Late last fall, I was having a lengthy conversation with The Spousal Unit about filmmaking. And it occurred to me that it’s a subject I find really interesting. So on a whim, I looked up the local community college to see if they had any programs about the subject. Lo and behold, they had an Associates degree in Film & Animation.

I looked up a bunch of things: the deadline to apply for spring semester, the out-of-pocket cost of one or two classes, and it seemed … possible?

So I just kept taking the next step, waiting for someone or something to stop me.

Nothing did. My (ancient) transcripts arrived quickly, and most of the gen ed courses from my abandoned attempt at a writing degree transferred.

Anyway, long story short, I’m a sophomore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Once a week, I drive across town and sit in a classroom with a bunch of rowdy 19 year old kids learning about screenwriting. It’s a little surreal. My daughter was supposed to be in college, and instead she just started her first “big girl job.” Meanwhile, I’m the one lugging a backpack onto campus and filling up a punch card with dining hall coffee.

There’s a version of me who got frozen in amber at 25 when I had my oldest child in 1997. A woman who was unquestionably the main character in her own life, without having to fight for the position. That person has been speaking up a lot these past few months. It feels like picking up a video game after a really long break, only to discover someone leveled up your character while you were away.

I have always felt a little embarrassed about not having a degree. Looking back, I would have needed support I simply did not get to graduate. And if I couldn’t manage it as a twentysomething from a blue collar family, with undiagnosed ADHD and a full scholarship, I definitely couldn’t do it as a mom of two kids (with undiagnosed ADHD), while juggling a series of full-time jobs, and about a thousand more responsibilities.

Still not sure where this road is going to lead. Probably not to a second (third?) career as an indie filmmaker or television screenwriter, but what the hell? Six months ago I didn’t know I was going back to school. Six years ago I didn’t know I was going to move to Arizona. Anything really is possible. Maybe I have stories still worth telling. And maybe, should I get an opportunity to step onto some big stage or another, I’ll be met with joy and respect.

Stranger things have happened.

What I’m Reading

I picked up (and devoured) The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Both were really funny, fast reads and I loved them. The cats!

I dipped my toe into sci-fi romance with Trial and Temptation by Ruby Lionsdrake. I enjoy her Lindsay Buroker books, and this was a fun romp with a hero who is very clearly coded as neurodivergent (probably on the autism spectrum).

I had high hopes for Playing the Witch Card by KJ Dell'Antonia, a cozy paranormal romance with a midlife heroine and a baking and tarot-based magic system. It should have ticked all the boxes for me. But I found myself more interested in the relationships between the heroine, her mom and her daughter than the shallow and underdeveloped romance. Bummer.

Wreck the Halls by Tessa Bailey was an unmitigated win. The children of two feuding female rock icons have to work together to try and reunite them for a Christmas special. They each have their own reasons for agreeing to be part of a completely insane livestreamed reality show about their efforts. It is absolutely crazyballs hilarious, steamy, and fantastic.

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty was a murder mystery in space that took the idea of a person who is coincidentally always around when people drop dead and always able to uncover the killer to some wild and amazing places. Hilarious and sad, with a solid twisty mystery - I loved this one.

Dungeon Mom

Some forward momentum! The Spousal Unit and I dropped in on a store game of D&D, and had maybe our best Date Night in years (it also involved an Applebee’s playing “Best of Both Worlds” from Hannah Montana and “Leave It All to Me” from iCarly as part of the ambience mix). Naturally, that game immediately got canceled. But we’re on a waiting list at a different game shop. And Spousal Unit ran a one-shot for me and my Indiana Besties when they flew out for a visit.

So… dice have been rolled. I played a druid that wild-shaped into a snake, and got fed through an arrow slot so she could transform back into a 7’ tall half orc and smash two goblin’s heads together. Also got to play a trickery domain cleric who immediately betrayed her party after successfully infiltrating a dragon lair, because trickery domain. Good times!

In the Works

I also started writing a serial fiction on Royal Road, and made some good progress until school started. Since then, I’ve had a hard time getting back into that story. Mainly because between work and school, I don’t really have that much excess storytelling and writing energy to spare right now.

I’d like to pick it back up, but I need to make sure I can keep all my current plates spinning first.

I meant to send this little missive out more often. A big reason I haven’t is that I’m trying to cram at least three different newsletters into one here. The original concept of Hearts & Hit Points was a mash-up of romance novels and tabletop roleplaying games. TBH, I had no idea what the Venn diagram of “people who geek out over romance novels” and “people who enjoy rolling shiny math rocks” would look like.

I just wanted a place to dump all my random thoughts about my hyper-fixations. I threw tarot in there, too, because why not? It also serves as a personal blog, because I underestimated how much I personal life I was gonna want to talk about.

But when I’m reading and/or writing romance novels, I’m not usually also thinking about D&D. I have a full-time job, and even as an empty nester, I don’t really have the bandwidth to also manage reading/writing novels, playing/running campaigns, and like, going outdoors and moving my body occasionally.

The past month has been a lot of exploring who I want to be in a new season. Most working moms spend a lot of time feeling like a set of roles without a real person underneath. Like some version of “three raccoons in a trench coat.” Now that my mom responsibilities are scaling back, I’d like to be fairly thoughtful about who that real person becomes.

It is startlingly similar to being a teenager, tbh. Trying on different identities like costumes for a Halloween party that happens every week or so. So far, I’ve purged 90% of the black and grey from my wardrobe. For one thing, black tees and Arizona summers do not mix. For another, the “most boring goth ever” wardrobe was a way of disappearing. Of making myself less noticeable. And I don’t want to do that.

Whoever I’m going to be, it’s not going to be invisible. I’m not going to be a supporting character in my own damn life.

And Tucson is a really good place to figure all that out. There are a lot more identities I could slip into and find a social group here than were available in rural southern Indiana, where your options are pretty much Church Lady or Meth Dealer.

It’s a city with a vibe. I could go for Outdoorsy Hiker Chick, Desert Hippie Artist, or Actual Cowgirl. Western U.S. History Buff. Plant Lady with a Lot of Succulents. Or some blend of those. I’m (probably?) still eligible for Former Military Wife. I guess Church Lady and Meth Dealer are still on the table? But Tucson has more flavors of Church Lady than Indiana did.

