Hello fellow trash pandas,

I do not have a vlog for this week. I will be including this week's videos for my writing vlog and will combine it with next week's and will publish that on 12/18.

A few days ago I had a marketing workshop hosted by The Nerd FAM. I got five pages worth of notes and left with some homework. They had four authors on the panel: one being Nisha J Tuli that I love to the ends of the earth for writing The Trials of the Sun Queen. All four authors gave amazing advice.

I would definitely do another workshop with The Nerd Fam. They are geniuses at what they do and give so much love and care to everything they do.

Additional homework besides the stuff I got from the workshop:

I have to work on back logging the pen scribbles in my five writing notebooks and all my apple notes worth of information for my book on to multiple dedicated clouds and usb's. My worldbuilding alone is spread across all these notebooks and having in one organized place will help me. Plus, having back ups to this information is vital when I am writing on the go.

What did I work on today:

I used my inkarnate subscription to get a base line space image. Then, I used canva to create a map of my planets and universe for the book I'm writing. It is awesome to see a side by side comparison of the penned version of my universe map and a color version of my map that looks like a real universe.

I messaged a book cover designer that I have been silently admiring for awhile now. I sent them my base line cover design that I would love for them to rework and create for my book. They said it would roughly be around 600$ for a full jacket. And while that is alot for me right now, I am 100% willing to pay for it even if it takes me a minute to scrape up that kind of money (and a little extra in case their rates change from here until I can pay for it). But, just having an idea of how much to save plus a little extra is what my goal was going in to this. I hope that once I do have the mulahhhh that they are willing to still work with me because it would be my literal dream for them to work on my cover.

What do I have going on in my life:

As you all know, they just launched me as a tastemaker on Bindery which is lovely and came at the perfect time. I was thinking about doing a bookish patreon for a minute now. Then, I got an email to work with them and it was as if the stars aligned.

It has been a learning curve. I'm used to Tiktok's instant gratification of views and likes and comments being in my face right away. So, delaying that by using youtube and delyaing access to videos has helped me slow down and has given me less anxiety to spam post. But, having to learn to have patience that it will all work out, my videos will find the right audience in due time, and that all good things take time to come to fruition has been rough for me.

To be honest, I love this version of content creation better especially the planning out my content and writing scripts. The old way of doing my content kind of stressed me out for different reasons. I think my biggest fear before was that I would lose my audience if I took to long in between posts, but I have learned that my audience will be there when I need them. So, I am feeling more comfortable now than I was before.

I have my recertification for my day-job coming up soon so that has me a little stressed trying to juggle everything in my life. I have been very fog brained, but everytime I felt like this in my life where I juggled the right amount of everything, good things came out of it and I came out a better person.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone. I love yall. Be safe out there. Have fun during the holidays but make use of your designated drivers and ride share apps.

Love and Peace,

Trash Panda Noel