It’s come to my attention that the Patreon plugin on my site is a little unreliable. It should be automatically sharing patreon posts to my blog on here, but sometimes it just….doesn’t, and I have to import them manually for them to show up on the site.
If you’re a Patreon follower, or you’re interested in joining, I do recommend keeping an eye on the app or my Patreon page directly to make sure you don’t miss any updates. ^^’
…with that said, I should probably use this site more often too.
Music and writing go hand in hand for me. I think there’s a blog post somewhere (unless it’s just in my drafts) about how intertwined Jaded & SNOW are with X’s music.
Likewise, one of my favorite bands to write to has always been Buck-Tick. I’ve loved Visual-Kei since I was in my teens (It IS pure coincidence that Aki’s surname is Sakurai, and that I also have an Atsushi. But I always found it to be a fun coincidence.) , but Buck-Tick was one of the bands I slept on for an unfathomable amount of time. They were always in my periphery, and I heard a song here and there and enjoyed it but I didn’t truly notice them until Kuchizuke came out, and the Razzle Dazzle album has been a staple in my writing bursts since it’s release.
A couple of summers ago, I listened to Sid Vicious on the Beach and 21st Cherry Boy almost on repeat, and they are some of those tunes that just… I can never listen to them just once. When they come on shuffle I have to play them at least twice over, and they make me grin like an idiot every single time.
Change of Heart has become incredibly tied to Buck-Tick (even though observant readers will have noticed that a lot of the chapter titles are actually One OK Rock songs). I don’t know when it happened, maybe it was because I was writing along to their songs, jotting down drabbles and side stories, entranced by the absolutely hypnotic and sensual tones, and Atsushi’s voice.
I just knew that Buck-Tick is definitely one of Noa and Haru’s favorite bands. Time and time again I write scenes where I know which songs play in the background.
My boys have good taste.
I woke up yesterday morning and checked twitter, immediately hit with shock and disbelief that we have lost one of the greatest voices of Visual-kei. Sakurai Atsushi and Buck-Tick have been such a massive influence on the genre, and he’s truly a unique and amazing vocalist.
And to me, he’s been an incredible source of inspiration, a great influence in setting the mood when letting my characters explore their respective worlds.
My deepest condolences to his family, the band and his loved ones.
Thank you so much for everything, Atsushi. Rest in peace.
櫻井さん。ありがとうございました。 ご冥福をお祈りします. ♥
I keep telling myself I’ll update more here about the things happening in my life – but then I keep getting busy which leads to feeling overwhelmed which in turn leads to executive dysfunction.
However, I WILL get better, especially with social media being what they are at the moment. I will stay on Twitter until one of us turns to dust, but I think this website is and should be my most stable source for information.
I do enjoy making casual updates about my day, my reads and my obsessions, so those will stay on Twitter, Insta and now also on Bluesky as I finally got myself an invite this weekend!
So do follow me on all of those, if you aren’t already!
Anyway! This weekend was a real blast with the first ever Citrus Con happening! I’m so incredibly grateful for the Citrus Con crew for bringing together such an amazing event and filling the gaping hole left with Fujocon being on hiatus! (Pun very much intended) You guys did AMAZING with your first con and I can’t wait to return again next year! Already plotting a new panel ahaha~
Although I didn’t sleep much, and spent all weekend in a frenzy of caffeine and filth, it was such an amazing time to be immersed in the con bubble with fellow fujin from all over the world! I met so many cool new people, and attended to many awesome presentations and panels! There’s nothing like watching academic lectures on BL in the middle of the night!
I want to extend some special thanks to everyone who came and listened to the panels I was on this weekend!
On Saturday, The Yaoi Shelf was live from Citrus Con, talking about how Fanfic has changed through the decades, which was a fantastic time! Amanda and I both had a blast, and I promise to share the video with you once it’s been uploaded! It was such a fun panel full of nostalgia and insanity, and we got so many fun questions at the end as well!
Then on Sunday I did a fresh version of my Gravitation: A Force to be Reckoned With panel to SUCH an amazing response from the audience! You guys were amazing! I’m so sorry about the technical issues at the end during the Q&A – I forget that my Discord always acts up when it’s been streaming for a little more than an hour. ^^’ But all in all it was an amazing time!
I have plans to share the panel to my Patreon once I have done some editing, and hopefully added subs as well!
If you were at the panel, I have posted the promised list of doujins to Twitter, and also in a doc here!
