This fortnight, I worked on a product launch with a client, abandoned a story, drafted two new stories, and played some D&D.

Copywriting

I’ve been flat out this fortnight working on a product launch for a wonderful client who works as a naturopath. It has been a slog — I won’t lie — but I’ve learnt so much about launches, email sequences, and marketing strategy in general. (And naturopathy!) I also spent several hours in customer phone calls (for research purposes), and that was absolute gold not only for my client but for me as well.

I can’t wait to show you what we’ve achieved.

Honestly, that project took up most of my fortnight. I posted on LinkedIn a little, but other than that, I didn’t do much work on my branding.

One thing I did do was a free website review for Dreaming Big Media. I think I mentioned in my last post that I’d like to start offering these to anyone who wants one. Hopefully, I’ll come to a decision about that within the month.

Here’s the website review, which I recorded in Loom:

Fiction

As for my fiction, I mentioned that I was feeling on track with my story Ciggie Zombie. That did not last long. In fact, within 24 hours of making that post, I had done a complete 180.

The story had honestly become a burden. Really, I think there are two stories there, both vying to be heard, and I just couldn’t figure out a way to merge them seamlessly. So yes, the bottom drawer is where I’ve consigned Ciggie Zombie for now.

Overall, it was a liberating decision, and it quickly paid off because I drafted two new stories that have been genuinely fun to write. Sometimes, you’ve gotta make a tactical withdrawal.

One of them is about a guy who gets a thrill out of making his guests use a dirty towel in a strange power trip (big brain premise, I know). And the other is a tiny flash piece about a nanobot tree on a generation ship in space.

Anyway, I thought I’d share one of my favourite paragraphs from Ciggie Zombie with you.

Here it is:

Isaac stumbles into us, sandwiching me between him and Luke, and we continue in our conjoined gait until we reach a crosswalk, where some turbo blasting trash rap from his souped-up car forces us to come to a sudden stop or go through his windshield. After jaywalking near a 7-Eleven, we begin down a street lined with heritage buildings, or at least the facades of them. Old hotels, banks, offices, and commercial buildings from the Gold Rush era, I remember reading somewhere. Mannequins pose in skimpy underwear in one shop window and the pixellated screens of arcade machines flash in the windows on the other side of the street. A group of backpackers lean on a fitted-out van parked out front of a red-bricked hostel, sharing a joint not thirty metres from a police wagon. The smell of the weed cuts through the perfume cloud left in the wake of a gaggle of high-heeled women of the perpetual hen’s night variety. A homeless man counts out his pushups in front of two smiling cops and a barefoot indigenous woman. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine. Sixty-nine again, because it’s his favourite. An oncoming group of wine-drunk forty-somethings diverts our horde onto the red-bitumen road towards a corner bar with a neon toucan on the window. Apparently our destination, our horde melds with an all but identical group of beatniks occupying a row of three picnic tables in the sidewalk section of the bar, separated from the street by wooden barricades and plastic sheets. Jazzy, Latiny, I-don’t-know-the-fuck-what music dances into the street from overhead speakers. Luke hugs between eight and nine-thousand people while I stand by the curb like a loser, clenching and unclenching my toes, anxiety creeping back into my heart.

Thoughts

Okay, so D&D. I finally got down to the Esplanade to roll some dice with the legends from DNDFremantle. There were honestly about 60 people there, between maybe 12 tables. I’ve never seen anything like it.

And yay, I’ve got another blurry-ass photo to prove how happy I was to be there.

At my writing group on Thursday, there was also talk of a D&D event to be hosted at the Freo Library. That, or we’re gonna try the rules-light TTRPG system Quest, which looks absolutely gorgeous. The digital version is also entirely free.

What else? I dunno, but life is fucking great right now.

Thanks for reading 🖤