Choose Your Adventure 🍂

Picture Book Update + Self Pub 101 + Book Sale

Hullo all,

I’m quite enjoying the white space of sending 1-2 emails a month.

That said, I had a lot to say this December. I didn’t mean to send so much at once, but it all bubbled up. 😂

I’m sending it all today so I can shift into holiday mode. So I’ve created a Choose Your Adventure email for you. You can read one or all of these. Or keep a tab open to catch the rest later.

First, here’s an update on my picture book collaboration with

Gracie Klumpp

! So many of you supported this project and we wanted to give you an idea of where we are in the process.

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Next, I’m celebrating the one year anniversary of Discover Your Creative Ecosystem.

It’s on offer right now if you want to grab an unbundled hardcover for $25 and ebooks & audiobooks are marked down to $10 each for the month of December.

I’m also nearly done creating a self publishing course.

Part of that process was digging up all of the process photos and videos I posted to Instagram. If you want to follow that process in real time you can see it unfold here:

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Announcements for next year’s

Neurokind

Publications

Neurokind Residencies & Theme for 2024

And one for the note taking nerds.

This post is a reflection on neurodivergent note taking and my new hybrid system (part digital + part analogue.) It’s something I’ve been playing with this since September and it feels like it’s here to stay (and evolve and grow with me.)

Ok, that’s it for the choose your own adventure programming. Maybe we’ll do this again? I kind of like the flexibility of publishing posts in my own time and then sharing them to your email inbox once or twice a month.

More scope for the imagination as Anne Shirley would say.

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Other bits and bobs I’d like to recommend this month.

Play

If you love word games I’d really recommend Gubbins.

It’s fun and quirky (and accepts names and lots of informal words that most word games just won’t).

And, if you upgrade to paid, 10% of the proceeds go to charity because it’s backed by Hank Green & Nerdfighteria.

Or you can play once a day for free. 💫

folly_studio

A post shared by @folly_studio

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Read

I don’t often mention my day job as an adjunct university instructor. But I teach a postgraduate class about musical theatre. When I give my students a chance to give a presentation on their favorite musical someone always chooses Hadestown. I’ve not yet seen it myself, but it’s been on my radar for a few years.

When Dónal Finn¹ was cast as Orpheus on the West End I fell down the Hadestown rabbit hole and found this book about the show’s lyrics.

It has some evocative quotes comparing the creative process to gardening,

“You’re raking around in the dirt, pulling up weeds. Flowers you love and find beautiful die on you. But not for nothing; they go back into the soil, and they nourish it. It’s the act of raking that prepares the ground, and it’s the seeds of those dead beautiful flowers that replant themselves in it and eventually come up right. The “right” thing could not exist without the “wrong” ones.”

The whole read was a delightful insight into the creative process. A very slow collaborative development that improved through iterations for well over a decade.

(More of my favorite quotes in my chronofile.)

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That’s it for me this month!

I’d love to hear from you.

Drop a link to something you’d like to share below. Or tell me something you’re looking forward to working on in the new year.

Cheers,

1. Dónal Finn also plays Mat Cauthon starting in Season 2 of The Wheel of Time