Currently, I’m feeling like a mix of 25% Outdoorsy Hiker Chick, 40% Desert Hippie Artist, 20% Church Lady, and maybe 15% Actual Cowgirl/History Buff.

This is a city where marijuana and open carry are both legal and both wildly popular. They’re generally big on personal agency, and if that means toking up and/or packing heat, well, just don’t be an asshole about it. It’s 2 hours from the Mexican border, but the residents are 1000% more stressed out about the seasonal migration of snowbirds and college students than they are about refugees and immigrants.

If Tucson has an unspoken motto, it’s “Live and Let Live.” Or possibly “Live and Let’s Eat” because there’s an extraordinary restaurants-to-residents ratio. On a pace-of-life scale from Hawaii to NYC, well, aloha amigos. Hope you’re not in a rush.

At any rate, I’m figuring out who I want to be when I’m away from this keyboard. Which means I’m spending a lot more time away from this keyboard. Which is, on the whole, a good thing. But it probably means this newsletter/blog is going to end up evolving into something else, too. I’ll let you know what that is when I know.

Till then, stay cool punks.

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While no one on the team dies, they split up. Gamora returns to the Ravagers, Quill goes back to Earth to reconnect with his maternal grandpa, Mantis goes off to figure out what she wants, Nebula and Drax commit to building a real community on Knowhere, and Rocket takes over as the new leader of the Guardians, which includes Groot, Craglin, Cosmo and a couple new recruits.

From the beginning, the main characters in this series were all running from their pasts. Because of Rocket’s bravery - and the love they all have for each other - all of them collectively make the decision to stop running and deal with their shit. All of their choices were so clearly and obviously right. The script beautifully sets up this conclusion to their character arcs, building naturally off of what we’ve already seen of them over the previous films.

• Of course, Rocket becomes the recognized captain, after shedding any lingering sense of shame over his origins.

• Of course, Gamora is happier with the Ravagers, who accept her wholeheartedly and without the baggage she’d always have with the Guardians.

• Of course, Quill needed to finally go back to Earth to deal with his unfinished business (and the other person who’s been grieving his mom all this time).

• Of course, Nebula wants to make Knowhere the home she never had, and of course, Drax is an ideal surrogate dad for the kids the High Evolutionary left behind.

• Of course, Mantis needs some time on her own to stop letting her empathy drag her into everyone else’s goals and agendas.

Obviously, they could have kept on doing what they were doing - it would have been easier. More comfortable. But it wouldn’t have been what was best for any of them. I appreciate that Marvel and James Gunn elected to let these characters grow. Even if it meant moving on, and breaking a “formula” that was working.

As the Guardians each confront the hard stuff they’ve been avoiding, they’re going to be wearing the invisible armor of the love they’ve received from each other. And that makes all the difference. We don’t need to see those journeys; in fact it’s probably better that most of them will be left to our imaginations. We can all create our own canon, when it comes to these characters’ happily ever after - which will likely be a lot weirder and messier than any movie could adequately portray.

Over the past year, my personal team of beloved misfits and weirdos have also elected to stop doing what was easy and comfortable, and pursue what is best. My youngest kid, youngest sister, and two best friends are back in Indiana; my middle sister and her family are in Florida; and my husband, eldest kid and me are in Arizona.

We may not be a galaxy apart, but it does feel that way sometimes. I’m glad this movie was able to remind me that the love we have for each other is still there. Still guarding our hearts, as we fly off into the beautiful and forever sky.

What I’m Reading

I’m trying to remember if I mentioned that I read Parentmoon by L.B. Dunbar? It was okay. I’ll be honest, her covers are probably the reason it took me so long to pick up one of her “later in life romcom” books, and this one had an illustrated alternate cover I didn’t hate.

“I didn’t hate it” probably describes my reaction to the book as a whole. There were a couple of good physical comedy scenes. And comedy is what is usually weakest in the romcoms I’ve been reading. I didn’t connect with either of the main characters, but the setting was nice?

I feel like I’m damning this book with faint praise, but it’s probably the perfect read for someone else.

Dungeon Mom

The more I dig into the Cypher RPG system, the more I like it. When you’re looking outside Dungeons & Dragons, the biggest issue is finding the correct amount of “crunch” - gamer slang for “how much math and rule referencing is required?”

If you don’t have enough crunch, you’re basically having lightly-structured improv sessions. If you have too much, you have turned accounting into a competitive sport. Cypher has a nice balance; a bit more streamlined than D&D5e, and I can already see how the difference in rules will make combat just flow better.

I’m still wanting to build an urban fantasy adventure, and at this point I’m pretty well decided that it’ll be in Cypher (with maybe a 5e version?) But another thing I’ve noticed perusing other urban fantasy systems is just how pervasive the “witches are monsters not heroes” idea is embedded in tabletop RPGs. Not exactly shocking considering the traditional demographic, but that’s a discussion for a different day.

In the Cards

I’m skipping the card prompt to talk a little bit about some tarot theory. What we call “stalker cards” or in less scary terms, “repeater cards,” are a specific card that just keeps popping up in every spread or reading.

Usually, you interpret a card in the context of its position in a spread and the question you asked. With a repeater card, you ignore that context. You treat it as your intuition desperately attempting to get your attention by any means necessary. Lately, I’ve been seeing what I think of as “a repeater card IRL.” An archetype that keeps appearing, either in conversation or in the media I’m consuming.

So today’s prompt is, if you were crafting your own personal Major Arcana, what new card would you add? What archetype or symbol would serve as an immediately recognizable and specific warning or encouragement?

For me, it would be “The Alias”… and the art would feature a raccoon.

Anyway,

See you later, punks.

So instead of being super serious, I’m going to deploy some dark humor and share selections from my Songs for My Funeral playlist (with some color commentary).

Because, as I wrote in the description, I believe in being thorough and I have a playlist for damn near every other occasion.