I’m still trying to figure out how to do Patreon as I’m not confident in keeping a monthly schedule with just how busy and drained I constantly am, but I think I want to try at least occasionally making and sharing videos. Maybe reviews and recs as well?
If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them! For starters, I’m going to kick off with bonus stories about my boys that I’ve been sitting on for way too long.
Wow, look at me actually posting this update! I’ll try to keep it up! Next week is Pride in my city, and I’m going to so many exciting lectures, including one on Queer rep in writing! Very excited, but also already exhausted.
I hope everyone is doing well!
I’ve been contemplating starting a Patreon for ages – then chickening out – setting it up completely – and then running into a bunch of issues I didn’t want to deal with so I just… didn’t.
Anyway, I’m finally doing this! I’ve never used Patreon as a creator before, so bear with me learning as I go. Not sure I’ll be able to keep up a monthly schedule, but I am aiming to share with you exclusive content, news and bonuses!
In the future, there might even be merch!
I can’t believe we’ve made it to May already, and I have done NONE of the things I set as goals for myself to start doing back in January – some of it has been out of my hands, to be fair – but a lot of it is just me be being exhausted and lacking in motivation.
However, I’ve been meaning to step up my game, which will hopefully mean that I’ll actually dare to figure out some paperwork so I can launch my patreon, and also maybe try to start a newsletter once I get on with things.
For now though, I just wanna quickly come on here and announce that this month on The Yaoi Shelf, a wonderfully unhinged podcast that I’m part of, we’re talking about the art of writing BL – more specifically; mine and Amanda’s experiences as BL writers. We’ve promised ourselves and each other that we’re going to abandon our impostor syndromes and be loud and proud about our writing, so we’d better stick to it!
The ep will be recorded this Sunday, on the 7th, and then we’ll have a live broadcast which everyone can join at the end of the month!
If you’ve got any questions, comments or anything you want to ask about BL authorship, I’ll be posting a question sticker to both my own IG story, as well as the podcast’s, so we can answer those either during the main ep or the live.
Wow, it’s been almost a full year since I actually updated this website?!
I guess nothing big has been happening – or maybe I’m just lazy, and posting most of my day to day updates on IG and Twitter. And speaking of Twitter; since it appears to be going belly up, I thought maybe I should start being more active on my own domain again.
As I am writing this I realize that I’ve done tons of cool things this summer and fall which I never wrote about, so maybe I should do some throwback posts about that too? I did after all become a radio host this summer, and did a really fun panel at Torucon, which I feel deserves it’s own little corner. SO look out for that I guess!
I’m slowly working towards setting up my Patreon, although I’m really nervous about actually launching it, which is why I keep putting it off. But I’ll do my best to figure out the details before the new year!
I’ll stay on Twitter for as long as I can, and I’ll keep using Instagram as well. You can find me on both those platforms as @Authorcarola.
In NON internet news, I’m super busy these days with a lot of exciting projects that are definitely draining all my energy, and leaving me MIA on every platform imaginable.
My 9 day NaNoWriMo-venture came and went in a flurry of short, mostly lemon-flavored texts, some of which will be Patreon fodder, and others that will go into the CoH bonus collection, whenever that might be.
I have a massive editing project lined up, with no time to actually edit *cry* but hoping I can get on with it once other things calm down a bit.
If you’re in Norway you can catch me next weekend (the 26th of November) at the Public Library, recording a broadcast and leading a panel with the creators of Rakkan, for their Manga launch fest. The event will take place in the Fantasy Room, and is free to attend! DO come join us~
I’m also preparing for Casacon next month, where I will be a panelist on a Romance Trope panel, and a moderator for a Queer Fiction panel. Casacon is 100% virtual so you can attend from wherever you might be in the world, and registering for the con is free as well! I’m super excited to be back at this cozy little virtual con, and hope to see you there!
To top if all of, I am of course still a co-host of The Yaoi Shelf, and we will be doing our monthly live this Sunday, on the 20th, with Peachie from The Church of BL (and Citrus Con!), so please pop by and catch our unhinged rambling!
So that’s what I’m doing for the foreseeable future. In my next couple of posts I guess I’ll look a bit back in time on what’s been happening this year?
But for now I’m going to retreat back into my bubble of BL dramas – currently watching everything under the sun in an attempt to fill the KinnPorsche-shaped hole in my heart.
