Hey y’all!

Happy days, everyone and my dad who I added to the subscriber list without his knowledge or permission. I hope you liked the coneflower with a sweat bee at the top of my newsletter. I saw that today, liked it, and now I hope you will also like it. Anyway, I do my usual book round up, I show off my recent art- mostly messy sketches, and discuss what I’ve been up to lately and any upcoming plans.

Book Reviews and Audiobook Services

I’ve finished 17 books and my yearly goal is 22.

It’s the Big 25 and I’ve finally read Pride and Prejudice. I have also seen the 2005 movie and 1995 BBC series for the first time this year too. Dare I say, kind reader, I think I have found myself quite enraptured with Jane Austen’s writing. I wonder what I’ll occupy myself with next. I’m glad I’m experiencing Pride and Prejudice with this version of me because I can wholly enjoy the storyline and characters. If I were to see myself as one character it’d be Mr. Bennett- just want to be alone in a room and quietly read. I see a lot of my younger self in Lydia which pains me greatly, but progress is progress. What does that mean? I dunno. I’m above being mean, selfish, and blindly with a man who doesn’t love me. Ahhhh…. youth.

I’ve been piecemealing Stephen Fry’s Greek mythology reimaginings. I read Mythos last year and I just finished The Odyssey and wow wee. It’s good. Stephen Fry is such a great writer and did a beautiful job of retelling Odysseus’s journey and giving us well-rounded character development. Up next will be Heroes, but I like to give it some time between genres so I don’t get burnt out.

Oh! Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir!!!! I finished that not long before the trailer with Ryan Gosling came out. It’s fabulous. Very funny. There’s a lot of math and science, but I think it’s pretty approachable. I cared for the main characters- I CRIED. I laughed. It made me think about concepts I haven’t fully considered (I’d explain more, but that would reveal the major twist of the novel).

Lastly, I’ll bring up Jennifer Ackerman’s The Bird Way. If you are a birder, this is a great read. You learn about how birds communicate, build nests, court, parent, etc.

I’ve been using Spotify premium for music, podcasts, AND audiobooks. I’ve felt uneasy about using Spotify because of how little they pay artists, how they handle intellectual property, but I’ve continued because of convenience. Most of my listening needs in one place. BUT I have just learned about the CEO giving lots of money to AI war drones and on top of everything else- I just can’t support that.

I also use Hoopla and Libby for audiobooks, but they don’t have everything I want and sometimes I’m waiting 6 months or more for a title which is why I’m on the hunt for a third option.

So far libro.fm is my top contender. They support indie bookstores and let you download and actually own the book rather than stream the book like Spotify and download something that only works with their priority software. Libro uses the credit method so you buy one book per credit- Barnes and Noble also seem to have this service (as does Audible, but I will only use something by Bezos if I’m desperate).

Part of me likes that because you have access to the whole book and you can always relisten to it without any penalization, but I do like how Spotify gives out so many listening hours and so you can listen to something for 30 minutes and decide it’s not for you and move on. You can even finish a short book and start another before the month is up. And, like, if I have to buy the book then I’m going to be looking for the biggest books possible to get my money’s worth. Am I just trying to talk myself into keeping Spotify? Ugh. That’s not going to happen.

You can respond to this and lemme know what you use and like. I clearly have thoughts and want to yap about it, but have no one to voluntarily listen to my trivialities.

Here’s more

Sketchbook pages

This piece came from Pinterest and the fact that we’ve been rewatching Futurama again. I also didn’t know what to do with her hands so… eyeballs. It’s another work in progress doodlebop. The original image had someone with a slim figure and I wanted to give my cyclops a fuller figure. Y’know, give little cyclops…es representation. Still working making that believable. Plus I don’t like how I made the eyeballs, but they were added once I finished the piece.

Oooo something fun…

I had a commission!

A friend of mine asked me to make something for their kid and although I wanted to say that I don’t make prints anymore, I decided to give it a go- and she had the CUTEST request. She makes these unicorn cat plushies and wanted a stamp to go on her bags when she works at markets. I was shown a picture of one of her plushies and was asked to make it look like the cat was jumping and make shooting stars flying all around. I tried to interpret it as the cat is jumping over the name and the shooting stars are the same style as the ones on the eyes of the plushie. They picked it up earlier today and I hope she likes it and uses it for a long time.

Aside from all that

What’s up with me?

Great Q, guys. My kid has been summering at home and it’s been two months with one more month to go and I have lost steam. We have been visiting the library a ton. I’m even staring at a pile of library books now. When I was first told that we had a 50 book limit I was like “no worries. That’s so much,” but there’s probably 20 books over there. I’ve been waiting for my kid to be into the library for yearsss so this is like my heaven.

Had to look at my last newsletter, I have made more recycled crayons, but I haven’t been making it my “thing” like I had hoped I would. I still have hundreds of crayons that need to be sorted and recycled so I’m not going to leave it alone just yet.

I also saw that I had a still life with food in mind, but I no longer have any idea what that was about. I don’t even think I made any sketches or breakdowns. I also said I wasn’t going to turn this into a book club, but here we are. I spent like 1/3 of this newsletter going on about books this time. Granted, I only put out like four of these a year so I guess I can give y’all a little something extra.

In a couple of weeks, we will be going on vacation to Virginia for a week. I hope it’ll be a good time and everyone can get their fair share of ocean air while we’re there.

Oo I have been working on new recipes for the family. Try to get some new things into the rotation as our old stuff is getting stale and it’s not super healthy. I’m going ham on some veggies- especially broccoli. Man, I love broccoli.

Latest buys that I like:

Chako Lab water bottle. I determined one of my favorite color trios is orange, yellow, and blue. So I now have two water bottles with those colors- oh! I’m also wearing a blue shirt and yellow shorts. Cuuuute.

Lego. We’ve been getting a lot of Lego sets lately and what fun. I didn’t play with Lego when I was a kid, but I’m more than making up for it now. Plus I’m going through Pinterest to get ideas for builds that aren’t official. Even though we’ve been buying sets, I’d say 95% of what we have is from my husband’s childhood and watching him just built robots and trucks without any instructions is cinematic.

Another thing

I wanted to bring up politics, but honestly it’s like not good. Just straight up fascism and it’s all messed up (to put it very lightly). Maybe we’ll have better news by the next newsletter- Tomyris knows what I mean (she does not. She also died like 2500 years ago). Please call your representatives, senators, governors, etc. People’s rights are being stripped left and right and we need to let our officials know what the people are thinking.

What’s next?

Since this is technically about my non-existent art career, what’s next for me is making more prints- like my recent medieval sketches. I’m going to try to do story sales or have my prints be made-to-order. A friend just asked about shirts so maybe I’ll do those too??? I have a shelf of thrifted shirts just waiting to be used.

I’m planning on doing one market at the end of the year. I have done nothing else so far this year- no online sales, no markets. It’s been a fruitful year.

Anyway, thank you for reading my newsletter. Please be sure you’re subscribed so you can find out what I choose to do with my audiobook situation, what prints I have completely abandoned, and what other crazy antics I have been up to for the coming three months.