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copperbadge · 12 hours
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Oh gosh, I visited for the first time last year in October and absolutely fell in love with the city! I just got back from my birthday trip to uptown Chicago, where I was scoping out the neighborhood u want to live in.
Maybe New York has better parks and museums and Texas better events but I think Chicago is pretty great. Plus the public transit system is very rad imo.
Uptown's a great first place to live in Chicago! I mean it's a good place to live in general, but it's a good landing place until you can get to know the city and see if you like somewhere else better. I lived just off the Sheridan red line stop for ages.
I don't even think New York necessarily has BETTER museums -- the Art Institute of Chicago Museum has been voted best museum worldwide a handful of times -- but they are more and more diverse, I think. And yeah the public transit system is one of the major reasons I moved here!
I do love Chicago. I could never live in New York or LA or Austin. It's just funny to me that someone's advertising for it in MARCH. Though I guess it makes sense if we want people to come visit in June or July when it's really nice.
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copperbadge · 16 hours
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Speaking as the creator of Askazer-Shivadlakia, I endorse the establishment of Wiscondiananois, that sleepy Midwestern flyover state.
It’s funny when American authors come up with a new European nation so their main character can be a secret royal without the pain of researching a real nation. We should all start doing that with North America, just make up a new state. My protagonist lives in New Utahioshington which is the 51st state and located between Delaware and Maryland
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copperbadge · 20 hours
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If it helps, I mean it with absolute love and I'm planning on using those exact ducks in the arms I'm making!
For a bit of fun I've been working on arms for the Shivadh novels -- one for the country, one for the royal family, one each for the duchies of Shivadlakia and Askaz, and also one for Eddie, Duke of the Orange, which is a title created for him so his arms are brand new. (For the curious, Richard the Librarian does double-duty as King of Arms, demonstrating that under his orderly and slightly fussy exterior beats the heart of a vicious punster.)
Anyway Eddie's is going to involve ducks, because his title is technically "Dux a L'Orange", and I had to google what heraldic ducks might look like and I can't stop laughing.
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THEY LOOK SO LUDICROUS. IT'S PERFECT. They're so adorable and dumb-looking it tickles my very soul. This is the arms of Athis-de-l'Orne in France, and I'm sorry if you live there but your ducks are absurd.
[ID: A shield-shaped coat of arms; it is white with two black chevrons on it pointing upwards. At the bottom and the top two corners are ducks done in black, with one foot forward as if they are in the act of walking; they are only very slightly cartoonish, but their odd proportions and pose are extremely funny. At least, if you're me.]
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copperbadge · 1 day
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I continue to investigate weird merch stores and I gotta tell you I don't think the Chiquita Fruit merch store thought this one through.
[ID: A screengrab of a $20 "Chiquita Fanny Pack", which shows a waist bag, also known as a hip pack or bumbag, in bright yellow with a yellow banana zipper pull. It simply reads, in blue, "Banana inside" which if you're wearing the bag on the front of your waist, as many do, would perhaps indicate you are packin' a banana of a different sort.]
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copperbadge · 2 days
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I commented to say this and then I was like "Hell I should reblog this" but that specific scene in that episode is the reason I wrote my first ever fanfic when I was a teenager in the 90s.
the year is 2024. I am watching The X Files 1x08 with my blissfully offline boyfriend. We reach the scene where, in confinement, Mulder and Scully examine each other's backs for alien marks. My boyfriend, who has never seen the show before, makes an amused noise and utters a strong contender for understatement of the year:
"I'm guessing there's fanfiction about these two"
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copperbadge · 2 days
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Well, on the plus, I did get evaluated for autism when I had my ADHD evaluation; yes to ADHD but no to Autism, despite the family history of it. But I think we all know that they share a lot of traits in any case.