• “While We Cry” Kenny Wayne Shepherd - Like, just listen to this song. I don’t know how KWS managed to wring that much sadness out of a guitar at 18, but I wanna start off my funeral/memorial/celebration of life or whatever they decide to call it with everyone having a nice, cathartic cry.

• “Dreams” Cranberries - If there were ever an occasion to feel like the Main Character, it would be my Final Party. No other song evokes this much big 90s romcom heroine energy.

• “Closing Time” Semisonic - Is this song a little on the nose? No. It’s EXTREMELY ON THE NOSE. I’m already dead, guys. It’s time to GO BIG OR GO HOME. I’m determined to do both with this playlist.

• “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” Otis Redding - This serves as an unsubtle request to PLEASE REMEMBER ME. Even if I was kind of an asshole.

• “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher” Jackie Wilson - Can’t have a whole playlist of unrelenting sadness. This is your upbeat emotional break. Enjoy it.

• “I’ve Always Loved You” Third Day - I have left the evangelical subculture pretty far behind by this point, but that doesn’t mean I left my faith behind. See also: “The Finish Line” by Steve Taylor, which is also extremely on-the-nose but sincere.

• “Superstition” Stevie Wonder - Adding this because A. It’s a certified banger good for any occasion, and B. maybe insinuates I might haunt everyone? IDK.

• “Waffle House” Jonas Brothers - Where I hope everyone goes afterwards. Seriously. The people watching is <chef’s kiss>.

What I’m Reading

The Wizard’s Butler by Nathan Lowell. This is, to be honest, not entirely my jam and I’m not sure why I snagged it off Kindle Unlimited. I haven’t really been reading male authors, and the protagonist’s voice is a little off-putting at first. Maybe because I found the cover strangely appealing, and my favorite character in most Regency novels I read is the butler? (I’m still waiting for Tessa Dare to write a sequel novella to The Duchess Dare where Khan aka “Regency Alfred” is the main character…)

I’m four chapters in and there’s been a whole lot of butlering and not much wizarding. Weirdly, that’s been more a feature than a bug; I’m really digging slice-of-life at the moment, and the details of running a big house are oddly soothing. Anyway, I got through all 75 WTF minutes of Velocipastor, I can keep reading to see where this goes.

Dungeon Mom

Still plugging away at my urban fantasy setting/novel, in between working on a contemporary romcom, and wrangling content at World Anvil. Still trying to figure out how to make an actual game session happen here in the Dirty T.

I did have fun cherry-picking which monsters from the 5e SRD I would include in my RPG setting. To the surprise of exactly no one who knows me, it’s mostly “anything that would be in a classic Universal Horror movie” plus only the metallic dragons.

RELATEDLY: I just discovered the Blue Rose RPG, and it makes me super sad. It was way ahead of its time, and yet another system I will get extremely excited about (I loved Mercedes Lackey and desperately miss that style of fantasy now that it’s All Grimdark All The Time) only to discover there are only three other people on earth who want to play it and they’re all in Boston or something.

In the Cards

I am being extremely lazy and sharing three cards from the Labyrinthos app, because it’s faster than pulling out physical cards, taking a photo, and sending it to myself.

At any rate, here are your writing/journaling prompts.

1. The Hanged Man - Where in your creative life are you feeling sidelined?

2. Eight of Coins - Where are you striving for mastery in your creative pursuits?

3. The Magician - What feels effortless in your creative life right now?

Till next time, punks.

I had my CLICK, BOOM! moment this past month, and while the obvious trigger was starting medication for my adult ADHD, in reality, that was just the trigger.

A lot of it is time. I’m now 6 months out from a major trauma, 5 months into a new job, and three months into a new year after one where I was basically marinated in loss and grief for 12 months. Time is an ingredient in growth and healing you can’t omit or substitute. Is it alarming to look back at things I did in December, when I was operating with a severely traumatized brain? Yes. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make a lot of hugely impactful decisions.

(In some ways, I’m actually impressed with how well I did while quietly drowning in stress hormones and short-term brain damage. Good job, past me!)

Some of it was a sort of compounding effect of work I did before starting meds. I let myself rest. I practiced good sleep habits. I got regular exercise. I spent time processing my emotions. I changed to a less stressful, more joyful job. I made all the lifestyle changes that can help tremendously with baseline anxiety, depression and ADHD, but really are just “keeping your head above water” efforts if you’re also dealing with recent trauma and grief.

Now, the combination of time, effort and medication has slingshot me into a really good place. Probably a better place than I’ve been in for years.

So if you want a few takeaways, I guess it’s just this cliché: if you’re going through hell, keep going. Grief and trauma are a hard tunnel to pass through, but eventually you do come out the other side, as long as you don’t refuse to move forward. You’ll probably hurt some people while you’re suffering; make amends if and when you can.

In many ways, the past 2-3 years echoed the early 2000s, which were tough times that also transformed me into a stronger, kinder, happier version of myself.

I’m excited to see where this current evolution goes next.

What I’m Reading

I started reading Meghan Quinn’s billionaire rom coms, because I had to (temporarily) give up on finding more 40+ / Gen X leads. I love how she’s taking classic 90s romcom movies and modernizing them into fun books with the same energy. I finished A Not So Meet Cute which is a self-aware reinvention of Pretty Woman, and it was great.

I’ll probably read the other books in this series, despite not really being that into “billionaire romance” generally. But “blue collar heroes who aren’t cops, military, or cowboys” is like, a niche within a niche, so beggars can’t be choosers.

(Note: Good billionaires don’t exist IRL, but neither do shape-shifting dragons. Escapist fantasy is fantasy, not meant to represent the real world. The Princess Bride “I’ve known too many Spaniards” rule very much applies here. I don’t read cowboy romances, because the idea of a heroic redneck is farther beyond my personal ability to suspend disbelief than AN ACTUAL DRAGON. Decades of living in rural America will do that to you. YMMV, I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum.)

Dungeon Mom

I have at least temporarily given up on my dream of participating in a game of Brindlewood Bay. However, it’s Adventure April at World Anvil (the company where I work!) which is a month-long challenge to write a one-shot adventure. Now that my brain isn’t broken, I’m planning to participate in this. I’m working on a modern urban fantasy setting for D&D5e, so the one-shot will likely be set there.

