It’s officially the December holidays – no one is around, stores are either closed or packed, and I can feel my end-of-the-year itches coming on strong. Yet there seems to be no time for anything…

So what have the Shames been up to?

I broke out our new camera to refresh some of my blog post illustrations. You can see the results on this post, or on some future ones I imagine I will create! Bonus: here’s my favorite visual story that’s not spoken for yet by a specific post.

Amy cranked out a recording + video for her Star Citizen parody of “Santa Baby” last night, and it’s doing very well for the modest amount of promotion we’ve given it (see: none). I’m sure I’ve mentioned this previously, but I am way proud of Ames for deciding to learn how to edit videos and then just effin’ doin’ it.

We’ve uploaded yet another episode of The Writers in the Room, and this one’s all about personal branding for writers. Give it a listen and let me know if you’d like more info on anything we touch on during the podcast!

Tiny Habits didn’t work as well for me as I’d hoped, though it has stimulated my appetite for habit-making, so Amy and I are now giving Habitica a try. I’ve attempted to use it before, but never with the mindset of tiny goals, which Tiny Habits did give me. Again, I’ll report back on how it works for me! I’m currently trying to get into the habit of at least one 10-minute word sprint and some aerobic movement every day.

I have seen some sketched comic pages with my own two eyes! I continue to be unable to share, because this thing has gotta stay on the DL until Alex is further along, BUT. Patrick has made us a fabulous landing page website as a placeholder until we have more content, and once I’ve seen a lot more storyboard pages, I will have him take that live and share it here.

Jake finished my dad’s guitar, and at the risk of him somehow seeing this blog post, I’m going to post a picture of it anyway. Because it is gorgeous and full of magic.

If you’d like a hand-crafted guitar for your very own, please reach out and I will put you in contact with Jake. He is ready and eager to take on commission projects. Or check out all of his instruments currently up for sale.

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.

This was my “birthday week,” which is not to say that I celebrate my birthday all week but rather shorthand to inform my coworkers that I won’t be around for their end-of-the-year “hurry up and wait” BS and will be enjoying some quiet, restful time at home.

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

And meanwhile, the Shames have been up to a few things…

The new guitars are finally up and ready for their new homes. These are two of my favorites Jake has made so far – both purple, both transformed from their original forms, each boasting its own sound. There’s the Washburn, which has a great underdog/comeback story, and the LTD, pictured here.

If you’re interested, please feel free to purchase them through Reverb, or contact me directly.

I wrote the first draft of the children’s book based on my cousin Lisa’s really adorable new baby, about a little girl and her elephant best friend and their adventures together. I almost made myself cry? Shhh. I’ve shared it with Nicole and I’ll preview any progress as it comes!

There are two new episodes of The Writers in the Room up on Soundcloud – one mostly about NaNoWriMo, and the other about padding your word count productively (and a lot about food, for some reason).

Jake took me to Half Price Books yesterday and I got a serious fiction haul that includes “Who Fears Death” by Nnedi Okorafor (a read I’ve been anticipating for some time now), “Viscera” by Gabriel Squailia, and “The Lives of Tao” by Wesley Chu. I’m looking forward to some winter evening reading!

I’ll leave you with this lovely holiday-themed original ukulele song by Amy.

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Not Bad goes analog. #practice #Koa #ukelele #christmastime #notbad #makemusic

A post shared by Not Bad (@we.are.not.bad) on Dec 13, 2018 at 9:02pm PST

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.

It’s dipped below freezing a couple of times, but here are the Shames, shivering along… What have we been up to?

I, for one, have been procrastinating! I’m late on my final Accidental Magic Project story, partly because I’ve found it hard to sit down and stay focused again lately, and partly because I really want to do this story justice. Excuses, I know.

I’ve also stalled on my NaNoWriMo project because my carpal tunnel flared up. I’m going to use this an excuse to tell you to TAKE BREAKS. Don’t let your hands get hurt. It totally sucks for a variety of reasons. Since I didn’t take suitable breaks during November, now I have to work hard in December to heal my hand and get the habit back.

On the other hand, the boys have been productive on guitar projects – my dad is going to get an amazing guitar for Christmas (fingers crossed), and many guitars in the oiling phase, which means more inventory up for sale soon!