Where I get a little lost is like...surely if someone's being a dickhead and it's not your fault, if you're capable of telling yourself that, you already knew that? I'm not vocalizing it well, but like...whether or not it was my fault, it still happened and I still feel bad about it. There's a guy I know in one of my social circles who pretty actively avoids me, and I have no idea why; I can tell myself it's a him problem, I've never been intentionally offensive to him, and I know that the mature thing to do is to leave him alone because he has no obligation to like me. So I leave him alone, and if we do interact I'm friendly but not overly familiar, because I know he doesn't especially want to be friends.
That doesn't make me feel better, watching him avoid me every time. I don't see how telling myself I've done nothing wrong and it's his right to avoid me is going to help with that. But apparently for lots of people, it does.
I was supposed to ask about it in DBT class yesterday, Therapist told me I should bring it up, but I hate being the constant problem child in that class and my internet went out right at the start of it anyway, so it's just as well. For the "gold standard" treatment for ADHD, it's been a really alienating experience, having ADHD in a DBT class. I try to take the "I've discovered several thousand things that don't work!" Edison approach to it, but I think what I've mostly learned is that this is apparently as good as it gets, and more energy should go to figuring out a way to make peace with that. It's not ideal, but my life's pretty decent when I'm not constantly getting implicitly called a freak, so at least it's only a temporary issue.
RE watching thoughts: I’m not 100% sure, but it might be that the whole “I am not my thoughts” is about engaging and identifying with your metacognition MORE than your initial thoughts. Because I get where you’re coming from - what is a consciousness but a collection of thoughts and feelings? But you can also have thoughts about your own thoughts that are more useful for dealing with whatever situation you’re in, I guess. (Random aside - every time I start thinking about thinking about thinking my brain inevitably starts thinking about Tiffany Aching and The Wee Free Men.)
I really should have replied to this ask sooner because it's going to seem like a non-sequitur now (this was sent much earlier in March) but I'm kind of glad I didn't, because I've been chatting with people about this and I think I understand more why there's an emphasis in some therapies on the idea that we are not our thoughts.
(I uh, haven't read the Tiffany books so I'm not much help there.)
I am coming to understand that many, perhaps most, people judge themselves, comprehensively and harshly, based on their thoughts. Perhaps it's just a lot of people who struggle with mental health, but given the commonality of the sentiment I don't know if I'd confine it that tightly; generally it appears that people cannot conceive of themselves as anything other than a binary of good or bad. So many people I've talked to about this portion of DBT, the watching-questioning-identifying thoughts portion, say that it helps to snap them out of a spiral of "I'm a horrible person, I deserve to suffer/die, I can never be redeemed" after they've failed at something, or had a negative thought, or reacted poorly to an unexpected event.
That is not something I've ever experienced. I mean, jokingly maybe, but not in a real, internal sense.
And that's not to brag -- I'm not saying I think I'm a good person, either, because I don't think I'm a good person. I don't conceive of myself in terms of good or bad. I never cuddle my cats and think "I'm such a good cat dad" or forget to feed them and think "I should die now." I have a perpetual morally neutral attitude towards my own existence; my thoughts and actions might trend me one direction or another but I'm aware of the temporary nature of that. If I fuck up I'll worry about who I might have hurt or whether I'll be fired or what's going to happen as a consequence, if I am polite to someone who didn't deserve it I know I was acting kindly in the moment, but I don't make an inherent moral judgement of myself based on that. And it seems like the vast majority of people do. Which you would think would make me feel pretty good about myself, but honestly...I don't know.
A lot of people I know who have ADHD or are Autistic have talked about seeing themselves as other, as alien -- like that one webcomic artist who draws themself with little antennae to indicate they're strange and different. I've always understood why one might do that, but I never felt that way myself, before or after the diagnosis. After all, let's remember, I was The Normal* Child of my siblings, and if I was The Normal One before the diagnosis, why wouldn't I remain Mostly Normal after?
* As ever, I'm using "normal" as a cultural term, to indicate what we think of as mainstream, not because normal is a thing that really exists.
