I swear to god, trad pub, stop this nonsense.

Today we discovered that one of my favourite pizzas technically contains alcohol (on account of the salami containing white wine). Did not expect that. Husband was very bamboozled. Highly unlikely to be enough to cause problems given the salami only makes up 4.5% of the ingredients, thankfully.

The productivity hit to my day every time I encounter a stupid new Co-pilot icon in an Office product and have to figure out how to disable it is insane. There is now a bloody irritating little icon that follows your cursor around everywhere in OneNote. Hate it. At least Clippy was cute and static.

Managed to successfully delete my tweet history, as I've been planning to do for a long time. It took two days! Now my Twitter account is just a stub. Good times.

You finish your words for the day, and the whole chapter, to boot: 😀 There isn't enough time left to play Kingdom Come before bed: 😫

I really wish I'd been able to finish writing this book in an earlier trimester, because wow, the struggle is real in this one. Like hitting an instant brick wall. I only have five chapters left to go but I'm just *shattered*. Losing an hour each day to get more sleep does not help 🫠

Kegel exercises and long-term money management: Two things that absolutely should be taught in schools but aren't. This thought brought to you by severe frustration at the former, which we are apparently meant to do our whole lives, but no one really tells you that until you're pregnant.

Might be a long shot, but I would really love if anyone could help save my local Ukrainian-run art studio. The place they rent got sold unexpectedly and they're having to scramble to find somewhere new: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-kalyn...

Storygraph's end-of-year stats really bringing home the disparity between my reading speeds for English and Ukrainian 😅 (Although hilariously, this means it also took me less time to read a Ukrainian book from the 1800s than a modern one.)

Well, today heralds my least favourite task of being a writer: filling in my tax return. Wish me luck.

Occasionally Alexa will say 'By the way, released new music' like she wants to show off her latest tunes. Thankfully, she has not released any tunes of her own. She just can't read band names if they're in Cyrillic.

After an hour-long stress trying to get the dog to the vets and back, I am 100% not up for the 1,000 words I planned to write today. I want a bath and a nap. And cake.

I love tracking systems that give me detailed notes on each step. It's so exciting to refresh reach day and see it's moved somewhere new! Maybe a little *too* exciting, but hey ho. I'd call it my gift to myself for finishing NaNo, but it'll arrive too early for that 😅

When you give an in-depth reply to someone asking for advice in a writing Facebook group, and it's the only reply for hours, but the poster chooses to reply to and acknowledge every comment except yours:

Slightly mad right now because it appears Scrivener has lost the content from all of my scenes after the midpoint. I spent ages fleshing those out before NaNo/the Writathon! And it had appeared so stable until now.

It was a bit of a struggle to write through 'that day' of news, but I kept going. My #Writathon progress is going pretty smoothly so far.

Russian occupying authorities in Mariupol announced plans to strip Ukraine's church of its unique artistic identity to align it with Russian Orthodox Church standards. The St. Petro Mohyla Church is the only church in the world entirely decorated with Petrykivka paintings, an ancient style of

I just ran my first ever dealers' table. A quiet event, but a great practice run and I had some nice chats. Definitely glad I got the big shelf for some verticality.

The trilogy has truly come to an end – it's now available in stores! books2read.com/out-of-exile Now's the perfect time to dive in if you're someone who likes to read through a series in one go.

I finally finished the Ukrainian book I've been reading for the past eight months. I'm fairly sure it would have been a quicker read if it hadn't been from the 1800s, but it was definitely worth reading! A shame the only English translation is out of print and not widely available.

Argh, IngramSpark was faster than usual and now KDP won't like me schedule the paperback release because the ISBN already exists on the store 😫 And here I thought I was being clever by setting them both going at once. It all worked fine with the other two books!

I've managed to tick off a lot of book-related tasks today, and everything is in the works for pre-orders to open soon. This has happened on some stores for the ebook already. Not long now, and I'll have ticked enough off that I'll have breathing room to write again.

I just had my card reader arrive for a book fair I'm planning to go to soon. Is it bad that I'm excited about being able to print my own logo out on receipts? 😅

I genuinely lose a little bit of my sanity every time I see a recipe measure butter in tablespoons.

