Jessica K. McKendry's Blog

 Hi friends!

I sort of not-intentionally went on a two month hiatus from blogging and writing due to one Very Big Thing that happened. This Very Big Thing has made it extremely difficult to focus lately, I've had sort of debilitating exhaustion and brain fog. It has made writing anything--for my blog, for my projects, and even journaling for myself--practically impossible. I had to go down from working 20 hours a week at my library to 12 hours because of how nauseous I've been all the time, and I haven't even had the attention span to read.

Despite what it feels like, I've been incredibly productive this past month and a half.

You've probably guessed it by now, but in case you haven't ...

I am building a human! From scratch! So that's pretty exciting!

As of today, I am around 14 weeks pregnant, which puts me right at the end of the first trimester. Of course, I told my closest friends and family members weeks ago. My parents, my siblings, and my in-laws were notified the day I got a positive pregnancy test.

I know you're not supposed to tell people you're pregnant until after the first trimester is done, but I was too excited and I personally think it's silly to wait. More on this later.

Anyway, now that I'm officially in my second trimester, I really hope I'm able to focus enough to write a bit more in the coming weeks.

Sometimes, I spend hours trying to pick a good name for a place in my stories. This sounds silly, but the names we choose for our fiction matter because they matter in real life.

Location-Naming PracticesIn the real world, the name of a place can tell you a little bit about what that place is like, what kinds of people the owners of that place respect or honor, or concepts and ideals that are valued there. We can confidently say that the most common place-naming practices of humans center around qualities, people, or concepts.Qualities

Naming a place after a quality is useful because it makes identifying the right place easy. If you're trying to get to a place called Huge Purple Desert, you'll probably figure out you're there when you see a huge purple desert.

Places named after their qualities:

The Yellowstone RiverNamed after the yellow sandstone bluffs that line the riverbanksThe Great PlainsThis should be pretty obvious how it got its name …The Rocky MountainsThis one should also be easyThe HimalayasThe word "Himalaya" comes from Sanskrit, meaning "abode of snow"The SaharaThe word "Sahara" comes from the Arabic word "çahra," which means "desert"The Cuyahoga RiverThe word "Cuyahoga" is an Anglicized spelling of the word "cayagaga," a Mohawk or Iroquois word that means "crooked river"

People

Consider all the places in the United States named after Martin Luther King Jr., Robert E. Lee, or previous presidents. When we name places after people, it shows what we value, it shows who our heroes are, who we deem worthy of honor.

Places named after people:

The city of Alexandria in EgyptNamed after Alexander the GreatWashington State in the United StatesNamed after George WashingtonThe city of Rome in ItalyNamed after the mythical founder of Rome, RomulusThe nation of IsraelNamed after the biblical Israel (also known as Jacob)

Concepts

When we name places after concepts, it can tell people about the intangible things we value.

Places named after concepts:

The city of Memphis in TennesseeNamed after the Egyptian city of Memphis, which comes from the ancient Egyptian word "men-nefer," meaning "enduring beauty"Nihon – the nation of JapanNihon is the Japanese word for Japan, and it means "where the sun originates." It is often translated to "Land of the Rising Sun" in EnglishZhōngguó – the nation of ChinaZhōngguó is the Chinese word for China, which literally means "middle kingdom" or "middle state," which refers to the ancient Chinese worldview that China was the center of the worldThe city of PhiladelphiaThe founder of the city, William Penn, combined two ancient Greek words, "philos" and "adelphos" to mean "brotherly love"Naming Places in Stories

The world I’m building is very different from ours. It’s an alien planet called Jakad, and everything about it is alien. The trees are not trees, only tree-like. The animals are not animals, just animal-like. There are humans on this planet, humans from fifty thousand years ago, taken from Earth to become slaves, then lost and forgotten on Jakad.

Humanity spreads across the land, and even though the world is completely alien, they manage to make it feel somewhat human. And part of that human-ness comes from the way they name things in the world around them.

So.

Here’s how I’ve gone about it, and here’s why it often takes me hours to settle on the right name for a place.

I have my map that I drew.

© Jessica McKendry

I started naming the most obvious places. The subcontinents, the rivers, the lakes, the mountains. Since I have created a unique language for each region of this continent, I named everything in the language tied to that location.

Take the mountain range near the bottom of the map, just beneath the big lake. The people who live in the mountains believe that these mountains are holy and that they are at the very top of the world. I wanted the name of this mountain range to meet three requirements:

The name should reflect the beliefs of the people living thereThe name should sound like it belongs to the language of the people living thereThe name should sound good to me

I'm very picky about words. There are some words I absolutely hate just because of how they sound, like moist or honkytonk.

Those words give me the ick.

I ended up choosing the name Phoraïth, which, in my made-up language, Pharais, comes from the roots pho- (meaning high, elevated, or supreme) and -raïth (meaning crown, crest, or pinnacle). Together, the words mean The High Crown, which perfectly fits the beliefs of the people living there. I also like the sound of the name, and it fits the language.

Near the top right of the continent, there is a large, rounded peninsula. This is a wetland, and the people who live there call it Molakai, which means Land of Reeds in the language of that region.

Sometimes, I’m not quite sure what I want a place to be like, so I need to spend some time thinking about the environment and what makes a certain place special. I have developed some of the world's history, so there will definitely be places named after historical figures important to each region, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.

That’s next week’s problem!