My life has been relatively solitary -- I have friends and family and I love them but I'm rarely part of a large group, I don't spend a lot of time out in public interacting with people, I'm not a big socializer. Before the Adderall, I really couldn't be, I took too much psychic damage from interpersonal interaction, so I chose those very carefully. And now my DBT class has been a rare moment when I'm encountering contradictions to a lot of my assumptions about the way human beings in our society interact, react, and behave. I just...don't fit that mold very well. I think of it as having crossed wiring, not in the sense that I'm faulty but just in the sense that I'm very, very different. Not Normal. It's not exactly a bad feeling but it's certainly not a great one, internalizing the sensation of alienness.
DBT is proving to be a mixed bag but not in the way I or my therapist intended -- it seems to be either things I was already instinctively doing or things that simply do not apply to me. In one way it's disappointing because it means there isn't much help to be had (we're a little over halfway through the course and I keep thinking "Maybe next class will be useful") but on the other hand it's validating that so much of what I came up with myself as unconscious coping mechanisms is literally what I would have been told to do anyway.
Sometimes it's a combination of both, though, which really blows. I guess most people, if they reframe another person's actions, actually find emotional relief in that, and I don't. An example from the class is that if someone is rude to you, you can consider how they might be having a hard day, and be polite in return; that's great, in terms of defusing a situation, and it's something I do a fair amount of. But apparently it's also something that for most people results in feeling less awful about the interaction, and that's not the case for me. Which is why so much of DBT feels to me like lying to oneself. It's not lying for most people.
So, yeah. I'm going to finish out the course and keep trying things with the therapist but I suspect given everything, I might already be at "as good as it gets" in terms of emotional work. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, and there is still the option to try medication that could help, but I think there will come a point where I'm going to have to deal with the fallout of just how different I am, and how that has impacted my life. Might end up a good thing; something I've really been trying to resolve is unhappiness over being unpartnered and highly likely to remain that way, and at least if this provides a better understanding of why, then perhaps I can process that and put it to rest in a way I've been trying to do but not succeeding well at.
So, we'll see. But I find it both fascinating and kind of horrifying how many people can believe they are irredeemably bad, even if the belief is only temporary, simply because they had an uncharitable thought or impulse. It makes me somewhat grateful for the crossed wires, at least.
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copperbadge · 3 days
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I was catching my train home today in the land down under and there was an ad, apparently paid for by the City of Chicago, saying that Chicago was voted the best city in the U.S.A and telling people to come visit
And all I could think was, I must tell Sam, I'm sure he will have thoughts(tm)
LOL, I will admit my first reaction was "By whom?" and "For what?"
I mean, I love Chicago and think it's a great city, but I don't know if there's any metric by which it is actually the best city in America, unless you confine your sample size to "people who live in Chicago" and even then, like, we don't tend to have many illusions about this place. It's a great city to be a tourist in but there are better ones, depending on what you're touristing for, and there's not much going on in winter outside of shopping. We have some world-class museums, but New York has bigger, and while we do have some of the nicest parks around, nobody visits Chicago for the parks. We have a lot of summer festivals but not as many or as large as say, Austin.
I'd love to see a photo of the ad if you happen to see it again, or know who placed it -- it must be a tourism board of some kind. But Australia? Advertising for Chicago in March, when it's freezing here and probably very pleasant there, is a real choice someone made.
I wonder if an airline subsidized it. We have a hub, so it could be some airline that just opened up flights between Chicago and Australia wants to encourage people to travel.
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copperbadge · 3 days
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Okay there Conan the Zarbarian, slow your roll a little.
[ID: A screengrab of Duolingo showing the character of Zari, a teenage girl wearing a pink headscarf; she is saying, in Italian, "Il pericolo é il mio pane e la morte é il burro" which the banner at the bottom translates as "Danger is my bread and death is my butter."]
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copperbadge · 3 days
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I guess you probably get asked why you’re converting a lot but I still want to ask,
I dunno, I don't think I really get asked all that much, to be honest. Usually when I do it's like -- I mention I'm converting to a Jewish person and they'll be like "Getting married?" and I'll explain I'm not, which does necessitate an additional explanation.
