eBook giveaway! Satyr Plays 2: a collection of humorous, adult short stories. (news)

ThankChristmas is here! Image by Midjourney.

https://www.amazon.com/Satyr-Plays-2-Naja-Tau-ebook/dp/B0DM3MKBG3

Hello! I hope you are enjoying the crisp, cool weather, the warm nostalgia, and the comfort of good friends and family this holiday season. 

The Satyr Plays 2 eBook is out. You can read a description, read a sample, or even purchase the eBook for Kindle for $6.99 right now at the link provided above. Please note that this book is for adults and has a lot of explicit content, even in the sample. 

In my opinion, it is not necessary to have read anything else in the Lost Atlantis/Satyr Plays universe to be able to pick up on what's going on in this book (although it will help). 

I've scheduled two eBook giveaways: one to celebrate Thanksgiving and one to celebrate Christmas. The eBook will be 100% free to download from Amazon on the following dates:

November 28 & 29
December 25, 26, 27

2024

The sales run from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. 

I recommend clicking "Buy now with 1-Click" instead of "Read for free." "Read for free" is for some kind of subscription service, whereas "Buy now" will allow you to download a more permanent copy to your Kindle. If the price says $0.00, you shouldn't be charged anything.

If you like the book, leaving a review would help me out, but mainly, I just want people to read it! I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope it's fun to read. 

I received a proof of the paperback in the mail today, and it still needed some work, so I haven't released that yet. (I put extra spaces between the paragraphs that weren't there in the first book, and I wanted them to match. And that led to having to redo the paperback cover.)

I am also in the middle of putting together an audiobook which I narrate myself. I really wish I could do a giveaway or set a lower price for the audiobook, but Audible controls pricing and doesn't do giveaways as far as I can tell. So that's going to be for sale at the regular price. I used better sound equipment for this audiobook, so I think it's going to be an improvement over the first Satyr Plays. 

Enjoy!

Cover reveal for Satyr Plays 2! (news)

 

Hello my friends,

I've been away for a while. I've had some very serious issues that I've needed to go through offline, but I've kept working on my comedy writing. I do anticipate releasing Satyr Plays 2 this month or in December. Satyr Plays is the comedic alternate universe for my Lost Atlantis series. 

There will be an eBook giveaway! So please check back later to see updates about that.

I'm currently working on the following formats for Satyr Plays 2: paperback, eBook, and audiobook. All will eventually be made available on Amazon.

Don't eat too much leftover Halloween candy!

Why isn't someone protecting her? (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm in a family restaurant. It's definitely a mid-level establishment. It's not fancy, but it's probably kind of expensive. Maybe a family of four would spend a little over $100 to eat there. 

It's got that dark ambiance lighting for night time dining, and a white and mauve-painted clapboard exterior. The paint is too thick, and it looks like it was allowed to drip here and there. It has its own parking lot, and a ramp for wheelchairs.

While I'm here to eat with my family, I can't help but notice a beautiful girl in a pink satin dress. She looks incredibly vulnerable and bewildered. I don't think she's quite aware of where she is or what's going on. But I recognize her--she's rather famous for something on screen. And she's wealthy. But her family has brought her wealth with her into the busy restaurant where anyone could take it. I'm under the impression that they want to show it off. Her family stacks her wealth (her wealth looks like 20lb disc weights that you would put onto a gym barbell) all around the table as they eat their meal. 

When they're done with their meal, her family carries her wealth--who knows where. I see some of them taking it to the trunk of their car. I see some of them just carrying it around deeper into the restaurant. I don't think there's any way this girl can keep track of what's going where. There's some built in protection for her, because we're in public and it's her family. Your family generally looks out for you, but that's not a guaranteed relationship. 

I'm really worried about what's going to happen to her. She's strong enough to make a bunch of money and do things people appreciate, but too vulnerable to keep any of it. How can someone like that prepare for old age? I really wish someone would protect her. 

INTERPRETATION

I have been going through a tremendous amount of stress for the past few weeks, and I've been experiencing a return of some of my bipolar schizoaffective symptoms because of it. 

I'm very frightened of hallucinating. I used to be frightened because I actually believed the aggressive hallucinations were real. But now that I can spot them pretty easily for what they are, I'm more scared of how vulnerable I am when I'm in the middle of psychosis, or experiencing either mania or depression. It's very, very easy for me to be taken advantage of in all kinds of ways when I'm ill: financially, sexually, socially--any way you can think of. It's partly why I'd be concerned about moving back to a large city again. There are more desperate, predatory people in a big city, and if you're not on your toes and thinking very carefully at all times, you can get into trouble really fast. 

So the pace of life is going really fast for me right now, even though I'm in a small city, and I'm concerned about what could happen. I have to take extra precautions to take care of myself right now--to sleep well, to eat healthily, to take walks, to take breaks, to be sociable, to plan out what I need to do ahead of time so I don't rush. Stuff like that. 

I become an underwater slave. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

Somehow, I wind up in an enormous swimming pool that's as deep as a performing arts center is tall. I'm not 100% certain, but I think I ended up in this pool because I met this random guy on the street, kinda started to like him a little, and he told me to come here. Now he and I and hundreds of other people are enslaved. 