Writers, how do you pick names for places in your stories? Readers, do you like it when the names of places in the books you read are well thought out? Or does it not matter?

An Autofiction

It took a bit of courage to ask the difficult question, but it needed to be asked. I needed to know.

"How long do you think he has?"

I couldn't look at the vet, so I watched as Jasper happily sniffed his way around the examination room. When he got to me, he licked my shoe, then looked up at me, his tongue hanging joyfully out of the side of his mouth.

"Well, it's hard to say," the vet responded. Her voice was kind, though there was a note of sadness in it. "Some dogs in his condition really pull through. But ... I wouldn't expect years, at this point."

Over the summer, I had come to this conclusion on my own. Jasper kept losing weight, despite the countless treats and heaping meals we gave him. The muscles all along his spine and hips had atrophied, until he started to look like a walking skeleton. He looked like those dogs on TV, the ones you'd see on some Animal Planet rescue show, where they go in and save starving dogs from neglectful or abusive parents.

"Is he eating?" The vet asked.

I nodded. "Like a vacuum. We give him two cups of food a day, plus a lot of treats. He was overweight a few years ago, and you guys told us to cut back on his food."

She hummed softly, then wrote something down on her clipboard. "Alright, let's give him as much food as he wants now."

"Well ... he would eat until he explodes," I told her.

"Ah," she said with a soft laugh. "We don't want that, do we, Jasper? Two heaping cups of food in the morning, and two in the evening, then."

Jasper looked over at her when she said his name, then wagged his tail and waddled toward her. She took out a bag of treats, and his tail became wild, wiggling fast as he opened his mouth to pant, excitedly. For the next few minutes, she would be his best friend in the whole wide world.

The vet tossed him a treat, and he snatched it right out of the air. "He's got good reflexes," she said. "And he's such a happy boy."

Jasper just stared at her, tongue hanging out, his dark eyes wide and adoring.

“What should we do?” I asked the vet.

She looked at me with a gentle, solemn expression. “It’s up to you. We can run panels of bloodwork and take X-rays until we figure out what else is going on with him … or we can make sure he’s comfortable.

My eyes began to burn. I knew this conversation would come eventually, and as Jasper’s condition has worsened over the months, I’ve felt it creeping closer and closer.

Yet, now that it had actually come, it felt like being hit by a truck.

Jasper is one of my best friends. He’s my buddy. To imagine that we were at a point where it wouldn’t make sense to keep looking for what was wrong with him … it was heartbreaking. I wanted to tell her to do the bloodwork, the X-rays. I would have, if I were making more money.

The vet must have seen the pain on my face. “You guys have already gone above and beyond for him.”

I nodded and looked at him, whose tail was tapping quickly against the floor as he stared up at the vet, waiting for another treat. She handed him one, and he joyfully gobbled it up before resuming the exact same position, begging for yet another.

“Okay,” I said softly. “What can we do to make him more comfortable?”

She prescribed more carprofen, a drug that would help reduce the pain from his arthritis. It is also a drug that can cause liver and kidney damage with prolonged use, but at this point, we aren’t sure what the long-term looks like for him. If he even has a long-term.

We went home, and he was very happy to get a surprise second bowl of food for dinner. I sat next to him as he ate. He didn’t even notice me until he was finished eating, and then he came to sit in my lap. I pet his fluffy ears, and his tongue started hanging out the side of his mouth again.

“You are the worst dog,” I told him lovingly, then kissed him on his head and hugged him. He leaned backward into me, leaning his upside-down face against my shoulder.

I wondered what he knew. He must have known I felt sad. He must realize he doesn’t quite move like he used to. Does he wonder why things hurt, or does he simply accept them? Does he know his body is starting to fail him? Would he hate me if he could understand that we aren’t trying to fix him anymore?

He sniffed my chin and gave me a stinky lick. His breath smelled terrible but I couldn’t even manage to be disgusted at the moment. I laughed and squeezed him tighter. It seemed like answer enough.

“Love you too, buddy.”

Jasper at the Vet
© Jessica McKendry

Last week, I was at my parents' house, sitting at their kitchen island and drawing a map for Convergence. So far, this is my hand-drawn world map, created on my iPad using Procreate.

As a science-fiction writer and someone who loves science in general, I appreciate it when stories take real science into consideration. No, it isn't necessary, I just like it.

However, I sometimes take it a little too far. For example, here's a little bit of my thought process moving forward with this map.

ME: Time to draw the equator. *starts drawing a red line through the middle*

BRAIN: Wait! If you draw the equator there, then the continent where your story is taking place is going to be really hot. You wanted more temperate climates for your main continent?

ME: Yeah … I did … hmm … *looks at a map of Earth* wow. There really isn't much land below the equator. Okay, well, I think it would be cool to have more landmass on this planet below the equator.

BRAIN: Above or below doesn't really matter. There's no "right side up" in space, so all that matters is which areas you want to be colder and which areas you want to be warmer.

ME: Wait … it doesn't matter? Hold on. *looks at a map of Earth again*

BRAIN: See? The direction North or South doesn't actually matter. You can flip them, and it doesn't change anything. The magnetic poles change every few hundred thousand years, too.

ME: Hold on. So who decided to draw the Earth like that? Who decided to draw the Earth "right side up" if it doesn't matter? Has anyone ever drawn the Earth the other way?