Not sure what I’m going to do with said one-shot if I manage to finish it, since I can’t seem to find a group to play with locally. Might throw it up onto DMs Guild or Drive Thru RPG. 🤷🏻‍♀️ We’ll see.

In the Cards

So today’s tarot-inspired writing or journaling prompts are from the Everyday Tarot, which I like because it is both easy to interpret and also easy to shuffle (even if you have tiny hands like me).

• Four of Cups: Where are you waiting for a better opportunity, when you might be better off accepting what’s right in front of you?

• The Magician: Where do you see all the elements coming together in your work/life? Where is there a convergence of “green lights”?

• Justice: What needs more clarity? More balance? Where do you need to “cut through the BS”?

So anyway, I’m off to Disneyland (literally) this month, for a deeply belated 50th birthday celebration for me and the spousal unit.

Hope your April is magical as well, punks. 🪄

The “tortured artist” trope is problematic as hell. Variations of it are “creative = crazy” and “artist = addict.” At worst, it convinces young creatives that they have to choose between prioritizing their mental health and making great art.

No, I take that back. At its worst, you get people aspiring to be in the 27 Club. Which is not only fucked up, it’s just wrong. Like, wrong as in “factually full of shit” because statistically-speaking, great musicians are most likely to die at age 56, not 27.

Which brings me back to Daisy Jones & The Six.

Yes, the show depicts “legendary” music artists who struggle with trauma, grief and addiction. And it does imply those experiences elevate their songs from “good” to “great.” But the show also doesn’t shy away from the cost of spiraling into addiction and refusing to address your baggage.

Early in the series, front man Billy Dunne’s issues get the band dropped from their label. Even after he’s gone to rehab, cleaned up his act, and written a potential new hit, the label considers him too much of a risk to book them studio time. Later, it’s clear Daisy’s addiction is negatively affecting her performance on stage, and she nearly dies of an overdose.

Nothing curtails your career quite like being dead.

But maybe the best argument that the show is subverting, rather than promoting, the “tortured artist” trope is the ending. In the climactic final episode, both lead singers end up going to rehab and committing to therapy. The epilogue shows that while the band broke up, both Billy and Daisy didn’t really begin to thrive - as artists or people - until they got healthy. It’s implied that Daisy found more success as a healthy, sober solo artist than the band saw during their brief, drug-and-misery-fueled peak.

Great art doesn’t come from suffering and pain. It comes from honesty and authenticity. Everyone has some kind of struggle in their experience. Great artists are vulnerable enough to expose it and generous enough to share it. But that doesn’t mean they need to nurture their pain. It doesn’t mean they can’t heal. And it doesn’t mean that they can’t keep producing great art from a place of health and happiness.

Who knows? Maybe even up to the decrepit old age of 56.

One of the weirder things about my life is that the frequency of people referring to me as “cool” goes up exponentially the older I get. Which (I think) is the opposite of how that usually works. In high school, absolutely no one would have described me as cool. I’m not saying I get that descriptor super often now, but it does pop up on occasion.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how maturity, for me, has largely been a process of getting out of my own way. Embracing the stuff about myself I used to feel pressured to suppress or change. It’s a little wild what a person can accomplish when they’re not wasting all their energy on a pointless mask.

I have a cool job in the tabletop gaming industry that uses ALL the skills I gained in every job up until now. I have a cool house in laid-back, quirky, sunny Tucson. I have cool art on the walls and wear comfy, cool clothes that fit my soft, strong, bouncy body. I have a very cool Kia Soul that looks exactly like about every 3rd car I pass.

It is so very odd to feel like I fit in while also feeling like I’m being completely myself.

I couldn’t have pictured my current life, back when I was a quirky, oddball teen who stuck out like a sore thumb in the Midwest. But if I could have shown her a few pictures of it, I think she’d be ecstatic.

I think she’s say it’s perfect.

What I’m Reading

Still looking for additional good midlife romcoms, but I also haven’t had a ton of time. I did read The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal, which was excellent. The cover sells it as “The Thin Man… in SPACE!” and that’s pretty much what it is. There’s some good disability and PTSD rep in the book, without being a downer, and a lot of very old school cocktail recipes to open every chapter. Plus, a very good doggo, a hard-boiled detective husband who does embroidery and a fashionable heiress wife who is a robotics genius. Also a whole lot of murder on an interplanetary cruise ship.

Dungeon Mom

I get to be on the official World Anvil Twitch stream on occasion! So if you’d like to see me geek out about Hard vs. Soft Worldbuilding and Pairing Dice with Character Creation with people way smarter than me… check it out.

Still not sure when I’ll be ready to dive into my personal creative projects, but the next collab with my writer friends had a kick-off this week. I’m super excited about doing another project together; SPI Girls Kick Ass! was incredibly fun. The next project is going in a different direction, but covering similar themes. More details to come.

In the Cards

Please ignore the cat hair all over my couch. These three cards are from the Light Seer tarot, for this month’s journaling prompts:

• The Wheel: Do you feel like you’re at (or heading towards) a low point or a high point? How are you navigating that feeling?

• Ace of Pentacles (Coins): What is a seed of effort or inspiration you could plant now that would lead to an exciting harvest later?

• 8 of Wands: Where do you see the most momentum in your life right now? How can you take advantage of the energy of focusing on what’s working?

Till next time, stay cool, punks! 😎

So, no spoilers, but I had a visceral reaction to the opening credits of Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania. (Aside: can we take a moment to acknowledge how ridiculous that title is? TEN SYLLABLES. I refuse to shorten it to “Ant-Man 3” because we had to wait so damn long to get a female hero in the title of one of these things. Anyway).

Obviously, it wasn’t the film itself because opening credits. Not that seeing a comic book movie as a belated Valentine’s date with your fellow comic book nerd spouse isn’t great. But I teared up a little over the Marvel logo and theme music. Because it was just the two of us.

