This is basically going to be an assorted updates post. I had a lot of things I wanted to talk about, but I don’t think each idea warranted its own post, so I’m just going to go through things here. Enjoy!

Matsuricon was Awesome

This past weekend, August 28 – 31, was Matsuricon at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. I presented my panel FANFIC INTO FICTION on Sunday at 12:30 and an astounding 36 people showed up for it!!! I had based my panel presentation on the last experience I had: Animate! 2023, where only 8 people showed up and I ended up finishing early. I had made my panel 1 hour long at Animate! but reduced it to 45 minutes for Matsuricon because of what had happened before…but it turns out I really needed that full hour. People were very talkative in the audience and not only shared their stories, but advice and experience, too. It was the ideal audience, but I didn’t plan for that, and we ended up running out of time before I could talk about traditional publishing. Despite that, I got incredible feedback and was asked to submit it back next year, so I shall!

There were so many incredible VAs I wanted to meet and get autographs from, but I had very little money to spend as my first paycheck is coming to me pretty late, but I did manage to snag two actors’ signatures: Keith Silverstein, who plays Zhong Li from Genshin Impact, and Clifford Chapin, who plays Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia. I had fun talking to both of them, and now I have beautiful, autographed art of my favorite characters they’ve voiced. As an aside, Keith Silverstein is really freaking charming. Like, my heart fluttered talking to him.

I Bit off More Than I Can Chew with Reviews

You may or may not know, but I mostly write reviews for The Beat, an Eisner award-winning comics resource and news outlet online. I review manga and anime, but mostly anime. TOKYOPOP contacted me to see if I wanted to review their stuff, and since they are a huge publisher of BL, I agreed.

This summer was an incredible time for publishing manga. Not only did TOKYOPOP have a variety of releases, but newer manga publishers like Manga Mavericks and Red String were also debuting works. And I agreed to review almost all of them. This was because I thought I had plenty of time in the summer to review, and that turned out not to be the case. I also didn’t realize that by agreeing to nearly everything, the burden that I’d be putting on the editors who’d also have to be checking my work would be pretty sizeable.

Anyway, I agreed to review specific titles, and because I agreed, I feel obligated to do so…but they are not coming out in a relevant, timely fashion because teaching is (and has always) kicked my butt and taken up all my time. I hate letting people down, but I had to let the TOKYOPOP rep know what’s what with my schedule.

Teaching is already challenging me

I can’t get into this with too much detail, but teaching sort of kicked my butt from the get-go. My commute to the college is an hour and a half…so I’m driving 3 hours every Tuesday and Thursday, and I have to get in that car no later than 6am. I know there are people out there who can do a tougher schedule, but this is kicking my butt. The drive down, I’m energized enough, but coming home, I feel like falling asleep. Instead of working as soon as I come home, I take a long nap and then rest for the night. On my days off, I’m supposed to be grading, but usually I’m spending hours creating PowerPoints for class and coming up with lessons, which takes me a while. There have also been technical snafus keeping me from accessing assignments, plus my own ignorance of Blackboard. So that’s been fun. I usually postpone grading until the weekend or Monday, but I’ve fallen behind and the assignments are adding up.

Basically, it’s a time management and sleep management issue. And I’ve always had problems with both, on account of me feeling exhausted all the time. I hope I can figure a sort of system out.

I’m scared I won’t finish my book in time

I have a self-appointed deadline for finishing The Name and the Key, and it’s October 1st. This is because it needs to be beta-read and I need some feedback to work with before revising and turning in the final draft to Oliver Heber Books. So my actual book deadline is later, but it was stated very clearly that I need to do whatever I can to prep this book for submission to my publisher, meaning…I cannot turn in a rough draft to them. My rough drafts are usually very clean, but there tends to be continuity or logic issues that aren’t caught until a beta reader looks at the book.

I was talking about how freaked out I was about this with my therapist, and how I wasn’t sure I could grade assignments and finish the book at the same time. Realistically we determined that I could probably only work on my book on the weekends.

I did calculations for writing Friday through Sunday and the word count requirements were pretty steep. So then I calculated writing on every day off: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday…and to meet the October 1 deadline, I need to write 2500 words a day (starting today since I missed Monday). To me, this is a substantial amount. But I can’t write everyday while school is in session.

Considering I tend to grade on days off or make lessons for the day, I’m worried about how to fit the writing in. But I’m at the point where I can’t make excuses for myself anymore. The deadline of October 1st is non-negotiable.

The tariffs and removal of “de minimus” pisses me off

So, I’m a collector. This didn’t start happening until I lived in Japan and was surrounded by tons of anime goods that I never even knew I wanted. When I came home to the United States, I continued to collect expensive figurines and cheaper character goods like noodle stopper figures (which make excellent bookshelf decorations, by the way). I got most of these from Amazon before the tariffs kicked in.

But I’m also a shopper at Good Smile Company, and many months ago, when I was still employed and teaching at North Central State, believing my job was stable, I preordered goods from them. You cannot cancel preorders. I believed I would have money to pay for these goods when they came, but I don’t get paid until September 20, and they’ve already shipped my first Nenderoid. For preorders that occurred within a certain time frame, Good Smile Company agreed to eat the cost of tariffs. So my Noragami figure of Yato didn’t have that additional fee. But then they got rid of the de minimus regulation that allowed goods worth under $800 to be shipped without additional fees…and that was eliminated before Yato got shipped. I am so nervous I’m going to be hit with additional charges due to the elimination of de minimus. I also keep hearing rumors that Trump wants to exact flat fees for foreign goods between $80 and $200. Imagine paying $34 for a Nenderoid but $80 to actually get it plus the cost of shipping.

I have about eight orders outstanding with Good Smile Company. The newer orders include estimated tariff fees calculated into the totals, but they’re not 100% set in stone as these rules keep changing. And the thing is, as selfish as I am, I really want what I ordered.

Not only is this going to hurt collectors like me who get goods from Japan, but I don’t think Americans realize how much stuff comes to us from overseas, especially China and India. I see dark days ahead.

All I Wanna Do is Sleep

I mentioned in the teaching section that all the driving makes me sleepy…getting up at 5am makes me sleepy…but I wonder if I’m still having some mental health issues or if there’s something in my bloodwork, too. I can’t seem to function without a two-hour nap every day, usually after I eat lunch. And I don’t stay up late to compensate for the time lost, either. My bedtime is 8pm. As much as sleeping takes away valuable time from me to do other things, I honestly feel like I can’t function without it. I hope I can figure out something soon.

…Well, that’s it for my rambling update. I hope to have a more focused post for all of you soon, whether it’s informative or entertaining or whatnot. If you read to the end of this post, I appreciate it! Thanks for your support!