Monthly Archives: June 2017

Okay, wow.

Posted on by Alexandra Erin

Did I really not blog at all from the first of the month, when I announced that Secret Sisterhood of Superheroes was launching, until the end of the month, when the first issue is wrapping? (Final update goes live tonight at 10:30 eastern.) I knew that I was stretching myself a little thin and time was slipping away from me. I didn’t realize I’d gone quite that quiet on this channel.

I had big plans for the month, and some of the longer-term and behind-the-scenes ones ate up more of my time than I’d expected. I’m also going through a few personal things. And I’ve had some big decisions to make, which I (as is my custom) spent a lot of time feeling pulled in every direction on and not taking action.

The good news is that with all of that going on, I still published several thousand words of original fiction, since S3 was running. I didn’t push it very much because I feel very self-conscious pointing people towards a serial story without much to read.

Anyway, here’s the semi-short version of some of those decisions.

1. Most of my blogging about career/work stuff is going to be going on at Patreon now, where I’m found at http://www.patreon.com/alexandraerin. I don’t really like that stuff crossing over with my Facebook, but I’ve decided to keep the Facebook crosspost from this blog live and just have a different place for my “state of the me” work updates. This’ll help me remember to use Patreon more and communicate directly to those who are specifically supporting and/or following my work. Note that you don’t have to pledge money to follow someone on Patreon, though it is appreciated.

I just always feel awkward about having a space that’s not quite fish and not quite fowl when it comes to work/life stuff.  I don’t naturally feel inclined to keep up two entirely separate blogs, but I also *need* to get more in the habit of updating my Patreon and interacting with it, because the alternative is I forget it’s there and I never wind up fulfilling the specific obligations I lay out. So this will be my personal blog, that will be my work blog.

There might be some gray areas, like long, rambling thought processes about stories or game design might go over here, while the results go over there. Like every decision I make, this is both an experiment and a work in process.

I’m putting a version of this post up in both places, just so everyone knows what is what.

2. Future issues of Secret Sisterhood of Superheroes will come out with one update a day for *part* of the month rather than being stretched out over the course of the entire month.

I had some problems with the pacing of the first issue when I realized belatedly that I’d removed some parts of it to form the prologue issue and hadn’t adjusted my count, hence the kind of erratic gaps in the middle there. It was every other day at first, every other day towards the end, and just kind of higgledy-piggledy in the middle. “About every other day” is not a great update schedule to begin with, and with many of the updates being kind of short (some being the length of a microblog post!), making people wait between them is not a great solution.

So I think daily updates with a period of downtime between them to build anticipation is probably the best way to go. If you’re worried you’ll forget to check, you can subscribe to Secret Sisterhood for email updates, in the side bar on the front page of it. I will also be debuting a Twitter account for the second issue.

July’s issue will start on July 16th, as I’m about to go on a family trip and after that I’m going to need some time to set it up and also work out the format for how my patrons will get to read the completed issue at launch, something I did not pull together in time for issue 1. The issue after that will start early August, in order to give a short break between them. And then issues after that will start on the first of the month.

3. I’m going to be setting a small amount of time each day to both write fiction (even if it’s just exercises) and to read the news for my political commentary career. I’ve been having a really hard time balancing those things, so I’m going to take an approach that lets me keep my hand in both, whatever else the demands of the day are.

4. I’m adjusting how much I rely on small to moderate amounts of alcohol to manage writer’s block and other anxieties/inhibitions. I’m not giving up on drinking as long as drinking doesn’t give up on me, but I’m trying to lean on it less. It takes a lot more effort for me to fill a blank space with words and then put them in front of people without a little word processing fluid to grease the wheels, so please bear with me.

I’m not looking for (and will not appreciate, trust me) overt shows of support, advice on this subject, or most especially other people trying to help me regulate my usage without being asked. I’m letting you know that if I seem even more distant or subdued than normal, there is a reason and it’s not a problem.

I’ve got a few more decisions to talk about, but they can wait until I’m back from my Fourth of July family excursion, which will be the week after next.

Secret Sisterhood of Superheroes Launch!

Posted on by Alexandra Erin

So the party I threw at WisCon started out purely as a retrospective celebration of Tales of MU. By the time it came around, though, I was thinking more of the future than the past, and it coincided with the time where I was ready to launch my new project, Secret Sisterhood of Superheroes.

I set the first part of the prologue to go live during the party, and then I read it aloud. It’s now available to read, along with the other three parts of the short “Issue 0” prologue that ran through the end of May. The first part deals with the divergence points of history in this universe, where a star fell and changed the shape of the eastern seaboard of what is now the United States, creating new land that became the cities of Star Harbor and Calvary Crossing, in the state of Hamilton.

When I was writing stories in this universe before, I always said that Star Harbor was in the great state of *cough*mumble*cough*. I kept its exact location vague for two reasons. One was the DC comic book trope of adding imaginary cities in unspecified locations. The other was that, as a Midwesterner, I didn’t really know the eastern seaboard well enough to locate the story in a particular place.

I’ve been living in the mid-Atlantic region full time for a few years now, following even more years of splitting my time between them, though, and I have a much better feel for the geography and political psychology of the region… good enough that I felt confident anchoring the story in (or at least adjacent to) a real place.

After my reading, someone told me I had done a great job of capturing the region in my description, which was really validating as I am a fairly recent transplant.

I also received high marks for the references to Alexander Hamilton. It might seem a little like a slow take on the popular zeitgeist, but Alexander Hamilton and (to a lesser extent, Aaron Burr) have always loomed large in the secret history of the Star Harbor superhero universe. I think the closest I ever came to referencing it was a mention of a portrait of Hamilton in the lobby of a certain shadowy government agency. The rise of Hamilton as a pop culture phenomenon is part of what convinced me it’s time to go back to this story verse, and also to bring the alternate history element out into the forefront.

The other thing about the reading is: it went really well. I have never given a reading before that went well, at least from my point of view. I’ve always had severe stage fright-like anxiety when I try: shaky legs, shaky voice, desperately trying to control my pace from a panicky gallop, etc. The fear even tends to creep in when I try to record myself reading something.

This time? Nothing. None of that. I’m sure it’s no one thing but a confluence of reasons that reached a critical tipping point, but I just… hit my stride. Found my voice. Was in my element. It went well. It went so well that I’m planning on doing an actual official programmed reading next year.

Anyway. Issue 0, short as it is, is now live. The first chapter of Issue 1 goes up later tonight, and Issue 1 will continue to run throughout the month with new updates about every other day.