BRAIN: *tries to shrug, but it has no shoulders*

So I spent the next thirty minutes looking at maps of the Earth, and realizing that "North" being at the "top" of the world is an entirely arbitrary decision. We could have just as easily called it "South," and drawn all our maps with Greenland and Russia at the bottom, and Antarctica at the very top.

Which makes a lot of sense, because in space, there's no up or down, we just don't often have to think about it unless you spend hours and hours drawing maps. Modern maps could easily look like this:

Apparently, there were many cultures in the past that placed East at the top of the map instead of North for various reasons. Essentially, the use of the North Star for navigation and Eurocentric perspectives contributed to the development of modern maps, with Europe at the top center of it all.

I voiced this revelation out loud to my mom, and her brain just about exploded.

Review: ★★★★☆ Summary

One night, when Ethan reaches under his bed for a toy truck, he finds this note instead:

"Monsters! Meet here for final test!"

Ethan is sure his parents are trying to trick him into staying in bed ... until he sees a bunch of colorful eyes blinking back at him.

How does stomach rumbling and snorting help one monster become Ethan's best bedtime friend? Find out in this silly-spooky prequel to the award-winning I Need My Monster.

How I Met My Monster is an irresistible monster-under-the-bed story for monster-loving kids. The perfect balance of shivers and giggles will keep you under your covers, and you'll soon be sleeping soundly.

My Review

I was checking in books people had returned to the library when I came across this book. The cover art had caught my eye. I absolutely loved the illustration style, and the colorful way "monster" is written made it impossible not to open the book and see what it was about.

Ethan is a little boy who can't fall asleep after his parents tuck him into bed. He gets up and begins to secretly play with his toys when he finds a strange note under his bed. It turns out that monsters are real, and their sole purpose is to live under children's beds and ensure a child stays in bed until they fall asleep. They're actually quite nice.

Ethan meets several monsters who are all in training to become his monster, but he isn't scared of any of them. A whole range of silly things happen as they try to find the best monster for Ethan, and finally, they settle on a monster who is friendly and just scary enough to keep Ethan in bed at night.

Art: ★★★★★

Honestly, it was the cover art that made me open this book. I know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I absolutely did, and this time it was worth it. The illustrations are vibrant and fun, Ethan is an adorable little boy, and the monsters are also pretty cute. I loved how colorful it was for a story set at night.

Plot: ★★★★☆The plot was just way too cute. Nice monsters under the bed who actually help children by scaring them? Yes. Absolutely, yes.Characters: ★★★★☆

Ethan is a brave little boy! If I found out monsters were living under my bed, even super cute ones, I don't think I'd be as fearless as he is in this book! I think his reaction to the monsters would help any little kids reading the book or listening to their parents read this book know that the monsters aren't really there to be feared, they're there to help!

Setting: ★★★★☆

The story is set in Ethan's bedroom and his house, which could have been pretty boring, but the art style made it colorful and exciting.

Recommended For

Anyone! I'm 28, and even I enjoyed reading this cute story. However, I would mainly recommend it for ages 5+.

Triggers

If you have children who would be scared of the thought of cute, helpful monsters under their bed, this probably isn't for them.

Once again, it's IWSG day!

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Let's jump into this month's question:

What are your thoughts on using AI, such as GPChat, Raptor, and others with your writing? Would you use it for research, storybible, or creating outlines/beats?

Honestly, I have very complicated feelings about AI. Yes, I have used it, and I think most of us have at least tried it out to some degree at this point. However, I try to use it very sparingly and only in tasks that are too big to manage on my own.

What I Use It ForCartography

I drew a map on my iPad using Procreate to get an idea of what I want my science-fantasy world to look like. I've shared it on my blog before, but I'll share it again now.

I'm not sure if you can tell from this low-resolution picture, but on the map, I've marked areas for forests, rivers, and mountains. I hand-drew this map, and I'm pretty proud of it. However, it just didn't feel like my map was coming to life like this. So … I plugged it into ChatGPT and asked it to make a realistic version of the map, as if it were a satellite image.

And this is what it gave me.

At first, I was extremely impressed.

However, as an artist, I have quite an eye for detail, and the longer I looked at the map it spit out for me, the more I was annoyed that it hadn't followed the exact coastlines, and it had changed some of the river systems. It had destroyed one of my peninsulas and made some of the lakes far bigger than they had been in my original drawing, or erased them completely.

Every time I asked ChatGPT to fix it, it would partially correct the issue, but then it would generate increasingly more distorted images, which ultimately proved disappointing and exhausting. Don't get me wrong, this is pretty cool for some concept art, but if I’m going to include a map in my novel, it’s going to be done by a professional artist, not an AI. What can I say, artists really do it better and have an eye for detail, too.

Languages

Because I let my world-building get out of control at times, I love developing languages. But I develop so many that it can get confusing, and sometimes it's difficult to remember everything I come up with. Recently, I've been creating language rules and words, and inputting them into ChatGPT, then later using ChatGPT as a dictionary and a translator for my own languages.

When I am drafting and need to write a prayer or hymn in one of the languages I've created, I don't have to individually look up each word and manually put them in the correct syntax. As cool as that would be, I honestly don't have the brain power for it.

So, I go to the chat where I was developing a language, and ask it how I would say this or that in the language I made, and it'll spit it back out to me using the grammar rules and syntax I designed. If I haven’t made up a word for something yet, ChatGPT will tell me, “You don’t have a word for this.” And at that point, I’ll make up a new word.

