I am glad to announce a contest! It actually originates from a slip of the tongue in our upcoming podcast episode, so be sure to check it out when it is published.

So, the contest. We’re calling this “Fantasty.” 

Here’s how it works: you show us what you’re cooking. You can either tweet it at author T.S. Pedramon with the hashtag #Fantasty or email a picture to fantasty@thorn.link with “Fantasty” in the subject line. At the end of May June we will choose the “Fantastiest” winner from among our newsletter subscribers (you can sign up for the newsletter here) and we’ll send you…we haven’t settled on this yet. A coupon? A gift card? Help us decide!

Here’s a review: 1) Subscribe, 2) Email or tweet your “Fantasty” photo, 3) Cross your fingers that you’ll win!

We’ll see you next week!

In today’s so-called “in-between-isode,” rather than talking world-building or providing story narration, we discuss some updates in our lives. Specifically, my planted grape seeds, the ongoing saga with our Airbnb property, and designing a logo for Grendhill Media.

My grape seeds aren’t sprouting. 🙁

Our Airbnb saga continues – they’re offering a low-ball payment that doesn’t cover the estimates we were given by contractors, let alone our labor, the mortgage and utilities while the property sits vacant due to their delay, lost profits, and of course,

Seriously. Lots of anxiety and life upheaval. They’re offering 82% of our plain-and-simple expenses to remedy the situation. Add our labor, mortgage and utilities, general contractor overhead and profit, and what they’re offering is about 50% of what appropriate compensation should be.

Now we have to decide – it’s a bird-in-the-hand-vs-two-in-the-bush situation. Do we capitulate, or hire a lawyer to push on them harder to bring their number up? What do you think?

Also, what do you think of the logo prototype?

I planted grape seeds.

The years ago this month I left my family behind in Virginia and attended six months of training for work in Georgia. Due to COVID hitting at the same time I couldn’t take the odd weekend to travel back home to visit my own wife and children, which makes me feel quite isolated.

Despite this I made the best I could of the forced separation. I roomed with some cool coworkers, did a lot of running, and a little bit of kayaking on some nearby lakes in my free time. I also pulled my Grendhill work-in-progress off the shelf, and while I didn’t write that much more of the story, I did create. I started the Grendhill Chronicles Podcast during this time, composing into/outro music, “advertisement” background music, and several conversations with my cousin and sister, most of which have yet to be edited into podcast episodes due to the amount of time it takes to produce each one.

I was able to attend church services in the home of fellow believers local to me. They were very inviting, allowing my buddies and me to shoot their pistols on their land. They also shared… Drumroll! … Some grapes with me from their vines in their backyard!

I’ve been bouncing around for last 2.5 years since then, unable to plant them. Now we have specific plans to stay in one place, we have a yard, and I got a little bit of time to get them started.

I found this page that talks about how to grow grapes from seed. Last month I started following the instructions, but not with intent to follow 100% precisely, since I started too late to “winter” them for three months in the fridge. I pulled them out this week and didn’t warm them up before putting them in soil.

You can read that web page for yourself if you want to see what I’m looking at. From this point, I’m keeping the soil damp with mist. Hopefully they will all sprout and grow. I know just where to plant them, at the front of our yard, next to the driveway, providing structure for them to grow across and form a kind of hedge at the front of the lawn to make the yard feel more private.

Then later, yum! Grapes!

…Oh yeah, I mentioned G.R.A.P.E.S. That’s a guide useful for world building. I haven’t used it yet per se, but it’s an acronym that can be useful to help cover the various aspects of a society and its surrounding environment.

You can read more about it here. Amanda Schlindwein provides a chart that spells out the acronym:

It may not cover everything. For example – magic system? – but it’s pretty good. But what I’m really getting at is that my wife and I were talking and I think we will employ this acronym and produce podcast episodes discussing the different factors and aspects of the worlds and peoples we create in our stories.

…Yeah. I was going to elaborate a bunch, but it’s late so I guess I’ll just let the discussions speak for themselves. Patience, they’ll come eventually!