Just because my dog has as many presents under the tree as the rest of my family combined doesn't mean he's spoiled; it means Petsmart had a buy 3, get 2 for free sale on toys (and also he's spoiled).

By the way, look at these lovely @whistberry.bsky.social prints I got! 3 for me and 1 for a Christmas gift. Now I just need the frames. Also, I’m a zookeeper and I brought the cardboard envelope they came in to work and used it to hide the porcupine’s diet. I thought that was be appreciated here.

Microsoft makes it really difficult to communicate with an actual person, but I finally managed to get through on a chat and get everything resolved, so now I can actually figure out what project I want to work on.

Latest in this saga is that I bought and downloaded Microsoft Office, but it's not letting me use it because there's apparently no license on my account.🙃

Well, apparently right now I'm not doing anything because I need to buy Microsoft Office for the new computer, but my bank flagged that as fraud for some reason so I can't buy it...

The thing is, I just got a new computer, and there's something so crisp about it that just makes me want to type, but I don't know which of the many ideas I should be chasing.

Now that I've finished the latest round of revisions for #JustStabsWIP and sent it to my parents for the very first readers, I don't know what project to work on. Do I revise another project? Do I draft something new? What am I supposed to do now?

#LateNightWrite Hmm, well, the city Ostra Ugarth definitely has a vibe. The mountains are also cool. And of course there's the airship.

#LateNightWrite I’m fascinated by storytelling in games, but I don’t know that’s for me. I wouldn’t want to write something like TV, where you have to actually work with other people. Maybe comics? Except I don’t have the drawing skills, so that would still require working with an artist…

#LateNightWrite Heyo, I’m Ellen, finally remembering this more or less on time. Last night I finished the latest round of revisions for #JustStabsWIP, about my stabby sapphic disaster, so I’m not sure what I’m working on now.🤷🏼‍♀️

I am forever amused that because I sort my books alphabetically by author, The Drowning Empire and The Burning Kingdoms are side by side. I am not allowed to buy anything by an author who would split them up.

All the struggle was worth it because look how much space I have for more books!

Sorting my books to put on the new bookshelves with said dog present is also proving problematic.

Assembling my new furniture would be a lot easier if I didn’t have a nine-month-old dog climbing all over me as I did it.

literally me screaming at every single program offering to write things, summarize things, etc etc, via genAI fuck OFF I didn't ask for this!! I like using my brain, actually, even if it's hard!! it's good for me and I like it!!

Not even Rin knows how many knives she has hidden on her person. #JustStabsWIP

How my dog and my parents’ dog feel when they’re together.

It's definitely not the middle, but here's from #HullWIP.

Anyway, I'm going to do a read of #HullWIP now for a palate cleanser, and then do another quick pass through #JustStabsWIP to make sure the edits make sense, and then it's finally off to the first readers. Yay, it's about damn time. #amrevising

Bragging moment: The original draft of #JustStabsWIP was 135,361 words. The latest draft is 115,740 words. That's nearly 20k, a full 14.5% shorter. Behold all those babies I killed. Especially when you consider there were a couple points needing expanding.

Remember: You cannot startle a sloth, but a sloth can most definitely startle you.

A book where there's a mention of some food right at the beginning, and then it goes off into this convoluted murder mystery, with the twist at the end being that it was all an absurdly long lead-up to the recipe for said food.

It’s one of my favorite days! It’s International Vulture Awareness Day! Vultures prevent the spread of disease by eating up dead things that would otherwise rot. Thank your local (and beautiful) vulture today! #IVAD (Also, vulture stomach acids are so strong their poop can be used as disinfectant.)

Today at work a little boy asked me where the panda bear was (in reference to the red panda, we don’t have a giant panda), only his annunciation made it sound like “candy bear”, and I propose that this now be used as an alternative name.

I love making maps! I made these all myself, so I'd want something a little artsier when I get published, but they still look pretty good. They are for #JustStabsWIP, #TheDragoneer, #ReyaWIP, and #BrokenHero (the latter two are shelved, but still nice maps).

Not to brag, but I ran the dishwasher and did laundry today, AND I emptied the dishwasher and folded and put away the laundry, because I am an adult who definitely does the corresponding tasks on the same day.

Traffic was really bad on my commute today, so I thought I should text my dog that I was going to be late. And then I remembered that he's a dog and therefore does not have a phone and cannot read.