I do double-check ChatGPT’s translation ability, because off and on, it will mess up. But it’s a nice guideline for me.

Math

The world I'm building often feels like a fantasy world, until I zoom out to the bigger picture and remember that this is a fantasy-like story set in a science fiction universe. At the end of the day, I'm more of a science fiction writer than a fantasy writer, because science is just so fucking cool.

As a science fiction writer, I like to try to be as scientifically accurate as possible when creating my stories, and even when I bend the laws of nature to create magic systems and societies on other planets, I still try to keep those laws in mind. Of course, there is a degree of accuracy that's simply impossible due to how I want the narrative to play out. Still, I try my best.

I often use ChatGPT to help me with math that's just too convoluted for my simple brain.

Example: 

The world I'm building is called Jakaad, and yes, it is a whole world. Jakaad is a planet that orbits a K-type main-sequence star (orange, instead of a G-type main-sequence star, which is yellow, like our sun). This means the star has a longer lifespan than our sun. Jakaad is a rocky planet with a liquid iron core, similar to Earth's, but it is slightly larger than Earth (1.37 times Earth's mass and 1.6 times Earth's circumference). One day on Jakaad is 0.95 Earth days, and one year on Jakaad is 1.17 Earth years. 

So.

If humans are living on Jakaad who age at the same speed as humans on Earth, how old would a human have to be on Jakaad to be about 12 years old/starting puberty on Earth?

I've done this math on my own, but I have absolutely used ChatGPT to check my math. And sometimes I’m wrong.

Again, ChatGPT is also wrong sometimes, so I always double-check its answers and make sure the math makes sense.

Cute Blog Pics

Open source images often don't make the cut when it comes to pictures decorating my blog posts. I don't have the time to draw relevant images, and I also don't have the money to pay an artist to do them. I definitely see this more as decoration than art, and for this, I use the Image Playground app on my Mac.

Using AI In Moderation

I will never use AI to come near my actual writing. I don't want it to help me plot my stories, and I don't want it to modify my writing. I have a few personal reasons for this. 

First, I genuinely enjoy writing. It is a pure act of creation; it is pouring my soul into my fingertips and transforming it into a format that could outlive me. If AI is doing it for me, it not only defeats the purpose, but I cannot claim that my soul is in it. Either there is no "soul" behind AI writing, or if there is, it isn't a human one. 

Second, AI isn't actually that good at being creative. It can only spit out what you put into it and what it knows from the internet. And if you've ever spent an hour on the internet, it's easy to see that it's filled with misinformation and disinformation. So … be cautious. 

Third, I'm already so reliant on technology. I don't want my brain to be reliant on AI. I don't want AI doing my thinking and creating for me. 

Fourth, and most importantly, even though I'm a hypocrite about this, we should not be using AI for art. We should be using AI to perform repetitive tasks that drain our creativity, and reserve the creative tasks for humans. I want AI to be integrated into robots so that they can do my dishes, cook, and clean for me, allowing me to spend my time being creative. 

However, AI won't be developed to do the things we want it to do; it will be further developed to do the things we are already using it for. And if we continue to use AI to do our creative work for us, that's what it will continue to be trained to do. 

AI is a valuable tool, but I believe it is one we must use wisely. 

Do you guys use AI for anything? Do you use it in your creative process? 

Don't forget to visit all the other amazing bloggers posting for the IWSG today!

New York City – Memorial Day Weekend (Sunday, Day 3 of 4)

* All names have been altered for privacy.

Other posts in this series: Day 1, Day 2 (part 1), Day 2 (part 2)

Our favorite place to get breakfast in NYC is Jack's Wife Freda. There are a few locations around the city, but our favorite is the one in West Village on Carmine Street. Noam and I had stayed up until 3 a.m. the night before, talking and laughing in our hotel room, so we were completely exhausted when we woke up at 8 a.m. to get breakfast, but we knew the delicious food would be worth the fatigue.

Han and I made it downstairs before Mom and Dad, so we sat on a bench outside the hotel for a few minutes while we waited for them.

"How much you wanna bet Lottie and Seth won't come?" Han asked.

I laughed. "They're definitely not going to come."

"I hope Jasper's doing okay," he said, voice soft and pensive.

"I'm sure he's alright," I replied, though I did also worry. The pictures and reports we'd gotten of him the previous day from the kennel had been promising, though. He looked content, if not perfectly happy.

"Here they are," Han said quietly.

I looked up, and my parents were walking through the revolving door out of the hotel.

“Hey, sleepyheads!" I called, my tone lighthearted and joking. "We almost left without you! You gotta get up earlier!"

Dad rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah."

"Are Lottie and Seth coming?" I asked, turning to Mom.

"I'll text them," Mom said, then looked down at her phone to type them a message.

We waited a couple extra minutes just in case they showed or texted back, but they didn't. So we walked through the bustling streets that cool morning to the subway, then rode all the way to West Village. I love taking the subway; it can transform a thirty-minute walk or a twenty-minute drive into a five-minute ride. It is, by far, the fastest and most efficient way of getting around New York City.

It took us about three or four stops to get to West Village, then we walked for about five minutes to get to the restaurant.

Jack's Wife Freda in West Village is one big room, longer than it is wide. There's one long table in the center of the room, like the kind of table where a king would sit at the very end, except there's no end seat, just bench seats along both sides. There are other, smaller tables scattered around the room, a few two-person tables, and a few four-person tables.

