Sena's DW :: Watermelon Life

Basically, what happened yesterday is, I punched in my last update that took me over the 50,000 word mark and the NaNo website rained confetti on me and my brain just... died. Like, it immediately fell asleep and even though I was sitting there planning on writing more because TKA isn't DONE, it just refused to cooperate. I think 50,000 words in 15 days was too much for my already OCD/ADHD/Bi-Polar riddled brain and it just needed to rest a while and take a break from TKA.

So last night I just kind of blearily watched some episodes of The Winchesters which I think I'm going to NOPE tf right out of after four episodes because they do not follow established SPN canon AT ALL for ANYTHING and I am not down with that. Also the lead actors playing John and Mary are not very good at their jobs and I don't like them. But mostly the canon stuff. If you're going to do a series BASED ON AN EXISTING SERIES maybe adhere to it's canon, yeah? Like. Fuck me. (I wish they'd done a SEQUEL instead of a PREQUEL.)

ANYWAY. Uhm, in Axolotl Town things are chugging along. Haku and Ryuu are settling in really well (Ryuu is more outgoing and Haku is more shy so far) and eating well, and Ryuu has pretty much taken over the big teracotta pot so I need to get another one of those for the other side of the tank next time I'm at the dollar store/have money. Kaida is... not a happy camper. He's doing a lot of hiding and sulking, but he's still eating so that's a good sign at least. He's just (very slowly) getting used to sharing his tank with other 'lotls again like when he was little(r.) But there's been no in-fighting or anything, to my knowledge, so I think it's going pretty well.

It's a (frustrating) constant game of Spot The Axolotl right now because they're in such a big tank with no many hidey spots. You can usually find Ryuu pretty easily, but Haku and Kaida? They vanish into the ether. It's like, I know they're IN THERE, but WHERE in there? A MYSTERY. (I have to deep clean the tank tonight so that'll get them all out in the open... ish... at least!)

Today I want to work on TKA some more because there's still SO FAR to go with it, but I'm not sure if my brain is up to writing quite yet. It still feels pretty mushy in my head this morning, even after a... well, it wasn't a GOOD night's sleep, I haven't been sleeping well lately, but it was a night's sleep of some kind at the very least. So I'm going to give it a go, but if I end up just staring blankly at the screen for an endless span of time instead I won't be like, SHOCKED.

After TKA is finished, I want to write Freefall, and maybe My Zombie. Both of those are pretty firmly stuck in my brain right now. And if all the word editors would stop telling me that "freefall" isn't a word that would be GREAT because FUCK YOU IT IS NOW I DECLARE IT, IT IS SO. I'm also going to be working on post-SS one-shots, of course, of which I am up to... 22? I believe? Since I added Stalactites (not to be confused with "Stalagmites" which is not longer a thing) and Dreamcatcher. So because my brain works in patterns of fives, I need at least three more or it'll drive me INSANE. But basically:

-STORM SEASON
-When Lightning Strikes (complete)
-Ghost In The Machine (complete)
-Pinfeathers (complete)
-Teeth
-Nightingale (complete)
-Temper Tantrums
-Hunting Souls
-Shrike
-Echoes
-Day Drinking
-Mockingbird
-Crawlspace
-Kindling
-What Angels Dream
-Run. Hide. Die.
-Hollow Things
-The Desert Tide
-Sudden Cardiac Arrest
-Stalactites
-Dreamcatcher
-
-
-
-Halcyon Days
-Serendipity

Yeah this entire series got completely out of control on me and I have no idea what happened but I'm not really COMPLAINING I'm just like... yikes. :| Especially since I'm just writing them basically for myself, the whole HH et al series doesn't have much of a following AT ALL. (There are a handful of people who do follow it, though, and I love every one of them!)

idk maybe I'll work on some SPN stuff this morning instead of TKA just for a change of pace. Maybe my brain would like that more?

