Although the Patch Project Fan Art Contest is well underway, I’m a little behind on finishing up the final draft of Where Long Shadows End.
But it’s all good! I’m still on track to release the book this summer, so stay tuned for a release day! I’m hoping for sometime in July, barring other weird changes to my schedule or major life events. This past year has been a lot about being gentle with myself and adapting!
Weekends are when I write the most! Here’s a photo of me drinking all the coffee during a writing session. This week’s goal is to finish filling in the chapters in the second half of the book!
Speaking of, it’s been one year since I moved to Nova Scotia! With summer just on the horizon, I’m starting to get excited for cottage visits and ocean adventures. The winter here was very hard-I’m thankful for my wonderful friends and family and the life-giving experiences that got me through the worst of it.
Are you going to enter the Patch Project fan art contest? All you have to do is make a piece of art inspired by the series and post it to social media with the hashtag #ThePatchProjectFanArtContest by June 30th! You could win a free copy of book three!
That’s the update for now! Between working full time and settling into a new space, there’s been a lot to get used to, but writing continues to bring me a lot of joy and clarity. As the Patch Project series comes to an end, I’m starting to get excited for new ideas and projects-but that’s another post for another day!
It’s time! In honor of the upcoming summer release of Where Long Shadows End, I declare the Patch Project Fan Art Contest now open!
What is it?
The Patch Project Fan Art Contest is an author-run friendly competition encouraging the creation of art based on or around the Patch Project series! “Art” in the widest sense: everything from visual art, film, found poetry, crochet, comics, songs, to sketches on napkins, whatever medium you thrive in! Let your imagination go wild!
You’re invited to create something based on a character, relationship, or scene from the Patch Projectseries so far (The Patch Project itself or the sequel A Place That Used to Be) – or, what you’d like to see in book three! Ship your favourite couple, imagine what the S.U.s really look like, or whisk your favourite character away on an adventure of your choosing!
All skill levels are welcome to enter!
When is it?
The contest will run from Thursday, April 14, 2022 toThursday, June 30, 2022.
All submissions to the contest must be posted by midnight on June 30, 2022 (EST).
How do I enter?
Once you’ve created your piece of fan art (whatever it may be!), you can post it on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with the hashtag #ThePatchProjectFanArtContest.
I will leave a like or comment on the pieces that I see – if you’ve posted something and don’t know if I’ve seen it, feel free to tag me: brittniinink on Facebook or brittni_in_ink on Twitter and Instagram.
What can I win?
The fan art that is deemed to be the “best” will win the artist a free signed copy of the third book in the Patch Project series, Where Long Shadows End! Plus bragging rights, of course 🙂
This is meant to be a fun and friendly competition, so the judging process will be casual. I will likely ask the folks at Adventure Worlds Press to help me narrow down the top five (although they don’t know this yet haha!)
Other rules
Only art that is directly based on the Patch Project series will be considered.
Be respectful of the social media platform’s rules you’re posting on. Submissions that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, or sexist will not be considered.
Submission language: English or with an accompanying translation/ subtitles. (This is more for word-based pieces; if your art incorporates words that don’t have to be understood (as in mixed media, for example) no translation is necessary).
Have fun!
Questions?
If you have any questions or thoughts about the contest, feel free to let me know below or message me through my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!
[Image description: The Patch Project and A Place That Used to Be books are on a wood surface surrounded by art supplies.]
(Note: This contest is not affiliated with Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.)
One: the first draft of Book Three of The Patch Project series is complete! It’s a book now! I’ve sent it out to first readers and am (totally not anxiously) awaiting feedback.
Although I’m curious to hear how people find the book, I also like this period of waiting. I get to work on other things (to distract myself from thinking about people actually reading a thing I wrote) and be creative in other ways.