The walls are a creamy white color, and the floors are composed of large, cream-colored tiles with black squares surrounding them. It feels like a café that would belong in Paris. The walls are lined with a strange mix of modern art and intricate paintings with heavily stylized Hebrew letters. Everything about this place feels friendly and warm. The owners of the restaurant are from Israel and South Africa. They serve a mix of American, Mediterranean, and Jewish comfort food that is to die for.

There's a reason you have to show up early here. The tables will be packed by 9:30 a.m. Thankfully, we had arrived at the restaurant early enough that getting a table was quick and easy.

I ordered a latte and my favorite item on the menu: rosewater waffles. They were served with a dollop of yogurt on top, sprinkled with mixed berries, and fresh maple syrup. The waffles were light and fluffy, and with the yogurt, it isn't too sweet, even when you add maple syrup. The berries were perfectly ripe, but just a tiny hint of sourness.

Han always orders the shakshuka, a popular North African/Middle Eastern dish, featuring eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce. Han’s mom is from Israel, and her parents were from Iraq, so Han grew up eating red shakshuka. At Jack's Wife Freda, they serve green shakshuka, which I think is made from a different base, but it’s still absolutely delicious.

Mom got eggs and sausage, so she and I split the eggs and the waffles, and Dad ordered a little grapefruit bowl.

"Is that all?" The waiter asked when my Dad ordered.

"Yes, I don't eat very much," Dad replied with an innocent smile.

Mom, Han, and I all burst out laughing because that isn't true at all. He was going to eat whatever the rest of us didn't finish, and would still be hungry after that, I was certain.

We took our time at breakfast, enjoying the delicious food and even better company. I felt so bloated afterward because I had seriously overeaten. If you're trying to lose weight and lack self-control, it's best to avoid this restaurant. Everything is too good to resist.

After breakfast, we took a very long detour back to our hotel. We walked the High Line, which is absolutely beautiful, especially in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. The High Line was an old rail line, but it was shut down and converted into a walkway filled with plants. It goes on for a while and goes past some very cool-shaped buildings.

walking the high line © Jessica McKendry

cool building views on the high line © Jessica McKendry

more cool views from the high line © Jessica McKendry

Dad was walking at a kind of insane pace, so my feet started to hurt a bit, but I wasn't going to complain.

"Hey, what's that!?" I called, momentarily distracted from the pain in my feet.

Mom and Dad turned to look at me, then followed my gaze.

“Oh, that’s the Little Island!” Mom said.

“We haven’t taken you there before?” Dad asked.

I shook my head. “Can we go?”

So Dad took us to Little Island, and we walked through the park on the manmade island. There’s a small amphitheater on the island, too, which is often used for concerts and events.

little island © Jessica McKendry
crossing the bridge to little island © Jessica McKendry

We returned to the hotel around noon and had already taken 12,000 steps!

Lottie and Seth had awakened by then and had gotten breakfast at the little café inside the hotel. We all dressed up a little to go see our next show: Operation Mincemeat.

This musical is based on a true story of how the British tricked over 90,000 German soldiers into leaving Sicily during WWII. I’d never heard of the musical before, and I had no idea what it was about before going into it.

The music is beautiful. It’s both fun and upbeat, yet deeply emotional. There are only four or five cast members, and each actor plays multiple roles. At first, it’s quite silly to see some male actors switch into female characters, and female actors switch into male characters. It was written to feel silly at first. But at some point, it becomes so believable that it isn’t funny anymore, and it just becomes beautiful.

Unfortunately, Han started falling asleep in the most emotional song, so I was annoyed. I took his hand and gave him a hand massage to help him stay awake so that he didn’t start snoring. At the intermission, he went and grabbed a rum and coke, which I was worried would only make him more tired.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised as he sat back down next to me. “I’m really enjoying the musical. We just did so much walking this morning and stayed up so late last night!”

I nodded. That was totally fair.

After the show, we went to Empanada Mama, a restaurant where the entire menu consisted of different kinds of empanadas. I got a mac & cheese empanada, a ground beef empanada, and a rice & beans empanada. I also ordered an apple juice.

Dad gave me a disappointed look, and Lottie, Seth, Mom, and Han all laughed at me.

“What?” I cried, defensively. “I like juice!”

“Are you a child?” Dad asked, though he was trying not to smile.

“Apple juice is not only for children!” I replied with a scoff.

The empanadas were delicious, of course. The ground beef one was really good, but I’ve gotta be honest, my favorite was the mac & cheese one.

After lunch, Lottie, Seth, Han, and I split off from my parents. We returned to the hotel while my parents attended a friend’s birthday party, and we relaxed and played Fortnite for a bit.

In the evening, we went to the Village Underground Comedy Cellar. Han led us there because my parents were meeting us there. We waited outside the Comedy Cellar for my parents since they had our tickets.

While we waited, Lottie pulled me aside while Han and Seth talked. Seth––who is a cop––kept talking about how you can identify which homeless people are on some really bad drugs, because they’re the ones with no shoes on. I think he was trying to sound cool, but we weren't impressed.

Mom and Dad finally arrived after we had been waiting for about ten or fifteen minutes, and we went into the Comedy Cellar together. The security personnel had to put everyone’s phones in bags, and we were required to keep our phones and all our electronics in bags until the show was over. We could keep the bags at the table with us; we just couldn’t open them until we left.