Just saw a quote from one of those books that doesn't use full stops at all. It just... it just uses semi-colons instead. That feels like cheating, somehow.

One of my favourite hobbies is scaring my husband with illustrations of azhdarchids.

Just wrapped the first batch of paperbacks for the Kickstarter while I wait impatiently for the hardcovers (and hardcover proof, in the case of the new versions) to arrive from the printers.

As it happens I've written a short story about the ethics of auto-cannibalism. shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/11... Enjoy!

There are just under two days left to back the whole Galaxy of Exiles trilogy on #Kickstarter. If you fancy binging a new #spaceOpera series (or catching up with the newest addition), check it out: www.kickstarter.com/projects/franklywrites/the-galaxy-of-exiles-a-complete-space-opera-trilogy

This was bound to happen sooner or later: www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdvic... (Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identification book we bought from major online retailer).

Additional art for Ukrainian charity project "Динокрай" #art #artbook #динокрай

Anyone here going to #WorldCon? I'm potentially picking up a last-minute weekend ticket and it would be good to know who's there to meet up with.

I've been watching Masters of the Air recently (not my usual, but I was milking Apple TV for everything interesting before I moved subscription service again). While looking into the historical archives, I found an interesting eyewitness account: 100thbg.com/wp-content/u...

Halfway funded on the Kickstarter, but we're running out of time to unlock some of the first stretch goals. Do you want to dive into a complete #spaceOpera series? The Galaxy of Exiles might be what you're looking for. www.kickstarter.com/projects/fra...

The Kickstarter is now LIVE. If anyone is interested in the above, please do check it out!

It's time to reveal the cover for Out of Exile! Once again, a lovely design from Design for Writers. I'm so looking forwards to seeing it in print. If you would also like to see it in print, follow the Kickstarter to be notified as soon as it goes live tomorrow: www.kickstarter.com/projects/fra...

One day before the Kickstarter launch is, I must say, a very bad time for IngramSpark to be rejecting my book upload. Fingers crossed I can get this resolved before the end of the campaign when I need to be printing everything.

The wheels, they are a-turning...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a manuscript printed for the first time must develop at least one typo, unseen in however many rounds of editing have gone before. On the bright side, the print quality of these little short story booklets I've made *is* amazing.

Hi #WritingCommunity, I'm back! I've also finally found a decent place to print hardcovers with nice ribbons and head/tail bands etc. I'd love to use it for my Kickstarter editions. Problem is, 2/3 books in the trilogy are already out without ribbons etc. Would it bother you to have one different?

As I mentioned it ages ago, I should probably post it. This is the oil #painting I did of a scene from my upcoming book Out of Exile (delayed for health reasons, but should release this year). #art #oilPainting

I wrapped up the latest round of edits on Out of Exile today. That means until the next bunch of feedback comes back, I can return to my dinosaur fantasy – namely, cutting the plot apart and putting it back together now I know the shape of things a bit better. #amWriting

At some point over the holidays I'm planning to do a space-battle oil painting inspired by John Berkey's style. It's probably going to go terribly. I've never painted space stuff before and I'm still relatively new to oils (which I haven't touched in months). Wish me luck, folks.

I'm so happy to see Bile and Blood on this list. It feels like so long since I published it that I can't believe it was this year! www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7RC...

As I continue writing this draft, my husband reads through earlier chapters to try easing my 'this is all rubbish' phase of writing. The 'stop using the metric system – it hasn't been invented yet' comments aren't helping 😭 (It's easy enough to go back through and translate later, okay?)

I've just signed up for the 2025 Eastercon in Belfast. No idea about the logistics yet, and dreading printing all those books if I get a table, but there are two years to go, so plenty of time to figure that out, right?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that most men granted possession of a microphone during a Q&A session have no intention of asking a question, but making a statement or relating an anecdote.

Managed 400 words before breakfast today – mostly because I went downstairs, took one look at the queue and went 'nope, I'll come back later'.

The challenge of going to conventions alone and with the social skills of a cabbage is trying to find people to eat tea with before you're forced to go and book a table for one.

My mission 'finish writing the 1,500 words I had planned today before any of the programme items start' might be about to fail. To be fair, I usually only manage to get that far by about 11am.