Anyhoo, this afternoon/evening I want to make some cookies from the recipe I (FINALLY) got off Lois, since Lee picked up mini chocolate chips when he did groceries yesterday and I'm pretty sure we have all the rest of the stuff for it, oats, unsweetened coconut, flour, eggs, etc. I am SO JAZZED to have this recipe FINALLY after DECADES of asking for it. She kept it really under wraps for a long time, but I guess she's getting older now so she figures why not? I dunno. Either way, COOKIES TONIGHT.

...I have a cough. I've had it for months, but it's been getting worse lately. I think it's a side-effect of my Breztri inhaler, which doesn't even work for me anyway so why am I taking it?? I'm so freaking TIRED of my lungs getting worse and worse and not being able to breathe, and then all the tests coming back that there's nothing wrong with them. It's been like that since 2019 and the first time I had Covid. I just want to be able to BREATHE again, is that so much to ask? Then again, there's a lot of things about my health that are JACKED and I would like to have go away/get fixed but it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon. My liver and the NAFLD situation are just the newest in a long line of bullshit.

And finally. Poe is back up on Insta again, and posting about a short film that's being made from one of their short stories, they seem excited and I'm SO proud of them. They deserve nice, good things in their life like that. I really hope it works out for them and turns out good. It's nice to be happy for them for a change.

Today I did basically nothing for most of the day because I'm so sore from hauling boxes up and down the stairs at Dad's place yesterday. I slept until my alarm (for once) and then after I'd been up for a couple hours I was like "fuck it" and went back to sleep again for like three more hours. My legs are killing me, like going up and down the stairs is a CHORE and my back keeps seizing up at random intervals.

I downloaded last week's episode of Brilliant Minds and it was SO GOOD. I cried. And then Dr. Wolf kissed the Neurosurgeon whose name I can never remember and I was just going CALLED IT because I knew a few episodes as soon as they offhand mentioned that the Neurosurgeon was bi. The one thing that bothers me about Brilliant Minds is that every second character is gay, and normally I LOVE LGBTQA+ representation in my media, but Brilliant Minds is really going overboard with it sometimes. But I wonder if that's part of the point of the show.

I also downloaded The Crazies (2010) because I haven't watched it in FOREVER and I had the urge to. Also my copy is in storage right now, so I have no access to it. It like... borders on being a zombie movie without ACTUALLY being a zombie movie, you know? At some point I should watch the original The Crazies, actually...

Tonight I like deep-cleaned the axolotl tank to make it nice for the new additions tomorrow. Though I'm not looking forward to the drive, I'm definitely looking forward to picking up my two new 'lotls. But right now Kaida is mad at me because I took everything out of the tank to clean the hides and suction the aquarium, so he's just being a grumpy 'lotl. It's actually pretty cute.

Mostly, though, today I've just been working on writing. I'm up to 69 pages and 33,093 words on TKA, so I'm WAY ahead of the game for the 50,000 word goal of the NaNo, but we'll see how much I actually manage to get done before the end of the month. I'm writing on average approximately 3,008 words a day, which is fantastic, but I'm also working on other things at the same time. Today I wrote 2,227 words on Echoes (mostly Destiel smut), and I officially have Freefall open in Word right now, too. I wrote the ending of Freefall the other day, the first thing I wrote for it, so it's like. Sure, why not?

Also everything yells at me that "Freefall" isn't one word but FUCK YOU SPELLING PROGRAMS I'M USING IT AS ONE WORD ANYWAY. Literally it's just the title, I don't think I'll even end up using it in the novel itself, so whatever. But after I finish TKA I want to work on Freefall and My Zombie because those are the two that have the most development for them, really, so it makes sense.

I also want to work on the Storm Season fics (THERE ARE SO MANY) and Where Monsters Come From, too, of course. And more SPN Witcher AU. And I want to get back into my Valdemar stuff, finish up some of the fics that've been dormant for a while. Marionette. Brothers At Arms. Of The Deepest Dye. That kind of thing. And, naturally, I want to write a House M.D./Brilliant Minds crossover because the idea of House and Wolf in the same room just TICKLES ME. That sort of thing.

But I need to keep in mind, when I do finish and edit TKA, that if I manage to get an agent and sell the book, I could potentially be looking at writing the whole TKA series, which is 10 books long. The second one is Pelts For Pounds, and then the third is called Grimoire, etc. They all have titles, characters and plots but need more work before they're ready to be written.

