End of April News

Some news, what's happening, ordinary day to day things.

Met my new doctor today; my former doctor retired at the end of March.  This was just a follow-up to my procedure last week and an opportunity to introduce ourselves.  He asked what I did and I explained that I was a writer, that among other things I produced material for Dungeons & Dragons.  The doctor didn't know what that was, so I answered a few questions and he went to look it up on the computer during our brief visit.  This was a very interesting opportunity for me, as I'll explain.

If you don't know, google tailors everybody's searches based on what they've searched for in the past.  If I look myself up on google, I come up first, because I search my own pages all the time and I'm always here.  The doctor, however, had never searched for D&D, ever.  It was a completely virgin search.  He wasn't sure what he was searching for so I had him type "D&D" ... just that.  The official page for the company came up.  I asked him to add "Alexis" to the search and there I was, the 5th result on the page.  Granted, there aren't that many people in the English world with my name, but I still find this very reassuring.

I mentioned on my Juvenis campaign yesterday that I'm planning to relocate to another residence come June 1st.  This is possible in large part from my patreon subscribers and other sources.  There's also been some movement on my book sales and patreon due to the efforts of Mark, who is in part freelancing as a business manager for me.  I met Mark about a year ago online, and since then twice in person; he's here in Calgary.  My book sales are up with Amazon and so in my patreon.  He's even arranged a little funding through a third party to help pay for my running a table at a game con, once those start going again.  I'm looking into Vancouver, Seattle and Portland; no telling if I'll be able to go farther afield or not.  I've started paying Mark a nominal fee for this work; I hope I can give him a little more in the future.

Because of these things, and in part because Tamara became legal in Canada just before covid started, we've gotten ourselves, at last, out of the troubles that began in 2015.  These have been five hard years and, thank you patrons, thank you buyers of my books, we're seeing the light of day at last.  Unquestionably, the support you've given us these last years has made the difference.  Slowly, I'm learning to breathe easy.

I'm hoping that once we move, I can buy some equipment that will let me do some decent recording.  I'm not convinced my future is in podcasting, but there's at least one experiment I'm game to try.  More on that later.

The poster has suffered this last month from other things; it is not dead!  Frustratingly, it's not on time either, but that's how it is with commitments and working.  I hope to have something exciting to show in 2-3 weeks, that my daughter and I expect to blow your socks off.  It's certainly made a stir with those people with whom we've discussed it.

So, with that ... oh, I wanted to say that the Travel page on my Authentic Wiki now makes it the longest page on the whole wiki that isn't about history: it's third longest overall.  6,000 words.

As a side note, this may be the first April in a decade that's passed without my encountering the stupid D&D april challenge.  I hope the concept is finally dead.

Be well.