jfgarrard

Just fall flat on your face

Before I started the Artsy Raven podcast, I spoke with a friend who gave me the advice of just being dumb. “Don’t try so hard! Just make videos of yourself falling flat on your face and thousands will watch!” was their sage advice.

I thought about it and considered it for a long time, but I just couldn’t do it. It’s the same situation when I see romance or erotica writers amass huge mailing lists and sell lots of books. The ladies that sell dino erotic made a million in their first year! There was a call for an erotica anthology and I wrote a piece which was rejected perhaps because you can tell my heart wasn’t in it.

Everything has their ups and downs in life, it is foolish to expect one will have good fortune indefinitely. The only thing you can do is build up support so you don’t fall too far too fast.

Some writers warned me not to do other things other than write. So the things I’m doing now, hosting a podcast or design work is frowned upon by the “pure writers.” Since my mother died I haven’t been writing much because it takes up a lot of energy to world build.

Over time I’ve been taking small steps around writing with my podcast and design work because I find them easier to do. All these other non-writing activities are my support because they involve other people and that gives me energy to go on. April NaNoWriMo camp just started and I have written a few thousand words so far, so I’m warming up to return to writing again.

In university I was told by some male students that I was too smart and had to dumb myself down to attract a boyfriend. I didn’t listen to their advice and found someone who appreciated me for who I was.

As much as falling flat on your face or acting dumb is the easier route to some problems, it’s just not worth it sometimes and you may never reach your goal! After a long struggle, you will appreciate your rewards more!

Talking to Lindsay Wong about success

Artsy Raven, asian, awards, Books, Uncategorized, women, Writing, you tube

What is success? Is it achieving a goal such as writing a best selling book or living a dream lifestyle?

Recently I interviewed Lindsay Wong about this and I was slightly surprised by what she said, since she hit success with her memoir, The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family. The book was nominated for book awards, won some awards and selected for the 2019 edition of Canada Reads.

For many people it seems after hitting one goal, it’s time to set up the next goal and keep going! Lindsay works very hard and I wish her luck in the future of being able to just wake up every morning to just write in pjs!

Link to my interview and her book reading here: Spotify, Youtube

Why a publishing house is selling design work

Artsy Raven, Books, business, Writing

Recently we merged the Dark Helix Press newsletter mailing list with the Artsy Raven club mailing list due to limited time capacity. Marketing people will say we are doing something wrong, but we have too much to do and need to focus on creating things!

At Dark Helix Press we are working on new books, but we have also started making designs that are suitable for t-shirts, notebooks, mousepads, etc. These items are in our Threadless shop: https://darkhelix.threadless.com/

Books take a long time to make and are not easy to sell. Designs aren’t easy to sell either but people may pick up t-shirts or other items for their friends as gifts knowing there’s a better chance that material goods will be better liked than books.

All revenue from design work goes back into books because they are expensive to make and since we are a traditional publisher, the costs are all up front.

As a small press, Dark Helix will never qualify for any grants because there are conditions of selling X and reaching revenue of Y. We are a tiny player on a large playing field and over time, the larger companies have been merging into mega-corporations with different labels. The Goliaths are getting stronger and the Davids are trying new things to avoid them!

The future of the playing field for publishing seems bleak, as the larger Goliaths still have much control over the usual aspect of the industry such as access to bookstores, superstores (Walmarts, Costco, etc), databases and libraries. There are many emerging Davids over time – the self-publishers who are publishing themselves because the Goliaths refuse to. The most successful Davids are the ones that can get published by a Goliath for one or two books because the Goliaths have more marketing dollars and staff to make a book a success. It’s all still a gamble, but if the Goliath can shield a David temporarily it’s easier than a David struggling by themselves. Then after the partnership is over, the David can earn more from selling books themselves since there is no Goliath to take a giant cut of the revenue.

There are no easy answers to publishing success if you are a David! Throw in a mix of people using AI to the party and that changes everything as well! Hope my biblical analogy makes sense and have a great day!

Free Postcolonial horror writer talk with Tonya Liburd

Books, editing, horror, Toronto, Uncategorized, women, Writing

On March 30, CAA-Toronto is hosting a free event featuring writer Tonya Liburd.

What is postcolonial horror, and how does it differ from conventional horror? Join us for what what promises to be a fascinating session with award-winning horror writer and editor TONYA LIBURD, whose stories and poems have garnered recognition in Toronto and beyond.

What you’ll hear:

How Tonya approaches her writing career

How her work as a magazine editor has shaped her writing and her thoughts about publishing

Her thoughts about code switching, Black horror, and postcolonial horror

Her novel-in-progress

Click this link to register on Zoom.

Ricepaper interview with Liam Ma

actor, art, asian, fun

My interview with Liam Ma was published in Ricepaper Magazine and accompanying it are the Artsy Raven podcast episodes on Spotify and Youtube! I was saving my “second season” Artsy Raven premiere podcast episode to have writer Lindsay Wong; but since there were events associated with Liam’s upcoming series, Streams Flow from a River, I published Liam’s podcast first and will publish his bonus Patreon content at a later date.

Streams Flow from a River is about a dysfunctional Chinese Canadian family, who when trapped by a freak snowstorm in their rural Albertan hometown, are forced to confront the events of a decade prior that tore them all apart. The series will premiere on April 1^st, 2023 on SUPER CHANNEL. The Vancouver Asian Film Festival (VAFF), Racial Equity Screen Office (RESO) and Fae Pictures has a free special presentation on April 1, 2023 which includes the short film NANITIC and the first four (out of six) episodes of Stream Flows from a River, Click here for more info.