It's difficult to vocalize, which is interesting because it has really very little to do with faith, and that's usually the most difficult part of discussing any conversion, I think. Often I'll just say, "I heard a call". Which is actually a rather Christian way of putting it, but I think it's probably the easiest way to explain, especially in a heavily Christian culture.
I had...I don't want to call it religious trauma exactly because compared to most people I know who exited Christianity, it wasn't traumatic -- I was just raised in Christianity and had trouble buying the faith in the various ways it was presented to me, and there's a certain type of ardent Christian who comes at you hard if you're in their church asking awkward questions. A few encounters with some egregious megachurches in my youth left a bad taste in my mouth, so in my twenties I really wanted nothing to do with religion and didn't have the time or energy anyway -- I wasn't actively anti-religion, just disinterested.
But in my thirties I had to ask myself, do I wish to be part of a faith community? And once I'd decided that despite being pretty heavily agnostic I did want that in my life, I had to decide what I wanted it to look like. There are churches within many branches of Christianity that are fine, and there are whole branches that are fine too, but I kept tripping over my disinterest in Jesus. I did almost become a Quaker but although I really like a lot of the Friends' attitudes towards social justice and I enjoyed silent Meeting, it eventually didn't feel quite right for me (the Quakers in my life refer to me as "Friend-ly"). I looked into Zen Buddhism but didn't click with it in quite the way I'd hoped.
Judaism didn't feel perfect, but unlike other faiths, after several years of study I have yet to reach a point where it feels "not for me" in the way the others did after a few months; even when I struggle with some aspects, instead of saying "I don't think this is it" I dig deeper, and Judaism is a place where you can just...keep digging. I like the sense of history, I like the idea that you can argue not only with other Jews but with the divine itself and maybe even win; I don't like arguing but I like that the option is there, which it never was in my Christian confirmation classes. I like the way Judaism frames community and family, I like the emphasis on scholarship and exploration. I've had to unlearn a lot of weird Christian and atheist attitudes about the Torah, but that's been educational too. Ancient cultures have always interested me and Judaism is sometimes the practice of actively conversing with ancient history that has been incredibly preserved but not calcified. I like that I can be an agnostic Jew if I so choose, once I finish conversion.
(Sometimes I joke, "Eh, I'm not really a huge fan of pork, either, so it's an excuse not to eat pork chops," but that's a joke for very specific company. I don't keep kosher or plan to, but I like that there is an option to show one's devotion through acts of nourishment, and that food is always such a huge part of Jewish ritual. And I like Jewish food.)
There is something in me that reacts to Jewish storytelling -- the fear and fasting of Esther, discourse on the sacrifice of Isaac, grumpy Rabban Gamliel from the Talmud, even the history of the Piazza Alla Cinque Schole when I stumbled into it in Rome. I didn't care particularly about the story of Moses when I learned it as a child, but I sniffle at the parting of the Red Sea in Prince of Egypt every damn time. Not even because of the miracle! I'm simply moved by the vision of a people going to freedom, scared but going, protecting each other and singing as they go.
Anyway. I'm in a conversation with Judaism that isn't over yet, and either eventually I'll reach a point where it ends, or I'll convert and be in this conversation the rest of my life. Kind of fun not to know yet which it will be.
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copperbadge · 4 days
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For a bit of fun I've been working on arms for the Shivadh novels -- one for the country, one for the royal family, one each for the duchies of Shivadlakia and Askaz, and also one for Eddie, Duke of the Orange, which is a title created for him so his arms are brand new. (For the curious, Richard the Librarian does double-duty as King of Arms, demonstrating that under his orderly and slightly fussy exterior beats the heart of a vicious punster.)
Anyway Eddie's is going to involve ducks, because his title is technically "Dux a L'Orange", and I had to google what heraldic ducks might look like and I can't stop laughing.
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THEY LOOK SO LUDICROUS. IT'S PERFECT. They're so adorable and dumb-looking it tickles my very soul. This is the arms of Athis-de-l'Orne in France, and I'm sorry if you live there but your ducks are absurd.
