So…I made ham out of bread?

The carnivores I know are shocked that it looks so ham-like.

The taste? It needs a little more flavour–I’d halved the recipe, roughly, and made some substitutions, and I needed more of the dry rub in the dough (SALT, MOAR SALT). But the glaze came out beautifully and overall it’s pretty good? Nice with some eggs in the morning, or I made a ham and gouda grilled cheese for dinner last night. Now that I better know what I’m doing, I think I can make something nice for Christmas.

I’d like to try to do a salami at some point, though it’ll require a few more ingredients that’ll be tricky. It’ll be a new year thing maybe, but it would be nice to make fake meats for when I’m grazing on veggies and cheese at lunch, as I often do.

I finished Silent All These Years aka Waverly 4 last night (well, at 5am this morning?). It was a 10K night. I’m tired, my hands hurt, but at least the damn thing is done and it doesn’t have to release until 2025, which makes it a problem for 2024 Skyla.

For a book that wasn’t supposed to exist, now I can’t imagine the series without it. Most of it is a hot mess but that ending? That’s a good ending. I wouldn’t say my confidence is back but I know at least I hit the right note there.

I’ll have a proper end of the year recap post up later, but for now, it’s official:

BTW, y’all see the TLoU series trailer? I’ve watched it about two dozen times and I cry with every single one. So excited non-gamers will get to meet Apocalypse DILF.

For now, I rest, and I’m not going to write a single goddamn thing for the rest of the year.

It’s been ages since I’ve made anything labour-intensive or from scratch, but a big part of that was being sick off and on for year (the other part was various mental health issues, though of course those were compounded by my physical health issues). But I’ve been consistently doing simple meal prep for months now and rebuilding habits is sort of like having to rebuild skills (which I’ve also done several times after being sick). I used to love cooking things from scratch but have largely gotten out of the habit, though with Christmas coming up I thought I’d try to do something for my own personal little meal (provided I’m feeling up to it with Shawn’s upcoming surgery stressing me out during that time).

Ham was one of the few meats I really liked as a carnivore, probably because of the salt content. I never miss meat, though I make fake chicken now for things, and while I get Tofurkey’s smoked ham deli slices, it isn’t quite the same, and it certainly doesn’t make a roast.

Enter this “pig saver” vegan ham recipe.

I like working with seitan, but I’ve never tried washing flour before, so I am intrigued!

And yes, yes, it’s bread. I’m making ham out of bread. Carnivores, I’ve heard it all: take your mockery elsewhere.

I’ve done my dough balls, washed the starch out, and now they’re resting again (I took a pic but…it is not appetizing looking lol). I have to make up some smoked salt, then I’ll be ready to combine them. It’s a multi-day process, but I used to make aged vegan cheese with rejuvelac so that doesn’t bother me.

With costs of everything skyrocketing–my rent goes up in January again, pet food and litter is up, groceries are up, etc–the flour-washing might be something I use next year to make chicken for salads and wraps and things. And getting plain vital wheat gluten can be tricky sometimes–bless all of you gluten-free folks, but it’s meant it’s trickier for me to find just a bag of gluten.

The gluten has to rest a lot, so I’m doing this between reading books for editing. I have about two and a half weeks to finish two books and get drafts of a cover out, and then it’s rest–sweet rest (or worrying, because of Shawn’s surgery, but at least I’ll be 100% on worry).

Kneading dough and washing out starch is like running, it gives my brain time to rest and I need more of that. I’m working out knots for the end of Waverly 4–I’ve got about 10K left to write on this messy, messy zero draft, and I know the very end, but trying to weave this together is…tough. The book is honestly like making this vegan ham, and I’m at the stage where I need to wash some starch out but it’s just falling apart in my hands.

I’m also suffering wavering confidence with this series because I have no idea how it’s going to be received. I’ve got a solid draft of book one ready–early next year, I’ll be tackling the final draft before copyedits, so I’ve got that time to revisit it and see if I’m properly setting up everything from the main mystery to the series tone.

I have zero interest in writing the same book over and over again, which I realize frustrates some people because that’s what they want: their procedural standalone drama that’s the same tight forty-two minutes with the same beats. But I’ve always let character dictate everything, from structure to pacing, which is most obviously apparent in Demons of Oblivion with the widely different narrators but both Livi’s and Waverly’s arcs do the same from book to book.

It’s Livi that has me second-guessing Waverly because the two series are structured very similarly (adventure/mystery-of-the-week but also overriding plot arc, like Buffy). I continually wonder what I could’ve done different with Solomon’s Seal to better set up the rest of the series, but I think I was a) relying on subtext being extremely obvious (Livi is an adrenaline junkie; that is not normal, it’s a coping mechanism, that will eventually have to be deconstructed) and b) seeing the series arc in my head and how it moves book to book organically instead of just focusing on that book by itself. The darker tone later in the series was always there at the beginning, for me–I didn’t suddenly decide to go dark in the fifth, as I’d been planning to kill ____ then, and that way, since the end of Solomon’s Seal. West’s presence and their angst was always going to build to a head by this point. Livi was independent to a fault due to her parents abandoning her at different points so her arc was always going to involve needing to rely on others so she learns to ask for help (she gets it from me–she will not ask for help and has to be forced by circumstances to accept it).