Looking forward to watching this streaming series!

Artsy Raven March 2023 newsletter out! Emotional damage, postcolonial horror & more!

Uncategorized

Since Mailchimp has increased in price, I’m trying out another mailing list program – SendFox. It’s attractive because it has a one-time lifetime fee for up to 5K emails which is a pro, however, the con is that it doesn’t have the latest bells and whistles. As well, sending out emails take a few hours. Other programs that charge monthly fees have better software, faster sending and archiving options but given I can barely manage one newsletter a month, I want to be frugal.

In this newsletter I have a link to a free event with postcolonial horror writer Tonya Liburd who is a writer and editor, a link to a female author reading group I have been part of for a while (Strong Women Strange Worlds), some artsy fun of creating rose cupcakes, my latest “emotional damage” design, DIY video to create rose cupcakes and of course, links to lots of free eBooks.

To access the newsletter click here for a pdf version. If you subscribe you will receive a nicer looking newsletter and a free gift, one of my short stories, Designing Fate. Click here for the free story!

April 2023 NaNoWrimo

Uncategorized

April is upon us once again and the NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) non-profit organization is encouraging people to enroll in its April writing camp which runs from April 1-30, 2023. It’s like a continuing education course with videos and links to resources, but it’s self-study style. At the end there are prizes given out by sponsors to people who have reached their goal.

Taking part in this April writing camp is free, however, the hardest part is committing yourself to write 50,000 words (or a smaller or bigger goal) by the end of the month. It is a test in perseverance to reach this goal because there are days when your head is blank but you need to pick up the shard of the last sentence to continue on. Also, there is no time to edit. I don’t understand people who claim they publish books immediately after this because so much editing is needed after a rush writing camp!

Regardless, having a goal tracker of words and “digital” badge awards will hopefully help me reach my goal of finishing another book. Every time I participate, I write about half of a book and will sit down for another few months to finish it. It’s been a while since I participated in this, so I’m a bit rusty!

For those interested in jump starting a book project in whatever style or genre you wish, visit NaNoWrimo at their site here: https://nanowrimo.org/

SWSW Birthday Bash Events!

Writing

Strong Women Strange Worlds, a literary promoter of female writers is turning two! They have a variety of virtual events and a great swag bag of free ebooks for all participants! Visit their website to register: https://strongwomenstrangeworlds.weebly.com/

I’ll be participating in two events and giving out prizes:

Thursday, March 16, 6:00-8:00pm (EDT) Birthday Party Fun & Games!

Saturday, March 18, 12:30pm-1:00pm (EDT) Facebook Party!

For the first event on Thursday night, me and a few authors will be playing Bluff the Audience. We will be reading a passage from our book and making up passages for other people’s books. The audience has to guess who is the correct author!

For the second event on Saturday, I’ll be playing virtual Facebook games by asking people to write funny memes and guess songs from musicals.

Hopefully we’ll see you virtually for this online party!

Clipchamp video editor

business, films, publishing, Uncategorized, you tube

Finally a replacement for Windows Movie Maker! I was had been using Windows Movie Maker on an old PC and when it died, I wanted to install Movie Maker onto the new computer. You can still download it from non-Microsoft sites, but it no longer has support. I have mac access, but I always feel odd using apple computers so I like PCs better.

After doing some research I discovered “Clipchamp” from Microsoft which does the same thing as Movie Maker, but its interface it a bit different. The interface reminds me of Canva and other online graphic programs. Indeed, it’s a very visual way of editing video.

When you open the program there are a variety of templates to choose from or you can start by uploading your videos.

After you choose something, you go into the editing screen. The preview screen is quite large and on the sides are your tools. I found that the audio takes a while to load, so you can go make a cup of tea while that is happening. For video clipping there are scissors and you can just use the delete key to remove parts of the video you no longer want. Audio is editing is similar, everything is drag and drop or remove with scissors.

Right now I’m on the free plan. Paying the monthly subscription gets you more special effects and storage space on a cloud. Since I’m only starting out, I’m just going to stick to the free plan for now.

I downloaded the program versus using on the web because I didn’t want to upload videos all the time. If you do try out this program let me know how things go! Always open to tips and tricks to do better at video editing!

Receiving a COVID-19 Humanitarian Service Medal

asian, awards, Uncategorized

Just before Christmas in 2022, I was notified that the honorable MP Shaun Chen, Scarborough North, on behalf of the Canadian government will be awarding me and my team COVID-19 Humanitarian Service Medals for our work on anti-Asian racism during the pandemic. Our team had held a variety of anti-Asian racism events to discuss this issue in the workplace along with a seminar to discuss elderly care in the pandemic, created a newsletter and I made some of the graphics for promos.

I feel very grateful for the execs that pulled a nomination together and at the time, they said we probably won’t get it because so many other people deserve this medal, such as people working in healthcare. So it was a surprise that we were told that our group would be receiving medals.

There were a lot of group and individual pictures, but I’m just sharing the one with me. Sadly I see I have gained some pandemic weight and will think about not eating as much chips in the future. I could get an avatar for virtual meetings, but in person is another issue!