I have to dive to the bottom of this pool either with weights, or to bring up weights depending on the assignment. And if anyone tries to escape, a diver launches into the air with a sledge hammer, and they will spin around and around until they come straight down on that person no matter where they go (aside from back underwater, doing what they're supposed to be doing).

Then I kind of half-way wake up and test one of these spinning divers underwater. She swings her sledge hammer at me, but she can't swing it fast enough to really hurt me. I can block it easily. She doesn't represent a threat underwater. I'm surprised at how effortlessly I can hold my breath. 

INTERPRETATION

The Olympics have been going on, and this dream definitely seems influenced by them. But I think this dream is kind of how I'll often meet someone I sort of like, and I'll often start to feel like I'm dragged into being their therapist. That's what the imagery of swimming down into the depths is to me. But having to hold my breath and kick with weights--that's work! I'm doing work when I do this, and I'm trapped in the pool. 

Someone I was on the fence about told me that I was their therapist. And it felt a little flattering, because I have that training, but have never used it outside of personal relationships and perhaps tangentially to help my coworkers. But when this person said it, it felt icky at the same time, because the relationship between a therapist and a client is completely artificial. It goes one way. You never get to truly know your therapist. They get paid to listen to you. But I'm not getting paid. So what do I get out of a relationship like that? 

I've had other people call me their therapist before, and that didn't bother me, because the relationship felt balanced in terms of give and take. But lately, I kind of feel like I'm being leaned upon too heavily for emotional support, and it feels a little like being in this dream.

My subconscious is trying to help me. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm sitting at a drafting table for drawing, and my subconscious is talking to me. It's a disembodied, god-like voice that says, "We need to do what we can to help her." (By this, the subconscious is referring to waking, conscious me.) The me at the draft board agrees. 

"What about this?" asks the disembodied voice. 

Then the me at the drawing table gasps as the disembodied subconscious gives her a blurry alien to draw. And she immediately realizes that she'll (I'll) have to learn to think completely differently if she's going to figure out how to draw this effectively. 

INTERPRETATION

I was in the middle of drawing a portrait for the first time in perhaps a decade when I had this dream, and there were many points at which I realized that I needed to think of the visual information totally differently in order to create some way to represent it with pencil. 

I took art classes in high school, and I remember one section that would talk about creating different textures for things like trees or rocks using different pen strokes, and using different sort of tricks like making the background lighter and less detailed in order to create the impression of distance. These sorts of things seemed important at many points in the creation of my portrait, because simply looking at the reference images wasn't enough to get a good result. I had to draw what I knew, rather than what I saw, and that required thinking differently about the visual information. 

I think it's helpful in broadly applicable ways to come up with ways to think of things differently like this. 

The orchestra playing in a castle that might blow over. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm at a concert of orchestral music. I'm inside what appears to be some kind of irregularly-shaped castle. The walls are made of stone bricks, and it's dark inside with dramatic rays of sunlight highlighting important things like the stage and the audience. But the audience is placed in irregular clumps all around the orchestra pit based on the strange angles of the walls. 

As the music plays, I go to my seat, which is at the very top of an extremely, extremely tall, narrow tower that only barely has enough space for me to climb up a rickety bamboo and rope ladder, which buckles, creaks, and sways with every step up. 

I get to the "bird's nest" where the seats are, and it's full. There are dozens of people in it, listening to the music. But I can still see over the edge, and it looks like a bottomless pit down there. 

I feel terrified, but I also know that it's a real privilege to be at this concert, so I suck it up and have a seat. I know I'll feel better once I sit down. 

Then the concert is over, and I see dozens of cats all over the castle jumping up on the stairs and other stones like little mountain goats. They love it. 

Someone starts playing choir music on a CD player that I find kind of creepy. I put on some other music that's more neutral. It's about tomatoes. I like it a lot better. It's not cheerful, but it's not grandiosely gloomy either. I don't know why more people don't like the tomato music. I feel as though it doesn't go one way or the other enough to be popular.

INTERPRETATION

Do you ever feel as though life is a beautiful nightmare? That's what I feel when I think of this dream. Life and the situation with the wobbly tower are terrifying. They're confusing. They're unsettling. But it's all very beautiful. And you realize you're lucky to be witnessing it.

With the tomato music, it makes me think of how tomato juice is supposed to neutralize skunk odor. My dad used to listen to this really creepy choir music that made me feel really upset when I was a child, and I would ask him to change it, and he would refuse. That went on for two decades. To me, that grandiosely gloomy choral sound is very similar to his worldview. And as someone who is well-medicated and relatively happy, I think of life as being much more neutral than that. I mean, the cats are having a great time. It's mainly a matter of where your focus is. 

My conservative, religious friend gets serious about trying drag. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM 

I'm watching a rather conservative, religious friend pick out dozens of different sequined outfits, high heels, wigs, makeup, jewelry, and dresses in this fashion warehouse we're visiting. He's really, really excited and serious about starting to do drag. He's even looking on his 2-in-1 laptop for more stuff he can buy online while we're shopping in person. 

He packs up all his stuff to do drag, and brings it home... 

...and he never uses it. He completely abandons the whole idea of doing drag. 

INTERPRETATION

I think this is a problem I have. I'll prepare for a career, and then I won't even get started with it. I think I'm worried that the same thing will happen with what I'm studying for right now. But I feel as though this is going to be the thing that carries me into old age, financially.