rynling | 2024 Writing Log, Part 29

- After an unexpected series of reflections on the part of the main character, I finished Chapter 20 of my original gothic mystery, An Unfound Door. For what it’s worth, this chapter puts the manuscript at over 60k words, finally pushing it into the territory of a proper novel. Five more chapters to go!

- I finally finished writing the last chapter of Lay the Gods to Rest, an industrial revolution era Tears of the Kingdom fanfic novella. I’ve been editing this chapter alongside some of the earlier chapters, and it should be ready to post next weekend. It’s a nice conclusion to the story, I think.

- I finished, edited, and submitted the first draft of “The Wisdom of the Waiting Princess,” the meta essay I’m contributing to the Princess Zelda fanzine.

- I’m continuing to work on “The Record of the Last Heavenly Warrior,” the short story I’m contributing to the Studio Ghibli fanzine.

- I edited my essay on Ender Lilies, added some images, and formatted the piece for Sidequest. I will be very surprised if anyone cares about this when it’s published, but I think there’s a chance that the developers (who follow me on Twitter) might see and appreciate it. And that’s the most important thing!

- I wrote a short blurb for The Nation of Plants: A Radical Manifesto for Humans for the August book recommendation post on Woman Write About Comics. It’s a lovely book, and I basically said that it’s one of the more “you can give it as a nice present to your aunties” radical political manifestos I’ve encountered.

- For the August comics recommendation post on WWAC, I wrote a short blurb about Hyeon Cho’s graphic novel Your Letter, which began its life as a webcomic in 2019. It’s a very sweet story about high school loners overcoming trauma and making friends, and Yen Press did a fantastic job with the print publication.

- This week’s mini review on my book review blog (here) is about Shinya Tanaka’s prizewinning novella Cannibals, which is a work of historical fiction set in 1988. Unfortunately, there are no cannibals. I say “unfortunately” because what the book is actually about is a teenage boy beating and raping a 16yo girl, and then his dad beating and raping that same 16yo girl. This is Serious Literary Fiction™ because fantasizing about violence against women helps sensitive men assert their masculine individuality against capitalism. I guess.

- I drew a small illustration of Aeris in the Sleeping Forest. This is going to be the fourth panel of my “Trees in Video Games” comic. I’m not sure how I feel about this one, but it’s on Tumblr (here) if you’re feeling nostalgic for Final Fantasy VII.

I’ve been taking a bit of a social media break this week. My mantra is: you don’t have to engage. It’s been nice. I also started a little terrarium moss garden in a cheap Ikea garden lamp, and that’s nice as well. (Here’s a picture.) And, on top of that, I found a nice vacant industrial lot at the edge of my neighborhood for the wild fig trees trying to grow up through the sidewalk on my block. Transplanting the saplings is going to be my project for this weekend. I’m not entirely sure this is legal, so nobody tell the police lmao.