I’ve been editing more episodes of The Writers in the Room and posting them to our Soundcloud account, so feel free to give those a listen. They’re a little wince-worthy, but I’m proud of them, still, somehow. Chalk it up to the same ego that compels me to re-listen to them…

Finally, a few more things:

• I’m doing Tiny Habits next week! I’m starting by working on some habits around my activity level, but I’m hoping to use the method (once I’ve learned it) to get better at sitting down and staying focused. I’ll report back on its effectiveness.
• I finished reading Iterate and Optimize by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, the third in their series of books about being a Smarter Artist. It was good! Not quite as chock full of specific steps as I’d wanted, but I’m OK with that for the most part; it was a great pep talk and had a lot of quality reminders of what to do and not to do while building a creative business of any size.
• Since I finished their book, I’m also checking out Sterling & Stone’s StoryShop.io. So far it seems cool. I may make an additional post on that in the future.

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.

Hello world! The Shames took some vacation time this week (or were forced to do so by federally mandated holidays) and were up to some ish…

During my time off, I’ve been working on projects, like I do. Because I obviously don’t have enough stuff to steal my time, I came up with a children’s book idea based on my cousin’s new baby and her stuffed elephant toy/friend. Nicole is going to illustrate, and I am so excited about it.

I am pleased to announce that I’m back on track with NaNoWriMo! After a few days of nose to the grindstone, I’m sitting where I should be with just an average 1667-word day standing between me and today’s par. By no means am I impressing myself this year on word count productivity…other than the part where I hadn’t really written longform all year until now, so it’s nice to get back into the practice. Meanwhile, Amy continues to plug away and make more progress than she ever has on a single project before. I’m so damn proud.

You know what else I’m proud of? The fact that Amy and I have now, for eight consecutive weeks, spent an hour or two on Saturdays streaming to talk about our writerlives. The Writers in the Room ran live again successfully today, and we posted part 2 of the “100 Ideas on One Stream” episode to Soundcloud.

(By the way, Soundcloud’s free version is annoyingly limiting. I guess 3 hours of upload time is enough if you create songs that are no more than five minutes apiece – that’s basically three full albums – but for a talk show, not so great. We may need to start looking at getting our podcast up on a podcast-friendly network, or else we’re in for a $144 cost for the year. Worth it? Not sure yet.)

If you can’t get enough Amy content, you can now follow her on Twitter at her amazing handle, @threedaloo. She intends to write quippy internet gold, which I assume you can’t pass up, so go give her a follow.

Josh was busy grabbing some photographs of the guitars that are going up for sale, but I don’t have his quality versions yet, so I imagine I’ll have those for-sale links next studiolog. Instead, please enjoy this image of the studio dog being entirely unhelpful.

More purchase options: I’ll be starting a Daugment holiday discount campaign this evening or early tomorrow morning. If you have any sci-fi fans on your list, it’ll be just $1.99 for the next couple of weeks, and makes a great virtual stocking stuffer or a present for someone you’re not ready to drop a fiver on.

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.

Lots of excitement in the studio this week! Here’s what the Shames have been up to…

Amy and I are uploading our “live podcast,” which we’re now calling The Writers in the Room, to a Soundcloud account. You can now listen to our first edited episode, part 1 of our challenge to come up with 100 ideas on a single stream. In the coming weeks, we plan to brand, write copy, and fill out our backlog, with each future episode still airing live on Mixer before it shows up on Soundcloud. Enjoy!

Jake and Josh continue to lay down the gorgeous colorful finishes on both pawn shop rescues and brand new kits. Last night, during a three-hour stream, they applied color to three guitars and finishing oil to two more. Look at this beauty!

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Applying that @crimsonguitars #stunningstains to a @schecterguitarsofficial pawn shop rescue live on @watchmixer! mixer.com/hnerskers #guitar #guitarsofinstagram #customguitars #guitarporn #stainingwood #schecterguitars

A post shared by TDS Custom Shop (@tds.custom.shop) on Nov 16, 2018 at 9:39pm PST

Still waiting to get them all up for sale, but you best believe you’ll hear about it from me when it happens.

Meanwhile, earlier in the week, Jake and Josh went to Mike Lull’s shop to do a photoshoot to generate material for the shop’s website. As soon as that’s online, I’ll share a link to their handiwork.

Oh, massive studio update this week: We bought a camera! It’s quite a nice Canon that should help us expand our abilities and serve as a clever bargaining chip when we want expensive services. It’s sitting on the charger right now, and I absolutely can’t wait to try it out.

Amy and I continue to slave away on our NaNoWriMo word counts, with a yawning abyss widening between where we are and where the math says we ought to be. But that’s OK – we both have some time off coming soon, and we’re going to encourage the heck out of each other to put in the extra effort.