For a decade, Marvel movies meant getting a big block of tickets in advance for us, our kids, my sister, her husband, their boys… It meant dissecting the film as a group for days or weeks afterwards, and theorizing about what was next. Playing D&D and watching (and obsessing about) Marvel movies with our whole big extended family crew was what we did.

It was the happiest season of our lives. And that season is done. Not going - gone. Not ending - over.

On the way home, we talked about being in the middle of that season, realizing it had an expiration date, and saying we’d miss it. When the kids grew up, moved out, moved on. I didn’t realize how hard I’d been clinging to the little shreds that were left. How hard I was fighting to believe it was just ending, not actually in the past.

If we’d stayed in Indiana, I’d still be dragging it out. Pretending that seeing my daughter every few months was the same as having her at home. Trying to convince anybody with nothing better to do to play D&D. Losing it all piecemeal, by degrees. Sitting in our old house, waiting for our old life to end before starting a new one. For years, probably, before we acknowledged it had already ended years before.

I put up some family pictures today. I started making plans. Thinking about what I want this new life I’m already living to look like. Where I want to steer this vehicle that’s already in motion, over streets that are already starting to look familiar.

Last year, my spouse and I literally achieved all our life goals from the past decade. In one year. Which was as completely insane to experience as it sounds.

It left a void, and I think we’ve been a little lost in it. But I think maybe I’m starting to see a porch light in the wandering. I’m starting to feel a sense of home again.

What I’m Reading

You guys. YOU GUYS. I just finished Come as You Are by Jess K. Hardy. This is it. This is the Gen X / midlife / grown folks romcom I have been seeking. Protagonists who feel like real people with a life’s worth of baggage, wisdom, insecurities, experience… not like someone did the fictional version of airbrushing some gray streaks on a twentysomething couple. It was cozy, it was funny, it was heartfelt, and it was SPICY.

To be fair, I also read You’re My I.T. by Charlie Holmberg, but it didn’t make nearly as big an impression. I liked her Paper Magician books better, tbh. If you’re not feeling the Gen X vibes or the SPICY, and you’re into roller derby and/or tabletop RPGs, the protagonists might resonate. But I personally found the male MC a little frustrating.

If Regency is more your jam, I mildly enjoyed The Beast of Beswick by Amalie Howard. Mainly it felt like a solid knock-off of a couple of Tessa Dare books (specifically Romancing the Duke and especially The Duchess Deal). But since those are possibly my favorite Regencies, and it’s unclear when we’ll next see an actual Tessa Dare book… this definitely scratched that itch.

Dungeon Mom

Approaching my first 90 days at World Anvil, which has consumed much of the RPG related portions of my brain. But I have been poking around some non-D&D games, not because I don’t still like playing it (I very much do), but just to expand my horizons a bit. I’m hoping to find some folks to play Brindlewood Bay with soon, because “Golden Girls vs. Chthulu” seems like it would be a lot of fun. But as hard as it is to find a group for even the most popular tabletop RPG, it’s exponentially harder to find a group for something else.

In the Cards

This month’s tarot-inspired prompts come from the Tarot of the Divine deck. There was a lot of masculine energy in this month’s cards; so I balanced it a bit by offering a reversed interpretation.

• Eight of Cups (Moses): Where could your work benefit from some introspection? Reversed: where are you guilty of navel-gazing too much?

• The Emperor (King Arthur): What structures of power, authority and tradition are present in your work? Reversed: How can you subvert these structures in your work?

• Seven of Wands (John Henry): Where is there an opportunity to rise above the average? Reversed: Where is there an opportunity to soften your stance?

Till next time, stay cool punks!

Weird thing. I’m writing this one year to the day after flying from Indiana to Arizona to start a new life. It’s crazy to look back and see who actually supported me, and who didn’t. You never know who’s going to show up for you, folks. Sometimes it’s the people you’ve long since written off. In the wise words of Vivian Ward, if people rarely surprise you you’re lucky, because most of them shock the hell out of me.

I’ve started a new project for 2023. I’m really excited, because it’s going to let me write a novel and create my own D&D setting. I somehow managed to hit on a premise that made sense for both. It’s also a good project for test driving World Anvil more extensively, which is important for my work there. It’s tough to market a product - especially software - without being super familiar wit

h how it actually works.

Anyway! Happier New Year. Fun project. Good times being had all around.

What I’m reading

I did try to pick up the last book in Karen Booth’s 40+ “Never Too Late” series, It’s A Widow Thing. But like, y’all - I very nearly did get widowed in October. I DNF’d it, not because it’s not good (it definitely is, and I really enjoyed Gray Hair Don’t Care and Brooklyn Monroe Wants It All). The subject matter just isn’t for me right now.

Relatedly, it should not be this hard to find a funny romance novel (given romcoms current HUGE resurgence on Kindle) with heroines who are over 40. It reminds me of a meme my husband shared, about “hot Aunt May” from the MCU Spiderman films. It’s not that Marisa Tomei is “too young” to play a teenager’s aunt - she’s 53. It’s not even that she looks way younger than she is - she looks great, but also like a middle aged woman. It’s that NOBODY KNOWS WHAT A 53 YEAR OLD WOMAN LOOKS LIKE. Because middle aged women are not allowed to be on TV or in movies.

Or in romance novels. Apparently. Ugh.

Dungeon Mom

I did (briefly) consider jumping on the #Dungeon23 or #City23 trend, but like … I have an entire new full-time job working for a tabletop gaming software company?

And I feel like trying to design a megadungeon with 365 rooms over the course of a year might have been biting off a bit more than I can chew. At least, if I expect to also have the creative energy for anything else (including playing or DMing).

I feel like working on a novel / campaign setting is ENOUGH. More deets when I feel like they’re fully baked enough to share.

In the Cards

Some writing prompts from these three cards from the Light Seer’s deck.

• King of Pentacles: Where do you feel materially supported in your creative life? If you had a “patron” for your art, who would it be? Who shows up for you?

• 4 of Swords: How does rest affect your creative output? Do you feel guilty when you need to step back and recharge? Do you need to sharpen your axe?

• 5 of Pentacles: Where could you ask for help in producing your work? Or - where do you feel called to mentor and support other artists?

