Summer Breezes and the Ace of Hearts...

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on here, and a lot has changed over the last six months.

Son and Transition School

Son officially graduated and had his ceremony of achievements on June 19^th, after being at the school for two and a half years. I was fine during the achievements of the other four students who were also leaving, but bawled the entire time Jeff was praising my sweet son, and everything he accomplished while attending the school. Son was always saying he was a Lieutenant Junior Grade, and at his graduation from the transition school, he was promoted to full Lieutenant. That only made me bawl harder. His teachers there are so good with the students, and they understand every nuance, every single quirk and more. To say we’re going to miss all of them next year is an understatement.

This also marks another huge milestone – Son is finally done with the South Shore Regional Education Centre. He had been in the system since he started primary in 2010, and has finally graduated from there too.

He had started attending his work placement program 4 days a week earlier this year, and is happy to be staying there. They are full on Mondays so he’s only attending there Tuesdays to Fridays, which is fine with me. I get three days to sleep in instead of only the weekends. And if there’s a holiday like Canada Day during the week, he gets that off too. Plus any days that it’s a snow day for the SSREC kids it’s one for his crew too. The LL gang (as I call it) does a lot of things, like laundry for various businesses around the county, silk screening, shredding paper, and so much more. These amazing people of all ages (ranging from 18 to elderly) learn a lot of skills at the placement, plus they also go on outings like bowling in Lunenburg, various fairs around the South Shore, museums, visiting horse stables and various farms, selling products that are made in the shop at farm markets and so much more.

They even had their first ever prom for LL participants and full time residents (this is attached to a home for people who cannot live independently who cannot live with family, etc.). Everyone looked so wonderful dressed up, and they had so much fun at the dance. Even Son – who hates any music that’s not classical or heavy metal – loved it and hope they do it again next year.

To say they are awesome is an understatement, and I’m so happy my precious boy is there. They’ve done so much for him, he’s even more independent now, and has matured a lot in the last six months or so.

I’m so proud of him!

Lunenburg Pride’s Third Annual Pride Parade

Another year, another pride celebration in my county! I was going to walk in the parade again this year, after having so much fun last year, but unfortunately, my body decided that it wasn’t going to store iron again, and I’m extremely anemic (no laughing or you’re a horrid piece of shit!). No walking in the parade, doctor’s orders. I was allowed to watch it, as long as I stayed out of the sun, I was sitting down and guzzling water.

It wasn’t as big this year as it had been last year, but it was still tons of fun, with everyone calling “Happy Pride!” and pretty much every part of the LGBT+ community represented.

When we got to Empire Street, we saw someone walking by wearing the lesbian flag, and others wearing the Intersex Progressive Pride Flag, as well as non-binary flags, lots of Canadian flags with the rainbow where the two red panels normally go (I call it the Canadian PRIDE flag), and of course the traditional Rainbow Pride flag (six coloured one) everywhere – and that was just the spectators.

Yours truly went all out in her own flag colours – which are also my signature colours as an author. Black, grey, white, and purple galore, head to toe. Even the sneakers matched, they’re black, white, grey and lavender. Perfect for me! I did wear my PRIDE hat with the word in rainbow colours, and my rainbow bracelet, but that was it. I wore my asexual flag as a cape too. Hubby said I looked awesome and he was so proud to see me having fun and cheering on my fellow LGBT+ community members. I even saw a few people I had made friends with last year… It was so much fun and so amazing.

I hope I’m well enough to walk in it next year, as an author and representative of the asexual community in the area. If not, I’m happy to sit on the sidelines and cheer on my fellow queers again!