Two: I came to the kind of sad conclusion that my space novel is not ready to be sent out to publishers. I had a particularly excellent one in mind, but while getting the manuscript ready for the open submissions call, I realized there were just too many parts that needed to be filled out. There are some parts of that book that I absolutely love, but it needs an overhaul to rework the book’s structure and characters to make it a more consistent read. For now, it’s on the backburner.
I also started working from home last month, so that’s taken some adjustment. But the work is writing-related, and I love getting to set my own hours and taking coffee breaks when I need to. It made me realize that I used to dread going to a workplace-even if the job wasn’t bad. Just something about a space where I was not myself, but a function, expected to behave in certain ways and ignore my own comfortability and needs, that really was hard to deal with. Working from home has been so low stress in comparison. I feel very fortunate to have found something that suits my needs at the moment.
So there’s good stuff happening. I also finally got to visit a thrift store (since I have my booster now) and found the comfiest shirt!
The aforementioned comfiest shirt: a red oversized flannel with small white and black plant fronds patterned across it.
More changes are on the horizon, but for now, just trying to stay grounded and thankful in the present. And be patient while I wait for feedback! Hopefully, I’ll be posting again sooner than later with more book and writing related things!
How’s 2022 so far? I keep writing “2021” when I’m dating things – that’s normal right? Time is even more wonky this year. In any case, hope you all had a gentle and lovely holiday.
We were very lucky to spend a couple days with family, and to visit my favourite place in the world – the ocean! I’ve now been to the Northumberland Strait in every season, and will be writing a short addition to my Notes at Low Tide blog about that experience. For now, I’ll just say it was very cold, and very wonderful.
Happy to be visiting my favourite ocean (don’t tell the Pacific)
After relaxing so much, I was excited to get back to writing! I tweaked an older manuscript to submit to an open call with a big publisher, did a beta read of Ben’s thrilling new novella, and got a rejection from a horror magazine. But I’m not letting it get to me. Book Three of the Patch Project series is filling out to be a mid-sized novel featuring some simply devastating encounters, but also some moments of rest and joy. Writing about the future, there’s gotta be some hope!
Speaking of, I started reading a fantastic collection of essays: An Ecotopian Lexicon mindfully borrows words from other languages, fields, and genres to help us imagine a better future and a better relationship with our planet. A few essays in, and already my mind is being blown. As someone finishing up a post-apocalyptic series, it’s causing me to reassess how I use the genre: do I challenge or support the tropes we’ve come to expect from such books? Are there ways I can highlight community more through my writing, portraying mutual aid and environmental themes with hopeful solidarity?
My first read of 2022: An Ecotopian Lexicon!
I’m hoping to be better at sharing what I’m reading this year and keeping my Goodreads list updated! What’s your first read of 2022?
Well here it is, the last blog post of the year! 2021 has been a ride, to say the least: I moved to a new province, got to spend a whole summer by the sea, submitted some short stories, and (finally) wrote the bulk of book three. In spite of the hard times, I’m thankful for getting to experience all of it.
I’m also thankful for all of the people who have uplifted my husband and I with their friendship, solidarity, board game and AEW wrestling nights. Some of you literally housed us, some of you shared meals with us, some of you sent us kind words when we needed them most. Thank you, thank you, thank you ❤
The year ahead is going to be a busy one. I’m hoping to have the first draft of book three ready for beta readers by the end of January. I’ll be looking for ways to balance work, creativity, and recharge time. I also want to find a writing group and more book-related events in the Halifax area.
Announcing a special holiday offer! It’s my first winter on the east coast, and so I wanted to do a little something to thank the folks who buy my books from near and far away! The offer is this: order a copy of A Place That Used to Be from me, and receive a photo for free!
Pictured above: Order a copy of A Place That Used to Be and receive one of these photo prints free!
What’s so special about a photo, you may ask. Well, the photos are part of a series directly inspired by the novel, and were taken by the incredible Sarah Kivell. She takes these amazing, dreamy film photos of everyday things and people, capturing stories with her camera. If you want to see the kind of work she does, check out her Instagram – I believe she even has a sale on some of her photos at the moment!