[ID: A shield-shaped coat of arms; it is white with two black chevrons on it pointing upwards. At the bottom and the top two corners are ducks done in black, with one foot forward as if they are in the act of walking; they are only very slightly cartoonish, but their odd proportions and pose are extremely funny. At least, if you're me.]
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copperbadge · 4 days
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Radio Free Monday
Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!
A note before we begin -- I'm traveling at the end of the week, and will be traveling home on Monday morning, so RFM may be delayed next week. I'm hoping to get it done at the airport or while in transit, but it may be midday before I get home and settle in enough to post.
Ways to Give:
Eric, a game store owner, is helping his adult daughter Rachel to secure stable housing near her young daughter; Rachel lives with chronic pain and severe social anxiety and is looking at several challenges to getting back on her feet. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.
Buy Stuff, Help Out:
francescaswords is publishing her most recent novel, a YA contemporary fantasy titled ROTTING TREES, via Patreon; she's recently had some worsening health issues including chronic fatigue, and is trying to finish her degree while facing mounting costs of living. Becoming a Patreon member offers access to the novel as well as helps support her; you can read more and sign up to give here.
Recurring Needs:
Anon linked to a fundraiser for prototrans, a disabled artist who needs help with rent money; they are also offering commissions. You can read more, reblog, and find giving and commission information here.
Anon linked to a fundraiser for killiel, who needs help to cover bills and debt; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.
chingaderita's partner recently lost their job due to a house fire that also destroyed the house; they're raising funds to keep food on the table, to try and get a supply of water to keep clean and do laundry, and for various bills until they can find new work. You can read more, reblog, and support the fundraiser here.
thelastpyler is raising funds to help with food, transportation, and replacement IDs after being robbed; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here, and have an Amazon wishlist they can share if messaged with the request.
Anon linked to karla-hoshi or Hoshi on TikTok, who is raising funds for cancer treatment for her cat Naku; they caught the cancer early and hope that he can survive it, but can't continue treatment without funding. You can read more and support the fundraiser here, as well as find links to her updates on tiktok.
And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.
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copperbadge · 4 days
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That's why it's called 'a baby'.
New gender binary: either you exist or you don't exist.
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copperbadge · 4 days
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"Why u no petting Deebs, Father?"
[ID: A photograph of Dearborn the Tortie, lying on her side on the Second Best Quilt; her front feet are dangling in the air, flopped over, and her head is turned to look up into the camera, one cheek practically pressed to her shoulder, face a little smooshed, adorable and beseeching.]
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copperbadge · 5 days
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Therapist suggested at our last meeting that I should try writing about an issue, not journaling but writing fiction because she knows I write fiction and I've talked about Jerry a little bit as a kind of avatar.
I don't think I achieved quite what we were going for because while it's true he represents me, that's true to some degree for all my characters, and in this case he has both bad behaviors and good resources I do not, so it's kind of apples to oranges. I might take another swing at a non-Shivadh story, or a story about a different (possibly new) character dealing with the issue.
That being said, I did have fun. I love coming up with endless silly t-shirts for Gerald to wear.
Gerald was standing in the doorway. He'd been wearing nice clothes earlier when they'd seen each other at breakfast, but now he was in a shiny nylon running shirt that read "THIS IS BORING" and a pair of shorts.
"Spill soup on your dress shirt?" Gregory asked, leaning back from his desk.
"Planning to wear this to my next budget meeting," Ger replied.
"You don't attend budget meetings."
"I'm not invited. Probably because of the shirt," Gerald said with a grin.
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copperbadge · 5 days
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Thanks for putting Italian on my dash! Studied it a university, but haven’t used it since. It was so nice to unexpectedly get to flex that muscle! You’re encouraging me to take it back up. You’re doing amazing, keep on :D
Aw, thanks! I have to say every Italian speaker I've encountered has been very kind and supportive, whether they're native speakers or English speakers who studied the language.