Writing Update

Now that the glucose is dropping a mile (almost back to normal!) and I’m losing that brain fog, I am determined to get Thorns of the Rose completed and get on with the other stories in the queue, from His Reasons to Fight to the crime drama Xek and I are working on, and so many more…

With Son gone four days a week, and Hubby working a lot of daytimes at his store (he works for a major Canadian grocery store chain), I’m getting at least two to three work days a week. I’m not always getting 5K days but I’m getting 1 to 3 K days and that’s better than nothing. You can’t edit a blank page, after all… And I’m filling mine up, faster than I thought I would be at this point. Thorns of the Rose is now over 40 thousand words, and I’m not even up to the halfway point yet.

This story will also have a bit more steam/spice in it than most of my other stories do, because I’m publishing this as an Indie published book under my own publishing company – whose name will be revealed in time, when I’m ready. I’m already researching registering it with the province and possibly with Ottawa, so it will be a legit company for my own books, and for selling art, and so much more.

I’m determined to finish draft 1 of Thorns of the Rose as soon as possible. That way I can finally finish the crime drama with Xek and the two of us can get it cleaned up, beta read and either done Indie or by one of the publishing houses we are looking at. It will not be done via Extasy Books due to them not putting many books out (I don’t want to overwhelm everyone!) and it won’t be out via Decadent because they focus on romance, and this one has no romance in it. Xek has one or two she’d like to try, and I have a couple in mind as well. Although I’m with her on her first choice, it’s my second choice, so we’ll probably submit there first.

And no, I won’t be saying when it goes out. That’s between us and the publishing house who receives it. The last thing we need is upsetting anyone else if we get a rejection. And I’m betting on at least one or two rejections before finding the right home for it.

As for His Reasons to Fight, I’ll be plugging away on that in the future. I know, I should get it finished ASAP due to Could Have Been ending on a cliffhanger… but I assure all of you out there, it will be more than worth the wait to see how Joshua and Lauren get their happy ever after. I promise!

Art

I’ve been drawing and painting again, this time using watercolors and watercolor pencils. Watercolor pencils are the bomb! I love how easy they are to use, notably for shading right and more. My only gripe is that they need a LOT of water to dissolve the pigments, especially if you layer tons of colors for shading and more. Otherwise, I love them a lot and I’m hoping to get a huge set sometime when we hit Michaels Crafts.

I just need more white multimedia paper though. I’m almost out and the Dollarama no longer carries it. Good grief.

No, I don't show my art publicly, due to companies like Google and others using it to "train" their generative AI slop without my permission. Plus I know a few people who would love to download it, print it out and use it as toilet paper, just out of spite. If you want to see my art, either check out my Discord (you have to have an invite for it) or certain places online that are not visible to the public eye.

Otherwise, everything is running smoothly and I’m doing my best not to gnaw on the monitor those days that I’m not writing.

Happy International Non-Binary Peoples Day! It’s celebrated every July 14^th, and celebrates everyone under the non-binary (enby or NBi) umbrella. I love enby people! They are so sweet, kind and down to earth. You don’t have to present a certain way to be enby either, just be yourself!

On a final note, due to recent circumstances, Generative AI is completely banned in my writing group, on my pages, on this blog and more. Any author who wants to participate in a takeover in my group must state if they used generative AI in either their writing, their covers or both. If they did, it'll be an immediate access denied and banned from the group.

Writing is not prompting.

It's hard work that takes time. You pound it out word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page until the story is finished. Period. No fucking shortcuts. At all.

If you use generative AI to "ghost write" and then revise it, you are a fraud and not a real author. You are an editor and proofer. Nothing more.

It's a legal form of plagiarism, and I hope it soon becomes illegal.

Besides, you cannot copyright anything "written" or "drawn" using generative AI. 

Period. 

So sick of entitled, selfish pieces of shit who think they're an "author" by typing prompts into generative AI and using what it barfs out as "a story" that they "wrote"...

I have worked my ass off to get where I am as an author and an artist today. I'm not perfect by any means, but there's a reason why two of my books have won awards... And it's not because they were written using stuff stolen from other people's original work. 

To wrap it up, I leave you with a song that’s been running through my head the last while… “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by local classic metal band, Whom Gods Destroy. Enjoy!