, I created a Blogspot account and I started writing. And then I had written 10 tutorials, then I thought that this is something that I was enjoying, this is something that I wanted to do as a long-term thing. I registered a domain name and got the hosting and started this in May 2013.

My objective was very clear, it was to help people in doing things in Excel and shared what I was learning everyday. At the same time, I also hope to make a little bit of side income something that would supplement my full-time income. To be honest, at that point in time, I had not thought that I would be able to leave my full-time job in IBM and to be able to work on my blog as a full-time deal. That happened in January 2015. I was able to leave my job and now I work on my blog full-time.

Coming to the things that I’m really grateful for when I started this blog and there are actually two things. Let me quickly also share a short anecdote with you. I wrote my first blogpost, that was 10th May 2013. I also shared it on my social media accounts. I’m a little bit introverted so it takes a little bit of effort and courage for me to share stuff and post to my social media account. I’m not really active on my posts in social media, I am to my Trump Excel account but not in my personal account.

I shared my first blogpost on Google+ and Facebook. The first comment that I got in Google+ was, “Really? He found that worth sharing?” And then I read that comment, it really my broke my confidence, at least at that point in time, it broke my confidence. I felt sad and at the same time, I felt really, really angry because the person who had commented did not consider the effort that had gone into writing that blogpost, the courage that it had taken me to post this online on social media accounts. That person completely trashed it. After 15 minutes, I really could not come up with a response to that so I simply replied with a yes, and I moved on and I did not stop.

The first thing that I’m really, really grateful for is that I did not stop. Had I taken that feedback, had I stopped because I only have the blogs for the content, I may not have reached where I am, my life would have been really different. I’m really grateful that I did not stop there.

The second thing that I’m grateful for is that I created a YouTube channel and I thought that since I’m writing blog posts, I’ll also create videos for my audience. That led to a lot of traction off my blog.

Right now, I have close to 18,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel and it also made me realize that I can be a very good teacher. That has become my super power. It’s a nice super power that I can really dump down stuff and teach it to people which also led me to create more online courses. I really just created a YouTube channel because I thought that it would be nice to share to people and share a video of what I was writing, but in hindsight, I think that was a great, great thing that I did and it has really helped me. I’m grateful for that as well.

Coming to the mistakes that I made and I would advise others not to make, especially new bloggers, is to reach out to people in your industry, in your niche, the influencers in your industry. I did not do that. I did not reach out to influencers in my industry for at least two years. Had I done that, things could have been a little bit different. My blog might have taken off even faster. It took me close to two years to get to a level where I could think of making this as a full-time income. But had I reached out to influencers, to people who are doing great work in this niche, in spreadsheets niche, then I could have done much better.

If you want to start now, just make connections, just network with people, just comment on their blog posts, make a relationship, and that would help you. That may even land you an opportunity to collaborate with someone who’s really big in your niche. That’s a mistake that I would advise others to avoid.

The good thing that have happened to me since I started my blog, there are quite a few. As I said, my blog took off after two years and now it gets close to 300,000 page views every month which is growing exponentially every single month. Now I have a lot of social media following, it’s been close to 23,000, 24,000 people on my Facebook page. I have close to 17,000, 18,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel and these are people who are really engage, who would comment on the stuff that I would post. These are some good things that have happened.

I was also able to offer my own online paid courses. I have more than 500 students in my paid courses. I’m thankful that I’m now making close to five-figure income every month and hopefully looking forward to a six-figure year next year. Those are the good things that have happened.

There are top two things that happened after I started my blog, close to a year, somehow Microsoft came to know about the blog and I was recognized as one of the Excel MVPs. That is the Most Valuable Professional for Excel. I was recognized by Microsoft and that made me 1 of the 2 people in India to have that kind of recognition and 1 of the 100 other people in the world. That really lend credibility to anything I do. If I reach out to anyone, being a Microsoft MVP really helps. That’s something really good that happened. It also helps me in establishing my authority in this niche and in selling more online courses.

Another thing that has happened over the years is my blog has been recognized by many different blogs in many different websites as one of the best Excel blogs in the world. People or companies would randomly pick my blog as one of the best resources to learn Excel. This has happened over the years just because I’ve been consistent in writing tutorials and creating videos every single week.

One tip that I would give new bloggers is to focus on a niche, not cast a very wide net, but try and focus on one specific niche and then identify where your audience is hanging out.