The show was hilarious, we could hardly breathe, we were laughing so hard! This was the lineup

Ayanna Dookie was my favorite. Her ex-husband was a cop, so she told a lot of jokes about him, and Mom, Lottie, and I were dying laughing. Seth was laughing, too, but I’m not sure he found it quite as funny as the rest of us did.

After the show, Dad took us to John’s of Bleeker, a pizza place, but Dad was walking so fast, and Alyss was wearing heels, so her feet really hurt. Dad was quite a ways ahead of the rest of us.

“Go tell Dad to slow down,” Mom said to me.

“Agh, okay,” I replied, then ran up the street to walk just behind Dad. “Hey, can we slow down a bit? Alyssa’s feet hurt!”

“No, we gotta get there!” Dad said.

I grabbed his arm and tried to slow him down, but he just kept walking.

“Why do we have to go so fast?” I asked.

“Because they close in seven minutes!” Dad said.

“You should have led with that!” I cried, then stopped pulling his arm. I turned around to face Lottie, Seth, Mom, and Han. “Guys, hurry up! The place is closing!”

I don’t think Mom was thrilled that we were going so fast, but we made it to John’s of Bleecker with five minutes to spare before it closed. We ordered extremely quickly, and I was honestly shocked that they took our order.

We devoured the pizza, even though it felt hotter than lava in our mouths, then went to another boba place across the street called Heytea. I ordered a mango drink, but the man taking our orders kept getting confused because we were all ordering at the same time. He could have easily gotten annoyed with us, but he was very friendly and patient.

We drank our boba–or in my case, my mango drink–as we walked back to the subway. On the way, we talked about Grandma, who passed away in May, and how Aunt Joyce had taken such good care of Grandma right up until the end. It was Aunt Joyce who’d gone to Grandma every day she was in the hospital during her recovery.

“We should call her,” Noam said.

So we FaceTimed her.

“Hello?” She said, answering the phone.

“Hi Aunt Joyce!” We all said into the camera.

“Oh hi, guys!” Aunt Joyce replied. “We’re watching The Watch right now, since Wander has never seen it!”

“We just wanted to tell you that you’re such an amazing person!” Mom said.

“Yeah, and we love you so much!” I added.

“Thank you, guys,” Aunt Joyce said. “I love you, too!”

We talked to her a little longer and said hello to Uncle Goose, Amelia, Oliver, and Wander (my cousin Amelia’s boyfriend). Then, we went down into the subway station and waited for a train. Mom was a little tipsy from the alcohol we had at the Comedy Cellar, so she and I were stretching and being silly.

Lottie and Seth were standing off to the side. I think they were arguing.

Anyway, we got back to the hotel safely and went to bed after all that.

I think I'm taking way too much time to write this story. Maybe I need to dive in. I feel trapped by the planning. Perhaps I need to run with it. Every time I feel ready to start writing, I get another idea that’s slightly better than the last one, and then I have to adjust my plan to accommodate it. But maybe I keep delaying because I’m afraid to start.

I made a lot of mistakes writing my first two novels, and I don’t regret any of them. However, I’m trying hard to learn from those mistakes, and maybe that’s what’s holding me back.

Here are the top three.

Mistake #1: Planning

My biggest mistake in writing From the Ashes and The Inferiors was the lack of planning. When I wrote those, I had been struck by an insatiable inspiration, one that consumed me like a fire I couldn’t put out. It was such an amazing, incredible feeling. I spent so much time writing that I didn’t stop and think about where I actually wanted these books to go.

When I started, I knew how I wanted Book 1 to end, and I had some vague plans for Book 2. I had assumed that a plan for Book 3 would just materialize as I wrote Book 2, but it never did. This was not only disappointing but also somewhat terrifying. I had come up with this whole story, to leave it 2/3rds finished, which feels very unfair to my readers. (Side note: I am still cooking up ideas for Book 3, but don’t get your hopes up.)

With my new stories, I want to have a plan for how I want each character arc to begin and end. If the plan changes along the way, that’s fine.

Mistake #2: Being Too Hasty

Don't get me wrong. I love From the Ashes and The Inferiors. They were the books that taught me how to be a writer. They were the books that taught me I could really be published, that I could actually do this. But there is a part of me that wishes I had waited to publish them until all three books were ready.

That way, I could have modified Books 1 and 2 to fit Book 3 in case things changed as the story evolved.

Mistake #3: World-Building

From the Ashes and The Inferiors are absolutely character-driven stories. However, I could have explored the world-building a bit further. Yes, I was 16 when Book 1 was published, and around 20 when Book 2 was published, but I had wanted to create a richer world.

The Mistakes I’m Making Now

Of course, I made so many mistakes writing my first two books, far more than these three, but these are the ones that bother me the most when I look back on them. Again, I don’t regret any of them, because all of my mistakes are things I can learn from. All my mistakes will make my current and future projects even better.

Right now, I’m wondering if the mistakes I’m currently making are an overcorrection of the mistakes I made in the past. I have over 100k words of world-building, I seem stuck in an endless loop of planning, and I feel overly cautious. I spend hours creating new languages, cultures, and religions. It’s incredibly fun, but I’m also not sure how productive it is. I often find myself in a world-building rabbit hole. I spend so much time writing, but it’s not going anywhere because I’m not drafting.

So … here’s to drafting.

Here’s to starting, to diving in headfirst, even if it’s scary.

Even if I don’t know where I’m going.