I took off walking in the frigid dark. I got about halfway there when two big dogs ran up to me as I was passing a cemetery, barking and circling me. One slammed into the back of me, hard. I didn’t realize till later that it bit me. I didn’t panic. I just kept walking, slowly. Talking in a low, calm voice. Eventually, they ran off. A few minutes later, a stranger pulled over and offered me a ride. The dome light in his car didn’t come on when the door opened. My parents and a hundred imaginary horror movie fans screamed in my head “Girl, don’t get in there!”

Five minutes later, he dropped me off at the large construction firm where I worked. I called my husband, who asked me testily what I expected him to do. I didn’t have an answer. I was just scared, hurt, and shaken up, and figured he’d want to know. The company mechanic offered to tow my car and fix the tire. I thanked him politely. I went to my office. And I promptly fell to pieces, sobbing and shuddering.

I’m telling you this because I have a track record of being amazingly calm in a crisis, then breaking down as soon as I feel safe.

I was working today, after my 30 day evaluation at my new job. I’d been skimming through Spotify, and I landed on one of their “we made this just for you” playlists. And the next thing I knew, I was sobbing over my keyboard.

I’m not going to go through the litany of insanity that has been this year. But I did want to say that when I broke down, I was feeling a lot of things, but the main thing was relief.

I did it. I made it. And so did you, if you’re reading this.

When the internet was mourning for DJ tWitch, I had to bite my tongue around some loved ones. Their comments made it clear they’d never been where I’d been weeks ago. Arguing in the middle of the night with a broken brain that had come to the inescapable conclusion that the best course of action was pulling the Ejector Seat handle from Life on Earth.

If you haven’t ever engaged in a similar argument, it’s probably hard to understand. Maybe if you’ve been very drunk, or so tired your eyes are crossing, or dreaming? Some altered state where you literally can’t access basic logic. I’m actually proud that I managed to retain enough of my real self to argue with the crazy brain dream logic mental malware. Not everybody can. Not everybody does.

And it’s tragic, in the same way that not everyone can pull their car out of a skid on black ice and avoid a head-on collision with a telephone pole. People die that way, and nobody says “they must have been a selfish horrible person.” Please believe me, when you hit that kind of mental skid, you are every bit as out of control as a car on black ice. You survive on nothing but pure grace and luck.

The other thing people who haven’t experienced that have a hard time wrapping their heads around is how temporary those mental glitches can be. That’s why so much of suicide prevention is convincing the victim to not act on those thoughts right now. A delay of hours - minutes in some cases - means your brain can clear cache or reboot, and the danger is passed. Which, yes, sounds crazy. It literally is. That’s the point.

I went from “imminent danger” to “okay” about as fast as my husband went from “imminent danger” to “okay” with his diabetes/DKA. And yeah, we both have been trying to do a better job of maintenance, but both those health issues can deteriorate so slowly you don’t notice a thing wrong, and then suddenly get very bad, very fast.

I’m not sure exactly how to wrap this up. Kind of like I’m not exactly sure how to wrap up the year. I don’t have a newsletter blog writing equivalent of a cathartic, unprompted sobfest. I don’t know how to help you release whatever it is you need to release from 2022.

But I hope that whatever your year was like, you take a moment to appreciate that you got to the end of it.

For years, I’ve qualified this statement. “I know it's problematic. It's more a story about processing change than a romantic comedy. It’s a product of its time.”

Yada yada yada.

Bullshit. It’s a good movie, and a good romance, full stop. Our lady of flawed but fabulous protagonists, Nora Fucking Ephron knew exactly what she was doing. It’s not her fault (or mine) that people don’t look past the surface. She could have written a non-problematic, satisfying-yet-simple Hallmark-grade romcom in her sleep.

She wrote exactly the movie she intended, and I said what I said.

I still think You’ve Got Mail is more about how to navigate unwanted change and loss than a typical love story. Which, unless you’ve been in suspended animation for the entirety of the 2020s, is pretty goddamn useful information.

But! But. The love story between Joe Fox, discontentedly wistful heir to a book superstore empire and Kathleen Kelly, wistfully discontented heir to a tiny Upper West Side children’s book boutique, is fucking great.

It drives me NUTS in romance novels and romcoms when the "obstacles" to them being together are shallow issues and miscommunication that a single honest, direct conversation could resolve. Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly aren't going to have an easy relationship, but they both picked each other over the easy relationships they had. They’re both willing to put in the work. There will undoubtedly be therapy involved. That's a lot more like real life, where OF COURSE your secret online bestie who makes your heart soar is also the person who inadvertently destroyed your career.

Whomst among us has not said “Well, fuck” in regards to the person who otherwise fills our hearts with joy?

I think it's also important to note that Joe's destruction of Kathleen's business wasn't deliberate, malicious, or in his words, personal. It was the collateral damage of his family business (which in hindsight, most likely got similarly cratered by Amazon. Been to a Borders or Waldenbooks lately?) He didn't set out to ruin her life, nor did he force her supposedly "devoted" customers to ditch her for his discounts and lattes.

Joe seems, at best, ambivalent about Fox Books. He’s a dutiful son, good at running things and proud of his own competence, but he’s also deeply aware that business success hasn’t made his dad or grandfather happy. Being raised by a succession of nannies who briefly became stepmoms doesn’t sound like it made him happy, either.

And Kathleen’s adorable bookshop? First up, it’s not making her happy, either. It’s a legacy she practically worships, but it’s also a strangling safety net that has kept her life, in her own words, very small. Like her relationship with Frank, it’s comfortable, but also kinda sad. It ties her daily life irrevocably to her mother’s death.

Like Joe, it’s a life that was chosen for her. Like Joe, she’s smart enough to be grateful, not entirely at ease, and not sure what else to do.

And sub-textually? The cozy New York book shop is every nerdy girl’s most beloved escape fantasy, and Nora rips it right out of our dirty little grasping fingers. Ruthlessly. Brutally. Because it’s a fantasy. Even then, living in a NYC brownstone and running a cute little bookshop (unless you inherited both) was as realistic as Tolkien’s hobbit holes or getting your Hogwarts letter.

