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!

Update: The Winds of Change

 It’s official: Extasy Books will no longer be selling directly from their site. This change was implemented on January 1, 2025, and is due to rising costs of publication and more. It was decided after a long and difficult deliberation by the owner, Tina.

Please note that Extasy Books is not going out of business. They are changing their business model to something closer to what we see at Decadent Publishing, where Eternity’s Gamble is published. We’re just not going to have our books published directly on Extasy’s site, only third party sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indigo for example. We’re still able to get the print versions of our books if they’re over a certain word count, and in pretty much every format in ebooks.

The amount of new releases will be a lot less than they have been in the past, so it may be a while before some of the authors have sequels and new releases hit the shelves. So please do not get upset if your favorite Ex author doesn’t have a new release for a bit. Edits, revisions, cover art and more take time.

All of the books I have published via Extasy Books will remain under their banner indefinitely. I don’t know when I’ll be submitting another story, due to how slow I write as a rule, and other variables hitting me between the eyes this last year. More on that later.

You can still see the new releases, and find our books via Extasy Books’ site. We’re all submitting our Books2Read or Amazon profiles to be included on the main site so it’s easy to find us and our books on the third party retailers.

Honestly, I’m not really upset about the change in format for Extasy publishing their books. Most of my sales came from third party sellers like Amazon as it is, and I’m used to not seeing a book for sale directly from the publisher, due to being with Decadent Publishing for the last three years (already?!???). I’m determined to strut along as usual, just posting my Books2Read link instead of the Extasy Books one for the six books I have out with them. It’s not a big change.

Upcoming Books… And a New Venture!

In lieu of Extasy Books’ change in publishing, I’ve decided to take a huge leap and do something really crazy…

I’m going to be publishing at least one novel as an Indie author. His Reasons to Fight, the finale of the Feathered Tartan series, will be coming out sometime in 2028 or 2029. It depends on how fast I can write it, edit it, have my friend/editor Jon edit it, and more.

I’m working on the cover now, and I will be doing a cover reveal about a month or so before the release date. This is the happy ever after to my latest book, Could Have Been, which was published in May 2024. I’ve decided to take it Indie so I can publish it when I want to, on my own schedule, and so fans can partake in it being on Kindle Unlimited for a while before it goes wide – to places like Smashwords, Indigo and more.

©2025 V.J. Allison Art. No downloading or sharing without my written permission.

I also have another book in the works, a love story called Thorns of the Rose. I’m not giving away any details other than I have the cover completed, and this has been in the works for a couple of years, but with Could Have Been taking up a lot of my time, and more, it was on the back burner. Now that I have a bit of direction with His Reasons to Fight, I’m working on this one when I hit a roadblock with the other book. It’s slow going but both are starting to come along nicely too.

Again, I’m looking at a 2028 or 2029 release for this one. I’m not sure if this one will be going Indie or not. I have to see how things go with His Reasons to Fight and a third idea I’m working on with my friend Xek. (More on that shortly!).

I did do a promo for it… Have a gander.

©2025 V.J. Allison Art. NO downloading or sharing without my written permission.

The cover reveal – if this goes Indie – will probably be in November of 2027 at the earliest. Otherwise, it may be sooner or later than that. So many variables…

I’m also in the extremely early planning stages of another paranormal-horror romance that was prompted by a chat with an extremely good friend of mine. No, not sharing yet. Let’s call it “Super Secret Project the Second”.

And I have another series in its ultra-early planning stages, one that I hope to get on the go as soon as I’m done the three I’m working on now, including the crime drama one I’m working on with Xek. Again, not sharing details because nothing is set in concrete. I don’t share details with anyone outside of a few people like my editor/friend Jon, a few of the people at Extasy Books, and a few extremely close friends. I’ve always been a bit cautious about sharing things about my WIPs, and I’m even more so now. I’ll update as needed, like on my author areas and in my Facebook group, etc.

Computer Woes

A month ago, my computer started acting strangely, and when I stood up to check something, I accidentally knocked the plug out of the socket, which turned it off. It would not start after that, creating the loud whine of death.

Thankfully I still had the computer that my former Business Tech instructor gave me in 2023, not long before the semester ended. After trying to get the old computer started for two days, I got the newer system, set it up and installed the old computer’s disk in it.