Here are all the details about this offer:
What: Order a copy of A Place That Used to Be directly from me (message me through my Facebook or website) and receive a free photo inspired by the book!
When: November 26, 2021 to January 5, 2022 (or as long as the limited supply lasts!)
Where: Anywhere! Shipping cost dependent on where you’d like the book sent.
How much: The book is $15, the photo is free, and shipping is $4 in Canada.
And there you have it! If you have any questions, let me know. To stay up to date with upcoming offers and events, follow me on Facebook or YouTube. Thanks, and take care!
This past weekend, I had the joy of setting up a table at a local craft fair! It’s been so long since I’ve sat with my books and talked to people about them. Really thankful for the opportunity, and for the kind staff and volunteers who welcomed me! I’m pretty sure I was the only author there, so I would’ve felt out of place without all the kind interest and support from the people who came through. Thanks to everyone who came out! I’m hoping to get more involved with community events in the new year!
Here I am at my vendor table at the North Woodside Community Centre craft fair! I had both of the Patch Project books available, as well as some crocheted stars to fit in with the holiday vibe!
I still have copies of The Patch Project and A Place That Used to Be available! Or you can find them at Chapters Dartmouth, the Dartmouth Book Exchange, or on Barnes & Noble’s website!
In other writing news, I’m halfway through NaNoWriMo and, as usual, am super behind on my word count! But some interesting things are coming together for Book Three and I can’t wait to go back and make sense of all the random scenes and encounters!
A close up of The Patch Project and A Place That Used to Be.
Also want to take a second to congratulate fellow Adventure Worlds Press author Christian Laforet on his recent publication announcements! Wonderful to see his stories and novels get picked up, and looking forward to seeing them in print!
I’ll be announcing a special holiday offer on A Place That Used to Be next week, so stay tuned for that!
Wow, these past couple of weeks have felt long! Seriously, how is it still October.
Part of this time warp was due to starting a job at a hardware store. It was a fascinating experience, but unfortunately, the hour-long commute to get there, including two buses and a long walk up a wasteland of a hill, destroyed me and I had to quit. I admire any of you out there who put in that amount of effort to get to work every day! I just couldn’t hack it.
The top of the hill that I climbed to work at the hardware store. A wasteland worthy of its own short story.
It really affected my mood as well, and after my break through with the third Patch Project book a few weeks ago, I hit another wall, hard. I had no energy after a full shift plus travel time, and what little I had was spent getting ready for the next day. I may have gotten used to it after a couple weeks, but that short span of time seemed to drag on forever.
But that’s over now, and I have another job prospect on the horizon. It feels like I can breathe again, and my writing brain has been on fire ever since I returned to my pre-hardware store schedule. I literally wrote or edited all day yesterday, and it felt incredible. It just solidifies for me that writing is what I should be doing with my life. It gives me purpose and a sense of value in this grim captialistic nightmare I’ve been trying to navigate the past month and a half.
NaNoWriMo starts in a couple of days! I look forward to this month-long writing event every year – it helps me to prioritize writing and for the past couple years has given me huge chunks of novels that I couldn’t have finished within a year otherwise. I’ll be working on the third Patch Project book, which has been giving me so much trouble. Hopefully, NaNo will immerse me in the story and force me to find the way through it.
Dropping off books at the Dartmouth Book Exchange! In the rain! They are super nice there!
Some other Patch Project series news: the first book is now available at the Dartmouth Book Exchange! I’ll be dropping off some copies of the sequel there as well in the next few days. The sequel is also available online through Barnes & Noble, which was really cool to discover. You can always request the books at your local library, bookstore, or Chapters. I always have signed copies on hand as well: if you’re interested in a copy, give me a shout!
Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween, and stay safe out there!
