Progress on "Incurably Goofy"

 Incurably Goofy is the working title for my current stream-of-consciousness "memoir" thing that I'm working on. For those who've been with me since the beginning, the OGs, as it were, it's going to be a much longer version of "That Whole 'World Ending in 2012' Thing" and "Random and Disturbing Thoughts" from the early/mid 10s. It's currently 15 pages long and gets a little longer most every day. 

I don't anticipate that it will sell very well, or that anyone will really make it all the way to the end of the book, as it is very, very jumbled, has no overarching theme other than, perhaps, free self-therapy for me. But it's the next thing that will be released, I'm aiming for mid-June but who knows, it could pop up for sale as early as next week. I'll be sticking it up on Amazon and Smashwords. Going to be trying to only let a few of my things end up being exclusive to Amazon, that Kindle unlimited page view pay really isn't all that worth it for someone of my author size. 

Current Project Notes

Y'all know me, y'all know I've always got a graveyard of about 100 "current projects" on any hard drive, cloud drive, or even thumb drive I'm operating with. Currently, my "current project" list includes the sequel to Forgotten Melodies; sequel to Stella's Saga book one; a book about a group of teenagers who become vigilantes after a bunch of their friends go missing and then turn up dead; another stream of consciousness... memoir? Comedy thing? Rant? Essay? Whatever you'd consider "That Whole 'World Ending in 2012' Thing" or "Random and Disturbing Thoughts"; a story inspired by Don Bluth's Anastasia but set in a fantasy world and with some caveats; and a story about a kid who gets abducted right before all hell breaks loose and nukes start falling, leading to some Swan Song-inspired shit. Swan Song the novel by McCammon, not Swan Song the episode of that soap opera with demons. 

Of all those, which do you think will ever see the light of day, and which do you think will be relegated to the back burner with the other twenty-seven-thousand ideas I've started, maybe even gotten pretty far with, and then abandoned? 

I'm never going to try to give release dates when I don't have a product completed, that's just setting my procrastinating ass up for failure. But here's a tentative timeline that I'd like to try to stick to, if I can. 

Rest of April: Write like the wind, hope my Chromebook holds up so I don't have to hand-write EVERYTHING on my iPad. 

May: release stream of consciousness thing, Amazon and probably smashwords. Maybe release first couple chapters of the Anastasia-inspired thing to that weird episodic Amazon service. Eventually it'll be released as a complete ebook-paperback, but this and the abducted kid thing are gonna be released 1-3 chapters per week until completion. 

June: Start releasing Forgotten Melodies 2 Electric Boogaloo (not the real title but I kinda am tempted) on AO3. Look through old 'back burner' ideas and maybe revive something. 

October-December: Put up Pre-Order for FM2EB on Amazon and/or announce actual release date. I know once I actually get in the groove of writing in my POTOverse, I can write it fast. At very latest, I'm thinking pre-order info will be made available by like February of next year. 

I've never been good at keeping a steady social media presence

 And as social media gets more and more video-based, I’m even worse at it. At least this most recent disappearance of mine has meant progress being made on a long overdue sequel. I’ve been doing some world building for the Forgotten Melodies sequel. I’m not gonna give any tentative dates away, but I do think I could have a sequel out in 2026 at current latest projection. 

I’m going to try to give y’all excerpts when I have something more concrete written.

All i currently know is that this middle book is going to feature at least one new POV we didn’t have in Forgotten Melodies. Can you guess which character might get fleshed out further? Hint, it’s not Saeed. 

Living Alone is an Adventure

 Not a terribly fun one, not one that I'd seek out if I had the option to not seek it out, but it is certainly an adventure. Especially living alone with cats. Prior to July 2022, I had only lived "alone" once in my life, and that was only for about 2.5 months before flipping my car into a river and being dragged back down to the twin cities by my dad. 

It's been a fairly steep learning curve on some things, but I'm starting to get the hang of things. I'm also finally starting to get a handle on my mental illness, which has been making itself far more apparent as I get older. Unmedicated PTSD will only be sustainable as an option for so long before you finally need to get your ass on something. And finally, I am. 

Which is meaning I'm finally starting to think clearly enough to deal with essentially a hoarder situation. I had the better part of a 10x10 storage space, stacked up to about my own height, when I started working on this. I currently spend every weekend going through a box or two at a time and listing what I think might sell on marketplace or etsy, depending on age and quality, and throwing out the shit that I know I don't want and nobody else will, either. 

It's a process. My apartment still looks a damned wreck, but it's a lot less shit already and I'm honestly really happy with the progress I've been making. 