The dratted thing decided it was going to repair the disk. Two days of fighting with it. I finally gave up and decided to skip the repair… Only to have Windows do a forced update, and then I saw it…

The dreaded Blue Screen of Death…

Three times.

It took a lot of thinking, quadruple checking, and more, but after forcing a system restore, I managed to get it up and running again.

If you know me at all, you probably just saw me in your mind, cursing a blue streak so long that it hit the Oort Cloud and returned something like 20 times over that weekend. There was a lot more cuss words bouncing off the Oort Cloud again, after the forced updates f**ked up the computer for a while.

Finally, things were setting up nicely. Then I tried accessing my User Folder on my old drive.

Access denied.

I cried. All of my manuscripts were in that folder, and I had forgotten to back them up in recent months, not since Could Have Been was published. Thorns of the Rose was there, as was what little I had for His Reasons to Fight.

I kept trying to get access for two whole weeks. I was ready to give up then tried right clicking on the dang thing and hitting “open” when the menu came up as a last resort.

Boom! Access granted!

I screamed in victory and almost fainted in relief. I had my graphics, my manuscripts, and everything else again.

I immediately backed everything up on the external drive as well as my Google drive to be extra safe. The incarnations of those stories and others that were there when the old system croaked will stay there, and I’ll be putting backups on that drive too. Triple backups, not double, to be extra safe.

Remind me to never be that negligent again…

*Note: If you laugh about anything you think is “bad” or “karma” for me, you are one of the worst people on this planet. It shows the world the kind of person you are, not who I am. Keep that in mind before you think it’s only fitting I’ve had a few issues, your karma may wind up biting you in ways you’re not realizing, or you’re blaming on others.*

Other News…

Son is still at his transition school but this is his last year. He’ll be graduating from there in June, and we’ll be sad to say goodbye to his friends and teachers there. He had a good two and a half year run with them, and he’s come a long way since he started there in 2023. He’s become so much more independent, from cooking his own meals in the microwave or the toaster oven, to purchasing his own groceries and more. I’m so proud of him. He’ll probably be living here for the rest of my life, and I’m okay with that. He’s great company and such a good person. The best out there.

He’s also participating in a work placement that teaches him skills like stocking shelves, shredding papers, using various things like cash registers and so much more. They also have a lot of recreation like trips to museums and more included in the program so he’s always on the go with them too. He’s there three days a week at the moment, while he’s at his transition school only twice per week until graduation. This is a year round thing, and we started doing the work placement over the summer, so I’m able to work more during July and August instead of taking those two months off like I had been during his full time tenure as a student. Bonus!

My art has picked up a bit, notably after hitting Michaels’ crafts for the first time this summer. To say I can spend hours in the art area alone is an understatement. It is so relaxing to walk the aisle of art supplies, from acrylics to watercolors and pastels, to the pretty wooden cutouts and the beautifully huge canvases they have in stock, and so much more. I always wind up going somewhat broke after hitting that store, and it’s become a running joke here. Don’t go to Bayer’s Lake Shopping Park without stopping into Michaels’, or else V.J. will lose it. Since I get my occipital nerve blocks in another part that park, there’s always time to make a short – read two hour – stop into the store… And to their location of my favorite national thrift store chain. I’m always looking for a bargain, and I’ve found a lot – from a leather fall/spring coat to art supplies, and from a full length (read down to my ankles) leather winter coat with a hood to a designer purse I didn’t realize was one until I got it home. I only picked it up because it has purple roses on it, my signature as an author, and its colors are my signatures too – black, purple, white and silver. It’s a Betsey Johnson original, and it’s so pretty! I love it.

Inside of the Betsey Johnson purse. So pretty!

Outside of the purse. Purple roses!

I do have a lot more on the go, but I’ve rambled on too much as it is. I’ll drop another update when I remember to… Hopefully before summer rolls around in six months!

Happy 2025, everyone. May this year be gentle for all of us.

I leave you with “What About Love” by one of my favorite bands, Heart. Nancy Wilson is my favorite female guitarist of all time, and she rocks circles around most of her male counterparts in my opinion… Anyway, enjoy the song! Have a great first weekend of 2025, everyone.