Open road ahead.

For the past few weeks, my body just hasn’t felt quite right. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I’ve always been very aware of when something is wrong. I’ve been exhausted, more so than usual, to the point that being creative has felt almost impossible.

Then, two Saturdays ago, Han and I went out to an Italian restaurant with our friends, Geralt and Luna. I ordered tortellini with tomato sauce, and honestly, it wasn’t very good. I can buy better quality tortellini and pasta sauce from Heinen’s to make at home. This food tasted like it came out of a box, which was disappointing.

When we got home, this acidic pain bloomed in my chest. It came in waves, ebbing and growing every few minutes. I don’t experience heartburn very often, but I knew what it felt like, so I took a Tums and tried to forget about it. Over the next few hours, the pain continued to worsen, and at around 12:30 a.m. I ended up … er … tossing my cookies. And I mean all of them.

Under remotely normal circumstances, that would’ve made me feel better. So I waited a few minutes for the relief to set in, for the pain to subside, but it remained. As a last-ditch effort, I took a shower, and when that didn’t work, I was exhausted. So, ignoring the pain, I lay down and went to bed.

For about three hours, I shifted in and out of restless sleep, trying to find some position where the burning pain couldn’t find me. Absolutely nothing helped.

At three in the morning, I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling for about twenty minutes, going through all of it in my head. The pain had only gotten worse.

Do I need to go to the hospital? I asked myself. I definitely didn’t want to spend my Sunday in the ER, especially if it turned out to be a bad case of heartburn. By this point, I was starting to feel anxious. I was pretty sure heartburn wasn’t supposed to last more than a few hours, and it had been six.

You might know from reading my previous posts that I have chronic anxiety, and that I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac. I often “don’t feel right,” so I go through an entire conversation with myself whenever I find myself in this situation. You think it’d be straightforward, but it really isn’t.

BRAIN: Are you blowing this out of proportion?
ME: Maybe? It’s hard to tell. You know how my anxiety is.
ANXIETY: Not blowing it out of proportion, it hurts so much!
BRAIN: How bad is the pain?
ANXIETY: It’s pretty fucking bad. Can we go to the hospital now? Jess, you know you have a high pain tolerance. If it hurts so bad that you can’t even sleep, then we need to go.
BRAIN: *sighs* On a scale of one to ten.
ANXIETY: Nine.
ME: *feeling a bit doubtful of anxiety* Nine is pretty high … I’m not screaming, I’m pretty sure childbirth or getting shot would be a lot more painful.
ANXIETY: Is that what people mean when they ask that question? If you’re measuring pain on a scale of one to ten, are you supposed to imagine the most painful thing you can think of and then compare it to that? Or is it more like you’re comparing this pain to all of the pain you have previously experienced?
ME: … I … actually don’t know.
BRAIN: Let’s think about this logically. Can we look up your symptoms online?
ME: *cringing* You remember how Anxiety reacted last time we looked up symptoms?
BRAIN: *Looks up over its glasses at Anxiety* Well, you’re wide awake and in pain with nothing else to do. We need to figure out what’s going on here. Anxiety, can you go sit in the corner while we look this up?
ANXIETY: Uhh, sure, I guess …
BRAIN: *pulls up my phone* Okay, so here it says heartburn should not last more than a few hours. It’s been what … six hours?
ME: Yep. That’s not good. Look here, it also says you should probably see a doctor if you experience heartburn accompanied by vomiting.
ANXIETY: *sneaking up behind me, and Brain* What if it’s an ulcer!? *steals my phone and searches up ulcer symptoms* Look! That sounds like what you are experiencing!
ME: *looking at Brain* It … kinda does …
BRAIN: Okay. Wake up Han. We’ll see what he thinks.

At that point, I did what Brain recommended, because Han is a lot more level-headed about these things. After a few minutes of discussion and going through my list of symptoms, Han cringed.

“Whatever you want to do, we’ll do,” he said. “I don’t really know how to help … if you feel like it’s that bad, and it’s not just your anxiety, then we should go.”

So that settled it.

Han took me to the ER at 4 a.m., which isn’t far from our apartment. They took my blood and did a CAT scan while we waited for a room in the ER. The CAT scan was super freaky, and the contrast they injected into my blood made me feel super weird for a bit.

At about 10 a.m. I finally got a room in the ER, and a doctor came to tell me that some enzymes in my liver were super elevated. They’re supposed to be under 50, and mine were over 500. Yeah, this felt like the time to start freaking out.

Sad liver!

I was admitted to the hospital and was given a nicer room around 1 p.m. They hooked me up to an IV and gave me fluids.

Mom and Lottie came to visit me in the early evening, which was nice because it allowed Han to go home, work out, shower, and bring me some things to do. Mom and Lottie helped take my mind off of everything, and Lottie talked to me about her boy drama for the week. That’s always a good distraction.

When Han returned, he hooked up our Apple TV to the hospital TV. He’d also brought my Nintendo Switch, the book I’m currently reading––Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson––and my laptop in case I wanted to write. I was way too stressed out to write, so I spent the rest of the night watching Star Wars: Rebels, playing Fortnite, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I had to stay the night, and Han stayed with me the entire time.

The IV was in the crook of my left arm, and it felt gross to move it around, so I did my best to keep it straight. Even so, I must have moved it around a little too much because around 10 p.m., my arm started to feel cold, and the IV started to hurt. When someone came to check on me, I asked if they could check my IV, and they told me the IV must have shifted out of my vein because my arm shouldn’t have been so cold.