This was never a dumb mindless popcorn series–it’s always been meant to grapple with long-term trauma and how we move forward in the world when we’re shaped by our PTSD, just in the way I enjoy which is over-the-top adventure. Because, hai, I’ve got PTSD and I’m a DV survivor and I’ve got anxiety and depression, and writing books is how I process things.

So in my head, I still keep pulling apart Solomon’s Seal to its pieces to figure out what I could’ve done differently, done better, while still easing readers into the journey, and how I can apply that now to Waverly. Because I want to learn and do better.

But I have no idea. I wrote it a decade ago, and even with that level of distance, I can’t figure it out.

I function best as a writer when I’m a megalomaniac, and my brain right now is the opposite of that. I dislike it immensely.

It amazes me how often we have drama in the book world because writers and publishers will advertise books as things they are not–usually trying to cash in on those romance dollars with women’s fiction or tragi-porn–and meanwhile me, who sells next to nothing, wants to reach through the screen and beg various people to please go buy something, anything, else. I can’t fathom trying to mislead people just to sell books.

I know money is money, but I’ve never wanted to be someone’s hate-read, and if you’re four books in and you literally hate a) one or more main characters, and b) the overriding plot arcs and character arcs, my god, please save yourself. Because I am writing exactly the books I would want to read, and while I can identify a few missteps (mainly that I should’ve found a way to work the plot of Ashford’s Ghost into a main novel, given its ties to later in the series), everything I’ve published is written exactly as I want them to be. West is integral to the plot and Livi’s life, he’s not going anywhere (unless I kill him, and I’m hoping not to); Livi’s PTSD is integral to her character and it’s not going anywhere; the bigger conspiracies and mysteries are integral to her adventures and will come back book to book. If you literally hate 75%+ of what I’m doing with the series, we have different tastes!

And that’s cool. I’m not writing it for everyone; I’m writing it for the people who DO like it. Life is too short to be miserable! If you’re reading something that is clearly not what you want it to be, write your own book. That’s why everything I’ve written exists in the first place.

Anyway, I’m exhausted, and frustrated, and I wish I could rest like my gluten is right now.

It’s time to smoke my salt. I will report back on how the vegan ham goes.

Also, patrons, the penultimate bundle of Soul Spell chapters are up–there’s one more coming in January, then the book will be done! Final edited version will be coming sometime late spring or early summer.

I had grand plans for the weekend–Watcher of the Woods to finish another pass on, Silent All These Years to make some significant word count on, and I’ve started Hell Fire (next year’s Elis serial at Patreon). I did get December’s Patreon vignette done–set during Livi’s Christmas after Charon’s Gold–but I woke Saturday with a headache and it was hours before I could function, so that put an end to that.

Not meds this time–I think it’s lack of sleep, eye strain, and stress. But I popped my electronics on Do Not Disturb and slept, and I’m much better today.

Black Friday sales are popping up early, so I broke down and got A Plague Tale: Requiem, which I’ve really been looking forward to. Innocence was such a great little gem I bought on a whim years ago (give me a female main character and I’m about 60% sold already) and was quite pleased with it.

It wears its TLoU influence on its sleeve while managing to be its own thing, and I replayed that this weekend in preparation for the sequel. Still mad about the dog (I skip that cutscene when replaying). Still mad about the pig (I don’t even look back at that). Still mad about Rodric (the only side character I truly loved). But it’s still a great game, and I’m going to play Requiem for a few hours today, prepared to have my heart broken.

Playing plague games during a plague is apparently a thing for me.

Speaking of Black Friday sales, I started mine early due to the Twitterpocalypse–without Twitter, I basically wouldn’t sell any premade covers. Since I’m still on the boat–or, rather, floating on debris above the frigid water at this point–the coupon this time is MYHEARTWILLGOON and you can get 30% off them until the end of the month.

If I’ve got time (ahaha), I’ve got stock to use up so there might be a few additional ones added in another week or so. All sales are helping to pad Shawn’s dental surgery fund. And possibly helping to buy me games for my PS5 that I’m excited about.

That code also works at Payhip for 30% off all my ebooks (though if you’re on Patreon, that discount code is better–got get discounts with that).

I’m going to finish some chores and play my new game and try to continue to rest with some silence here at Chez Skyla for a bit–and attempt to not feel guilty for not getting enough writing done. The downside of finishing three WIPs and writing three new ones last year is that anything less than feels like I’m slacking (though, of course, half of what I’m doing right now is revising the hot messes I created last year, so I guess it all evens out).