It’s a fantasy, not a dream. With work and luck, dreams can come true.

People get so damn pissed about Kathleen losing that book shop, not because Billionaires Are Bad (they are, but this is not about that) or because Power Dynamics (he’s not her boss, he’s her competition, and she lost) or because He Destroyed Her Life Then “Rescued” Her (he objectively didn’t, she had a job offer as a children’s book editor and also still apparently owned an apartment in Manhattan and had an independently wealthy friend who offered to give her money if she needed it…)

They get pissed because romcoms are a fantasy where we vicariously get all our wishes, and we all wish for that bookshop. Nora didn’t just take the bookshop from Kathleen - she took it from us. She punctured our fantasy, where we inherited a book shop and a brownstone and found true love with Tom Hanks, The End.

The whole point of this movie is that comfort, fantasy and legacies will not save us. They are not the path to Real Love or True Happiness.

If there's a villain in the movie, it's not Joe. It’s the Upper West Siders who promised to support Kathleen’s shop, and didn't back it up with anything but empty words and an afternoon spent chanting and waving protest signs. Who want to keep their “cherished institutions”… but not enough to pay full price for children’s books.

Yes, the movie is Very 90s, but that’s a feature. Because the cozy autumnal 90s NYC vibes are immaculate - and camouflaging some razor-sharp critique. Also, what the movie has to say about the internet is David Bowie Level prescient.

Listen to Frank’s dialogue! “You think this machine is your friend, but it's not.”

So what does You’ve Got Mail say about Real Love and True Happiness? It’s not effortless "love at first sight" vibes or pragmatic box-checking. Real love is more likely found with “the person who fills your life with joy,” than the person who makes sense on paper.

Real love often means having lot of real stuff to work through to make it work. Because you’re both wide-awake and engaged with reality, instead of sleepwalking through your comfort zones and escape fantasies (Side note: YGM is way more of a spiritual successor to Joe vs. the Volcano than most people realize).

True happiness means making tough-but-ownable choices in the face of Shit You Absolutely Didn’t Want to Deal With. Not following the path of least resistance, or winning the “born in the right time, place, and circumstances” lottery.

If you didn’t (or don’t) like You’ve Got Mail, I’m not here to invalidate your experience, or insist you have to like something. It is Hopelessly White and Straight, early Dave Chappelle and a delightful Sara Ramirez appearance notwithstanding. Totally fair argument.

But a lot of (especially young) folks are out here insisting it’s Objectively Bad and like… NO. My darling children, NO.

You do not get to unironically enjoy A Christmas Prince and then tell me that this well-written, well-acted, flawlessly-directed movie with a gorgeous visual aesthetic and pitch-perfect needle-drops is trash.

And I’m done apologizing for enjoying it.

As a person with depression, I’m familiar with my own vanishing act. I could rattle off a list of external factors, including my spouse nearly dying. But the truth is, I started slipping into invisibility long before that happened. Not just here, on my tiny little fledgling newsletter. In what passes for “real life,” too. People kept talking over me, talking past me, talking around me. Till they failed to notice I wasn’t really in the room. My body was present, but my brain was completely AWOL.

I’ve been clawing my way back into three-dimensional space, from whatever ghost zone limbo I fell into, for weeks now. And I think I’m ready to be heard again.

I had a bit of an identity crisis. It mostly involved accepting my ADHD, digging into how that was affecting my life, and finding a new path that works with my neurodivergence, instead of forcing me to fight it all the time. I realized I needed a job that was a better fit. Thankfully, I got that worked out, and I started what’s basically my dream job this past week. There’s more, but we’ll get to that later.

I realized I had too many digital identities. Mainly, that’s a function of being a writer with pen names who would like to also have a private personal life. That includes Kat Bradbury (who writes SF/F and gaming content), Mara Dane (who writes romance), and Dungeon Mom, which is an Instagram account I started before the whole “spouse almost dying” thing happened.

But the thing about ADHD is, the minute you prune one digital doppelganger, a couple more pop up in service of your latest fixation. For now, I’m trying to figure out how to cram all my writing/gaming stuff under one Moonspinner Media umbrella. Between Substack, Anchor, and various other platforms (Are we all done with Twitter? Are we all moving to Mastodon?) it’s still pretty messy.

It probably always will be, to some extent. Anyway… carrying on.

What I’m Reading

I frankly had to give up on romance reading for a bit, because my personal life got too complicated. It’s hard to really enjoy midlife romance when your partner is experiencing serious health issues, largely related to getting older.

I did start Karen' Booth’s “Never Too Late” series, and enjoyed the first book. So I’ll probably go back to that soon.

In the meantime, I checked Annie Bellet’s excellent “20 Sided Sorceress” series from my local library. They had the omnibus editions for books 1-7, published as Level Grind and Boss Fight. I plowed through both of them in days. Bellet does a great job of pacing in these urban fantasy books, making it hard to put them down. Her heroine, Jade Crow, is an immortal who was a teen in the 80s, as well as a gamer and comics nerd, making her highly relatable (at least to me.) I’ll probably pick up the last three books in the series, but Boss Fight ends in a pretty satisfying conclusion.

Dungeon Mom

The big update here is that Dungeon Mom is a thing now! I started an Instagram account specifically to share resources for people who are new to D&D, or are curious but intimidated by it. And I’m going to be on the Raised on DnD podcast! Will be sure to link to the episode after it’s out.

I also got a job as content strategist & manager at World Anvil, the amazing worldbuilding tool for fiction writers and game masters. I’m a fiction writer! And a game master! And a content strategist! So having all my “worlds” collide like this is a big deal for me. It’s already a dramatic improvement over being teased by IT dudes (insert massive eye roll of irony) about my “nerdy” D&D hobby.

In the Cards

Today I pulled The High Priestess, 8 of Swords, and 7 of Cups from Yoshi Yoshitani’s lovely fairy tale inspired Tarot of the Divine deck. They’re represented by Scheherazade, Donkeyskin, and Aladdin. Here are a few prompts for your journal:

• What is the story you’ve been telling yourself about why you haven’t started That Thing yet? Who or what is the gatekeeper or threshold guardian holding you back?