One last note of author delight: a dear internet friend, Geo, recently tweeted out of the blue that he’d just finished reading Daugment. Seeing this show up randomly on my feed made all of the painful moments of editing and publishing well worth it:

You peeps should check out this sci-fi book about a dude who has to become a space dog and go on Adventures in Friendship. <333 https://t.co/YBaJfEXdg5

— Geo Holms (@GeoHolms) November 12, 2018

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.

Short update this week on what the Shames have been up to…

Guitars go on. Streaming goes on! (Amy and I are looking to rebrand our stream, maybe this week, maybe next. It depends on how sick I still am tomorrow.) Not Bad goes on, now with 100% more guitar.

Jake and his team Arts & Crafts took first place in yet another Roberts Space Industries Star Citizen commercial contest, this time featuring the mighty starter ship that could, the Mustang. Jake did the voiceover again, and I think this might be my favorite so far.

My NaNoWrimo word count continues to rise – as of writing this, which is a blatant excuse to write something other than NaNo, I am at 13,272 words and plan to reach 15k tonight. Achievable goals!

I’m reading the Smarter Artist book Iterate and Optimize, which is way more fun to read than the title might imply. It’s all about making your creative business a little bit better, one significant but manageable step at a time. Advanced stuff, really only relevant if you’re a) serious about going into creative business for yourself and b) already sort of doing it, but I’m enjoying it and learning a lot.

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.

Another week, another series of studio updates! What have the Shames been up to?

Besides finishing more guitars, continuing our streaming habits, and acquiring a few pedals (Jake got me an awesome looper pedal to go with my gorgeous Witchell guitar, and a nifty tuning pedal as well), it’s been a chill week for the studio.

For me, on the other hand, it’s been a busy week. I started by creating a mailing list for writer-types who are interested in hearing from me when I publish something for writers or just when I have something cool or interesting to share. If you’d like to sign up, you’ll receive a free copy of my upcoming “short story boot camp” book (title as yet undetermined), as well as occasional emails from yours truly.

I managed to crank out another story for The Accidental Magic Project, a light story called “Hilda’s Secret.” I’ll be honest: I’m not very happy with it. It’s flat compared to a lot of stuff I’ve put out in the world. But this is the lesson of projects like AMP – it’s more important to have created than for that creation to be perfect.

And, last but not least, NANOWRIMO HAS BEGUN. I haven’t talked much about my book this year because it’s the sequel to my adult sci-fi romance book I wrote a few years ago (and still have yet to publish), and I plan on publishing under a pen name, but I’m insanely excited about it. And as usual, I’m happy it’s November and that I’m once again proving to myself that I can write more than a few words in one sitting. Yesterday, Amy and I cranked out about 2700 words each to make up for our poor performances on day 1, and I’m already 1300 words in on the day.

Plus, it’s #DoubleUpDay, meaning NaNoWriMo is giving you $50 worth of goodies for a $25 donation, and their goal is for everyone to write double the amount of words they normally would have. So here I am, trying to crank out 4k…somehow…

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.

It feels like so much has happened! And yet…

What have the Shames been up to?

Our trusty and talented designer Patrick sent over the draft of his cover concept for our comic book project with Alex – and wow, it’s hard to think about much else now that I’ve seen it! This is the stage at which a project feels real to me.

Speaking of fake covers, I’ve made a few fake covers for my NaNoWriMo novel and Amy’s. I’m really quite happy with one of hers, enough to share it here:

I finished writing up the beats for 2018’s NaNo novel just this week, hitting around 3300 words of narrative description. It should keep me more or less on track to get through the complex events that have to occur, since this is a sequel and still setting up a lot of events for later in the series!

I’m also on the last stretch of an adult romance novella I’ll be publishing under a pen name, so I expect I’ll be pressing “Publish” on that one within a month or so.

Jake sold another guitar! The Avocado, bless its green and yellow heart, is off to a new home tomorrow. The TDS Custom Shop should see a few more guitars going up for sale later in the week or early in the next week. You can also follow the shop’s creations on Instagram.

More on social media: we now have an umbrella Twitter account for all of our Damn Shames studio ventures. This is an attempt to centralize all of our content for our superfans while not overwhelming the people following us for Star Citizen content with our guitars and other creative streams. A small step towards brand consolidation!

If you’re someone who writes collaboratively and regularly, and you’re interested in being part of an author collective, please contact me! I’d love to talk.