“Is that bad?” I asked, trying desperately hard not to sound like I was panicking.

The nurse shook her head. “No, it’s fine. The IV is draining under your skin instead of into a vein. It’s just saline, so your body will absorb it.”

“Oh … great …” I managed. My anxiety was pacified with the new knowledge, but I was so grossed out.

The next day, Monday, they wanted to keep me again because my numbers had gone up. Instead of 500, they were at 552, and the doctors weren’t entirely sure why this was happening. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t take pain medication even when I probably should, just because I don’t like taking medication.

On Tuesday morning, my numbers had finally gone down to 300, so they released me with orders to rest until Monday–– today.

They are still unsure why this happened, but they have developed two theories.

Theory 1: I had COVID and didn’t know it. I have never tested positive for COVID, either at home or in a medical facility, but some people don’t ever test for it, even if they have it.

Mean turmeric!

Theory 2: I drink a lot of tea, and one of my favorites is turmeric ginger tea. I had a lot of that a few weeks ago, and then I had paneer butter masala from my favorite Indian restaurant. Many Indian dishes incorporate turmeric, but excessive consumption of this spice can lead to liver damage.

They still aren’t sure which one of these two things caused it. Either way, they’re pretty sure my liver being messed up was what also caused the severe heartburn, since livers produce bile, and when your liver is messed up, a whole horrible range of things can happen.

Anyway. If there’s a moral to this story at all, it’s fine to have turmeric, but avoid excessive amounts of it. It’s fine to have in small quantities, but maybe don’t drink four cups of turmeric tea in a day, just in case that’s what caused this whole fiasco. Though again … they still aren’t entirely sure.

Project UpdatesConvergenceNothing to see here … I mean literally nothing.

Fan FictionDon’t look at me!

Goals This WeekCan we get back to normal, please? Let’s see if I can meet these goals this week.

I'd like to write:

500 words in Convergence that I actually keep500 words in my Fan Fic that I actually keep

And I'd like to read:

1 chapter in Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson

Jasper Update

Jasper had a tick this week. We took him to the vet and they removed it, but it was so gross! Although… with all of Jasper’s medical problems, my parents joked that they felt bad for the tick.

“I bet Jasper gave the tick Lyme disease,” my dad laughed.

Don’t worry, he was joking, and Jasper doesn’t have Lyme disease. So far.

Quote of the Week

What are your goals for the week? How have you guys been?

It's Insecure Writer's Support Group day! This is exciting for me because it's been about eight or nine years since I last posted for the IWSG, and it's really really nice to be back. The first Wednesday of every month, the IWSG hosts a blog hop with a prompt, and it's always been a fun way for me to connect with other writers.

The prompt today is, "What is the most unethical practice in the publishing industry?"

I've only got two novels published, and they're self-published at that. So I don't really have a lot of experience in the publishing industry. However, this question made me think of the thing that's been bothering me the most this week: publishing children's picture books.

For background, I work at a library. I'm not a librarian, I'm just a circulation assistant--the person who checks in books that have been returned, answers phones, directs people to the resources they're looking for, answers questions, etc.--but a lot of my day consists of handling books, which automatically makes it the best job ever.

Sometimes, if it's a slower day, I have time to flip through some of the books. The ones I read most often are picture books, since they're the easiest to finish in one sitting. I'm not a picture book author, and I won't pretend to know anything at all about traditional publishing, or publishing children's books or picture books. However, I can't help but notice how many picture books seem to be written for adults.

I'm not talking about the picture books that address LGBTQ+ issues, the ones that the right-wing are getting all triggered about. I've read a lot of these books, and they're wonderful. So far, in my personal readings, I haven't come across a single LGBTQ+ picture book that I would find inappropriate for children.

No, the books I'm talking about are the ones like We, the Curious Ones by Marion Dane Bauer.

PC: Goodreads

Before I say anything else, this book is absolutely gorgeous. When I read it the other day, I was captivated by the stunning images and the poetry. This is a beautiful book, one I think most adults would enjoy reading––I certainly did. It discusses the human experience and our curiosity, our beliefs, and how they've changed throughout the ages. However, as I was reading it, I started to wonder who this book was really for.

Would I have enjoyed this book as a kid? Most likely, yes. I enjoyed Carl Sagan's Cosmos series as a six-year-old, so I'm absolutely not saying "there are no children who would enjoy this book!" But … there are so many books out there like this, books that are poetic and vague, books that seem sort of "highbrow" for children. Which, again, is fine.

But I realized something after coming across a few of these.

When it comes to children's picture books––and children's media, in general––we're not actually writing these books for kids. And you can't write these books just for kids because the people who approve whether or not you get published at all are adults. You have to convince these adults that your book is worth it, you have to convince adults to publish a book for kids. It makes sense, because a five-year-old isn't going to be shelling out the money to buy these picture books, or signing up for a library card to check these out. Your publisher knows that the people you really have to charm are the parents, otherwise they're not going to buy your books for their kids, or let them check out your books from the library.

I'm not saying anything is inherently wrong with this, it's just the way the world works. But it's one of the few industries where your target audience is not who you're trying to sell to, and all I can say is … I can't imagine how hard it is to write and publish children's picture books right now.

Be sure to visit the Insecure Writer's Support Group page and the other people who have posted today!