If I post in Italian, I'll always include a translation, and people who know the language should feel free to let me know if I've made mistakes; obviously you're not obliged to, but it's okay to let me know if you want to. The hardest part of being at this specific point in the learning is that I know just enough grammar to be dangerous -- I can't tell when I'm incorrect, and I still make very rookie mistakes without knowing why they're mistakes.
I'm a bit better at reading than I am at writing, which I think is fairly standard for most language learners. I do understand enough now that I can more or less take over with self-instruction, so the plan is to keep on with Duolingo until my Duo subscription is up, building a language resource with flashcards and a spreadsheet for conjugation reference, then probably let Duo lapse and start doing more intensive reading work.
I have had a couple of questions about resources for self-guided mid level language learning and my plan is to read Italian language fanfic, since it's easy to find on AO3 and you can filter for length, and most fanfic has pretty straightforward prose. I'm already doing pretty well reading and listening to Italian football media, but that's admittedly a fairly limited vocabulary. (I miss Mourinho, who spoke Italian fluently but rather slowly; de Rossi is a native speaker and a Roman to boot so when he gives pre and post game interviews he really clips along, and does the apparently Roman thing of never quite fully pronouncing the ends of words.)
Anyway if I get far enough along, I'll start trying to translate Italian fanfic into English -- not publicly, at least not at first, and of course only with permission, but fandom really is a pretty great resource if you're looking to self-teach a language.
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copperbadge · 5 days
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FYI the pizzas were a success! Of 27 I brought (second batch plus a few from the initial half test-batch) all but five were eaten and those were sent home with folks who wanted them. Triumph! And I scored a bottle of red wine from the party.
The recipe was pretty easy too -- it's just this (you guessed it) King Arthur crust recipe, split into 24 pieces and topped with pizza sauce or pesto sauce, cheese, and toppings before baking as directed. Nice supple dough too, good to work with.
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Chag Purim Sameach everyone! I made Pizzataschen.
[ID: Two pictures of freshly baked mini-pizzas on parchment paper; they are triangle-shaped like hamantaschen cookies, made from a circle with three sides folded up to form a triangle; the visible filling is made of pizza sauce and cheese that has caramelized on the tops and edges.]
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copperbadge · 5 days
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Coming Soon!
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All right, we're doing this! The day of the full solar eclipse, April 8th, I'll be putting the second omnibus volume of The Shivadh Romances up for sale.
Askazer-Shivadlakia is “the little country by the sea” — a coastal micronation perched between France and Italy, with Europe’s only Jewish royal family and a distinctly queer-friendly culture. The irreverent but earnest Shivadh people have recently elected a new king, and there are a lot of changes afoot for the country and its rulers. (Want to know more? There's a page here with plot summaries and sales links for the series.)
In the US, the ePub will be available for $3.99, the paperback will be $24.99, and the hardback will be $34.99. Internationally, there's some variance in price of course based on local currency, but the print cost and profit margin are about the same, so you're not paying much more or less, comparatively, than the American prices. The print versions can also serve as a paperweight, doorstop, or murder weapon, so it's really a deal if you think of it that way.
The paperback and hardback are only available through Lulu; the ePub should be available through Amazon as well, but I get a much bigger cut if you buy through Lulu, so that's where I'm linking.
The Twelve Points of Caleb Canto introduces Caleb, a young trans music teacher who accidentally enters Eurovision on behalf of The Ask, and his rival and new friend -- or maybe more -- Buck Haverd, the ambitious bad-boy competitor from the UK. Dinner At The Palace is the first collection of Shivadh short stories, spanning everything from Michaelis meeting his destiny in 1978 to Gregory and Eddie going cryptid-hunting in 2022. The Royals and the Ramblers tells the story of Gregory and Eddie's three weddings, and introduces Eddie's sister Monday, who is helping the kings have a royal heir and may or may not have a thing going on with Georgie, the palace head of security. And then there's Joan, the headstrong orphan who could use a couple of dads....
Read all three in a single volume, starting April 8th!
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