Some great news! I had a breakthrough with my case of writer’s block – I really was writing around something instead of trusting that the story would take me where it needed to go.
I finally gave in and am making the third Patch Project book about Pinot. I was really struggling with finding my way into the story, considering all the possible characters and arcs the book could include. But it hit me the other day that this book had to follow Pinot, and once I accepted that, the garden started to bloom. I guess I was resistant to the idea of focusing on Pinot because she became the main character of the last book and I somehow got into my brain that readers were tired of her. But even if that is true, it doesn’t matter (apologies to the hypothetical readers); what matters is the story and where it wants to go.
I have a rough timeline worked out and am now following Pinot as she prepares to go to Summerland, the mythical city mentioned in previous books but never visited. I will have to include at least one other POV character for the subplot, and maybe a few scattered around the wasteland (as a writer, I get bored writing one POV for a whole book haha). In any case, you can look forward to more of Pinot in book three.
My new glasses arrived this past week! My last pair was literally falling apart, so it’s nice to have a pair that fits again!
Other than that, I’ve had a few days off to do things like clean the house and binge episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Hastings, Miss Lemon, and Hercule Poirot are characters most charmants, and I enjoy making connections with the books and how the screenwriters adapted the material. I’ve also set up a mini-studio to record audiobooks – if you are interested in having your book narrated or have voice work you’d like done, let me know!
I’m also hoping to order a batch of the sequel to have on hand before the holiday season rolls around, as it sounds like the printer is also going to be raising prices in November. I’ve updated my Ko-fi goal to reflect this – for every donation, I’ll make a thank you video. For donations over $10, I’ll send a personalized card in the mail!
With Inktober to keep my little grey cells engaged and NaNoWriMo just around the corner, the fall is turning out to be quite a busy one! Thanks for stopping by, hopefully I’ll have more updates on the third Patch Project book soon!
Happy fall! This sunflower is growing in a vacant lot by my house. Lovely to see nature in the city.
Also, I ordered a new notebook, hoping that it’ll be the inspiration I need getting into the third Patch Project book. I have yet to find the “in” scene that’ll unlock the story, help it flow a bit better. A lot of my writing so far has been world-building, stage maps of where everything is, where characters are. Just throwing my thoughts on paper when they surface and trying to make the most of my time in my office space.
New office set up! A rolling turquoise office chair, a table for my computer, keyboard, and coffee, and some art up on the walls, including a portrait of Pinot by the incredible Al Hess!
Still, it’s frustrating. This is probably a bout of writers block, though I tend not to like the term. I’m writing around what I should be writing about, is more what it feels like. But I’m a gardener when it comes to writing books: I tend to approach my books without much of a concrete plot, and a lot of my best stuff comes out of discovery writing. So I’m trying to go along with whatever my brain is doing right now, hoping that whatever it’s cultivating will poke its head out of the soil soon.
Maybe it’s because the first two books have set up a lot already, and working within that framework is starting to feel constrictive. My own fault, really! For example, I don’t want to focus on a particular location, but it’s where all of the character arcs converge, so it’s necessary to creating something that fulfills the previous two books.
Still, I got a killer opening scene, a new character who I love, and some vague idea of how the plot is going to go. So that’s something! If only I could go to the Green Bean cafe and spend a couple of hours writing it all out…
Cookies, coffee, dipping sauces, date squares, and brownies all the way from the Green Bean Cafe! The homemade belt underneath is for the fantasy AEW wrestling league my husband and I are part of – he is the current champion!
Speaking of the Green Bean, some of our dear Windsor friends sent my husband and I a care package including a bunch of Green Bean treats; another one of our friends sent a pack of specialty coffee our way a couple of weeks ago. Those, plus some wonderful friendship mail and art swaps, have been keeping us hopeful in spite of some difficult life things – I’d forgotten how hard it can be to adapt to a new city.
To get through the changes and find my way into the third book, I’ll just keep writing and hope for the best.
brittni in ink 