Anyway.

Plotting and planning, plotting and planning.

Alrighty, so. Basically, Nightingale has been REMOVED from the post-Storm Season one-shot roster because it really works better as a stand-along one-shot, I think, since it focuses on Sam more than Dean and Cas and all the Horror High et al stuff is very Dean and Cas centric. HOWEVER, it has been IMMEDIATELY REPLACED by ANOTHER fic, Mockingbird, which struck me this morning and DOES fit in Horror High verse quite nicely. Unrelated to Nightingale, even though they both have birds as the titles. :D;;

I'm making up my own original monster for Mockingbird, which I've never done before, I've always used SPN-verse monsters or (bastardized) monsters from folklore around the world (the jorogumo, the palraijuq), so making something up on the fly is going to be interesting. Socorros are interesting, though, they can mimic any sound or voice with near-perfect accuracy. It's how they lure in their prey. Hence "mockingbird", though they also have things in common with shrikes as well, particularly in how they feed. And of course they have a human form to blend in with society.

Anyway, yeah, so Mockingbird is a thing now and I have way more figured out for it than I do for Day Drinking, which I THINK is going to be a wraith Hunt, but then again, I've done wraith Hunts twice before already so I kind of want to do something else. Maybe ghouls? I'm still deciding.

So I finished When Lightning Strikes, Ghost In The Machine and Pinfeathers (not in that order), and now I'm working on Teeth and trying to get as much done of it as I can in the next two days before the NaNo starts and all fanfiction goes OUT THE WINDOW for an entire month. DO YOU HEAR ME, BRAIN? ALL FANFICTION GOES OUT THE FREAKING WINDOW. FOCUS ON TKA GDI. ALSO DO NOT SUDDENLY HYPERFOCUS ON FREEFALL, EVEN THOUGH I CAN TELL YOU WANT TO. BEHAVE YOURSELF FOR ONCE, OR I SWEAR TO GOD NO MORE ADHD MEDS FOR YOU. (I'm kidding pry my ADHD meds from my cold dead hands.)

.....

Tonight I have to give Kaida's tank a thorough cleaning, like take all the hides and stuff out and clean them off and vacuum out all the gunk because even cleaning every day I'm missing some, especially on and around the hides. And part of that is NOT dumping the water back into the tank after I'm done using the gravel vacuum, so last night I got a bucket of water out and sitting to dissipate all the chlorine so I can use it to top up the tank when I'm done. Hopefully I can do all this without traumatizing Kaida TOO much. Poor guy. But it really does need to be done. :/

I can't remember if I mentioned it or not, but I DID end up pulling Castiel out of the axolotl aquarium and repotting him in soil after all. He just really wasn't doing well (as opposed to Dean, who is THRIVING) and I didn't want him to die, so I just yoinked him. I also renamed him Gabriel, so whatever plant I end up getting to go in with Dean can be named Castiel and my little shipping heart will be happy. I'm thinking about getting a monstera on Thursday when my money comes in.

P.S. Sam is also doing really well in the tank, and Jack is growing like a bad weed so I'm hoping to be able to add him to the tank in a couple of months, too. ♥

When I put out my Pumpkin Parade this year (I put out 10 and I have another one to put out on Halloween night) I was half expecting some of them to get stolen by the redneck asshats who live next door to us, but so far it hasn't happened (a miracle??) and I am not complaining. I can't really put out any more pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns outside because I have nowhere to put them, but there are nine inside as well. I'm enthusiastic about my pumpkins. XD;;

Mom even got in the spirit this year, too, though, she bought a witch window decoration and a ghost for our front door wreath, which like, she NEVER decorates for Halloween so I must be catching. It's super nice to see her getting into it a little this year, though. Normally Christmas is her thing and she's just MEH about Halloween.

SPEAKING OF CATCHING. Mom and I both seem to have miraculously NOT caught Covid from our trip to Toronto/the aquarium, which is like. Yeah. Wow. I figured FOR SURE we'd both end up sick from that and I'd end up with pneumonia again at the very least. NOT COMPLAINING.