I've finally gotten out of retail, at least for now. Who knows what the future will hold, but I hope that I'll still be in my current job for a good long while. I currently very much enjoy it. Due to social media rules for where I'm working, I'm gonna be purposely vague, but it is still very much in the service of others, even if I'm not trying to sell anything to anyone. 

But honestly, I kinda like that more than i I was just working some vague office job not directly helping anything or anyone or affecting change on anything or anyone. I can tell it's probably going to be a job that burns me out pretty easily and probably fairly frequently, but it also seems like it'll be fairly easy to talk to my boss and be like "yo, can I please use some of my admittedly ample pto/vacation/sick pay for a couple mental health days in a row? Ya mans needs a break." Not that I'd really go for more than two paid days in a row or a long weekend. It's just nice and refreshing and kinda weird to be working at a place where I'll have that option WITHIN THE YEAR. I'm so used to retail, where, if you even get paid time off of any kind, it only kicks in after a year has passed. By the Ides of March, I will be eligible to use accrued pto. And that makes me really happy because I'm betting by beginning of April I'm going to need just. A day. 

This weekend, I'm endeavoring to clean up my "dining room" area. My apartment is kinda open plan in the living room/dining room/kitchen area, but there's a dining area I've kind of cordoned off with a couple bins and the placement of my table. I want to actually be able to use that table coming up because I'm going to be starting to make my own dishwasher detergent powder and laundry detergent powder and I'd like the extra space. 

I'm gettin thrifty in 2024. 

What I've Been Writing About Lately

  Up until about six months ago, the only writing I was really doing was text-based RPGs with my bestie. We did some Star Wars, we're more recently doing MCU-based things (lots and lots of FrostIron and Thorki) and honestly, that was about the only "recreational writing" that brought me any joy. Sitting down and trying to write purely for myself wasn't sparking joy. Hadn't been sparking joy since before Forgotten Melodies made its debut (do not worry, the sequel WILL be coming out, hopefully in 2025 at latest) but really had begun to drag by 2016. I've tried SEVERAL times to restart writing and get back into it, and each time I've gotten two or three chapters into something before completely losing interest.

I'm finding that I'm more able to keep interest in things featuring religious abuse, fundie christianity, megafamilies/quiverfull families, anorexia/bulimia/binge eating disorder/orthorexia/eating disorders in general, homelessness, fantasy, and apocalyptic things. 

That's not to say that's what you'll be likely to expect once I start actually publishing again, but it is likely what you'll see some excerpts from on here as I start to post more commonly.

I'm hoping sometime soon I'll run across another IP that sparks enough joy in me to make me write more fanfiction. Like, I like the MCU but not really enough to write standalone stuff on my own. I think it's impostor syndrome mixed with just.... not knowing enough about the IP as a whole despite having watched most of the first four cycles or w/e they're calling the groupings of movies and tv shows like seventeen times each. 

As Ever, Life Soldiers On

 It's been a few years since I've done anything with this blog, and I have to say that it hasn't really bothered me to not have a constant presence like this on the internet, even if I haven't ever really gone anywhere.

My parents are now both dead, and my last "childhood" cat is currently living out his last few years with me in my apartment. I'm no longer living with roommates, I have my own apartment in one of the shittier towns in my home state. 

For more than five years, I've been really struggling with my mental health. It's only been within the last... oh... six months? that I have been making marked improvements, mostly with the help of industrial strength- well, medicinal strength-- marijuana. That, and finally having gotten out of retail (hopefully for good). I'm starting to write for myself again and I'm starting to smile again, both are things I've struggled with for what feels like decades. 

Weirdly, it was the grief surrounding my father's death that kinda started getting me out of the slump I'd been in. Like being pulled out of icy water after falling into a frozen pond, the first emotions I started to feel were pain and anger and sadness and grief and fear. But slowly, those have given way to apathy (not the same as depressed apathy, weirdly), small bouts of happiness, and even moments of hope. 

Hope that, within the next six months if all goes well, I'll finally be releasing another piece of fiction under my own name. 

You may notice that the title of this here blog has changed. I no longer personally go by the name Emmaline Westlund, but that name will be going nowhere as my professional name. Until I finally get my name legally changed AND write at least one bestseller to where it makes sense to actually publicly change the name, I'll continue to publish under the name Emmaline Westlund or maybe E. Westlund. 

I'm going to try to post here more commonly, too. I'd like to get to where I can monetize this bitch as well as my youtube channel (The Book Bitch) again. I'd like to get to where random strangers stumble across my writing again and decide to give me a chance. I do so miss seeing random people review my work. 

I hope this post finds you well, dear reader. And I hope that within the coming months I'll be announcing a release or two. 

via Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BmeX9m9n0YZ/