For example, let’s say you’re a finance blogger, then I wouldn’t recommend you to talk about everything under the sun but rather talk about only mutual funds, only equity, or only property, or only goal funds, anything specific. Pick one niche and focus on that niche. Channel all your energy in that specific niche. And then also identify where your audience is hanging out. Maybe it’s a Reddit community, maybe it’s a Facebook group, maybe it’s YouTube, or maybe they’re finding these blogs through search engines.

Just identify where your audience hang out and focus your energy on those specific channels. Don’t try and cover everything. Let’s say Pinterest or Facebook or Reddit or StumbleUpon, don’t try and focus your energy on all these mediums. Just focus on those mediums that you think would be helpful in getting the kind of audience that you have and try and niche down. Don’t try and cover all things. That is what I would recommend as my tip for new bloggers.

I think that’s it. I’ve covered most of the questions. Thank you again, problogger.com team and Darren. I’ve been a huge fan and I have learned so much from you every week. I look forward to your podcast. I hope you continue to do this great work in many, many years to come. Thank you so much, have a good day.

Darren: Thanks so much, Sumit. That is just brilliant. I love hearing the stories. I love hearing the different accents. I love hearing the different experiences. I love hearing some of the overlap there between that story and Paul’s story as well, both in terms of topic, Microsoft blog. Who would have thought we would have two Microsoft bloggers submit but also some similar experiences, they are both being recognized by Microsoft.

A couple of things there that I love in what was said, pushing past those negative comments. I love what he said. It didn’t stop him. “I moved on and I did not stop,” were the words there. Don’t let those pushbacks and the negativity of others stop you. It could have stopped Sumit in his tracks and his life would have been remarkably different today.

All of us, every single full-time blogger that I’ve ever met has had something like that happen in the early days of their blogging. It might be a negative comment on social media, it might be a negative comment on the blog, it might be a friend who doesn’t get what we’re doing, it might be a technical challenge, it might be a fear or a doubt, it might be something else. In the scheme of things, it’s relatively small, someone leaving a negative thing. But it can become all consuming and it can be that type of thing in those early days of starting a blog where you’re feeling a bit fragile, you’re feeling a little bit horrible. It’s the type of thing that could quite easily stop you in your tracks. If it does, you never will know where things could have ended up. I’m so glad that Sumit pushed past that.

I want to encourage those of you who are thinking of starting a blog doing this course that we’ve got coming up to not allow those things to stop you in your tracks. One of the best things that you can do to not allow those things to stop you in your tracks is to join with other people who are at a similar stage to you. I would encourage you to join our Facebook group to join the course. We’ll try to get bloggers who are starting together, together to quick pass those little negative things that happen and to help each other. That’s really what this course that we’ve got coming up is all about. You can sign up to be notified about the course at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que.

I also love there the idea of using video on the blog as well. As I was listening probably for the fourth time to that story because I love it so much, I went to across to Sumit’s blog at trumpmexcel.com and I had a look at his most recent blog posts. Every single post he writes is text but it’s also got a video. They’re three or four minute videos that illustrate what he’s talking about.

There’s something really amazing and powerful that happens when you can write about something but also illustrate it. With Sumit’s topic and many of your topics out there I know as well, a visual element can really bring a tutorial alive. Some people like to read, some people like and learn more when they watch. I’m one of those people. I know when I’ve got a technical challenge, it’s one thing to read a post and to read and have to do something but it really comes to life for me when I can see it. If you’ve got any kind of visual element to it and you can create a video that can really distinguish what you’re doing from what everyone else is doing. It can be very powerful, you’ll broaden your audience and you’d be much more effective particularly for teaching.

His videos are very simple. They’re just screen captures with him talking in a very similar way to what you just heard. But they do bring alive that article. Those tips there on reaching out to other influencers to making connections with other people. You’re going to hear that tip again in a number of future stories that we’ve got coming up in days ahead as well. Do take note of that.

Thanks so much to Paul and to Sumit who shared their stories today. You can find links to their blogs over on our show notes today at http://ift.tt/2D0ErrK. If you are inspired to start a blog like Paul and Sumit, head over to http://ift.tt/2Cz9que and sign up to be notified when I start a blog and the course goes live. It’s completely free and it will help you to start a blog that’s not only technically set up the right way but also it helps you think through some of those foundational things to build a business around your blog and become more effective in your blogging as well. Thanks for listening. Chat with you tomorrow when I’ve got another story from another blogger. Thanks for listening.

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