Phantasmagorical Car Crash

my son.. (frames from this video)

no leaves, but plenty of eyes.

inspired by me spacing out on a long drive & staring at trees. this happened earlier this year, and birches ended up growing leaves before i finished the doll.

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

we will have adults born in

the 2010’s

January - Agalychnis callidryas. Of course. AI loves popular animals, and perhaps no frog is as iconic as the red-eyed treefrog. February - Trachycephalus resinifictrix March - probably supposed to be Dendrobates auratus, but honestly looks more like a Ranitomeya April - I think this is supposed to be Odorrana? It certainly looks like it. May - any of the many green frogs in the family Ranidae. May be Aquarana or Pelophylax, but could also be many others. June - Maybe Litoria caerulea? but not chubby enough July - I think the AI was trying to represent a Pelobatrachus nasutus, but had arbitrarily decided it wanted only green frogs and accidentally landed on something like Gastrotheca guentheri? August - Some hylid frog, almost certainly based on either Dryophytes or Hyla September - Any of a number of green toads, possibly genus Bufotes October - Ceratophrys cranwelli or C. ornata November - No idea. Could be any number of species. But given that when you ask ChatGPT for a list of ten random frogs, it almost always includes Pyxicephalus adspersus, I guess this could be a young individual of that species. December - A glass frog, family Centrolenidae. AI is *obsessed* with Hyalinobatrachium, so it's probably a member of that genus.

There was no doubt in my heart that Mister October, the Ceratophrys, would be the problem child. But truly, frogs don't owe anyone anything, and I love them all equally. They are perfect.