Also my jaw is hurting right now. The one that got shattered by the dentist back in the summer. It doesn't hurt much anymore, but sometimes it still aches so I guess it's still healing. Probably just the last of it, but I'm reluctant to get dentures until I know for sure my jaw has settled down, you know? If I get them and then my jaw shifts a bunch more they won't fit right and I'll be SOL because ODSP won't pay for a second pair that quickly. The dentist told me to call in early November to book an appointment with the denturist but idk. Then again, with my new diet and all the vegetables and fruit and CHEWING I'm going to have to do, I NEED the dentures, so like... idk, man, idk.

This morning Kaida was out when I got up and not only is she HUGE compared to when I brought her home, but she is also... not a SHE. Yes, indeed, I was finally able to sex her. Him. Whatever. And it turns out Kaida is a male axolotl not a female so I need to get used to different pronouns lol. That's fine though, I just told him "that's cool, you do you, I just need to know for future possible tank mates." And he just smiled at me like 'lotls do. :)

At least that batch is big enough now that they CAN be sexed so if I DO go at the beginning of November to get another one I know I can make sure it's the right gender. This is all hinging on Mom being willing to drive me back to Elmvale again, which... yeah. We'll see. I'll have to approach the subject very carefully on that one. =/

Anyway, I got a good pic of Kaida's little face this morning but unfortunately there's a lot of tank gunk behind HIM because it was before I cleaned out the aquarium, which is too bad. I'm hoping to get better pics of him once he gets bigger and can't hide quite as easily, you know? Which reminds me, I need to take the hidey-log out of the tank soon before he gets so big he gets STUCK in it. :|

So, Tubi got in a whole bunch more movies and I've been working my way through the new horror ones the last little while. Most of them are shit, but they got in all three Pulse movies as well as Kairo (the Japanese movie that Pulse was based on), so I just finished the Pulse trilogy last night and I'm going to watch Kairo tonight I think, the only problem is it will be in subs so I won't be able to write while I watch it so boo to that.

The last couple of days I've been working on Freefall when I should have been working on Ghost In The Machine, but Freefall popped into my brain and really GRABBED ON in there, like I've written a four-page summary, I'm working on the actual story outline and this morning I did a Pinterest board for it so I'm pretty well committed. I think it's going to be the next original project that I work on after TKA, unless by some miracle I sell TKA and the publisher wants the rest of the series, too. Freefall has angels, it has demons, it ticks all the boxes. I really like it and I hope other people will too. FINGERS CROSSED.

Speaking of Ghost In The Machine, though, I'm currently at 24 pages and 10,781 words, and I WOULD be father but I ended up working on Pinfeathers last night instead (21 pages and 9,361 words) because. I dunno. REASONS. Basically I'm at smut scenes for both of them and I wanted to write the Pinfeathers one more than the Ghost In The Machine one last night so I just... I did. Okay. Don't judge me.

What you CAN judge me for is adding another one-shot into the post-Storm Season one-shots and bringing it up to freaking TEN of them. And that's assuming I stop there. Like I JUST added Hunting Souls and Day Drinking, and then last night I added Nightingale and I (tentatively) reinstated Stalagmites I just. My brain won't stop with this AU, I swear, it's so out of control I'm like. Halp plz. Anyway, this takes the Horror High et al fic count up to SEVENTEEN, and TWO OF THOSE have TEN CHAPTER EACH so like. Stop anytime, brain, this is getting ridiculous (and I kind of love it.)

So, I'm hoping to get some more work done on Ghost In The Machine today, or maybe Pinfeathers idek anymore, and HOPEFULLY have those two finished by Thursday because then it's NaNo time and fanfic is OFF THE TABLE for the following month, BRAIN, DO YOU HEAR ME?? IT'S TKA ALL THE WAY!! WE ARE GOING TO DO THIS, YOU AND I!! AIDAN AND TYLER DESERVE OUR FULL ATTENTION FOR AT LEAST THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER, AFTER ALL THEY'VE BEEN THROUGH!!

DETERMINED SENA IS DETERMINED!!