• In what ways are you feeling trapped? Are those feelings accurate, or is your inner protector being overzealous? What elements of your past do you need to exorcise to move forward into your creative work?

• Where are you feeling the paradox of choice in your work? What is the risk in making a decision and moving forward with it, even if it might not be the optimal choice in hindsight?

Till next time, keep it weird, punks!

How did I end up moving four times in eight months? The short version is: I planned for every part of a cross-country move from Indiana to Arizona to take a long time, so naturally everything happened 1000% faster than expected.

So I’ve spent most of this year slightly disoriented because everything is moving at light speed. Also highly exhausted because I have to try to keep up. Naturally, I’ve also been beating myself up for all the writing I haven’t gotten done while moving four times, working full-time, and launching my youngest in the general direction of academia.

This week, I got four of my out-of-print works released again as Kat Bradbury. They are ebook only - and probably will remain that way. I regained the rights from their respective small press publishers in 2020. Then went in circles, debating whether it was worth putting energy into them. But when I tried working on new stuff, I’d end up wondering if I should make the effort to get my backlist refreshed and re-released.

It was an endless procrastination loop, complicated by the fact that I find my old work cringy. It’s not the work itself, even though I’m a better writer now. They’re fun little books, and my craft has always been competent. It’s more that I associate them with who I was when I wrote them.

I think if we’re evolving, we always find earlier versions of ourselves unbearable.

But then I thought about Taylor Swift. Who, in a commencement speech, told an entire graduating class you have to accept cringe. I thought about her re-releasing all of her old stuff, and it never occurred to me that a wildly successful artist might look back at the wildly popular work she released in her early twenties… and wince.

So I fixed a couple of small things that still deeply bugged me about those books, and quickly put them back up on Kindle Unlimited. It helped me close a loop I didn’t realize was keeping me stuck.

So I hope whoever you are, if you’re moving in circles, they’re flywheels not time loops.

What I’m reading: Hearts Cove Hotties

If you are enjoying the current RomCom Resurgence, but wish some of the heroes and heroines were a bit older, check out Lilian Monroe’s Heart’s Cove Hottie series. It’s funny, steamy, and I love the small town California setting. Most of the heroes are not cops, military, or billionaires, which is refreshing. If fit, emotionally mature dudes in their 40s who like to work with their hands is your jam, jump on this now. It’s well worth your time, and available on Kindle Unlimited.

There’s good banter, low angst, and the grown folks act like actual grown folks with complicated lives and backstories.

(I’m not naming names, but I nearly threw my Kindle while reading a “40+ romance” where neither person ever had a serious relationship, or matured since high school. It read like someone heard “seasoned romance” was going to be the next big thing, but didn’t actually want to write it. Yuck. Don’t do that, y’all.)

Not that I don’t enjoy younger characters, but like, grown folks also enjoy sexytimes. We, too, can get into ridiculous, silly hijinks. And if you peruse the “Later in Life” romance category on the ‘Zon, mostly what you will find is a lot of covers with sunset beaches and divorced/widowed women who may, at some point before the end of the book, kiss the grizzled dude who has been hovering around the edges of what is clearly a Women’s Fiction book going after those sweet, sweet romance dollars.

This is fine, if that’s your jam. But if you want “zippy, banter-filled rom com energy but with people who remember landlines” then the pickings, they are slim outside of Monroe’s excellent contributions. (And yes, I plan to do something about that, with a quickness…stay tuned, punks.)

Dungeon Mom

I don’t have a lot to say about D&D at the moment, because see above rant about moving yet again. I missed Free RPG Day at Isle of Games because I was unexpectedly busy buying a house that day - it’s been that kind of July.

However, I did jump into DnD Beyond to snag some free Spelljammer content. I have been excited about Spelljammer for a while now, because space pirates. And also Giff. Basically, if Guardians of the Galaxy is your favorite MCU subfranchise, then this is the setting for you. Go forth and check it out.

In The Cards

So today I pulled Queen of Cups, 2 of Wand, and 3 of Pentacles/Coins. Here are a few prompts for your journal:

• How are you managing your emotions right now? What is your creative intuition telling you about where you can find joy next?

• If you were going to take a road trip, where would you go? What plans have you been sitting on that you could actually take your first steps on NOW?

• Who are your creative cheerleaders? What areas of your life might benefit from doing a collaborative project?

Till next time, keep it weird, punks!

In the face of <waves hand frantically in several directions> all this…

• Is there room for the joy of a bantering couple who are absolutely going to bang despite their insistence that they hate each other?

• Is there a place for slaying pretend monsters with your friends and gawking over shiny math rocks?

• Can anyone really say “Happily ever after” with a straight face these days?

• If you could see the future in a deck of playing cards, who the hell would try it?

I believe in doing what you can to make the world a better place, but I am also aware that what any one person can do is limited. I worked for three years at a nonprofit trying to change a huge global injustice. Even a million people, working together, can only do so much. And it’s exhausting to keep at it over time.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to read and enjoy the hell out of a lot of romance novels on Kindle Unlimited. I’m going to be brutally honest about them, but I’m also going to try to stick with recommending good stuff. Because ripping apart crap is easy and sometimes fun, but that’s not what this is about.

Warning: If you are here to shit on romance, take your (internalized) misogyny and fuck right off.

I’m going to curate useful, fun and delightful content about playing ttrpgs, mainly Dungeons & Dragons, because it’s the game I grew up playing and thanks to 5e, was most easily able to teach other people. Yes, the game will probably be attempting to excise the vestigial bullshit from its origins forever. If you’d rather start fresh with a different system, cool. Have fun! Again, that’s not what this is about.

Warning: If you just came here to shit on D&D, take it elsewhere, please.

I’m also going to share writing and journaling prompts based on tarot, because the pretty pictures are fun and it’s good for your mental health.

Warning: If you came here to shit on tarot, byyyyyyyeeee.

Lastly, I do write fiction, so when I have a new book or story out, I’ll mention it here.

In a world that insists we should feel like shit, all the time, pursuing pleasure and joy is a form of resistance. Welcome to my fluffy little punk rock rebellion.

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