#LateNightWrite I offer very affordable beta reading on Fiverr: www.fiverr.com/s/yv108mV?ut...

#LateNightWrite Rin doesn't do regrets. Due to her parents failing her, she believes the only person you can rely on is yourself. So even if she screws up, at least it's her own problem and she doesn't have to worry about someone else.

#LateNightWrite Rin would say, in her family's history, the first was when her ancestor found a Source of magic that allowed them to become super rich, and also locked said magic to anyone but their family. The second was when Rin's parents lost all of the wealth.

#LateNightWrite Learn to write more efficiently and cut in revisions (and, yes, it can be and should be shortened). I love those stories I wrote, but they can be so sprawling that I don't know if they're fixable. I wonder what they would look like if written now.

#LateNightWrite Heyo, I'm Ellen. I'm revising #JustStabsWIP, a fantasy about a stabby-sapphic disaster who needs to be kidnapped onto her own quest. Once I finish this round I'll do a reread of my resurrecting immortals story, then return to JustStabs for hopefully the last pass before betas.

Ladies and gentlefolk… My dog.

#LateNightWrite Rin rents a room in a five-story boarding house, a stone-faced building with crawling ivy. Nothing fancy, and sometimes the floors creak and sometimes Rin hears her neighbor's, ahem, assignations with a seamstress, but it's reasonably priced and keeps a roof on her head.

#LateNightWrite I don’t meme well, or know my brand, so here’s a picture of my dog. Anyway, #JustStabsWIP has humor, an MC who fully embraces never having a plan, and that wonderful trope of extended disarming scene.

#LateNightWrite Heyo, I'm Ellen, revising #JustStabsWIP, the surprisingly heartfelt story of a stabby sapphic disaster who has to be kidnapped on her own quest. My favorite fruit varies. I like a clementine with lunch, or raspberries on yogurt, for instance. Fun fact: a strawberry is not a fruit.

Every time I get a new nick or scrape or bruise on my hands at work, I think of the male guest who told me they should give me gloves to protect my "pretty hands". Anyway, I hope I never get pretty hands.

#LateNightWrite Rin herself subverts cultural expectations within the story. She was born to riches and peerage, but her parents lost it, so right there she confuses people by both being a peer and not. Beyond that, she doesn't WANT the riches back. Can't lose again what you don't have.

#LateNightWrite In #JustStabsWIP, there's flexibility in some things and rigidity in others. As noted, gender and queerness are accepted in whatever forms. But wealth and class play a big role in how people are treated. The peerage are definitely at the top, but there's still layers within that.

#LateNightWrite #JustStabsWIP is set in a queernormative world, so there are nonbinary characters throughout, both in the main cast and as random background characters. And no one makes any remarks about it, nor is it ever explained how they know the pronouns of someone they just met. It just is.

#LateNightWrite Heyo, I'm Ellen, revising #JustStabsWIP, my fantasy about a stabby sapphic disaster who has to be kidnapped on her own quest. And I don't know that I have a favorite drink (the thing I drink most is water), but I was really excited that Fresca brought back their black cherry flavor.

It’s okay, I bought two more.

Rin thinks the only person she can rely on is herself, so she pushes others away with snark and compulsive lying. Her knives are her comfort items, & she will always be distracted by a beautiful woman. She may not have much, but she's happy, because you can't lose what you don't have. #JustStabsWIP

I don't want to alarm anyone, but my fiction TBR is down to 20 books, and that seems very low. To be safe I should probably buy some more.

- I have three separate stories about why baboons should never be trusted. - I used to work with the official groundhog of Massachusetts. - I have met a king. - The number of bird species that has come in contact with my head is at least 12.

“Science KNOWS it doesn’t know everything. Otherwise it’d stop.”

Writers, describe your WIP in the worst way possible. A damaged woman learns to make friends. #JustStabsWIP

With the release of #JurassicWorldRebirth, I want to remind everyone that I once did a live posting of the first #JurassicWorld based on my perspective as a #zookeeper. Spoiler: they did not do good zookeeping.

#ChaosChat These golden retrievers are proud of you and love you just as you are.

#ChaosChat I don't identify as queer, so I would defer to what queer folks are saying. But just generally, more--so those who don't feel represented can see themselves, and so those who need to learn can realize how normal it is.